The British government recently required that “faith schools”—religious schools receiving government funding—add a second faith to their curricula, at the expense of time allotted to a school’s primary religious instruction. After initially protesting the law, the UK’s chief rabbi has decided that, in Jewish schools, the second religion should be Islam. In a show of apparent reciprocity, the Association of Muslim Schools announced that it would encourage its members to choose Judaism as their second religion. Sara Lehmann suspects that, contrary to the law’s expressed purpose, little tolerance will follow:

How this new love fest will play out should not be anyone’s guess. If history is a correct indicator of predictability, we should look forward to more of the same. Much of Muslim extremism and anti-Semitism derives precisely from its own educational system—its clerics, its teachers, its schools.

And Muslims already do teach about Judaism. Their instructors [cite] teachings about Jews being descendants of apes and pigs, discredit the biblical and historical ties of the Jews to their homeland, and push a distorted Palestinian narrative. We can now expect Muslim faith schools in England to spend 25-percent more of their time doing just that. . . .

Ironically, the new rules governing British faith schools can be juxtaposed with a report this past month by the Commission on Religion and Belief in Public Life calling for Britain to be systematically de-Christianized. The report cites a major shift away from Christianity, with the number of people describing themselves as having no religion jumping from less than a third of the population to almost half in just 30 years. It also advocates phasing out faith schools, which it describes as “socially divisive.”

If faith is on the decline in England, why force faith schools to split their time by compelling them to teach another faith? . . . . Jonathan Rabson, the executive director of the National Association of Orthodox Jewish Schools, described the new requirements as an “unwarranted intrusion into religious freedoms.” It is worse than that; it is a destructive intrusion into religious freedoms.

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.