The recent passion in the West for tearing down statues, taking television shows off air, and “canceling” people seems for the most part driven by nihilism and ignorance. But Ruthie Blum insists that, nonetheless, there is a “need for serious intellectual debate over the type of material that a society wishes to promote or discourage.” And while some within the Black Lives Matter movement wish to coopt the Palestinian cause for their own purposes, and vice versa, there seems to be no room for debate over which figures Palestinian society should memorialize. Blum writes:

One monument of note is a structure in Ramallah honoring Dalal Mughrabi, a female Palestinian terrorist from Lebanon who led the 1978 Coastal Road Massacre, considered the deadliest terrorist attack in Israel’s history. The attack began with the hijacking of a bus and ended with the slaughter of 38 innocent passengers—among them thirteen children—and the wounding of more than 70 others.

As for sports, Palestinian karate, chess, soccer, table-tennis, and other youth tournaments bear the names of “martyred” mass murderers. Ditto for murals, music videos, and cartoons depicting Jews as hook-nosed aggressors in IDF uniforms, and urging Palestinians to commit stabbing, car-ramming, Molotov-cocktail, and missile attacks on Israelis. Oh, and hopefully to lose life and limb during the endeavor.

If Palestinians were to take to the streets . . . to shout about their lives mattering, it would make perfect sense. Not only are they persecuted, kept impoverished, and programmed to exist in a state of fear, they are egged on to sacrifice themselves and their children for a goal that their leaders perpetually block.

If the residents of Ramallah and Gaza were to topple portraits of terrorists, overturn police cars and demand a new order of democracy and civil rights, they would be justified. Unfortunately, they’d also be subjected to torture on a par with, or worse than, that suffered by George Floyd.

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.