In January, the Polish government passed a law making it a crime for anyone to “accuse, publicly and against the facts, the Polish nation, or the Polish state, of being responsible or complicit in the Nazi crimes committed by the Third German Reich.” Even prior to the passage of this law, Warsaw had initiated a libel probe against Jan Gross, a Polish-American historian who has written extensively on the participation of Poles in the murder of Jews during and immediately after World War II. Gross comments on the current situation:

[A]lthough the Poles are deservedly proud of their heroic anti-Nazi resistance during World War II, it is also demonstrably true that during the war Poles killed more of their Jewish fellow citizens than they killed occupying Germans. Of course, there were many Poles who helped Jews during the war. Indeed, there are more Poles listed among Yad Vashem’s “Righteous Gentiles” than citizens of any other nation, which is not surprising given that half of the six million Jews who were murdered in the Holocaust were from Poland. But these individuals typically acted on their own, against prevailing social norms. Strikingly, even after the war, many insisted on keeping their wartime heroism a secret from their neighbors. . . .

Although the new law specifically excludes those acting “within the framework of artistic or scientific activity,” in fact it aims to have a chilling effect on art, scholarship, and honest discussion more generally. In particular, it aims to muzzle the extraordinarily rich and honest Polish historiography of the Holocaust produced over the last twenty years, which has provided the record of Poles’ complicity in the persecution of their Jewish fellow citizens. . . .

Under the pretense of defending Poland’s dignity and freedom to act as a sovereign country, the regime has played to the worst xenophobic and anti-Semitic prejudices of the public. Public television controlled by the [ruling] Law and Justice Party stirs populist outrage by repeating that outside forces, and Jews in particular, want to prevent Poland from telling the truth about its own history, that extermination camps were set up and run by the Germans and not by the Poles—a fact no one denies. Not surprisingly, one can see the rise of anti-Semitic feeling throughout social media, in television, and in the pro-government press.

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.