Last week, a group of leaders of Jewish organizations decided to express their indignation by pulling out of an annual pre-High Holy Days conference call with the president. Meanwhile, a number of Jewish pundits have attacked Jewish members of the Trump administration for not voicing outrage over the president’s remarks following the demonstrations and car-ramming attack in Charlottesville. Seth Mandel responds:

[The] columnist Dana Milbank took aim at a trio of Jews serving Trump: the president’s top economic adviser, his treasury secretary, and his son-in-law. [He claims] they’re playing the role of “court Jews” [in pre-modern Europe]. The court Jew, he explains [somewhat inaccurately], “existed to please the king, to placate the king, to loan money to the king,” and “his loyalty was to the king,” not his co-religionists.

So, to Milbank, Trump’s treasury secretary is a greedy, power-hungry money lender and a traitor to his people. I liked the column better in the original German. In fairness, Milbank wasn’t even the first . . . to use this term about Jews insufficiently [opposed to] Trump. . . .

It should be clear why all this is wrong. First, the rabbis dropping their High Holy Days call with the president: these days are about atonement, forgiveness, humility, grace, and the willingness to talk to those who have wronged you. These rabbis will, during the coming High Holy Days, stand before their congregations and preach those values—clearly with no intent to practice them.

Second, calling Jewish government employees “court Jews” for not quitting their jobs . . . or publicly trashing their boss is silly. . . . During the fight over the Iran nuclear deal, the New York Times editorial board insinuated that opponents of the deal were more loyal to Israel than to the United States, and a month later put up a vote tracker on the Times website that highlighted—in yellow!—how the Jewish members of Congress were planning to vote. How, [by the logic of those calling on high-ranking administration officials to resign or vocally to denounce the president], could [the staff] of the Times have stayed silent, especially given the ugly history of the dual-loyalty charge against Jews?

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.