There is little reason, writes Konstanty Gebert, to believe that Vladimir Putin is an anti-Semite. He has drawn close to a segment of Russia’s organized Jewish leadership, and has also painted himself as a defender of Jews against the Ukrainian government, which he frequently alleges is “fascist.” Still, writes Gebert, there is reason to worry that Putin could unleash anti-Semitism for his own purposes—or prove unable to thwart it:

Last Friday, the Israeli defense minister Benny Gantz announced the designation of six Palestinian organizations as terrorist groups due to their deep entanglements with the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), which has been committing murderous attacks since 1968. Both the EU and several European states have provided funds to the recently proscribed organizations. A decade ago, pro-Israel activists even supplied the European Union with information, for a long time ignored, about the links between these groups and the PFLP. Members of one group—the Union of Agricultural Work Committees—murdered the seventeen-year-old Rina Shnerb in 2019. Jonathan Tobin writes: