In his book The God Delusion, the evolutionary biologist and New Atheist polemicist Richard Dawkins proclaims that the commandment in Leviticus 19:18 to “love your neighbor as yourself” originally meant “only ‘love another Jew.’” Not so, argues the Bible scholar Richard Elliott Friedman, mustering significant contextual and linguistic evidence:

[First], the text already directs Jews/Israelites to love foreigners: “The stranger who resides with you shall be to you as one of your citizens; you shall love him as yourself, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt” (Leviticus 19:34). What [then] would be the point of saying to love only Jews—and in the very same chapter! So who is our “neighbor”?

The Hebrew term here for “neighbor” is re’a. The first occurrence of re’a in the Torah is in the story of the tower of Babel (Genesis 11:3), the Bible’s story of the origin of different nations and languages. The term refers to every human, without any distinctions by group. . . [T]he next occurrence of the word [is] in the story of [Jacob’s son] Judah and [his daughter-in-law] Tamar. Judah has a re’a named Hirah the Adullamite (Genesis 38:12, 20). Hirah is a Canaanite, . . .  from the then-Canaanite city of Adullam. He cannot be a member of Judah’s clan because, at this point in the story, that clan, the Israelites, consists only of Jacob and his children and any grandchildren.

In the Exodus story the word appears in both the masculine and feminine, [when] Moses instructs the Israelites to ask their Egyptian neighbors for silver and gold items before they leave Egypt (Exodus 11:2): “each man will ask of his neighbor and each woman of her neighbor . . .”. The word there refers precisely to non-Israelites. . . .

In short, the word re’a is used to refer to an Israelite, a Canaanite, an Egyptian, or to everyone on earth.

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.