Last week, a neo-Nazi group threatened that it would make Saturday a “Day of Hate” dedicated to attacking Jews. Fortunately, the day passed without incident. Yehuda Kurtzer takes the occasion to analyze the inadequacies of many common Jewish responses to such anti-Semitic provocations, and suggests reverting to a tried-and-true model:

In the aftermath of the Leo Frank lynching in 1915—the murder of a Jewish man amid an atmosphere of intense anti-Semitism—Jewish leaders formed what would become the ADL by building a relationship with law enforcement and the American legal and political establishment. The ADL recognized that the best strategy to keep American Jews safe over the long term, in ways that would transcend and withstand the political winds of change, was to embed in the police and criminal-justice system the idea that anti-Semitism was their problem to defeat.

For Jews, the high-water mark of this strategy came in the aftermath of the Tree of Life shooting in Pittsburgh. It was the low point in many ways of the American Jewish experience, the most violent act against Jews on American soil, but it was followed by a mourning process that was shared across the greater Pittsburgh community. The words of the kaddish appeared above the fold of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. That [would have been] inconceivable at most other times of Jewish oppression and persecution. It tells the story of when we are successful—when anti-Semitism is repudiated by the general public. It is the most likely indicator that we will be collectively safe in the long run.

A strategic plan to defeat anti-Semitism that must be collectively embraced by American Jews [should include] more investment, across partisan divides, in relationships with local governments and law enforcement. . . . [This] means real education and relationship-building with other ethnic and faith communities that is neither purely instrumental nor performative—enough public-relations visits to Holocaust museums!—so that we have the allies we need when we need them, and so that we can partner for our collective betterment.

Israel will likely respond directly against Iran after yesterday’s attack, and has made known that it will calibrate its retaliation based not on the extent of the damage, but on the scale of the attack. The specifics are anyone’s guess, but Edward Luttwak has a suggestion, put forth in an article published just hours before the missile barrage: cut off Tehran’s ability to send money and arms to Shiite Arab militias.

In practice, most of this cash comes from a single source: oil. . . . In other words, the flow of dollars that sustains Israel’s enemies, and which has caused so much trouble to Western interests from the Syrian desert to the Red Sea, emanates almost entirely from the oil loaded onto tankers at the export terminal on Khark Island, a speck of land about 25 kilometers off Iran’s southern coast. Benjamin Netanyahu warned in his recent speech to the UN General Assembly that Israel’s “long arm” can reach them too. Indeed, Khark’s location in the Persian Gulf is relatively close. At 1,516 kilometers from Israel’s main airbase, it’s far closer than the Houthis’ main oil import terminal at Hodeida in Yemen—a place that was destroyed by Israeli jets in July, and attacked again [on Sunday].