Thanks to Hamas’s assiduous propaganda, widely disseminated by journalists and human-rights organizations, it is widely assumed that the people of the Gaza Strip live in abject poverty and are hovering on the brink of a humanitarian crisis, created or exacerbated by an Israeli “blockade.” Not so, writes Hillel Frisch:

Gaza’s life expectancy of seventy-four is above both the world average (sixty-eight in 2010) and the average in the Arab states. This means that more than 3.8 billion people are living shorter, and probably harsher, lives than Gazans. . . . [Furthermore] life expectancy in Gaza has not declined, and the [Israeli] blockade no longer exists. . . . Even the electricity crisis in Gaza points to a high, and rising, standard of living. The crisis is partly the result of the gap between supply and increasing demand. . . .

So why is this myth so widespread? The answer lies with those who have a vested interest in perpetuating it. By far the most important of these is Hamas. The terrorist group taxes all incoming goods to pay the salaries of its 30,000 terrorists and the bureaucracy that feeds them, as well as for training, missile production, and the digging of tunnels into Israel. The budget supports 20,000 more on the public payroll whom Hamas has hired since 2007—mostly teachers who preach jihadism in Gaza’s public schools. Hamas hopes that claims of a humanitarian crisis will bring in more aid, more demand for goods, and a greater flow of goods, all of which it will tax for its own benefit.

Hamas is not the only culprit. The international “humanitarian” relief industry has an obvious stake in perpetuating the myth. In few places in the world can relief-agency workers live in a cosmopolitan hive like Tel Aviv, enjoy a world-class symphony orchestra, museums, and night life, and commute to the allegedly stricken areas. . . . Championing the humanitarian crisis in Gaza is to champion a personal lifestyle at the expense of, [for instance], East African countries that need the aid much more desperately than Gaza.

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.