Last month, Argentina’s President Javier Milei made an official visit to the Jewish state, where he announced that he intends to move his country’s embassy to Jerusalem. Milei, an unabashed philo-Semite who has spoken about possibly converting to Judaism, also made a stop at the Western Wall, where he was moved to tears. The visit prompted Meir Soloveichik to reflect on King Solomon’s prayer at the inauguration of the First Temple, in which he asked God to answer the prayers of the “Gentile that is not of thy people Israel, but cometh out of a far country for thy name’s sake, when he shall come and pray toward this house.”

In the moment, Milei captured, deliberately or providentially, what the Western Wall is all about. . . . [I]n Jewish law, the Western Wall is no holier than any other site in Jerusalem; in the period when the Temple stood, it was a retaining wall. The notion that the site would serve as a sacred place of prayer would have seemed surpassingly strange.

What sanctified the Wall was Jewish tears after the Temple’s destruction. Under the Ottomans, who governed the area for centuries, the Wall was the closest site to the Temple Mount where Jews were allowed to pray. And mourn for what they had lost. One-hundred-and-fifty years ago, in another fulfillment of Solomon’s prediction, a former American secretary of state, William Seward, visited the city and gazed with awe at the Jews at the Wall: they were “reading and reciting the poetic language of the prophet, beating their hands against the wall, and bathing the stones with their kisses and tears,” we are told in a memoir edited by Seward’s son.

This is the source of the sanctity of these stones. In standing at the Wall, Milei seemed to sense Jewish history itself, realizing that the pain of the current moment merged with the weeping that had gone before. He then gave voice to this insight in reflecting how Israel’s greatness can be understood only through the prism of the past.

Last week, the New York Times reported, based on unnamed sources within the Trump administration, that the president had asked Israel not to carry out a planned strike on Iranian nuclear facilities. That is, somebody deliberately gave this information to the press, which later tried to confirm it by speaking with other officials. Amit Segal writes that, “according to figures in Israel’s security establishment,” this is “the most serious leak in Israel’s history.” He explains:

As Israel is reportedly planning what may well be one of its most consequential military operations ever, the New York Times lays out for the Iranians what Israel will target, when it will carry out the operation, and how. That’s not just any other leak.

Seth Mandel looks into the leaker’s logic:

The primary purpose of the [Times] article is not as a record of internal deliberations but as an instrument of policy itself. Namely, to obstruct future U.S. and Israeli foreign policy by divulging enough details of Israel’s plans in order to protect Iran’s nuclear sites. The idea is to force Israeli planners back to the drawing board, thus delaying a possible future strike on Iran until Iranian air defenses have been rebuilt.

The leak is the point. It’s a tactical play, more or less, to help Iran torpedo American action.

The leaker, Mandel explains—and the Times itself implies—is likely aligned with the faction in the administration that wants to see the U.S. retreat from the world stage and from its alliance with Israel, a faction that includes Vice-President J.D. Vance, Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard, and the president’s own chief of staff Susie Wiles.

Yet it’s also possible, if less likely, that the plans were leaked in support of administration policy rather than out of factional infighting. Eliezer Marom argues that the leak was “part of the negotiations and serves to clarify to the Iranians that there is a real attack plan that Trump stopped at the last moment to conduct negotiations.”