While noting his concerns about the racist and ant-Semitic roots of Austria’s Freedom party, which is now part of the county’s governing coalition, Daniel Pipes urges Jews to work with the party, not against it:

The [current Austrian] government comprises two very different parties, which together won 58 percent of the vote: the arch-establishment and very mildly conservative Austrian People’s party and the populist, firebrand Freedom party of Austria, whose roots lie in the far-right swamp of German (not Austrian) nationalism.

The two parties’ coalition agreement is an anti-jihadists’ dream. Distinguishing between Islamism (which it calls political Islam) and the religion of Islam, it boldly stakes out new ground. . . .

Those hostile to the Freedom party stress its Nazi origins, its “politics of resentment,” and its anti-Western outlook. . . . My assessment: the Freedom party brings realism, courage, extremism, and eccentricity; it has a way to go before it becomes just another party. Its leadership’s efforts to address a problem like anti-Semitism (visiting Yad Vashem or calling for the Austrian embassy to be moved to Jerusalem) have gone down badly among rank-and-file members.

But I advocate working with the Freedom party, not marginalizing it. . . . [A] political party has no DNA or essence; it can change and be what its members make of it. Note, [for instance], how the U.S. Democratic party changed on the race issue.

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].