On January 22, the UN General Assembly held a special meeting to discuss anti-Semitism. With the exception of speeches by the Israeli and American ambassadors, and by the French philosopher Bernard-Henri Lévi, the session amounted to a gathering of foxes discussing how best to guard the hen house. Ben Cohen suggests a better approach:

While it would be churlish to demean the efforts of Jewish advocacy organizations and the Israeli UN delegation in helping to pull off the meeting, it’s important to recognize that our side of the debate doesn’t have full control of the proceedings, and never will. As long as we fail to control the substance of the debate, and as long as we are powerless to weed out anti-Semites . . . from these deliberations, we will never properly explain to the world what anti-Semitism involves.

Ultimately, it’s not about trading in discredited stereotypes or being nasty to individual Jews. . . . In the era of the Jewish state, anti-Semitism . . . seeks the restoration of the status quo that prevailed before World War II, when there was no Jewish state, and when Jews were by definition a minority at the mercy of others.

That is what we have to oppose. And so, if there is a future meeting about anti-Semitism at the UN, or at a national parliament, or any similar body, let’s state at the beginning that the movement to destroy Israel—which spans Middle Eastern governments, Middle Eastern terrorist groups, and assorted Western activists brandishing signs in favor of anti-Israel boycotts—is the greatest concern and the greatest threat. If we can’t say any of those things, then it’s probably not worth holding the meeting to begin with.

Early Friday morning, Israel attacked military installations near the Iranian cities of Isfahan and nearby Natanz, the latter being one of the hubs of the country’s nuclear program. Jerusalem is not taking credit for the attack, and none of the details are too certain, but it seems that the attack involved multiple drones, likely launched from within Iran, as well as one or more missiles fired from Syrian or Iraqi airspace. Strikes on Syrian radar systems shortly beforehand probably helped make the attack possible, and there were reportedly strikes on Iraq as well.

Iran itself is downplaying the attack, but the S-300 air-defense batteries in Isfahan appear to have been destroyed or damaged. This is a sophisticated Russian-made system positioned to protect the Natanz nuclear installation. In other words, Israel has demonstrated that Iran’s best technology can’t protect the country’s skies from the IDF. As Yossi Kuperwasser puts it, the attack, combined with the response to the assault on April 13,

clarified to the Iranians that whereas we [Israelis] are not as vulnerable as they thought, they are more vulnerable than they thought. They have difficulty hitting us, but we have no difficulty hitting them.

Nobody knows exactly how the operation was carried out. . . . It is good that a question mark hovers over . . . what exactly Israel did. Let’s keep them wondering. It is good for deniability and good for keeping the enemy uncertain.

The fact that we chose targets that were in the vicinity of a major nuclear facility but were linked to the Iranian missile and air forces was a good message. It communicated that we can reach other targets as well but, as we don’t want escalation, we chose targets nearby that were involved in the attack against Israel. I think it sends the message that if we want to, we can send a stronger message. Israel is not seeking escalation at the moment.