Although he considered himself a Christian writer, the Polish poet, novelist, essayist, and translator Józef Wittlin (1896–1976) was born to Jewish parents and wrote extensively on Jewish subjects during the 1930s and 40s. The city of Lwów (now L’viv, Ukraine), where he lived from his childhood until World War II, plays a major role in his writings, and a collection of his essays on the city has recently been published in English. Comparing Wittlin’s Lwów to the Odessa of the Russian-Jewish author Isaac Babel, Uilleam Blacker writes:

The NKVD, [precursor to the KGB], brought plain old nastiness [to both cities]—though it had existed before, in the pogroms, as described in Babel’s “A Story of My Dovecote.” The startling and bloody fate of the Jewish boy’s pigeons in this tale is surely one of the most shocking scenes in literary history. This kind of cruelty occurred in early 20th-century Europe wherever there was a combustible ethnic mix, which in prewar Eastern Europe was almost everywhere. L’viv was no exception. In 1918, after the Poles had defeated the Ukrainians in the fight for the city, there was a horrific pogrom, carried out largely by Polish soldiers in a sort of grotesque victory celebration.

In 1941, when the Soviets, who had occupied the city for two years, retreated before the advancing Germans, hundreds of dead bodies, executed in Soviet prisons, were dragged into the streets. The Jews were blamed for this, and another, much larger-scale pogrom ensued, this time carried out largely by local Ukrainians. As Wittlin notes with bitter irony, drawing a comparison with the pogroms inspired by the Ukrainian Cossack leader Bogdan Chmielnicki in the 17th century: “the cause of all wars and every kind of evil in the world did not change from Chmielnicki to Hitler.”

Knowledge of the fate of the Jewish inhabitants of these great cities of L’viv and Odessa casts a shadow over our readings of both authors. Wittlin doesn’t dwell on the matter, but neither does he shun it—it is always there, throbbing, like a hidden wound, underneath the superficial lightness of the text.

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.