Earlier this week, the Israeli Supreme Court issued a ruling that conversions performed by Conservative and Reform rabbis inside Israel are to be considered valid for naturalization purposes. (Previously, this was only true of non-Orthodox conversions performed in the Diaspora.) Bethany Mandel observes:

[A]s usual, conversion is being used as a political . . . football. This has always been the problem with how Israel has handled conversion: it treats actual converts and their needs as being of no consequence. Converts are seen . . . only as proxies in fights over political and religious power. . . . That objectification isn’t restricted to any one sect of Judaism; I’ve seen it in all of them, from the far-left to the far-right.

The proof of that indifference to the converted is in how Israeli media has so far handled the decision—that is to say, with very little curiosity about actual converts behind the case, or about the limbo they’ve been kept in for over a decade while they waited for a ruling from the high court. The actual people involved, and their plight for the last fifteen years, is an afterthought in the country’s imagination—if even that.

So: could this ruling actually bring good news for Reform and Conservative converts, not just those who complete their conversions in Israel, but also those outside it? To me, it seems unlikely. Good news would mean there was some sort of political incentive for those in power to go to any effort to recognize and embrace converts as part of the Jewish people. This decision doesn’t meet that bar.

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.