The Swiss-born philosopher and politician Benjamin Constant (1767-1830), one of the founders of 19th-century liberalism, sought in his five-volume treatise On Religion to provide a comprehensive history of religion in its various forms and manifestations. Despite his commitment to the separation of church and state and to religious toleration, Constant argued that religion—any religion—is necessary to the flourishing of society. On the occasion of the publication of the first complete English translation of On Religion, Gianna Englert writes:

From March to May, a series of small-scale terrorist attacks claimed the lives of some twenty Israelis, and raised fears that jihadist murder would again become a fact of everyday life in the Jewish state. Hillel Frisch details how a swift campaign waged by the IDF and Shin Bet, employing deliberate and discriminate force, succeeded in restoring the peace: