David Horovitz argues that, instead of condemning Israel’s highly effective counter-terrorism strategies—as Europe and the U.S. have done for decades—it would make more sense to emulate them.

As bombers and gunmen targeted our buses and our shopping malls and our hotels and our colleges and our restaurants, we did two things that France, the U.S., and the rest of the free world will have to do if they want to defeat this latest, particularly despicable Islamist terror iteration: we learned how to reduce our vulnerability to terrorism, and we tackled the killers in their centers of operation. Shortsightedly, hypocritically, and abidingly, the international community, including most of the Western world, barely understood the need for the former strategy, and castigated us for the latter.

We made it harder for terrorists to kill us by doing what those CNN experts are saying is impossible: yes, protecting all of our cafes, and restaurants, and shopping malls, and hotel entrances, and buses, and every other public place where our citizens gather, with barriers and metal detectors and security guards. . . . And to the ongoing fury of misguided critics everywhere, we built a security barrier—a mix of fences and sections of wall—so that Palestinian suicide bombers could not just drive into Israel and blow us up. We became a nation of domestic-security analysts, gauging where to shop and whether or not to take the bus as we sought to minimize our exposure to the killers. And we toughed it out.

We also took the offensive, notably after that black March 2002 when we launched a major military operation to destroy the “infrastructure” of terrorism in the West Bank—the bomb-making factories and the bomber-indoctrinating production lines. Much of the international community, ill-served by some particularly pitiful journalism, misrepresented the operation, echoed false Palestinian claims about the death toll, and . . . insisted that we stop and get out. But we didn’t.

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.