The number of Jews leaving Russia rose steeply in 2014; many are making their way to Israel. According to Roman Super and Claire Bigg, they are fleeing an increasingly hostile regime:

Spooked by Russia’s actions in Ukraine and by the increasingly stringent punishments for anyone deemed critical of the Kremlin, Russians of Jewish descent have been fleeing in droves over the past eighteen months. According to Israeli authorities, as many as 4,685 Russian citizens relocated to Israel in 2014—more than double than in any of the previous sixteen years. And the trend seems to be accelerating. . . .

Zeev Khanin, an official at Israel’s Immigrant Absorption Ministry, says the average Russian immigrant has changed dramatically since the last mass exodus of Jews from Russia ebbed in the late 1990s. He says newcomers from Russia are significantly younger, more educated, and, as a rule, hail from Moscow or St. Petersburg. “The average education level is on the rise and the number of people with degrees in humanities has increased massively,” said Khanin. “Today’s repatriates are mostly the creative intelligentsia.”

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.