Iran’s Nightmares

Details of the recent limited Israeli retaliatory strike against Iranian anti-aircraft missile batteries at Isfahan are still sketchy. 

But nonetheless, we can draw some conclusions.

By: Victor Davis Hanson

Blade of Perseus

April 25, 2024

Israel’s small volley of missiles hit their intended targets, to the point of zeroing in on the very launchers designed to stop such incoming ordnance.

The target was near the Natanz enrichment facility. That proximity was by design. Israel showed Iran it could take out the very anti-missile battery designed to thwart an attack on its nearby nuclear facility.

The larger message sent to the world was that Israel could send a retaliatory barrage at Iranian nuclear sites with reasonable assurances that the incoming attacks could not be stopped. By comparison, Iran’s earlier attack on Israel was much greater and more indiscriminate. It was also a huge flop, with an estimated 99 percent of the more than 320 drones, cruise missiles, and ballistic missiles failing to hit their planned targets.

Moreover, it was reported that more than 50 percent of Iran’s roughly 115-120 ballistic missiles failed at launch or malfunctioned in flight.

Collate these facts, and it presents a disturbing corrective to Iran’s non-stop boasts of soon possessing a nuclear arsenal that will obliterate the Jewish state.

Consider further the following nightmarish scenarios: Were Iranian nuclear-tipped missiles ever launched at Israel, they could pass over, in addition to Syria and Iraq, either Saudi Arabia, Jordan, the West Bank, Gaza, or all four. In the cases of Jordan and Saudi Arabia, such trajectories would constitute an act of war, especially considering that some of Iran’s recent aerial barrages were intercepted and destroyed over Arab territory well before they reached Israel.

Iran’s strike prompted Arab nations, the US, the UK, and France to work in concert to destroy almost all of Iran’s drones. For Iran, that is a premonition of the sort of sophisticated aerial opposition it might face if it ever decided to stage a nuclear version.

Even if half of Iran’s ballistic missiles did launch successfully, only a handful apparently neared their intended targets—in sharp contrast to Israel’s successful attack on Iranian missile batteries. Is it thus conceivable that any Iranian-nuclear-tipped missile launched toward Israel might pose as great a threat to Iran itself or its neighbors as to Israel?

And even if such missiles made it into the air and even if they successfully traversed Arab airspace, there is still an overwhelming chance they would be neutralized before detonating above Israel.

Any such launch would warrant an immediate Israeli response. And the incoming bombs and missiles would likely have a 100 percent certainty of evading Iran’s countermeasures and hitting their targets.

Now that the soil of both Iran and Israel is no longer sacred and immune from attack, the mystique of the Iranian nuclear threat has dissipated.

It should be harder for the theocracy to shake down Western governments for hostage bribes, sanctions relief, and Iran-deal giveaways on the implied threat of Iran successfully nuking the Jewish state.

The new reality is that Iran has goaded an Israel that has numerous nuclear weapons and dozens of nuclear-tipped missiles in hardened silos and on submarines. Tehran has zero ability to stop any of these missiles or sophisticated fifth-generation Israeli aircraft armed with nuclear bombs and missiles.

Iran must now fear that if it launched 2-3 nuclear missiles, there would be overwhelming odds that they would either fail at launch, go awry in the air, implode inside Iran, be taken down over Arab territory by Israel’s allies, or be knocked down by the tripartite Israel anti-missile defense system.

Add it all up, and the Iranian attack on Israel seems a historic blunder. It showed the world the impotence of an Iranian aerial assault at the very time it threatens to go nuclear. It revealed that an incompetent Iran may be as much a threat to itself as to its enemies. It opened up a new chapter in which its own soil, thanks to its attack on Israel, is no longer off limits to any Western power.

Its failure to stop a much smaller Israel response, coupled with the overwhelming success of Israel and its allies in stopping a much larger Iranian attack, reminds the Iranian autocracy that its shrill rhetoric is designed to mask its impotence and to hide its own vulnerabilities from its enemies.

And the long-suffering Iranian people?

The truth will come out that its own theocracy hit the Israeli homeland with negligible results and earned a successful, though merely demonstrative, Israeli response in return.

