In a recent radio interview, Rashid Khalidi—a distinguished professor of Arab studies at Columbia University—voiced his fear that Jewish supporters of Israel would “infest” the Trump administration, using that verb not once but three times. Dore Feith, a former student of Khalid’s, responds:

[Khalidi’s] remarks may not be the ugliest comments along these lines that ever emerged from the Middle East-studies faculty at Columbia. . . . But the “infestation” theme is nasty enough to warrant special notice. What makes it nasty is its historical resonance. To be sure, not all criticism of Israel is anti-Semitism and not all anti-Semitism is Nazism. But there’s no getting around the fact that in his memoir Mein Kampf, Hitler over and over again described the Jews as an infestation of vermin. That was one of the book’s main metaphors. And that’s why Nazi officials made a point of saying their Jewish policy aimed not to “kill” but to “exterminate” (vernichten), a word more appropriate for bugs or lice than human beings. . . .

In [a statement given to the Forward in response to criticism of his words, Khalidi] acknowledged “infelicitous phrasing,” but that’s even less of an apology than the classic non-apology “I’m sorry if anyone took offense.” In an e-mail to me, he then renewed his attack on “these people” as having “a racialist disregard for Palestinians” and using “anti-Muslim, anti-Palestinian, and anti-international-law rhetoric.” In other words, Khalidi doubled down on his insult when he should have simply said “sorry.” Rather than granting that both sides of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict have points worth hearing, Khalidi painted Israel’s supporters as crazy extremists who lack rational arguments and who don’t deserve serious consideration.

Many good people are puzzled at how the Arab-Israeli conflict can fester and rage for more than 100 years. A key reason is that Israel’s enemies are so passionate in their hatred that they pass it down through the generations. Rashid Khalidi’s uncivil words demonstrate the problem. They damage the very people he favors. After all, the Palestinian people would benefit from mutual accommodation and peace with Israel. And his words also harm the interests of Columbia students who hope to have mutually respectful exchanges of ideas about controversial subjects.

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.