In 2016, a talk by an Israeli activist at University College London was met by a violent protest; eventually police had to escort the participants to safety, past a jeering mob. Such happenings have become commonplace on British campuses, where anti-Israel sentiment runs high. No small amount of responsibility belongs to the BBC, which dominates reporting and consistently paints a distorted picture of events in the Middle East. But, writes Tamara Berens, there are other causes as well:

Organizations in the UK, including charities and political advocacy groups, are often funded by networks linked to Palestinian terrorist entities. . . . On campus, these organizations play a prominent role in both isolating pro-Israel students and indoctrinating well-meaning but uninformed individuals into blind support for anti-Zionism.

Opposition to Israel is woven into the very fabric of several prominent British universities. At King’s College London and University College London, employees of the student unions organized aggressive protests against, respectively, the Israeli ambassador to the UK, Mark Regev, and the former Israeli deputy prime minister Dan Meridor. At King’s College most recently, . . . the student union supported [public] mourning for nineteen Hamas, Fatah, Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, and Islamic Jihad terrorists killed during Gaza border riots over the summer. . . .

British administrators are too often cowardly in their dealings with anti-Israel aggression on campus. . . . Anti-Zionist organizations have successfully gained the upper hand by holding universities hostage with constant threats of disruptive protests and negative media coverage. The result is that Jewish students are left at an unjust disadvantage when attempting to host events to celebrate Israel and their own Jewish identities.

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.