On Monday, a German organization that monitors anti-Semitism reported that, in the first half of 2022, there were 450 anti-Semitic incidents in Berlin, including 97 physical and verbal attacks on individual Jews. Ben Cohen observes:

While many of the incidents were triggered by the Israel-Palestinian conflict, several more involved Holocaust denial—a crime in Germany—and the abuse of the Holocaust by activists protesting the public-health measures introduced by the government to counter the COVID-19 pandemic.

The increasing willingness of offenders to make their anti-Semitic convictions public reflects the further erosion of Germany’s postwar taboo against anti-Semitism, which crystallized in the wake of the Holocaust. According to data released by the Federal Criminal Police Office in October, more than 1,500 anti-Semitic attacks had already been recorded around the country during 2022—an average of five per day.

At the same time, the German media have been awash with headlines about anti-Semitism throughout the year. . . . Anti-Semitic rhetoric has even been aired in the presence of the country’s leader, Olaf Scholz. In June, a smarting yet silent Scholz stood alongside the Palestinian Authority president Mahmoud Abbas at a press conference in Munich where the latter accused Israel of having perpetrated “50 Holocausts” against the Palestinians.

Germany enters 2023 with the very real prospect that, when it comes to anti-Semitism, next year could well be worse than this one.

Surveying news websites and social media on Sunday morning, I immediately found some intelligent and well-informed observers arguing that Iran deliberately warned the U.S. of its pending assault on Israel, and calibrated it so that there would be few casualties and minimal destructiveness, thus hoping to avoid major retaliation. In other words, this massive barrage was a face-saving gesture by the ayatollahs. Others disagreed. Brian Carter and Frederick W. Kagan put the issue to rest:

The Iranian April 13 missile-drone attack on Israel was very likely intended to cause significant damage below the threshold that would trigger a massive Israeli response. The attack was designed to succeed, not to fail. The strike package was modeled on those the Russians have used repeatedly against Ukraine to great effect. The attack caused more limited damage than intended likely because the Iranians underestimated the tremendous advantages Israel has in defending against such strikes compared with Ukraine.

But that isn’t to say that Tehran achieved nothing:

The lessons that Iran will draw from this attack will allow it to build more successful strike packages in the future. The attack probably helped Iran identify the relative strengths and weaknesses of the Israeli air-defense system. Iran will likely also share the lessons it learned in this attack with Russia.

Iran’s ability to penetrate Israeli air defenses with even a small number of large ballistic missiles presents serious security concerns for Israel. The only Iranian missiles that got through hit an Israeli military base, limiting the damage, but a future strike in which several ballistic missiles penetrate Israeli air defenses and hit Tel Aviv or Haifa could cause significant civilian casualties and damage to civilian infrastructure, including ports and energy. . . . Israel and its partners should not emerge from this successful defense with any sense of complacency.