Former Israeli ambassador to the UN Dore Gold speaks about the possibility of renewed negotiations with the Palestinians, Israel’s relations with Arab countries, the Iranian nuclear threat, and the absurdity of the attack on Netanyahu for accepting an invitation to speak to the U.S. Congress. On the subject of borders, Gold comments:

Many people forget that Israel was never required to withdraw to the 1949 armistice lines—which are often misnamed “the 1967 borders.” It was the UN Security Council Resolution 242, adopted in the aftermath of the Six-Day War, which stated explicitly that Israel was expected to withdraw from “territories” and not from all the territories. The common understanding of the U.S. and the UK at the time was that there had to be an Israeli withdrawal, but it wouldn’t have to be a full withdrawal. . . . Israel received assurances from successive US administrations that it was entitled to defensible borders that would replace the fragile pre-1967 lines from which it was attacked more than 40 years ago. . . .

Israel has to negotiate a new border with the Palestinians. . . . In the context of negotiating those new borders, Israel will seek ways to assure that, at the end of the day, it will have secure boundaries that are defensible, given the multiple threats mushrooming around Israel at present, from Islamic State to Iran.

While it is commendable that administrators of several universities finally called upon police to crack down on violent and disruptive anti-Israel protests, the actions they have taken may be insufficient. At Columbia, demonstrators reestablished their encampment on the main quad after it had been cleared by the police, and the university seems reluctant to use force again. The school also decided to hold classes remotely until the end of the semester. Such moves, whatever their merits, do nothing to fix the factors that allowed campuses to become hotbeds of pro-Hamas activism in the first place. The editors of National Review examine how things go to this point:

Since the 10/7 massacre, Columbia’s Jewish students have been forced to endure routine calls for their execution. It shouldn’t have taken the slaughter, rape, and brutalization of Israeli Jews to expose chants like “Globalize the intifada” and “Death to the Zionist state” as calls for violence, but the university refused to intervene on behalf of its besieged students. When an Israeli student was beaten with a stick outside Columbia’s library, it occasioned little soul-searching from faculty. Indeed, it served only as the impetus to establish an “Anti-Semitism Task Force,” which subsequently expressed “serious concerns” about the university’s commitment to enforcing its codes of conduct against anti-Semitic violators.

But little was done. Indeed, as late as last month the school served as host to speakers who praised the 10/7 attacks and even “hijacking airplanes” as “important tactics that the Palestinian resistance have engaged in.”

The school’s lackadaisical approach created a permission structure to menace and harass Jewish students, and that’s what happened. . . . Now is the time finally to do something about this kind of harassment and associated acts of trespass and disorder. Yale did the right thing when police cleared out an encampment [on Monday]. But Columbia remains a daily reminder of what happens when freaks and haters are allowed to impose their will on campus.