Last week, the New York Times published an editorial complaining about a public swimming pool in the Brooklyn neighborhood of Williamsburg that has designated women-only hours every week, to accommodate the mores of the area’s large ḥasidic population. The policy also provoked the ire of the New York City Human-Rights Commission. Mark Hemingway writes:

After an anonymous complaint, the Human-Rights Commission intervened and stopped the pool from offering female-only swimming hours. Those hours were later restored after city officials and the state assemblyman Dov Hikind stepped in.

This is the second high-profile attack the Human-Rights Commission has made on the city’s Orthodox Jewish population in the last couple of years. After Jewish stores in Williamsburg started putting up signs in their windows requiring that customers adhere to a dress code, the commission sprang into action and threatened fines. Again, there was a big double standard. The Four Seasons [restaurant] could require diners to wear a jacket and tie, but Jewish business owners could not.

There seems to be a troubling trend where local officials are attempting to criminalize behavior that would otherwise be acceptable—but only when it has religious motivations. The attacks on Jews by the New York City Human-Rights Commission and the New York Times are also a good reminder that religious-liberty concerns are not just limited to Christians. Accommodating a large local religious population at a public facility a few hours a week hardly seems like an injustice, but at this point it’s hard to refute the fact that a major goal of the left seems to be driving any trace of religiosity from the public square.

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.