In Oliver Twist, Charles Dickens created the notoriously Jewish gangster Fagin, who lured impoverished Gentile children into lives of crime. Fagin, writes Adam Roberts, was “one of the most famous villains in English literature” and the product of “a congeries of virulently anti-Semitic stereotypes and libels.” Later, as Roberts explains, an encounter with a Jewish family led Dickens to regret his choices. In an attempt at “repentance,” the great English author created another Jewish character—less famous, but far more compelling—in his last completed novel, Our Mutual Friend. This Jew, Mr. Riah, works for an unscrupulous banker named Fascination Fledgeby:

The mild-mannered [Riah], at the wicked [Fledgeby’s] specific instruction, acts the role of the hardhearted and relentless owner and financier of the usurious Pubsey and Co, where Fledgeby, the real owner, pretends to be merely a subaltern figure. Fledgeby is in effect the casting director or stage manager, a fact of which he is well aware; . . . two things makes the “performance” go over. One is the employment of what a later age calls “reverse psychology”: when asked, Riah simply denies that he is the owner of Pubsey and Co. It is the truth, but his interlocuters assume he is lying because—and this is the second part of the performance—he is a Jew, and their prejudice about Jews overrides other considerations.

In the end, Riah escapes being punished for Fledgeby’s sins. But Robert wonders where Riah fits into the book’s peculiar theology of the soul, which he reads in light of the notion, persistent in Victorian Christianity, that Jews possess body and soul, but not necessarily “spirit.”

Dickens is writing a virtuous Jew, rather than the villainous Jew he had written into Oliver Twist, yes: but does he—which is to say: does his novel—believe this Jew is inspirited in the way that [other characters] are? The novel doesn’t specifically articulate this, but from Dickens’s Christian perspective the matter is not straightforward. The good deeds of a member of a tribe that has, specifically and consistently, denied the Holy Spirit, might animate a body without meaning that that body is inspirited in a Christian sense.

I don’t want to make too much of this point. Manifestly, Riah is nowhere near as offensive an anti-Semitic caricature as was Fagin, and there’s no reason to doubt Dickens’s sincerity when it comes to making amends for the earlier portrayal. But that doesn’t mean that Riah is, in his conception, fully inspirited as a character in his novel. . . . Our Mutual Friend is not an exercise in vulgar anti-Semitism, but neither does it escape anti-Semitism altogether.

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.