In a memoir of his life in New Square, Shulem Deen tells about leaving a tight-knit ḥasidic community and discovering the outside world. Jessica Kasmer-Jacobs writes in her review:

[A]s the years pass, [Deen] wonders more and more: “Does God exist? Does our faith really contain the universe’s essential truths?” Desperate for guidance, he finds no salve for his growing doubts in the community’s leaders. If anything, he is treated with disdain by those he hoped might offer help. “The evasiveness that characterized so many of the responses,” he writes, “. . . suggested that the answers were a tangled spaghetti of sophistry meant to obfuscate rather than illuminate.” But in a village so small, word travels fast. Mr. Deen’s façade crumbles as his neighbors whisper about what books he reads and wonder whether he prays on the Sabbath.

Mr. Deen’s curiosity grows as quickly as his expanding family. In his early twenties, already the father of two children, he begins sneaking off to the children’s section of the nearby public library, slowly expanding his limited education with touches of the “new world.” From his perch on a tiny orange chair, Mr. Deen leafs through the pages of the World Book Encyclopedia with “heady delight.” . . . He starts listening to the radio in his car and reading newspapers. His wife grows uneasy, worried that her husband “would not be content to transgress alone, but would try to get her to join . . . and reel in the kids.”

Established in 2012 and maintaining branches in Europe, North America, and Iran, the Samidoun Palestinian Prisoner Network claims its goal is merely to show “solidarity” for imprisoned Palestinians. The organization’s leader, however, has admitted to being a representative of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), a notorious terrorist group whose most recent accomplishments include murdering a seventeen-year-old girl. As Arsen Ostrovsky and Patricia Teitelbaum point out, Samidoun is just one example of how the European Union allows Iran-backed terrorists to operate in its midst:

The PFLP is a proxy of the Iranian regime, which provides the terror group with money, training, and weapons. Samidoun . . . has a branch in Tehran. It has even held events there, under the pretext of “cultural activity,” to elicit support for operations in Europe. Its leader, Khaled Barakat, is a regular on Iran’s state [channel] PressTV, calling for violence and lauding Iran’s involvement in the region. It is utterly incomprehensible, therefore, that the EU has not yet designated Samidoun a terror group.

According to the Council of the European Union, groups and/or individuals can be added to the EU terror list on the basis of “proposals submitted by member states based on a decision by a competent authority of a member state or a third country.” In this regard, there is already a standing designation by Israel of Samidoun as a terror group and a decision of a German court finding Barakat to be a senior PFLP operative.

Given the irrefutable axis-of-terror between Samidoun, PFLP, and the Iranian regime, the EU has a duty to put Samidoun and senior Samidoun leaders on the EU terror list. It should do this not as some favor to Israel, but because otherwise it continues to turn a blind eye to a group that presents a clear and present security threat to the European Union and EU citizens.