History Has Been Made as Arabs Fought Alongside Israel | The Rape Denialists | Israel’s Retaliation Dilemma, and more

But they elected to combat the threat. They did so because it is the Islamic Republic, not the Jewish state, that is regarded in most Arab capitals as the far greater threat, and because, contrary to conventional belief, it is Khamenei’s regional ambitions and not the unresolved Palestinian question that keeps Arab leaders awake in the small hours.
This burgeoning strategic reality in the Middle East represents a golden opportunity to definitively remove the principal threat to peace and stability in the region. Since the Hamas atrocities in southern Israel on October 7 and the subsequent war in Gaza, all the focus – from governments, NGOs, the UN and other international agencies, and the media – has been on Israeli motives and Israeli actions. Utterly lost in the mix has been Tehran’s role in arming, financing and sustaining its Hamas proxy and its proxies elsewhere in the Middle East.

The U.S. Navy Has Now Proven It Can Stop Ballistic Missiles  (David Axe, The Telegraph)
When Iran launched waves of drones and missiles at Israel on Saturday, the US military deployed warships and warplanes to reinforce Israeli and allied defenses. American forces actually shot down more of the roughly 160 drones and missiles than Israeli forces did, according to The Intercept.
The US Navy’s surface fleet contribution was a pair of destroyers, USS Arleigh Burke and USS Carney. Between them, the two 500-foot destroyers shot down as many as seven Iranian ballistic missiles. What’s most notable is how the ships shot down the missiles.
As reported by Sam Lagrone at USNI News, they fired Standard Missile-3 (SM-3) interceptors: 22-foot missiles with rocket boosters. SM-3s don’t carry normal explosive warheads but “exo-atmospheric kill vehicles”, EKVs, designed to destroy targets travelling at immense velocities beyond the Earth’s atmosphere in space. The $12-million-a-shot SM-3s are the Navy’s premier ballistic-missile-defense munitions, and the only ones the service has which can potentially bring down a ballistic weapon during the “mid course” phase of its flight, while it is outside the atmosphere. SM-3s had never been fired in combat before Saturday, though an SM-3 was used operationally in 2008 to destroy a malfunctioning US spy satellite in low orbit.
The Navy and the US Missile Defense Agency have been testing and improving the SM-3 for decades. But despite plenty of successful test shots, no one knew for sure whether the SM-3 would work in the stress of actual combat.  
Good news for American missile-defense planners. The SM-3 works. And that has big implications for US forces as they plan for a possible war with China. 

Israel’s Retaliation Dilemma  (Greg Priddy, National Interest)
Israel highly values its freedom of action in Syria and Lebanon, which has often allowed it to interdict arms shipments to Hezbollah, neutralize terrorist suspects, as well as take out a Syrian nuclear reactor in 2007. Allowing Iran to “reestablish deterrence” by absorbing even an ineffective strike without a response after a strike in Damascus is unthinkable. However, the pressure from the United States and others to avoid escalation by keeping any retaliation small is immense. Israel also would clearly lose in some ways in a fully escalated regional conflict, as Hezbollah and Iran are capable of inflicting serious damage via missile strikes. They may have intentionally telegraphed the April 13 strikes so far in advance that other nations were able to intercept some of the drones well before they reached Israeli airspace. Iran also refrained from using its most advanced missile systems. Israel could not expect to replicate the success of their defenses at the same level in a regional conflict.
A regional conflict could also see other negative consequences for Israel. Public opinion in the United States might not be supportive of sustained involvement in the region after a perceived fiasco, especially if consequences included an economically damaging oil price spike. Iran demonstrated its ability to create such a problem when it attacked critical Saudi facilities in 2019, intentionally not targeting anywhere near their full capacity. While a regional conflict could very well see Israeli and U.S. strikes aimed at Iran’s nuclear program after escalation commenced, the aftermath of the war would not be a positive scenario for containing the program. The United States and Israel could set it back perhaps a year or two, if that, but cannot kill off the advances in nuclear enrichment technology that Iran has attained since President Trump pulled the United States out of the JCPOA in 2018. Also, in a post-conflict context, Iran’s nuclear program would likely move forward without the current limited transparency via IAEA inspections. Having to strike it repeatedly would not be a good outcome for either Israel or the United States, nor would it likely work indefinitely.

Benjamin Netanyahu is Pushing for War with Iran  (Jon Hoffman, National Interest)
A war between Israel and Iran—which would undoubtedly come with direct American involvement—would be catastrophic for U.S. interests and the Middle East. Washington needs to make clear that America’s chief interest is to avoid being dragged into another ruinous military campaign in the region.
Netanyahu has long considered Iran Israel’s primary threat and has tried for decades to get the United States to attack Iran. Before that, Netanyahu forcefully advocated the invasion of Iraq. These facts bear consideration and are cause for concern when considering Netanyahu’s incentives.
The prime minister was a leading figure pushing the United States to invade Iraq in the lead-up to 2003. In an address to the U.S. Congress in 2002, Netanyahu promised, “If you take out Saddam, Saddam’s regime, I guarantee you that it will have enormous positive reverberations on the region.” Regarding Iraq’s nuclear program, Netanyahu claimed, “There is no question whatsoever that Saddam is seeking, is working, is advancing towards to the development of nuclear weapons.” He urged the United States forward, arguing that it “must destroy” the regime of Saddam Hussein.
Whether Netanyahu—and the U.S. foreign policy establishment—were being cynical or foolish (or both), the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003 was ruinous for both the United States and the Middle East—including Israel. A geyser of extremism erupted across the region, causing a profusion of wars, instability, and terrorism. Plunging into war with Iran could be worse than Iraq.

The Rape Denialists  (Michael A. Cohen, The Atlantic)
On October 7, Hamas terrorists crossed the border into Israel and massacred more than 1,100 Israelis. The depths of Hamas’s sadism are almost too sickening to comprehend. Babies and children butchered. Parents murdered in front of their children. Families bound together and then burned alive. Others were tortured, and their bodies mutilated while both alive and dead.
Even the harshest opponents of Israel’s subsequent military campaign in Gaza acknowledge, albeit often half-heartedly, that Hamas acted with brutality on October 7 in killing innocents. But many of those same critics refuse to acknowledge the widespread sexual assaults against Israeli women that day.
Since allegations of sexual violence first appeared in the fall, a contingent of anti-Israel activists have sought to disprove them. “Believe women” and “Silence is violence” have been rallying cries of progressive feminist organizations for decades. But the same empathy and support have not been shown for Israeli victims.
Many prominent feminist and human-rights groups—including Amnesty International and the National Organization for Women—said little about the sexual-violence allegations. International organizations tasked with protecting women in wartime kept their powder dry. UN Women waited until December 1, nearly two months after the Hamas attack, to issue a perfunctory statement of condemnation.
Israel’s critics have insisted that a lack of firsthand accounts from rape survivors or forensic evidence undercut Israel’s accusations—and have dismissed claims that systematic sexual violence occurred as “unsubstantiated.” Others have accused the Israeli government of “weaponizing” accusations of rape to justify Israel’s “genocide” in Gaza, as an open letter from dozens of feminist activists put it in February. The letter has since been signed by more than 1,000 others.
Across the United States and Western Europe, criticism of Israel’s actions quickly and predictably veered into rank anti-Semitism, with Jewish organizations, cultural institutions, artists, and individual Jews targeted by pro-Palestine activists because of Israel’s actions.
But rape denialism falls into its own separate and bewildering category. Why have so many of Israel’s critics—and pro-Palestine activists—chosen to fight on this hill?