Following a recent spate of attacks against Jews in New York City, Mayor Eric Adams has pledged to devote serious effort to finding the perpetrators and restoring security. Governor Kathy Hochul has promised to assist in the investigations.

Over the weekend, vandals scrawled anti-Semitic graffiti across a dental lab, while others smashed the windshield of a school-bus with Hebrew lettering on the side. Upon learning about the graffiti, Adams released a statement saying that “this would be disgusting anytime but it’s especially outrageous as we come to the end of Shabbos. We won’t let this vicious hatred go unanswered in our city.” Luke Tress reports:

A slew of anti-Jewish incidents in the New York region in recent weeks has included numerous acts of vandalism such as spray-painting swastikas, verbal abuse, blasting Jews with snow, spitting on children, and physical violence. On Sunday in Crown Heights, an assailant hit a Jewish man in the face while passing him on the street, knocking off his hat. He was detained by a volunteer patrol group and then arrested.

Saturday reports said a police crossing guard in Manhattan’s Upper West Side was fired earlier in the month for making anti-Semitic comments against Jewish parents and children.

“Push your Jewish kids into the street and get hit by a bus,” she told one parent.

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.