For many decades, mainstream American Jewish organizations were unified in their support for Israel and in encouraging bipartisan friendliness in the political realm toward Jews and the Jewish state. But, writes Isi Leibler, over the course of the last decade many of these leaders have moved away from this stance. One result was seen on Sunday, when the Minnesota congresswoman Ilhan Omar broadcast her anti-Semitism on Twitter, this time commenting on the nefarious powers of Jewish lobbyists:

[Once], Jewish leaders never hesitated to speak out against government policies considered inimical to the interests of Israel or the Jewish people. When Barack Obama was elected president, this mood changed. He began to treat Israel as a rogue state, groveled to the Iranians, described Israeli defenders and Arab terrorists as moral equivalents, and finally declined to veto [one of the most egregious resolutions] ever passed against Israel by the UN Security Council. The response by the majority of the American Jewish establishment, who were previously never reticent about raising their voices, was a deafening silence. . . .

Prior to Donald Trump’s election, Jewish organizations were meticulous in seeking to maintain a bipartisan stance. But once he was elected, hysteria swept through the Jewish community. Many progressive rabbis and lay leaders . . . decided it was their duty as Jews to oppose him, even on issues that had no direct bearing on Jewish interests. Speaking as Jews, some went so far as to accuse President Trump of being a racist, an anti-Semite, and even a Nazi sympathizer. . . .

The most striking example of this Jewish anti-Trump agitation is the Anti-Defamation League (ADL), whose mandate is to fight anti-Semitism and bigotry. . . . Dispensing with a long tradition of bipartisanship, it openly lobbied against the Senate confirmation of Mike Pompeo for secretary of state. It concentrated on radical-right anti-Semitism and soft-pedaled the greater threat from the left, refused to endorse anti-boycott legislation on the grounds that it limited freedom of expression, and generally failed to react with any vigor against Muslim and extremist anti-Israel elements who abuse—sometimes violently—Jewish students and suppress pro-Israel activity on college campuses. . . .

But what must have shocked and sent shivers down the spines of Jews even remotely supportive of Israel was Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi’s appointment of [Ilhan Omar] to the prestigious and powerful House Foreign Affairs Committee, which oversees foreign aid and such national-security issues as terrorism and the proliferation of nonconventional weapons. Belatedly, some Jewish organizations are now protesting. Had they spoken up earlier, this radicalization might have been stemmed and the appointment of an outright anti-Semite to this sensitive position pre-empted.

While I’ve seen much speculation—some reasonable and well informed, some quite the opposite—about why Jerusalem chose Friday morning to begin its campaign against Iran, the most obvious explanation seems to be the most convincing. First, 60 days had passed since President Trump warned that Tehran had 60 days to reach an agreement with the U.S. over its nuclear program. Second, Israeli intelligence was convinced that Iran was too close to developing nuclear weapons to delay military action any longer. Edward Luttwak explains why Israel was wise to attack:

Iran was adding more and more centrifuges in increasingly vast facilities at enormous expense, which made no sense at all if the aim was to generate energy. . . . It might be hoped that Israel’s own nuclear weapons could deter an Iranian nuclear attack against its own territory. But a nuclear Iran would dominate the entire Middle East, including Egypt, Jordan, the United Arab Emirates, and Bahrain, with which Israel has full diplomatic relations, as well as Saudi Arabia with which Israel hopes to have full relations in the near future.

Luttwak also considers the military feats the IDF and Mossad have accomplished in the past few days:

To reach all [its] targets, Israel had to deal with the range-payload problem that its air force first overcame in 1967, when it destroyed the air forces of three Arab states in a single day. . . . This time, too, impossible solutions were found for the range problem, including the use of 65-year-old airliners converted into tankers (Boeing is years later in delivering its own). To be able to use its short-range F-16s, Israel developed the “Rampage” air-launched missile, which flies upward on a ballistic trajectory, gaining range by gliding down to the target. That should make accuracy impossible—but once again, Israeli developers overcame the odds.