So Iranians will learn their homeland is now vulnerable and, for the future, no longer off limits.

And they will conclude that Israel has more effective allies than Iran and that their own ballistic missiles may be more suicidal than homicidal.

As a result, they may conclude that the real enemies of the Iranian nation are not the Jewish people of Israel after all, but their own unhinged Islamist theocrats.

Many Culprits Behind Rise of Antisemitism, Including the Media

By: Howard Levitt

Gatestone Institute

April 23, 2024

Over the last several years, Canadian employers have increasingly brought in “diversity, equity, and inclusion” (DEI) trainers to rid their workforces of conscious, and even subconscious, racism. On the face of it, who can object to diversity, equity and inclusion? It is like objecting to Santa Claus.

Unfortunately, these workshops too often have been hijacked by radical ideologues who pitted races against each other. The unhappy story of Richard Bilkszto, who committed suicide after alleging he was deemed a racist by one such trainer for observing that Canadians are not more racist than Americans, was simply the publicly exposed tip of that iceberg.

I have had many Jewish clients, even before Oct. 7, complain about how Jews have been treated in these DEI seminars. To what extent has this radical training played a role in the sudden outpouring of antisemitism here?

Who indeed is to blame for the wave of hatred toward Jews that is roiling Canadian workplaces, universities, unions, social media postings, even our streets and neighbourhoods?

Antisemitism has had a long sordid history in Canada and, for some (ironically many of those who have never knowingly even met a Jew), it has always been hidden just below the surface. There was a reprieve after the guilt induced by the atrocities of the Second World War. But it is ascendant again, and surprisingly, its adherents are proudly so.

Who are the purveyors of antisemitism?

Obviously, first are the radical Islamists importing their ancient historic Jew-hatred based on their particular interpretation of the Koran. Their hatred of Christians and other “infidels” is only slightly behind in the hierarchy.

There is the radical woke left, which has, since Israel’s underdog defeat of the combined armies of Jordan, Egypt and Syria in 1967, viewed Israel as an oppressor. I believe much of the antisemitism in the public sector union movement can be attributed to that strain.

There is the influence of DEI which has too often placed Jews at the top of a racial hierarchy, ignoring the fact that Jews have always been, and remain, dramatically more discriminated against than any other group, including those groups at the supposed bottom of the DEI hierarchy of intersectionality: Indigenous, Blacks, Muslims and the LGBTQIA+.

Allied with those forces are universities and colleges, which have been temples of wokeness for years, penalizing students who express views that dissent from their left-wing pronouncements. While campuses are hotbeds of support for Hamas, polls have shown young people who have not been in the clutches of our university and college professors support Israel, as do most other groups in Canada by large majorities.

Although I am distinguishing them, the left, the universities and DEI practitioners are somewhat interchangeable, and have many of the same members.

The last group which I believe has been responsible for rising antisemitism are irresponsible media publications.

Canada’s public broadcaster, the CBC, has been particularly one-sided and unrelenting in its coverage of the conflict between Israel and Hamas. It still does not describe Hamas as a terrorist organization and has yet to apologize for falsely accusing Israel of bombing a hospital and killing hundreds — even though it has long been acknowledged that a misfired Palestinian Islamic Jihad rocket was to blame and that the death toll was much lower.

Consistently, the CBC has presented a view of the war, distorted in Hamas’ favour.

In a recent column in the daily Toronto Sun, Warren Kinsella revealed that the CBC has a committee struck to directly oversee its coverage on Israel. He also reported that Jewish journalists there say the stories they pitch on the war are being routinely ignored.

CBC is the worst, but it is not alone. Montreal’s La Presse daily ran a ghoulish cartoon depicting Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu as a repulsive vampire with a big nose and sharp claws poised to suck the life out of Palestinians, referring to him as “Nosfenyahu” in reference to the 1922 German silent horror movie Nosferatu, which has long been seen as deeply antisemitic. The Toronto Star has also published columns with strong anti-Israel positions.

I will close with a disturbing, but unsurprising, story about our public broadcaster. It says it all.

