According to widespread sentiment—expressed, most notably, by Secretary of State John Kerry—last month’s bloody attacks in Paris were different from those in January, which targeted only the staff of Charlie Hebdo and Jews rather than “just anybody.” Douglas Murray comments on what this attitude reveals:

The true problem with the line that it used to be “just the Jews, the writers, or [the] cartoonists,” is not that it is offensive or inelegant or any of the other words that are now used to shut down a discussion—though all these things it may be. The problem is that it suggests that people were not paying attention during those earlier attacks. It suggests a belief that the terrorism in January was a different order of terrorism—call it “understandable terrorism”—rather than part of a continuum of terrorism that now reached its logical endpoint as “impossible-to-understand terrorism”—because “Jews, writers, or cartoonists” were missing. . . .

The latest attacks in Paris were, indeed, targeted at absolutely everybody. In that, there should be a lesson of a kind. The lesson should remind us that in a free society, no one can wholly dodge the bullets of these particular fanatics. In the conflict that faces us now, there is no opt-out if you happen to be “lucky” enough not to be Jewish. There is no opt-out if you happen to think that people should not draw or publish opinions that are anything other than 100-percent agreeable to 100 percent of the people, 100 percent of the time. Because one day, you will be targeted for being at a restaurant or a concert, or for having the “decadent” temerity to attend a soccer match. That this has not yet sunk in to the public imagination is one thing. That it has still not permeated the understanding of the heads of the world’s only superpower is quite another. . . .

So here we are, at the end of what should be one of the world’s sharpest and most painful learning curves in recent history. At the end of this curve, we ought finally to be living with the realization we might have acquired earlier: that since we cannot live with Islamic State and [similar] groups, we had better live without them. We therefore had better do whatever it takes to speed up an end of our choosing before they speed up an end of their choosing.

Analyzing the recent direct Iranian attack on Israel, and Israel’s security situation more generally, Michael Oren looks to the 2015 agreement to restrain Iran’s nuclear program. That, and President Biden’s efforts to resurrect the deal after Donald Trump left it, are in his view the source of the current crisis:

Of the original motivations for the deal—blocking Iran’s path to the bomb and transforming Iran into a peaceful nation—neither remained. All Biden was left with was the ability to kick the can down the road and to uphold Barack Obama’s singular foreign-policy achievement.

In order to achieve that result, the administration has repeatedly refused to punish Iran for its malign actions:

Historians will survey this inexplicable record and wonder how the United States not only allowed Iran repeatedly to assault its citizens, soldiers, and allies but consistently rewarded it for doing so. They may well conclude that in a desperate effort to avoid getting dragged into a regional Middle Eastern war, the U.S. might well have precipitated one.

While America’s friends in the Middle East, especially Israel, have every reason to feel grateful for the vital assistance they received in intercepting Iran’s missile and drone onslaught, they might also ask what the U.S. can now do differently to deter Iran from further aggression. . . . Tehran will see this weekend’s direct attack on Israel as a victory—their own—for their ability to continue threatening Israel and destabilizing the Middle East with impunity.

Israel, of course, must respond differently. Our target cannot simply be the Iranian proxies that surround our country and that have waged war on us since October 7, but, as the Saudis call it, “the head of the snake.”