In preparation for the centennial of the Balfour Declaration this November, Mahmoud Abbas has been campaigning for Britain to apologize for its 1917 commitment to establishing “a Jewish national home in Palestine,” and has even threatened to sue the United Kingdom for this alleged injustice. Last week, London issued a statement that it remains “proud of [its] role in creating the state of Israel.” Ruthie Blum comments:

In a piece in the Washington Post in October, the chief Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat called the Balfour Declaration the “symbolic beginning of the denial of [Palestinian] rights.” He failed to mention that it was actually [Palestinian] leaders who have denied the Arabs of the West Bank and Gaza their rights. Well before the 1967 Six-Day War, when the term “Palestinian people” was coined, Arabs rejected the 1947 United Nations Partition Plan for Palestine—the original “two-state solution.” They have been refusing to reach any peaceful arrangement with Israel ever since.

The end result is on display for all to see. Israel has spent nearly seven decades building a booming democratic country, while the Arabs of Palestine have frittered away the time by engaging in acts of destruction. Yes, as the Jewish state marks 69 years since its establishment, 50 years since the reunification of Jerusalem, and 100 years since the Balfour Declaration, the Palestinian Authority is threatening to take Britain to court.

Let Donald Trump be reminded of this before hosting Abbas in the Oval Office and listening to his lies. The rest of us should take a break from discussions of war and peace to toast Balfour—and Israel’s success in a region otherwise characterized by failure.

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.