Near the end of World War II, Czechoslovakia’s Avia Company retooled one of its factories to produce Messerschmitts for the Luftwaffe. Avia kept making fighter planes after the war ended, but, having lost access to the German-made engines, had to redesign the aircraft with different parts, creating the S-199, an awkward hybrid used by the Czech air force. In 1948, with war on the horizon, the Haganah—unable to buy arms from the U.S., Britain, or the Soviet Union—became the only other military to purchase the S-199. Robert Gandt writes:

The first band of volunteers—two Americans, one South African, seven native Israelis—arrived at the České Budějovice air base on May 11, 1948. Lou Lenart, a wiry former U.S. Marine Corps pilot, made the group’s first flight in the S-199. It was nearly his last. Lenart recalled, “The big paddle-bladed propeller produced so much left-pulling torque that the first time I tried to take off, the plane ran away from me clear off the runway, through a fence, and over a cliff.”

To the volunteer pilots, the Czech fighter seemed to have a vicious streak, like an attack dog turning on its handler. The narrow landing gear made the S-199 difficult to keep aligned during takeoff. Directional control was made even worse by the enormous torque of the propeller. . . . The volunteers had barely begun training when, on May 15, the radio in their Czech quarters broadcast the news that Israel’s war of survival had begun.

Learning that Arab planes had bombed Tel Aviv, the pilots, with hardly any training, disassembled and packed the planes and went to fight for their country, where the aircraft were reassembled at the Ekron airfield.

The existence of the Czech-built fighters was a closely held secret. The newly assembled S-199s had not been test-flown. The guns had never been fired. None of the radios worked. But if the Egyptian army was not stopped, none of these concerns would matter. . . . Lenart, who led the four-ship [mission], had never flown in Israel before. Where was Ashdod? he wondered. All the villages along the coast looked alike.

In the [nascent Israeli air force’s] first two missions, two fighter planes were lost and one severely damaged. Of the first five pilots, one was dead and another too injured to fly again. But the secret was out: Israel had an air force. To make it official, the unit was given a designation: 101 Squadron, a grand-sounding label for a ragtag outfit down to one flyable airplane and three pilots.

Still, these crucial missions slowed the initial assault on Tel Aviv and may well have forestalled a calamitous defeat. By the war’s end in January, the S-199s had shot down a total of seven enemy planes. And as Gandt points out, the “mere sight of the fighter in the early days of the war had terrified the invaders and roused the spirits of the outnumbered defenders.”

Analyzing the recent direct Iranian attack on Israel, and Israel’s security situation more generally, Michael Oren looks to the 2015 agreement to restrain Iran’s nuclear program. That, and President Biden’s efforts to resurrect the deal after Donald Trump left it, are in his view the source of the current crisis:

Of the original motivations for the deal—blocking Iran’s path to the bomb and transforming Iran into a peaceful nation—neither remained. All Biden was left with was the ability to kick the can down the road and to uphold Barack Obama’s singular foreign-policy achievement.

In order to achieve that result, the administration has repeatedly refused to punish Iran for its malign actions:

Historians will survey this inexplicable record and wonder how the United States not only allowed Iran repeatedly to assault its citizens, soldiers, and allies but consistently rewarded it for doing so. They may well conclude that in a desperate effort to avoid getting dragged into a regional Middle Eastern war, the U.S. might well have precipitated one.

While America’s friends in the Middle East, especially Israel, have every reason to feel grateful for the vital assistance they received in intercepting Iran’s missile and drone onslaught, they might also ask what the U.S. can now do differently to deter Iran from further aggression. . . . Tehran will see this weekend’s direct attack on Israel as a victory—their own—for their ability to continue threatening Israel and destabilizing the Middle East with impunity.

Israel, of course, must respond differently. Our target cannot simply be the Iranian proxies that surround our country and that have waged war on us since October 7, but, as the Saudis call it, “the head of the snake.”