Early in the war, CBC sought out “deeply personal essays” about what it means to be Jewish and Canadian today, and welcomed Jewish Canadians to pitch their stories.

As a result, Shawna Cohen of Toronto submitted a piece. A producer from the CBC responded:

“Specifically, I’d like to hear from someone who wants a ceasefire/is finding it hard to be pro-Israel right now OR someone who supports the war despite the high cost of civilian life — and how their personal lived experiences inform those views. Please let me know if you might want to write something along those lines, and if so, what would your take be.”

Ms. Cohen wrote back:

“As a Jewish person, I feel I have a responsibility to let you know that the specific angle CBC is searching for is dangerous and narrow-minded. The Jewish community is feeling extremely unsafe — in Canada and beyond.

“Rather than providing writers with an opportunity to share how and why Jews are feeling this way, CBC has reverse engineered the narrative. It is specifically seeking out a rare breed of Jew who doesn’t support Israel and/or is willing to negotiate with a terrorist organization. Taking this approach only contributes to anti-Israel propaganda.

“To be honest, I was reluctant to pitch my story to CBC because of its established record of anti-Israel and anti-Zionist bias. From your response, it is clear that CBC does not welcome genuine opinions or perspectives that are not viewed through its own narrow, sociopolitical lens. This reality is unconscionable for a publicly funded broadcaster that considers itself the voice of a nation.”

She never received a response.

Hopefully our public broadcaster will be defunded soon enough. It has become a national disgrace.

Howard Levitt is the senior partner of Levitt Sheikh, Canadian employment and labour lawyers, and Bencher (Director) of the Law Society of Ontario.

Openly Jewish

By: Ayaan Hirsi Ali

Restoration

April 23, 2024

Last week, the English-speaking world watched in horror a short video clip of a Jewish man in central London being kept away from a pro-Palestinian protest march. It was filmed on Saturday 13th April. A British policeman addresses Gideon Falter, a smartly dressed man wearing a suit and small yarmulke, warning him:

You are quite openly Jewish, this is a pro-Palestinian march, I’m not accusing you of anything, but I’m worried about the reaction to your presence.

These words are naturally horrifying to hear. It is no surprise, given the great suffering of Gazan civilians during Israel’s armed response to brutal and unjustifiable Hamas attack of October 7th, that tensions at such protests are high. Peaceful, law-abiding protest is a fundamental civic freedom in Western society. But it is utterly intolerable that anybody – let alone a British subject – should be unsafe on the streets of London because they look “quite openly Jewish.”

The public square can certainly be tolerant of a great range of political and religious groups, but it can’t be neutral.

Jewish organizations have warned that pro-Palestinian marches in London have featured anti-Semitic chants and slogans since October. Signs have been reported with the slogan, “Welcome to Gaza, twinned with Auschwitz.” Marchers have screamed the so-called Khaybar Chant: Khaybar, Khaybar, ya yahud! Jaish Muhammad soufa yaʿoud!(“Khaybar, Khaybar, oh Jews, the army of Muhammad will return”). The chant refers to Muhammad’s slaughter of purportedly treacherous Jewish allies at the Battle of Khaybar. It is an implicit threat of Islamist violence against Jews – notably, it is not restricted to Israeli “occupiers.” Nor does it claim to represent any supposedly secular or inclusive Palestinian future. For Islamists, this is the subtext of “From the River to the Sea.”

The real shock of the April 13th video, though, is not the perceived threat of Islamist anti-Semitic violence. That we are used to. Instead, it is that a British police officer, an agent of the state, seems to suggest that being “quite openly Jewish” is unacceptable on the streets of a major Western city.

It is important not to be sensationalist here. The police officer, though his choice of words is highly dubious, was clearly motivated more by concern for Falter’s personal safety than by any personal or official anti-Semitism. There is no serious suggestion that the officer is himself a dangerous bigot.

