The Argentine-Israeli pianist and conductor Daniel Barenboim—who currently resides in Germany and has a record of anti-Israel pronouncements—recently contributed an op-ed to Haaretz repeating the oft-heard assertion that guilt over the Holocaust led “the world” to permit the creation of the Jewish state. In an open letter to Barenboim, Yehuda Bauer, an eminent historian of the Shoah, sets him straight. (Free registration may be required.)

In the decades before 1948, the Zionist movement laid the ground for a Jewish political entity in the land of Israel. It sought to settle large numbers of Jews there—mainly from Eastern Europe, where they faced persecution and were barred from immigrating elsewhere.

A large number of Poland’s 3.3 million Jews sought to go to Palestine. The Holocaust destroyed the potential pool of immigrants on which Zionism was based and, it seemed, the possibility of establishing that Jewish political entity. It is the fact of that entity’s establishment, despite the odds, that must be explained. . . .

You also presumably rely on the claim that Israel was established because of the “world’s” guilt over the Holocaust. The belief that world leaders felt remorse over what happened [during the war] is a Jewish myth. The archives from 1945-48 are open. Britain opposed a Jewish state. So did the U.S. State Department, which in March 1948, after the partition plan was approved in November 1947, proposed the establishment of an Anglo-American protectorate that would continue the [pre-war British policy of restricting immigration]. Its main provision was to hand the country, after ten years, to the Arab population. The Holocaust and the Jews’ fate in the war were irrelevant.

Early Friday morning, Israel attacked military installations near the Iranian cities of Isfahan and nearby Natanz, the latter being one of the hubs of the country’s nuclear program. Jerusalem is not taking credit for the attack, and none of the details are too certain, but it seems that the attack involved multiple drones, likely launched from within Iran, as well as one or more missiles fired from Syrian or Iraqi airspace. Strikes on Syrian radar systems shortly beforehand probably helped make the attack possible, and there were reportedly strikes on Iraq as well.

Iran itself is downplaying the attack, but the S-300 air-defense batteries in Isfahan appear to have been destroyed or damaged. This is a sophisticated Russian-made system positioned to protect the Natanz nuclear installation. In other words, Israel has demonstrated that Iran’s best technology can’t protect the country’s skies from the IDF. As Yossi Kuperwasser puts it, the attack, combined with the response to the assault on April 13,

clarified to the Iranians that whereas we [Israelis] are not as vulnerable as they thought, they are more vulnerable than they thought. They have difficulty hitting us, but we have no difficulty hitting them.

Nobody knows exactly how the operation was carried out. . . . It is good that a question mark hovers over . . . what exactly Israel did. Let’s keep them wondering. It is good for deniability and good for keeping the enemy uncertain.

The fact that we chose targets that were in the vicinity of a major nuclear facility but were linked to the Iranian missile and air forces was a good message. It communicated that we can reach other targets as well but, as we don’t want escalation, we chose targets nearby that were involved in the attack against Israel. I think it sends the message that if we want to, we can send a stronger message. Israel is not seeking escalation at the moment.