Last week, Speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy, freshly returned from a trip to Israel, used his authority to prevent his colleague Rashida Tlaib from holding an event lamenting the creation of Jewish state. Tlaib, however, was able to commemorate “Nakba Day” in the Senate side of the Capitol on Tuesday, thanks to the intervention of Bernie Sanders. Thus attendees could witness the spectacle of the congresswoman declaring, “No child should ever have to worry what will fall from the sky,” as—in the words of Lahav Harkov—“children across Israel’s south slept in safe rooms to protect themselves from rockets shot by Palestinian terrorists.” Noah Rothman comments:

Sanders can host whatever meetings he likes as chair of the Senate Labor Committee, and even Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer couldn’t stop him. But he could have objected to the display if the avowed defender of Zionism found it objectionable. Schumer’s office has yet to issue any statement about this display, though a source close to the senator told the New York Post that he was caught off guard by the event. Indeed, among Senate Democrats, so far only the Nevada senator Jacky Rosen condemned the event, calling it “deeply offensive,” a distortion of the history around Israel’s founding, and a rejection of America’s support for Israel’s right to exist.

Even Jonathan Greenblatt, the Anti-Defamation League’s CEO who is congenitally loath to associate himself with a cause or position that might be confused with a conservative point of view, savaged Tlaib and her abettors. It is “disgraceful that Senator Sanders allowed this event by Rep. Rashida to be held in our nation’s Capitol,” Greenblatt said. He added that a conversation around “a path to peace” in the Middle East could not be had with people who “espouse anti-Semitism,” and he called on the U.S. Senate to condemn the event.

Greenblatt shouldn’t hold his breath. But the press should pull on the thread he has exposed. Will Democrats in Congress and the White House continue to have it both ways—professing their unwavering support for Israel’s right to self-defense while shrugging their shoulders over the commandeering of their property to broadcast [attacks] against Israel’s very existence? They will so long as political media is inclined to look the other way. Sadly, it’s likely that reporters will continue to avert their eyes rather than confront Senate Democrats with yet another grotesque embarrassment that Bernie Sanders and Rashida Tlaib have engineered for their party.

Yesterday, the beepers used by hundreds of Hizballah operatives were detonated. Noah Rothman puts this ingenious attack in the context of the overall war between Israel and the Iran-backed terrorist group:

[W]hile the disabling of an untold number of Hizballah operatives is remarkable, it’s also ominous. This week, the Israeli defense minister Yoav Gallant told reporters that the hour is nearing when Israeli forces will have to confront Iran’s cat’s-paw in southern Lebanon directly, in order to return the tens of thousands of Israelis who fled their homes along Lebanon’s border under fire and have not yet been able to return. Today’s operation may be a prelude to the next phase of Israel’s defensive war, a dangerous one in which the IDF will face off against an enemy with tens of thousands of fighters and over 150,000 rockets and missiles trained on Israeli cities.

Seth Frantzman, meanwhile, focuses on the specific damage the pager bombings have likely done to Hizballah:

This will put the men in hospital for a period of time. Some of them can go back to serving Hizballah, but they will not have access to one of their hands. These will most likely be their dominant hand, meaning the hand they’d also use to hold the trigger of a rifle or push the button to launch a missile.

Hizballah has already lost around 450 fighters in its eleven-month confrontation with Israel. This is a significant loss for the group. While Hizballah can replace losses, it doesn’t have an endlessly deep [supply of recruits]. This is not only because it has to invest in training and security ahead of recruitment, but also because it draws its recruits from a narrow spectrum of Lebanese society.

The overall challenge for Hizballah is not just replacing wounded and dead fighters. The group will be challenged to . . . roll out some other way to communicate with its men. The use of pagers may seem archaic, but Hizballah apparently chose to use this system because it assumed the network could not be penetrated. . . . It will also now be concerned about the penetration of its operational security. When groups like Hizballah are in chaos, they are more vulnerable to making mistakes.