Last week, the United Kingdom sanctioned eight Russian billionaires, including Moshe (Vyacheslav) Kantor, a Jewish fertilizer magnate who maintains close ties to Vladimir Putin. Kantor has also given generously to Jewish causes, leaving them in what is now an awkward position. Ben Cohen comments:

Among those [Russian] oligarchs of Jewish origin, Kantor is the one most closely associated with Jewish causes, although Roman Abramovich—the best-known oligarch of all—is also a significant player in the Jewish world. Kantor is, among other honorifics, the head of the European Jewish Congress (EJC), a position from which he resigned on April 8; the founder of the Kantor Center for the Study of Contemporary Jewry at Tel Aviv University; and a significant donor to the Jewish Leadership Council (JLC) and Community Security Trust (CST) in the United Kingdom, his main residence. His philanthropy has transformed the Jewish world in the fifteen years since he was elected as the EJC’s president.

Jewish organizations should play no part in pushing the narrative of oligarch benevolence. It’s certainly true that our community has benefited from their largesse, but that would not have been possible had Western governments, banks, and investment funds not fallen over themselves to attract the oligarchs’ investments in property, media, marquee sports teams, and other valuable assets in the first place. Moreover, in accepting their hefty donations, Jewish organizations provided oligarchs with an equally valuable service, allowing their names to be associated primarily with philanthropic and charitable works, rather than their murky relations with the dictator in the Kremlin.

That cozy exchange cannot—and should not—survive the war in Ukraine. Jewish organizations exist to serve their communities, not the individuals who fund them.

Analyzing the recent direct Iranian attack on Israel, and Israel’s security situation more generally, Michael Oren looks to the 2015 agreement to restrain Iran’s nuclear program. That, and President Biden’s efforts to resurrect the deal after Donald Trump left it, are in his view the source of the current crisis:

Of the original motivations for the deal—blocking Iran’s path to the bomb and transforming Iran into a peaceful nation—neither remained. All Biden was left with was the ability to kick the can down the road and to uphold Barack Obama’s singular foreign-policy achievement.

In order to achieve that result, the administration has repeatedly refused to punish Iran for its malign actions:

Historians will survey this inexplicable record and wonder how the United States not only allowed Iran repeatedly to assault its citizens, soldiers, and allies but consistently rewarded it for doing so. They may well conclude that in a desperate effort to avoid getting dragged into a regional Middle Eastern war, the U.S. might well have precipitated one.

While America’s friends in the Middle East, especially Israel, have every reason to feel grateful for the vital assistance they received in intercepting Iran’s missile and drone onslaught, they might also ask what the U.S. can now do differently to deter Iran from further aggression. . . . Tehran will see this weekend’s direct attack on Israel as a victory—their own—for their ability to continue threatening Israel and destabilizing the Middle East with impunity.

Israel, of course, must respond differently. Our target cannot simply be the Iranian proxies that surround our country and that have waged war on us since October 7, but, as the Saudis call it, “the head of the snake.”