Tomorrow, as much of the U.S. celebrates a major Christian holiday, Jews may find themselves in an uncertain position. Such discomfort was expressed earlier this month by Michigan’s Jewish attorney general Dana Nessel, in a since-deleted Tweet:

I remember the first time I was at a store with my son and an employee said “Merry Christmas” to us. My son looked devastated as he asked, “Are we the only people who don’t celebrate Christmas?” I answered ‘No, and we are just as American as everyone else.” [I’m] glad Joe Biden knows that.

To Liel Leibovitz, this comment “manages to misunderstand America, Christianity, Judaism, the concept of religion in general, and also what it means to live with other humans.” He writes:

If you believe that even a greeting that mildly smacks of religious belief has real power to harm minorities, you must then also believe that such niceties ought to be censored for the safety and well-being of our most vulnerable friends and neighbors. Which, of course, means that you now giddily support banning more or less all forms of religious expression in anything that could even remotely be understood as the public square, or, in other words, that you find the whole “freedom of religion” thing as troubling as, say, the freedom to own firearms.

Indeed, it’s starting to feel a little strange to keep avoiding the obvious truth: the problem . . . is with religion qua religion, and, too often, they are using Jews to broadcast to everyone else how unnecessary—even toxic—religion truly is.

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.