As Europe—along with many Middle Eastern countries—faces a massive influx of migrants, many of them fleeing the Syrian and Libyan civil wars, Aryeh B. Bourkoff and Ari R. Hoffman suggest looking to Israel’s extensive and perhaps unique experience in settling refugees within its borders:

Both necessity and ideology have placed welcoming and integrating immigrants at the heart of Israel’s national ethos. . . . Israel, which more than doubled its population in the first decade of its existence and permanently changed its national complexion by admitting Jews from Minsk to Morocco, is a vital example for today’s crisis. . . .

In particular, this record of absorptions suggests that long-term, the key to success is maintaining a two-way street. Refugees had to do difficult things to fit in to Israeli society, changing their occupations, languages, and sometimes even the nature of their families. They often lived in periphery towns, took low-paying jobs, and for a long time lacked a robust political voice. Nevertheless, over time they have contributed to Israel uniquely and irrevocably, from politics to pop culture. Israel, like America, is inconceivable without this diversely peopled mosaic.

Israel’s example illustrates that our approach to the current refugee crisis cannot only be a matter of numbers, quotas, and background checks. We have to consider our basic values. . . . Perhaps the most difficult kind of accounting revolves not around budgets but relates to the almost impossible equipoise between cultures that is likely to ensue from profound demographic change. Both the American and Israeli examples show, however, that there is enormous payoff in the long run for farsighted policy and principles.

Analyzing the recent direct Iranian attack on Israel, and Israel’s security situation more generally, Michael Oren looks to the 2015 agreement to restrain Iran’s nuclear program. That, and President Biden’s efforts to resurrect the deal after Donald Trump left it, are in his view the source of the current crisis:

Of the original motivations for the deal—blocking Iran’s path to the bomb and transforming Iran into a peaceful nation—neither remained. All Biden was left with was the ability to kick the can down the road and to uphold Barack Obama’s singular foreign-policy achievement.

In order to achieve that result, the administration has repeatedly refused to punish Iran for its malign actions:

Historians will survey this inexplicable record and wonder how the United States not only allowed Iran repeatedly to assault its citizens, soldiers, and allies but consistently rewarded it for doing so. They may well conclude that in a desperate effort to avoid getting dragged into a regional Middle Eastern war, the U.S. might well have precipitated one.

While America’s friends in the Middle East, especially Israel, have every reason to feel grateful for the vital assistance they received in intercepting Iran’s missile and drone onslaught, they might also ask what the U.S. can now do differently to deter Iran from further aggression. . . . Tehran will see this weekend’s direct attack on Israel as a victory—their own—for their ability to continue threatening Israel and destabilizing the Middle East with impunity.

Israel, of course, must respond differently. Our target cannot simply be the Iranian proxies that surround our country and that have waged war on us since October 7, but, as the Saudis call it, “the head of the snake.”