Considering a recent book, written by a scholar of medieval history, on the evolution of attitudes toward anger, Shalom Carmy examines Moses Maimonides’ prescriptions about to how handle this powerful emotion:

[Mamonides] offers two evaluations of anger that appear to contradict each other. First, he advances an Aristotelian view, according to which the key to virtue is moderation. The path of wisdom, which is also the way of God, is to be angry at the right time, in the right proportion, about appropriate matters. To be sure, the wise man is likely to deviate a bit from the mean as a precaution against falling into vice, cultivating outrage if he tends to be too cold and analytical, or detachment if his nature is to be hotheaded. But this ideal of the golden mean remains paramount.

Yet Maimonides follows these remarks with a second account. Here, he insists that in certain areas, moderation should not be the goal. With respect to anger, extremism should be the norm. He cites rabbinic teachings that compare anger to idolatry and condemn, in strongest terms, the leader who cows and intimidates the community. According to this line of thought, if, for practical reasons, one must display anger in guiding or educating family and community, the show of anger must be feigned, not felt. Here, the ideal is to avoid emotions that overwhelm one’s capacity for rational thought.

As I see it, the two accounts reflect two different ethical ideals. The first, which advocates moderation in anger as in all things, . . . makes for a decent, orderly society as envisioned by a prudent Aristotelian. If, however, character formation should nurture the right relation to God, this approach is insufficient. More extreme self-restraint is necessary to become a God-fearing individual, one who avoids destructive, idolatrous rage and arrogance.

Carmy then turns to the essays of Samuel Johnson and the plays of Anton Chekhov, which both, in different ways, point to the fact ignored by Maimonides that there is often something comical in rage:

If Johnson and Chekhov highlight the comedy in irritability and its theater of anger, they cannot obscure its tragic potential, even when it does express itself in physical violence. . . . A few unguarded, undisciplined words cannot be undone in a lifetime of regret and remorse, and they can lay waste to relationships that took decades to build up. We should be grateful that humor, anger’s antidote, may, at least sometimes, spare us and spare others that pain.

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.