When confronted with things like the 9/11 conspiracy theories frequently floated in Palestinian media, State Department officials are apt to respond with condescending remarks like “that’s just how Palestinians talk,” writes Stephen Flatow. The same attitude is on display in a particularly bizarre and incendiary email, mainly proposing U.S. encouragement of anti-Israel incitement, that then-Secretary of State Hillary Clinton received from Thomas Pickering, a retired senior State Department official who was serving as her quasi-official adviser:

[Pickering] proposed that the U.S. should persuade NGOs to stir up Palestinian demonstrations against Israel, in order to pressure the Israelis to make more concessions. . . .

The racism part comes in with Pickering’s explanation as to why he prefers that the protesters be women. If Palestinian men take part, he explained, they might turn violent, . . . which would spoil Pickering’s whole plan of garnering world sympathy for the Palestinian cause.

Why was he so sure that Palestinian men would use violence? “On the Palestinian side, the male culture is to use force,” he wrote. . . .

Imagine if an Israeli official or an American Jewish leader asserted that Palestinian culture is inherently violent. Surely he would be denounced as a racist, ostracized from polite society, and forced to apologize publicly.

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.