When defenders of Jeremy Corbyn—the British Labor party’s Israel-hating, terrorist-loving leader—confront the accusation that he is anti-Semitic, or excessively tolerant of anti-Semites, they usually employ one of two tactics, Ben Cohen notes. The first is to insist that Corbyn is the victim of a nefarious Jewish conspiracy to smear and discredit him with mendacious allegations. More insidious, however, is the second: to insist that Corbyn’s accusers are falsely labeling rational criticism of Israel as anti-Semitism, or blurring the lines between anti-Semitism and anti-Zionism. Taking Professor Ian Almond as one example, Cohen writes:

The . . . argument that Almond chooses to defend from the charge of anti-Semitism [is] that Israel is the outcome of a “racist endeavor,” a favorite theme of the Corbynite left. This argument has historically been the preserve of anti-democratic ideologies and regimes. As early as 1965, Soviet diplomats at the United Nations were bracketing Zionism with Nazism. . . .

If Israel should, as Almond . . . advocates, be presented as a “settler-colonial” project to school students encountering the Israeli-Palestinian conflict for the very first time, how is that to be done in a way that doesn’t jeopardize attitudes to local Jewish communities? If Israel is to be portrayed as a rogue state of global proportions, whose inhabitants have essentially fabricated their historical and spiritual links to the territory which they now occupy at the expense of the indigenous Arabs, how can such an argument possibly avoid anti-Semitic tropes about Jewish wealth, Jewish political influence, and ingrained Jewish exclusivism? And if the Palestinians are to be portrayed as ongoing victims of ethnic cleansing by Jews (and Jews alone), then how can one neatly separate the opposition to Zionism from anti-Semitism?

The short answer is that you can’t.

That’s because the “racist-endeavor” portrait of Israel, however much one encounters it in Middle East Studies departments, is grounded in the anti-Semitic trope of a distinctly “Jewish” dishonesty—in which . . . disingenuous appeals for public sympathy, ruthless political lobbying, strategic use of financial wealth, and overbearing military might are the essential elements in the story of Israel’s creation, as well as its ongoing existence. If Almond and those who agree with him want to protect diaspora Jewish communities [from anti-Semitism] and achieve concrete progress for the Palestinians, the proper question they should ask themselves is whether their discourse about Israel is helping either of those goals.

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.