The United Kingdom has created or sponsored programs to bring young Muslims deemed at risk of radicalization into contact with Muslim “anti-extremists” who will help them toward a more peaceable vision of their religion. While these anti-extremists are genuinely opposed to Islamic State and al-Qaeda, writes John Ware, their views about Israel are far from moderate. One of them, the government-approved mentor Hanif Qadir, refers to Palestinians who stab Jewish civilians as “resistance fighters”:

A first stage in the development of extremist ideas can be, as Prime Minister David Cameron has said, a belief in conspiracy theories about Jews exercising malevolent power. So what about this tweet from Qadir when Israel launched Operation Protective Edge, its 50-day military assault on Gaza to stop rocket fire into Israel in the summer of 2014? “A whole nation is being radicalized to exterminate the Palestinians. Where are the interventionists? Who is going to prevent this terrorism?” “Exterminate”? There could be no more serious, nor tendentious, charge against Jews. . . .

At the height of operation Protective Edge, Qadir also tweeted a picture showing Israelis supposedly playing badminton inside the al-Aqsa mosque. . . . The picture was captioned: “One of the most disturbing images of today. This is inside al-Aqsa mosque!! Palestinians were not allowed to pray inside but these people are allowed to play!” Attached to it were pictures of what look like smoldering Qurans and a woman defiling a Quran by standing on it with her bare feet and painted toenails.

The picture . . . appears to have come from Turkish media reports in July 2013 showing badminton (and karate and soccer) being played—not in Jerusalem but in the Milas mosque in the Mugla province of Turkey. A simple Google search would have alerted Qadir to his error.

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.