In December 2012, the African National Congress (ANC)—which has been South Africa’s governing party since the fall of apartheid in 1994—officially endorsed the movement to boycott, divest from, and sanction (BDS) Israel. The party’s deputy secretary-general (among many others) has made clear that the ANC is opposed to Israel’s existence, rather than to its rule over any particular territory. Another operative praised Hitler on social media. The South African BDS movement has been particularly brutal in its tactics, and willing to engage in blatant anti-Semitism. Annika Hernroth-Rothstein explains:

The precipitous growth of the BDS movement in South Africa began with Thabo Mbeki’s presidency from 1999 to 2008, and stemmed from his unusual fascination with the Arab-Israeli conflict. . . . Mbeki’s belief was that now that South Africa had been liberated from apartheid, the natural next step was to free the Palestinians from Zionism—caricatured as a colonial movement dispossessing and expropriating the native population. . . .

[I]n the 21 years that elapsed since the death of apartheid, the government of South Africa has proved to be corrupt and weakened, deprived of an obvious enemy and an inspiring political fight. Israel has provided both those things.

One might say that the ANC and BDS South Africa are in business together, and it is a business, since both need to highlight “apartheid” in order to justify their existence and their actions to the outside world. . . . If the Arab-Israeli conflict ends, activists will not get paid or gain attention; by pursuing a line of “no compromise,” the BDS movement ensures that this will never happen. Young black South Africans, those who should be the future of the country, are being used to preserve the status quo rather than build a better future, once again paying the price for a dishonest system.

Surveying news websites and social media on Sunday morning, I immediately found some intelligent and well-informed observers arguing that Iran deliberately warned the U.S. of its pending assault on Israel, and calibrated it so that there would be few casualties and minimal destructiveness, thus hoping to avoid major retaliation. In other words, this massive barrage was a face-saving gesture by the ayatollahs. Others disagreed. Brian Carter and Frederick W. Kagan put the issue to rest:

The Iranian April 13 missile-drone attack on Israel was very likely intended to cause significant damage below the threshold that would trigger a massive Israeli response. The attack was designed to succeed, not to fail. The strike package was modeled on those the Russians have used repeatedly against Ukraine to great effect. The attack caused more limited damage than intended likely because the Iranians underestimated the tremendous advantages Israel has in defending against such strikes compared with Ukraine.

But that isn’t to say that Tehran achieved nothing:

The lessons that Iran will draw from this attack will allow it to build more successful strike packages in the future. The attack probably helped Iran identify the relative strengths and weaknesses of the Israeli air-defense system. Iran will likely also share the lessons it learned in this attack with Russia.

Iran’s ability to penetrate Israeli air defenses with even a small number of large ballistic missiles presents serious security concerns for Israel. The only Iranian missiles that got through hit an Israeli military base, limiting the damage, but a future strike in which several ballistic missiles penetrate Israeli air defenses and hit Tel Aviv or Haifa could cause significant civilian casualties and damage to civilian infrastructure, including ports and energy. . . . Israel and its partners should not emerge from this successful defense with any sense of complacency.