Released in the U.S. last month on Netflix, Operation Mincemeat tells the real-life story of the successful effort by British intelligence to convince the Nazis that the Allies planned to invade Sardinia and Greece rather than Sicily in 1943. The team that pulled off this dramatic coup included a young Ian Fleming—author of the James Bond novels—and was led by Ewen Montagu, the film’s hero. Michael Medved explains what the movie leaves out about this extraordinary figure:

The real Ewen Montagu took special pride in outwitting Hitler in light of his family’s background. “Joy of joys to anyone, and particularly a Jew, the satisfaction of knowing they had directly and specifically fooled that monster,” he once wrote. Operation Mincemeat, based on Ben MacIntyre’s 2011 book, makes only the briefest mention of its hero’s Jewish identity—when Montagu dispatches his wife and two children to the relative safety of America, in view of “the nightmare that is marching this way that is only too real” and poses especially acute dangers for a Jewish family.

What the movie fails even to hint at is that Montagu’s family constituted one of the most conspicuous, powerfully connected, and philanthropically committed of all Jewish tribes in the realm, with members playing distinguished roles in politics, business, the arts, and synagogue leadership.

Montagu’s grandfather, Samuel Montagu (1832–1911), won elevation to the peerage as First Baron Swaythling, honored for his generosity to the poor, Jewish and non-Jewish alike. . . . In 1885, he won election as a Liberal member of Parliament for Whitechapel until he stood down five years later. He also organized the Federation of Synagogues, representing 51 small congregations in the crowded, Yiddish-speaking East End of London. While hoping to Anglicize and uplift recent immigrants from the Russian Empire, he simultaneously supported “Lovers of Zion,” promoting resettlement of Jewish communities in Turkish-controlled Palestine.

[Ewen] continued the long family tradition of Jewish service, as president of the United Synagogue (1954–62), and president of the Anglo-Jewish Association from 1949, pressing restitution claims against Germany and promoting the welfare of Holocaust survivors. He also came to welcome and support the establishment of the new Jewish state, moving beyond the doubts about Zionism that had motivated his father and the elite but short-lived League of British Jews. He died at age of eighty-four in 1985.

Last Tuesday, the Houthis—the faction now ruling much of Yemen—said that they intend to renew attacks on international shipping through the Red and Arabian Seas. They had for the most part paused their attacks following the January 19 Israel-Hamas cease-fire, but their presence has continued to scare away maritime traffic near the Yemeni coast, with terrible consequences for the global economy.

The U.S. responded on Saturday by initiating strikes on Houthi missile depots, command-and-control centers, and propaganda outlets, and has promised that the attacks will continue for days, if not weeks. The Houthis responded by launching drones, and possibly missiles, at American naval ships, apparently without result. Another missile fired from Yemen struck the Sinai, but was likely aimed at Israel. As Ari Heistein has written in Mosaic, it may take a sustained and concerted effort to stop the Houthis, who have high tolerance for casualties—but this is a start. Ron Ben-Yishai provides some context:

The goal is to punish the Houthis for directly targeting Western naval vessels in the Red Sea while also exerting indirect pressure on Tehran over its nuclear program. . . . While the Biden administration did conduct airstrikes against the Houthis, it refrained from a proactive military campaign, fearing a wider regional war. However, following the collapse of Iran’s axis—including Hizballah’s heavy losses in Lebanon and the fall of the Assad regime in Syria—the Trump administration appears unafraid of such an escalation.

Iran, the thinking goes, will also get the message that the U.S. isn’t afraid to use force, or risk the consequences of retaliation—and will keep this in mind as it considers negotiations over its nuclear program. Tamir Hayman adds:

The Houthis are the last proxy of the Shiite axis that have neither reassessed their actions nor restrained their weapons. Throughout the campaign against the Yemenite terrorist organization, the U.S.-led coalition has made operational mistakes: Houthi regime infrastructure was not targeted; the organization’s leaders were not eliminated; no sustained operational continuity was maintained—only actions to remove immediate threats; no ground operations took place, not even special-forces missions; and Iran has not paid a price for its proxy’s actions.

But if this does not stop the Houthis, it will project weakness—not just toward Hamas but primarily toward Iran—and Trump’s power diplomacy will be seen as hollow. The true test is one of output, not input. The only question that matters is not how many strikes the U.S. carries out, but whether the Red Sea reopens to all vessels. We will wait and see—for now, things look brighter than they did before.