A recent collection of essays on the so-called BDS (boycott, divestment, and sanctions) movement explores the twisted ideologies that have led to increased calls from university faculties to isolate Israel. The essays expose the intellectual vacuity of the movement, how easily it slips into overt anti-Semitism, and how hating Israel “has become arguably the single most potent marker of being of the left today.” Andrei Markovits writes:

[T]he New Left . . . shifted the axes of theory and practice from the Old Left’s proletariat as the subject of history and prime agent of salvation to third-world peoples. This also entailed a much more comprehensive reorientation of progressive politics from extolling the Enlightenment, as virtually all major agents of the Old Left did with gusto, to its total dismissal. Indeed, for the New Left, the Enlightenment—and its main global representative, “the West”—mutated into the all-powerful oppressor which had to be confronted on all fronts by new agents of progress and revolution, none more potent than Third World liberation movements of whatever ideological bent. Few, if any, became more beloved for the new progressives than the Palestinians, victims of the Jews, who, a-priori suspect as paragons of the Enlightenment, became doubly evil by virtue of attaining power in a “settler” state and thus becoming Exhibit A of a Western-implemented (neo-)colonialism at the behest of the source of all evil—the Great Satan, as it were—called the United States of America.

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.