Since Israel’s October 26 attack, Iran has been threatening retaliation, and recent reports suggesting it will strike soon, and may use deadlier weapons than the last, have led Israelis to restock their bomb shelters. Noah Rothman asks why Jerusalem isn’t considering a preemptive strike, especially if it has intelligence that something more than Iranian bluster is afoot:

If publicly available estimates of the damage Iran incurred as a result of Israel’s October 26 strikes are accurate, Iran has never been more vulnerable. Its radar and air-defense systems have been degraded substantially. . . . If Iran is planning to up the ante and conduct another multi-pronged attack on Israeli targets—and Israeli intelligence is confident that such an attack is imminent—Jerusalem is well within its rights to interdict that event preemptively.

One possibility, Rothman suggests, is that Tehran hasn’t yet made a firm decision as it is waiting for the results of the American elections “with bated breath.” But that fact only sharpens the question:

Israel is not obliged to wait around for an inevitable attack. It should see to its interests promptly and without regard for the composition of the American administration.

In October, a young Mauritanian national murdered an Orthodox Jewish man on his way to synagogue in Chicago. This alone should be sufficient sign of the rising dangers of anti-Semitism. Nathan Diament explains how the Anti-Semitism Awareness Act (AAA) can, if passed, make American Jews safer:

We were off to a promising start when the AAA sailed through the House of Representatives in the spring by a generous vote of 320 to 91, and 30 senators from both sides of the aisle jumped to sponsor the Senate version. Then the bill ground to a halt.

Fearful of antagonizing their left-wing activist base and putting vulnerable senators on the record, especially right before the November election, Democrats delayed bringing the AAA to the Senate floor for a vote. Now, the election is over, but the political games continue.

You can’t combat anti-Semitism if you can’t—or won’t—define it. Modern anti-Semites hide their hate behind virulent anti-Zionism. . . . The Anti-Semitism Awareness Act targets this loophole by codifying that the Department of Education must use the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s working definition of anti-Semitism in its application of Title VI.