Last Sunday, a documentary aired on Israeli television about the Kiryat Shmona terrorist attack, which in its time was one of the worst in the country’s history. Amy Spiro writes:

The terrorists, affiliated with the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, crossed into Israel early on the morning of April 11, 1974, managing to go undetected for more than an hour. Their first target was an elementary school, but the classrooms were empty since it was the intermediate days of Passover.

They then crossed the street, entered the apartment building at 13 Yehuda Halevi Street and killed a number of residents before moving to the building next door, No. 15, first killing the gardener, then climbing the stairs and shooting everyone they encountered.

The three terrorists barricaded themselves in an apartment on the top floor, where an exchange of gunfire ultimately blew up the backpack of explosives they were carrying, killing all three. Two IDF soldiers were also killed in the incident, alongside sixteen civilians, including eight children. . . .

In the decades that have followed, the horrific massacre has largely faded from the public consciousness, with many unaware that the terror attack ever happened and little national remembrance.

While conventional wisdom in the Western press believes that the war with Hamas has left Jerusalem more isolated and scuttled chances of expanding the Abraham Accords, Gabriel Scheinmann points to a very different reality. He begins with Iran’s massive drone and missile attack on Israel last month, and the coalition that helped defend against it:

America’s Arab allies had, in various ways, provided intelligence and allowed U.S. and Israeli planes to operate in their airspace. Jordan, which has been vociferously attacking Israel’s conduct in Gaza for months, even publicly acknowledged that it shot down incoming Iranian projectiles. When the chips were down, the Arab coalition held and made clear where they stood in the broader Iranian war on Israel.

The successful batting away of the Iranian air assault also engendered awe in Israel’s air-defense capabilities, which have performed marvelously throughout the war. . . . Israel’s response to the Iranian night of missiles should give further courage to Saudi Arabia to codify its alignment. Israel . . . telegraphed clearly to Tehran that it could hit precise targets without its aircraft being endangered and that the threshold of a direct Israeli strike on Iranian nuclear or other sites had been breached.

The entire episode demonstrated that Israel can both hit Iranian sites and defend against an Iranian response. At a time when the United States is focused on de-escalation and restraint, Riyadh could see quite clearly that only Israel has both the capability and the will to deal with the Iranian threat.

It is impossible to know whether the renewed U.S.-Saudi-Israel negotiations will lead to a normalization deal in the immediate months ahead. . . . Regardless of the status of this deal, [however], or how difficult the war in Gaza may appear, America’s Arab allies have now become Israel’s.