Almost every day, for several weeks running, large demonstrations have taken place in Jerusalem and Tel Aviv against Prime Minister Netanyahu’s alleged corruption, and calling for his removal from office. While the prime minister’s trial on corruption-related charges has already begun, and anecdotal evidence suggests that his support may be dwindling, Lahav Harkov argues that the protests are unlikely to accomplish anything:

Netanyahu is not going to respond positively to a protest calling for his ouster, especially on grounds that he believes are trumped-up. He still hopes to prove in court that his actions were within the bounds of the law, [and] he successfully built a coalition after the last election, so why should he go home just because a few thousand angry people say so?

Beyond that obvious reasoning, it seems like these protests don’t really seek to convince anyone who isn’t already against Netanyahu. As Netanyahu himself pointed out in a recent tweet, the “Black Flag” protest movement behind the anti-corruption demonstrations in recent months has suspicious ties to the former prime minister Ehud Barak, who is one of Netanyahu’s most vocal opponents. [Some] protesters waved Palestinian flags or the red flags of “antifa,” [a congeries of] loosely tied anarchist groups, . . . making it easy for the right and Netanyahu to dismiss the demonstrations.

It’s as if the organizers don’t realize that Israelis who supported Netanyahu or the [parties] that help him build his coalitions tend to be pretty conservative, and radical left-wing messages and connections will only make it impossible for them to convince anyone on the right of their cause.

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.