Until the cease-fire, the world’s attention was trained on Israel’s airstrikes on Gaza, which may have suited Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu, who is facing trial on corruption charges. And Netanyahu is hardly the only populist leader in legal peril.

From Austria to the United Kingdom to the United States, similar investigations are under way. Have democracies finally found the means and the willingness to vanquish their domestic enemies?

To answer that question, let us begin by looking at the poster child for anti-democratic populism: former U.S. President Donald Trump. He is in the crosshairs of prosecutors in both New York (for potential tax and other business-related crimes) and Atlanta (for his efforts to overturn the 2020 U.S. presidential election).