Secondly, a much longer video has since emerged. Mr. Falter was certainly attempting to access the pro-Palestinian protest, with companions of his own. At one point he confronts the police officer, saying, “The Metropolitan police says these marches are completely safe for Jews, there is no problem whatsoever.”Falter seems keen to test this hypothesis. This is presumably in connection with his work as chief executive of the Campaign Against Antisemitism. We might consider this brave, or imprudent, or needlessly provocative. It might even be all three.

None of this excuses what happened. It seems to be a pretty clear implicit admission that a significant proportion of the protestors might be violent anti-Semites.

Again, let’s be clear: peaceful protest is legal. Lots of the protestors will have perfectly legitimate concerns about civilian casualties in Gaza. A few of them would no doubt also march for Ukraine, or deplore the use of violence by thuggish, murderous regimes from Beijing to Baku.

But, apparently, not all of them. Clearly the London Metropolitan Police are aware that there is a real presence in these protests of an anti-Semitic, Islamist element. The kind who from time-to-time chant Khaybar, Khaybar, ya yahud!

How can these weekly protests be allowed to continue, at least in their current form, if this is the case? If another weekly political protest came with the serious threat of racist or religious violence, would it be allowed to continue? It seems hard to believe that any large-scale march which came with a regular risk of white supremacist chanting or violence would long be tolerated on the streets of Britain’s capital.

Restoring Public Spaces:

Western societies need to realize – need to remember what we all once knew – that peace, order, and lawful freedoms all need to be actively and publicly maintained. This maintenance needs to come from the state, from civil society, and from all citizens as free individuals. We can no longer afford that tired old liberal myth of a neutral public space.

We cannot pretend that there is no difference between peaceful protests and those which come with a threat of Islamist violence. We cannot pretend that there is no difference between different conceptions of the good, of the just society, of human dignity.

We cannot be blind to the way that some Islamist groups – Hamas and Al-Quds supporters among them – have a pretty good grasp of how to wield power in the public square. They know how to exert pressure on agents of the state, and how to project political strength on the streets. This isn’t a naive phenomenon.

Islamism is a world where the minaret towers over all. It’s the burka’s flowing tendrils blanketing women like an invasive vine in a once-flourishing garden. It’s the gathering in the square that proclaims “this is our space now.” It’s the adhan blasted loudly at the Christian or Jewish – or secular! – part of town. Until, one day, there are no non-Muslim parts of town left. The Christians of Istanbul and the Jews of Baghdad found this out the hard way. I pray the monied agnostics of Mayfair and Chelsea never do.

And they may not have to! That is, perhaps the British state can learn to differentiate between legitimate protests (however misguided), and marches that proclaim conquest.

The West needs to recover and to actively, publicly promote some basic ideas about our shared public peace. About the common allegiances and responsibilities of citizens. The public square can certainly be tolerant of a great range of political and religious groups, but it can’t be neutral. Attempted public neutrality is a vacuum that less-than-benevolent groups are always ready to fill.

In a free and democratic society, the day-to-day politics of domestic government, foreign activities, finance, etc., must constantly be debated. This is right and just. But at the same time, Western democracies must demand – in the public square – loyalty not to wispy, vague ideas of procedural neutrality and skin-deep inclusivity. Instead, we need to be a lot better at articulating the importance of public peace, the legitimate authority of our states, mutual fraternity with our fellow citizens, respect for the law, and the dignity of all human beings.

This isn’t a big ask, and it isn’t bigotedly intolerant. A country can be sure of itself and of its fundamental requirements, and still accept newcomers or visitors. Bluntly, people should normally be free to protest against a government’s foreign policy, or to stand in solidarity with those they think are oppressed overseas. But the political deal needs to be clearer, and straightforwardly articulated: the rejection of intimidation, violence, anti-Semitic extremism, and the pursuit of power by unconstitutional means. It’s the difference between having a law-abiding, European-style social democratic party in a country’s parliament, and tolerating organized political violence or state espionage by Communist groups. Western states sometimes benefit from the former, but must have the self-assurance to stamp out the latter.

If we don’t get better at doing this, our public square will be more and more vulnerable to hostile takeover. The present moment is a canary in the coal mine. If we don’t get better at doing this, we risk seeing more of our fellow citizens grimly warned of the dangers of being “openly Jewish.”