Yesterday, the Jewish Chronicle—the usually restrained, 178-year-old Anglo-Jewish newspaper—published a front-page editorial urging not its regular readers but the general British public to vote against the Labor party in the December elections because of the anti-Semitism that has engulfed it. Tanya Gold, among the many British Jews who have forsaken the party over its hostility toward them, describes the current climate:

“Jew’” is absolutely a loaded word again. I have been told, very recently, that the Rothschilds control Europe—at an Alcoholics Anonymous meeting of all places; and by a socialist, naturally. This is normal. When I ask Labor members about anti-Semitism, they react with denial or, more likely, fury: why do we seek to maim the [socialist] utopia, and why do we not do something about Islamophobia? (I wish I could; but how does ignoring anti-Semitism further the anti-racist cause?) I know they think my testimony is suspect—oh, lying Jew!—but my antennae are set to peril, and I trust them.

I also trust that things will get worse; that the more [anti-Semitism] is tolerated, the more it bleeds across the culture. Do people really think that a far-right thug will pause before he punches a Jew and think: hang on, didn’t this rhetoric emerge from Stalin’s Russia? The left provides the script, always, for they are the pseudo-intellectuals writing their borrowed lies; the right, the fists.

That Labor call themselves progressives, and yet are imbued with the infection of ancient Christian Jew-hatred—the murder of God was our original sin—is . . . laughable. We [Jews] have returned to our settled place; too proud, in every sense, to assimilate; rather, we drift across the world to where we feel safe.

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.