Tomorrow, Great Britain will hold its national elections. The Labor party, led by Keir Starmer, is expected by virtually everyone to win. While Starmer has done much to rid the party of the anti-Semites and Israel-hating fanatics who came to dominate it under the leadership of Jeremy Corbyn, Labor has failed to regain the trust of many British Jews. Among them is Melanie Phillips:

Starmer boasts of his ruthlessness in getting rid of Labor’s hard left. Yet Corbyn’s former deputy, John McDonnell, who has accused Israel of apartheid and genocide, remains a party figure. And Starmer’s deputy, Angela Rayner, who was happy to serve Corbyn’s agenda in his shadow cabinet, was also protected from the purge.

Starmer may have rid the Labor party of its most egregious anti-Semites. But as in the progressive world in general, he has drawn a wholly artificial line between Jew-hatred and the demonization of Israel that is now de rigueur on the left.

In an apparent effort to reassure Jewish voters, Starmer, whose wife is Jewish, recently spoke about his family’s routine Shabbat dinners, and his efforts “to carve out really protected time for the kids” on Friday nights, when, he explained, “I will not do a work-related thing after six o’clock, pretty well come what may.” As if to compete with Labor in the anti-Semitism sweepstakes, the Conservatives rushed to attack this anodyne statement as a sign of laziness. Stephen Pollard writes:

Even by the desperate standards of a desperate party, desperate to find any way of attacking Keir Starmer, this is desperate stuff. But the desperation turns into the disgusting when it comes to [Defense Secretary] Grant Shapps’s intervention. The defense secretary is a proud Jew. He knows full well what trying to keep Friday night free for Shabbat with the family actually means.

Unless you’re fully observant (and unless I am missing something, even the Tories in their desperation haven’t gone so far as to suggest Sir Keir is an Orthodox Jew), it doesn’t mean switching off all electronics and refusing to answer the phone. It just means having dinner with your family. But . . . Shapps went for the jugular: “Virtually every military intervention we’ve carried out has happened at night, partly to keep our servicemen and women safe.”

It is even worse that the message underlying this smear is that any Jew who has Friday night dinner with his family—let alone anyone who actually keeps Shabbat—is a wastrel deserving of opprobrium from the government. But what is truly foul is when that attack comes from a Jew.

Below, today’s newsletter will return to some other reflections on the one-year anniversary of the outbreak of the current war, but first something must be said of its recent progress. Israel has kept up its aerial and ground assault on Hizballah, and may have already killed the successor to Hassan Nasrallah, the longtime leader it eliminated less than two weeks ago. Matthew Levitt assesses the current state of the Lebanon-based terrorist group, which, in his view, is now “a shadow of its former self.” Indeed, he adds,

it is no exaggeration to say that the Hizballah of two weeks ago no longer exists. And since Hizballah was the backbone of Iran’s network of militant proxies, its so-called axis of resistance, Iran’s strategy of arming and deploying proxy groups throughout the region is suddenly at risk as well.

Hizballah’s attacks put increasing pressure on Israel, as intended, only that pressure did not lead Israelis to stop targeting Hamas so much as it chipped away at Israel’s fears about the cost of military action to address the military threats posed by Hizballah.

At the same time, Levitt explains, Hizballah still poses a serious threat, as it demonstrated last night when its missiles struck Haifa and Tiberias, injuring at least two people:

Hizballah still maintains an arsenal of rockets and a cadre of several thousand fighters. It will continue to pose potent military threats for Israel, Lebanon, and the wider region.

How will the group seek to avenge Nasrallah’s death amid these military setbacks? Hizballah is likely to resort to acts of international terrorism, which are overseen by one of the few elements of the group that has not yet lost key leaders.

But the true measure of whether the group will be able to reconstitute itself, even over many years, is whether Iran can restock Hizballah’s sophisticated arsenal. Tehran’s network of proxy groups—from Hizballah to Hamas to the Houthis—is only as dangerous as it is today because of Iran’s provision of weapons and money. Whatever Hizballah does next, Western governments must prioritize cutting off Tehran’s ability to arm and fund its proxies.