At most Israeli public schools, the history of the Jews of Muslim lands merits scant attention, with the sole exception of the poets of medieval Spain. The recently released Biton Report, commissioned by Education Minister Naftali Bennett and produced by a committee chaired by the poet Erez Biton—himself of Moroccan and Algerian descent—seeks to remedy that situation. Aryeh Tepper explains its significance:

[S]ince Mizraḥi Jews tend to be more [religiously] traditional and nationalistic than Ashkenazi Jews, augmenting the Mizraḥi story naturally dovetails with Bennett’s expressed desire to strengthen the bond between Zionism and Jewish history. . . .

And make no mistake, the depth of connection to Jewish tradition is what distinguishes Mizrahi culture from Ashkenazi culture in Israel. The roots of the split go back to the beginning of the 20th century, when secular and socialist European Jewish Zionists rebelled against tradition by “negating the Diaspora” in order to fashion a “new Jew” in the land of Israel. These animating principles were unknown to Mizraḥi Jews, but they got to know them pretty quickly when, upon arrival in the country in the 1950s and 60s, they “learned” in school and via the media that their traditional Jewish identity was a primitive relic of the Diaspora that deserved to disappear into a new secular-socialist melting pot. . . .

But rooting Israeli identity in Middle Eastern Jewish history via Mizraḥi heritage isn’t only a strike against the “negation of the Diaspora.” By explicitly placing the Mizraḥi story in its Israeli context or, in other words, by viewing the Mizraḥi story as part of the national Jewish story, the Biton Report constitutes an implicit response to a fashionable journalistic and academic trend that removes Mizraḥi experience from its national, Jewish context and leverages Mizraḥi suffering to attack the state of Israel. In order to pull off this pseudo-intellectual sleight-of-hand, journalists and academics are compelled to participate in a staggering act of intellectual dishonesty in which the openly expressed and deeply rooted Zionist sentiments of Mizraḥi Jews are either ignored or written off in good Marxist fashion as an example of “false consciousness.”

If Iran succeeds in obtaining nuclear weapons, the war in Gaza, let alone the protests on college campuses, will seem like a minor complication. Jonathan Schachter fears that this danger could be much more imminent than decisionmakers in Jerusalem and Washington believe. In his view, Israel seems to be repeating the mistake that allowed it to be taken by surprise on Simchat Torah of 2023 and Yom Kippur of 1973: putting too much faith in an intelligence concept that could be wrong.

Israel and the United States apparently believe that despite Iran’s well-documented progress in developing capabilities necessary for producing and delivering nuclear weapons, as well as its extensive and ongoing record of violating its international nuclear obligations, there is no acute crisis because building a bomb would take time, would be observable, and could be stopped by force. Taken together, these assumptions and their moderating impact on Israeli and American policy form a new Iran concept reminiscent of its 1973 namesake and of the systemic failures that preceded the October 7 massacre.

Meanwhile, most of the restrictions put in place by the 2015 nuclear deal will expire by the end of next year, rendering the question of Iran’s adherence moot. And the forces that could be taking action aren’t:

The European Union regularly issues boilerplate press releases asserting its members’ “grave concern.” American decisionmakers and spokespeople have created the unmistakable impression that their reservations about the use of force are stronger than their commitment to use force to prevent an Iranian atomic bomb. At the same time, the U.S. refuses to enforce its own sanctions comprehensively: Iranian oil exports (especially to China) and foreign-currency reserves have ballooned since January 2021, when the Biden administration took office.

Israel’s response has also been sluggish and ambiguous. Despite its oft-stated policy of never allowing a nuclear Iran, Israel’s words and deeds have sent mixed messages to allies and adversaries—perhaps inadvertently reinforcing the prevailing sense in Washington and elsewhere that Iran’s nuclear efforts do not present an exigent crisis.