Reacting to a recent UNESCO resolution that implicitly denies the historical Jewish connection to the Temple Mount, Yossi Klein Halevi points to the destructive agenda behind it:

At the heart of the anti-Zionist assault is the notion that the Jews aren’t a people but only a faith. That premise is normative throughout the Arab world, and especially in the Palestinian national movement, all of whose factions—from Fatah to Hamas—deny the existence of a distinct Jewish people with a right to national sovereignty.

The Jewish [calendar] tells a different story. Passover celebrates the birth of the Jewish people, the beginning of a coherent historical narrative. Shavuot, two months later, celebrates the giving of the Torah at Sinai, imprinting the Jewish people with a distinct path to God. The Jews, then, are a people, with a specific faith. In that order. . . . There is no Judaism without the Jewish people and its story. . . .

The UNESCO resolution erases us from our own story. There were no temples on the Temple Mount; the Mount isn’t the holiest site in Judaism; the Western Wall isn’t the heart of Jewish prayer. Of all the attempts to destroy us throughout our history, the campaign against history itself is the most devious. . . .

The current assault on the Jewish story is so dangerous precisely because it strikes at the core of Passover. If we lose the story, our sense of the basic justness of our narrative, we will lose the essence of our being.

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.