With the winds of war again blowing in Europe, David Horovitz recalls two interviews he conducted: one two years ago with the Jewish comedian-turned-Ukrainian-president Volodymyr Zelensky, and one last week with the Israeli foreign minister Yair Lapid. Both conversations, for Horovitz, emphasized something essential about Israel’s situation:

My heart goes out to Ukraine’s president today, bracing for a possible Russian invasion, defiant, championing his country’s sovereignty and integrity, massively outgunned, uncertain of the potency of international support. And I note something else he said in our interview, his possibly envious, certainly admiring observation that “there are many countries in the world that can protect themselves, but Israel, such a small country, can not only protect itself, but, facing external threats, can respond.”

Lapid, [meanwhile], has been walking the tightrope between expressing principled opposition to a Russian invasion and ensuring the wellbeing of Israelis and Jews in Ukraine, on one hand, and trying, on the other, not to alienate a Russian president with whom Israel has a complex, critical relationship—both because of Moscow’s Middle East presence and influence, and because of Russia’s significant Jewish community.

“This is very 20th century, one country invading another,” said Lapid of the crisis, initially taking the dispassionate historical view. . . . But soon enough in our conversation, he reflected on the Israeli implications. I put it to him that it seemed like the world was doing nothing to protect a sovereign country.

If we thought the danger of despotic regimes remaking the world map was “very 20th century,” along comes Russia to slap us back to our senses. And if we thought the oft-declared imperative that Israel be able, always, to defend itself, by itself, was mere outdated rhetoric, the vulnerability of Volodymyr Zelensky’s Ukraine, and his admiration for our country, underlines its critical relevance.

Surveying news websites and social media on Sunday morning, I immediately found some intelligent and well-informed observers arguing that Iran deliberately warned the U.S. of its pending assault on Israel, and calibrated it so that there would be few casualties and minimal destructiveness, thus hoping to avoid major retaliation. In other words, this massive barrage was a face-saving gesture by the ayatollahs. Others disagreed. Brian Carter and Frederick W. Kagan put the issue to rest:

The Iranian April 13 missile-drone attack on Israel was very likely intended to cause significant damage below the threshold that would trigger a massive Israeli response. The attack was designed to succeed, not to fail. The strike package was modeled on those the Russians have used repeatedly against Ukraine to great effect. The attack caused more limited damage than intended likely because the Iranians underestimated the tremendous advantages Israel has in defending against such strikes compared with Ukraine.

But that isn’t to say that Tehran achieved nothing:

The lessons that Iran will draw from this attack will allow it to build more successful strike packages in the future. The attack probably helped Iran identify the relative strengths and weaknesses of the Israeli air-defense system. Iran will likely also share the lessons it learned in this attack with Russia.

Iran’s ability to penetrate Israeli air defenses with even a small number of large ballistic missiles presents serious security concerns for Israel. The only Iranian missiles that got through hit an Israeli military base, limiting the damage, but a future strike in which several ballistic missiles penetrate Israeli air defenses and hit Tel Aviv or Haifa could cause significant civilian casualties and damage to civilian infrastructure, including ports and energy. . . . Israel and its partners should not emerge from this successful defense with any sense of complacency.