After sitting for a two-part interview by the Fox News host Tucker Carlson in which he aired various outlandish opinions, including a criticism of the Abraham Accords, Kanye West took to Instagram to accuse a fellow entertainer of being controlled by Jews. He then used Twitter to threaten that he would be “going death con 3 On JEWISH PEOPLE The funny thing is I actually can’t be Anti Semitic because black people are actually Jew also” [sic]. Both social-media sites, where the wildly successful hip-hop star—who in 2021 legally changed his name to “Ye”—has millions of followers, suspended his accounts. Stephen Pollard comments:

Apart from my incredulity that Twitter actually acted to remove an anti-Semitic post—most of the time it seems to rely on them for business—what struck me most was how this was reported. Near universally his words were described as anti-Semitic. Now this might not seem the most noteworthy aspect of this story, given that they were indeed anti-Semitic. But you hardly need me to tell you that, more often not, even the most blatantly anti-Semitic statement is usually reported as “allegedly anti-Semitic.” Write that Jews kill babies to suck their blood and the likelihood is you will be described as having written an apparently or allegedly anti-Semitic sentence.

But it was, as I say, too good to last. In the days after the first reports, two main themes have emerged. First—and most ludicrously—that Ye’s words should not be interpreted as antisemitic. . . . [Second], is that what Ye said doesn’t really count because they are clearly the words of someone who is, to use the technical term, off his trolley.

Yet, Dominic Green contends that—anti-Semitic though West’s words were—the rapper should be allowed some consideration given his history of mental illness:

[West’s] manic outbursts have long been the subjects of cruel jokes. It is crueler still for Fox News to put on air someone who is plainly ill, especially when he’s educated himself on the Internet.

Compare West to Roger Waters, who turned up over the High Holy Days in an interview with Rolling Stone magazine. Waters, who insists that he has nothing against Jews, only the existence of Israel, said that British and American Jews bear responsibility for Israel’s actions “because they pay for everything.”

Roger Waters will always be a delusional bigot. But Kanye West, who has performed in Israel, will recover from his delusions and their bigotry. He deserves a break.

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.