Why does Ed Miliband have it in for Israel? Was organizing a purely symbolic vote in parliament that recognized a fictive Palestinian state designed to earn him “wild applause from the unions [and] smiles of approbation from the far Left”? Or is the answer to be found in his discomfort with his own Jewish identity? Whichever, writes Maureen Lipman, his actions show that he believes in “one law for the Israelis, another for the rest of the world”:

The world is exploding all around us. Islamic State is beheading our civilians while raping and pillaging across Syria and Iraq. Presidents Putin and Assad are playing such heavy-handed games that we don’t know which rebel group to support. Hong Kong may be about to see a replay of Tiananmen. Islamist terrorism in every spot of the globe—and if one Jew had been responsible for any of those bombings, there would be a repeat of Kristallnacht. At this point in our history, you choose to back these footling backbenchers in this ludicrous piece of propaganda?

Israel will likely respond directly against Iran after yesterday’s attack, and has made known that it will calibrate its retaliation based not on the extent of the damage, but on the scale of the attack. The specifics are anyone’s guess, but Edward Luttwak has a suggestion, put forth in an article published just hours before the missile barrage: cut off Tehran’s ability to send money and arms to Shiite Arab militias.

In practice, most of this cash comes from a single source: oil. . . . In other words, the flow of dollars that sustains Israel’s enemies, and which has caused so much trouble to Western interests from the Syrian desert to the Red Sea, emanates almost entirely from the oil loaded onto tankers at the export terminal on Khark Island, a speck of land about 25 kilometers off Iran’s southern coast. Benjamin Netanyahu warned in his recent speech to the UN General Assembly that Israel’s “long arm” can reach them too. Indeed, Khark’s location in the Persian Gulf is relatively close. At 1,516 kilometers from Israel’s main airbase, it’s far closer than the Houthis’ main oil import terminal at Hodeida in Yemen—a place that was destroyed by Israeli jets in July, and attacked again [on Sunday].