Last week, New York University conferred its President’s Service Award on Student for Justice in Palestine (SJP), one of the most vicious campus anti-Israel groups. The school’s president, although he has firmly rebuffed calls for the university to boycott the Jewish state, ignored pleas to reverse the award committee’s decision. Jonathan Marks comments;

So enthusiastic are the NYU chapter of SJP’s members that two were arrested last year for disrupting a celebration of Israel’s independence. Law enforcement has terms to describe stealing flags and hurting people as you rip microphones from their hands, such as “robbery in the second degree” and “assault in the third degree.” NYU, on the other hand, calls such actions having an “extraordinary and positive impact on the university community.” . . .

The NYU spokesman John Beckman [defended the award by claiming] that although “many in our university community disagree with the SJP, NYU will continue to defend the rights of our students and others to express their opposing views.” By conflating respecting free speech and rewarding discriminatory behavior, Beckman managed in one brief statement to declare NYU both morally and intellectually bankrupt.

Those looking to excuse the school’s president Andrew Hamilton and NYU can point to how the ceremony was handled. SJP complained that Hamilton didn’t show up and that [those conducting the ceremony were] “not calling out the names of the award recipients. Pathetic.” Here, I must agree for the first time with Students for Justice in Palestine. Even if SJP is right that Hamilton and NYU were sending a message in the way they handled the ceremony, this coward’s mode of distancing is, indeed, pathetic.

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.