For 22 years, Hadley Freeman wrote for the British newspaper the Guardian, one of the world’s most influential English-language news outlets—and also a hotbed of obsessive anti-Israel sentiment. Freeman, having just stepped down from the publication, reflects on her experience as a Jew ensconced in a bastion of the British left. What strikes her most are the responses she received from non-Jewish leftists whenever she expressed concern about the takeover of the Labor party by the anti-Semitic politician Jeremy Corbyn and his acolytes. She lists five characteristic comments:

1. “I don’t think you should write about anti-Semitism because you obviously feel very passionately about it.”

2. “What, exactly, are Jews afraid of here? It’s not like Corbyn is going to bring back pogroms.”

3. “Jews have always voted right so of course, they don’t like Corbyn.”

4. “It’s not that I don’t believe that you think he’s anti-Semitic. It’s just I think you’re being manipulated by bad-faith actors. So let me explain why you’re wrong . . . ”

5. “Come on, you don’t really think he really hates Jews.”

All of the above were said to me by progressive people, people who would proudly describe themselves as anti-racism campaigners. And yet. When Jews expressed distress at, say, Corbyn describing Hamas as “friends,” or attending a wreath-laying ceremony for the killers at the Munich Olympics, or bemoaning the lack of English irony among Zionists, we were fobbed off with snarky tweets and shrugged shoulders.

A lot of illusions were broken, and I lost a lot of respect for a lot of people I thought I knew, but it turned out I didn’t. Not really. Not at all.

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.