Since Jeremy Corbyn—who praises Hamas and Hizballah, who laid a wreath at the grave a notorious terrorist, and who makes frequent appearances on Iranian state television—became leader of the British Labor party, anti-Semitism has moved from the party’s leftist fringes to the mainstream. Corbyn has responded to concerns about hatred of Jews and Israel within Labor’s ranks with dismissiveness and one well-organized whitewash. David Hirsh explains what the tolerance for Corbyn and his ilk says about the British public. (Interview by Liam Hoare.)

I think most people [who voted for him] don’t know about Corbyn’s connections with anti-Semitic politics, and if they did, they probably wouldn’t understand or might deny those connections quite vociferously. Those people [in a sense] don’t want to know.

But if you assume lots of people who voted Labor didn’t understand the significance of anti-Semitism, then the question becomes, how should people know? The way people know things is through journalists, intellectuals, activists, and other kinds of cultural producers. So, why didn’t those people tell them?

[The reason is that, within their] milieu, . . . Israel has become the symbol of oppression, of everything that’s wrong with the world, in the struggle between imperialism and anti-imperialism. It is the keystone in the brick arch. [Anti-Israel politics] has become a badge of belonging to that community. You have to sign up to certain common notions about Israel, Zionism, and people who raise the issue of anti-Semitism. . . .

[Y]ou can be sure that Labor would not have allowed somebody to become its leader with a history of anti-black or misogynist politics, for example. . . . The Labor party is not yet institutionally anti-Semitic, but people [in the party] don’t want to hear about [anti-Semitism]. What Corbyn has done is he has allowed the whole thing to be treated as if it’s just a few bad apples in the barrel, and if you find the bad apple, just kick it out, when you should ask what it is about the barrel that makes the apples go bad.

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.