Returning from Britain’s annual Limmud conference—where some 2,500 Jews attended a series of classes and panels on Jewish issues—Ruthie Blum comments on the political attitudes she encountered:

[T]he attitude toward Israel among British Jews is that because they consider themselves to be held accountable in their society for “bad” Israeli behavior, they want Israel to stop engaging in practices that reflect negatively on them. And it is this ill ease above all that shapes their political views. It is thus that they are both affected by the boycott, divestment, and sanctions movement and end up abetting it, albeit unwittingly in most cases.

So deeply rooted is this malaise on their part that a young man attending one of my lectures had the gall to suggest that perhaps Israeli border police should not shoot to kill Palestinians in the act of committing stabbing attacks, but rather aim for their limbs. You know, because dead Arab teenagers don’t look good on the BBC.

The most striking thing about such a shocking suggestion is that it came from someone who was not taking issue with the Israeli soldiers—whose predicament he said he understood—but with how they are portrayed in the anti-Israel press. As though somehow the Jewish state would be given a pass if it adhered to the script of its enemies.

My ultra-emphatic reply to this person, which I tried, rather unsuccessfully, to keep at a reasonable decibel level, was drowned out by the applause in an adjacent room, where a member of Breaking the Silence was accusing his comrades in the IDF of war crimes.

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.