Early this year, after long and arduous negotiations, representatives of the Orthodox, Conservative, and Reform denominations, together with figures from the Israeli government, worked out a compromise to allow for mixed-sex prayer at the Western Wall. The agreement, however, was tabled before going into effect due to opposition from ultra-Orthodox parties in the Knesset and is now in danger of being jettisoned completely. To Natan Sharansky—who, as head of the Jewish Agency, was the prime architect of the deal—doing so could cause lasting damage:

[T]he compromise reached over the Wall was truly remarkable. . . . [It] granted legitimacy to non-Orthodox communities while acknowledging that Orthodoxy remains Israel’s de-facto religious common denominator. The proposed arrangement, in turn, received the support of a huge majority of the Israeli government. Each of the parties to this unprecedented agreement understood something that their respective constituencies tend to overlook.

On one side, the representatives of the Israeli religious and political establishments recognized that Reform and Conservative Jewry are not fringe sects, as some in Israel seem to imagine, but important venues for large numbers of Jews who reject the strictures of Orthodoxy yet want to remain part of the Jewish people. . . .

For their part, the non-Orthodox parties to the agreement recognized that Orthodoxy’s preeminence in Israel is not an accident. Rather, it stems from the historic need for a unifying religious force in the Jewish state. . . .

[T]o abandon the Wall agreement now is to legitimate extremism, to alienate large groups of fellow Jews, and to allow discord to poison our public life further. . . . Anyone who cares about the future of the Jewish people should care about this issue.

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.