Gertrude Himmelfarb, the eminent historian of Victorian England and the European Enlightenment, died Monday night at the age of ninety-seven. The author of a prodigious number of books and essays on a wide variety of topics, Himmelfarb was among the great minds of post-World War II America. Her contributions to Mosaic can be read here; the Israeli historian Asael Abelman’s essay on her work here; and a review of her final book here.

Of the millions of so-called Palestinian refugees the world over, most are in fact not refugees by any standard definition, but are properly speaking the descendants of refugees, often kept in a permanent state of segregation and dependency by Arab regimes. But as a consequence of the Syrian civil war, numerous Palestinians living in Syria have become actual refugees, fleeing to countries like Lebanon. Khaled Abu Toameh explains their current discontent with the Palestinian Authority (PA) and its leader, Mahmoud Abbas: