Despite all the signs of a rising tide of anti-Semitism, observes Meir Soloveichik, the United States remains a uniquely philo-Semitic country, and one whose citizens overwhelmingly sympathize with Israel. “Before America,” Soloveichik adds, “there was Amsterdam.”

It was in Amsterdam that the Jews of Europe—expelled from England and burned alive in the autos-da-fé of Spain and Portugal—first found a beacon of freedom in the 1600s. As the historian Steven Nadler notes, the fact that this occurred is not happenstance; it “goes right to the heart of Dutch identity in the 17th century, particularly as this evolved through the struggle for independence from Spain and the political, social, and artistic forces unleashed by that crusade. . . . The Dutch found in Hebrew Scripture a rich source of models for both martial and civic virtues: courage, temperance, fortitude, wisdom, and justice.”

But it was not in the Netherlands that Jews found full equality; that would come only in the country that would place human equality at the core of its creed and consider itself covenantal in seeking to further this vision.

It is both ironic and frightening that the city that once led the way in tolerating Jews has now seen one of the 21st century’s severest outbreaks of anti-Semitic violence. Soloveichik concludes:

What happened in Amsterdam is, of course, a warning for America, for it is, alas, not difficult to imagine a similar mob made manifest on an Ivy League college quad or on the streets of Los Angeles or New York. Nevertheless, . . . one truth is quite clear. The commonality between America and Israel—and the bond built upon it—endures. And surely, whatever one’s views on the many policy questions facing this country in this season of Thanksgiving, that is a reason for gratitude.

While I’ve seen much speculation—some reasonable and well informed, some quite the opposite—about why Jerusalem chose Friday morning to begin its campaign against Iran, the most obvious explanation seems to be the most convincing. First, 60 days had passed since President Trump warned that Tehran had 60 days to reach an agreement with the U.S. over its nuclear program. Second, Israeli intelligence was convinced that Iran was too close to developing nuclear weapons to delay military action any longer. Edward Luttwak explains why Israel was wise to attack:

Iran was adding more and more centrifuges in increasingly vast facilities at enormous expense, which made no sense at all if the aim was to generate energy. . . . It might be hoped that Israel’s own nuclear weapons could deter an Iranian nuclear attack against its own territory. But a nuclear Iran would dominate the entire Middle East, including Egypt, Jordan, the United Arab Emirates, and Bahrain, with which Israel has full diplomatic relations, as well as Saudi Arabia with which Israel hopes to have full relations in the near future.

Luttwak also considers the military feats the IDF and Mossad have accomplished in the past few days:

To reach all [its] targets, Israel had to deal with the range-payload problem that its air force first overcame in 1967, when it destroyed the air forces of three Arab states in a single day. . . . This time, too, impossible solutions were found for the range problem, including the use of 65-year-old airliners converted into tankers (Boeing is years later in delivering its own). To be able to use its short-range F-16s, Israel developed the “Rampage” air-launched missile, which flies upward on a ballistic trajectory, gaining range by gliding down to the target. That should make accuracy impossible—but once again, Israeli developers overcame the odds.