Since World War II, the German state has come to believe, or at least to claim to believe, that it has a special obligation to oppose hatred of Jews. Yet neither its leaders nor its various federal and state anti-Semitism commissioners (with one exception) have had anything to say on the matter of the Islamic Republic’s anti-Semitism. Benjamin Weinthal and Charles Small write:

The recent “election” of Ebrahim Raisi as the Islamic Republic of Iran’s next president presents Merkel and her foreign minister Heiko Maas with a clear opportunity to condemn Raisi’s hardcore anti-Semitism. Raisi, [among much else], managed the production of a 50-episode anti-Semitic documentary spreading the lies of The Protocols of the Elders of Zion. . . . Raisi also said “all the Zionists know Hizballah will drop such rockets and bombs so that no person in Israel will be safe.”

[Meanwhile], Michael Blume, the [anti-Semitism] commissioner for the southern German state of Baden-Wurttemberg, “liked” a Facebook post likening Zionists to Nazis. [But] Blume . . . is a mere symptom of a larger problem in Germany among almost all public servants tasked with confronting ant-Semitism, as well as all layers of Germany’s government apparatus—namely that the greatest threat to the Jewish people, Iran’s regime, is courted as a diplomatic and economic partner.

The policy of appeasing the Iranian regime is deeply entrenched in German academia and politics.

Analyzing the recent direct Iranian attack on Israel, and Israel’s security situation more generally, Michael Oren looks to the 2015 agreement to restrain Iran’s nuclear program. That, and President Biden’s efforts to resurrect the deal after Donald Trump left it, are in his view the source of the current crisis:

Of the original motivations for the deal—blocking Iran’s path to the bomb and transforming Iran into a peaceful nation—neither remained. All Biden was left with was the ability to kick the can down the road and to uphold Barack Obama’s singular foreign-policy achievement.

In order to achieve that result, the administration has repeatedly refused to punish Iran for its malign actions:

Historians will survey this inexplicable record and wonder how the United States not only allowed Iran repeatedly to assault its citizens, soldiers, and allies but consistently rewarded it for doing so. They may well conclude that in a desperate effort to avoid getting dragged into a regional Middle Eastern war, the U.S. might well have precipitated one.

While America’s friends in the Middle East, especially Israel, have every reason to feel grateful for the vital assistance they received in intercepting Iran’s missile and drone onslaught, they might also ask what the U.S. can now do differently to deter Iran from further aggression. . . . Tehran will see this weekend’s direct attack on Israel as a victory—their own—for their ability to continue threatening Israel and destabilizing the Middle East with impunity.

Israel, of course, must respond differently. Our target cannot simply be the Iranian proxies that surround our country and that have waged war on us since October 7, but, as the Saudis call it, “the head of the snake.”