The Jewish Museum in New York City is currently mounting an exhibit entitled The Power of Pictures: Early Soviet Photography, Early Soviet Films. In her review, Frances Brent notes that the exhibit—although in many ways well executed—does not properly draw attention to the outsized role Jews played in early Soviet photography, or the Jewish identities of most of the artists whose work is on display:

[Take, for instance], El Lissitzky, whose experiments with photographs and mastery of photomontage grew out of the Jewish and Russian avant-garde. Lissitzky was a protean talent, and there were many iterations to his career. As a teenager he studied painting in Vitebsk with [Marc] Chagall’s teacher Yehudah Pen. He trained in Germany and later Moscow as an architect before taking part in Jewish ethnographic expeditions. He illustrated both Russian and Yiddish books—most famously Ḥad gadya, [an illustrated version of the traditional Passover song]. Under the influence of [Kazimir] Malevich he became a Suprematist and, after that, a constructivist in Moscow. From 1921 to 1925 he lived in Germany and Switzerland and experimented with printmaking, typography, and book design, adding the new techniques of photo-collage and photomontage to his repertoire.

While conventional wisdom in the Western press believes that the war with Hamas has left Jerusalem more isolated and scuttled chances of expanding the Abraham Accords, Gabriel Scheinmann points to a very different reality. He begins with Iran’s massive drone and missile attack on Israel last month, and the coalition that helped defend against it:

America’s Arab allies had, in various ways, provided intelligence and allowed U.S. and Israeli planes to operate in their airspace. Jordan, which has been vociferously attacking Israel’s conduct in Gaza for months, even publicly acknowledged that it shot down incoming Iranian projectiles. When the chips were down, the Arab coalition held and made clear where they stood in the broader Iranian war on Israel.

The successful batting away of the Iranian air assault also engendered awe in Israel’s air-defense capabilities, which have performed marvelously throughout the war. . . . Israel’s response to the Iranian night of missiles should give further courage to Saudi Arabia to codify its alignment. Israel . . . telegraphed clearly to Tehran that it could hit precise targets without its aircraft being endangered and that the threshold of a direct Israeli strike on Iranian nuclear or other sites had been breached.

The entire episode demonstrated that Israel can both hit Iranian sites and defend against an Iranian response. At a time when the United States is focused on de-escalation and restraint, Riyadh could see quite clearly that only Israel has both the capability and the will to deal with the Iranian threat.

It is impossible to know whether the renewed U.S.-Saudi-Israel negotiations will lead to a normalization deal in the immediate months ahead. . . . Regardless of the status of this deal, [however], or how difficult the war in Gaza may appear, America’s Arab allies have now become Israel’s.