Earlier this year, respected Israeli economists and businesspeople issued dire warnings about the potential effects of judicial reform on their country’s economy. They are now citing a major decline in venture-capital investment over the past year and Moody’s recent decision to downgrade the Israeli economic outlook from “positive” to “stable” as evidence that they were correct. Michael Fertik is not convinced:

Israel is in a superb position—probably the best globally, except for the United States—to ride the current and future waves of venture-capital allocation. Israeli startups have never been stronger, more inventive, more dynamic, more sophisticated, or more attractive. The recent downturn in venture-capital investment in Israel mirrors the declines across the globe. It has precious little to do with how many opposition Knesset lawmakers get to vote on judicial candidates.

For reasons of their own understandable concern, political conviction, or personal inclination toward catastrophic thinking, commentators against the judicial reform link a couple of juicy data together to paint a picture of looming economic doom for the state of Israel.

Israel is experiencing a venture-capital reset along with the rest of the planet. It’s a healthy and good thing. You might even conjecture that over the past decade, there has been too much venture capital flowing into companies around the world, perhaps into Israeli startups more than those of most other countries. A reset is fine. It’s right. It’s typical. And it will make Israeli startups only stronger in the medium and long term. And, more than anything else, no matter your political opinion, the venture-capital reset has just about zippo to do with judicial reform.

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.