While the rampant anti-Semitism among the coordinators of the now-annual Washington, DC Women’s March has finally cost it the support of many individuals and institutions, some local groups that had disaffiliated from the national organization nonetheless held their own simultaneous demonstrations on Saturday. Nicole Guzik, a Los Angeles rabbi, spoke beforehand with the leaders of the march in her city and received assurances it would not be allowed to become a platform for anti-Semitism. Unfortunately those promises proved hollow, as she writes in an open letter to the organizers of the Los Angeles gathering:

I was assured by . . . the founders of this march, [repeatedly], in a private meeting, that . . . in Los Angeles (unlike at the national march), Israel would not be attacked, labeling Israel as an apartheid state would be unwelcome on the stage, and if a speaker went off- script, the managers of the program would raise the music. In the very first hour, . . . all those promises were broken.

Marwa Rifahie, representing the Council on American-Islamic Relations, used her allotted time [addressing the gathering] to focus on the Palestinian agenda, a [subject] that I was told would not be a focus [of speeches]. I waited. When she called Israel an apartheid state, I waited. Where was the music? Where was someone asking her to remain on-script? Who vetted this speaker? Why was I assured that anti-Semitic statements would not be permitted or tolerated in this anti-hate arena? Why was someone allowed to defend the organizers of the march in Washington? . . .

If you want me back at next year’s march, someone like me [ought to] vet and screen your speakers. Someone like me must be willing to say that anti-Zionist speech is the language of hatred and won’t be allowed on stage. But until you take this course of action, it will be quite a while until I give someone like you the benefit of the doubt. I held a sign that read, “Jewish and proud Zionist standing for women’s equality.” . . . I hoped to find a place where those signs would be welcome and not attacked. It’s with the heaviest of hearts that I admit I was wrong. This march was clearly not meant for me.

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.