Richard Kemp, the former commander of British forces in Afghanistan, argues that the decline of traditional morality has undermined the West in its war on terror and contributed to the vilification of Israel:

Throughout most of the West, certainly in Europe, Judeo-Christian principles, honesty, family values, respect for the state, honor, and loyalty have all been eroded, often beyond recognition. Negative values, such as the acceptance of betrayal, duplicity, and deceit, have flourished. Defining values including patriotism and religious faith have been undermined. . . .

It is impossible to avoid a connection between the shift in public opinion on Israel and the change in Western morality. . . . War is no longer a matter of the good guy fighting the bad with the good expected to win. Political correctness encourages individuals to say what they think is seen as acceptable and will not offend the majority rather than what they actually believe. . . . The destruction of defining values mean that people will now accept physical acts that would before have been utterly abhorrent to them. . . .

The target is Western values themselves, most often represented by the United States, the most powerful country in the world. But Israel has increasingly become a proxy for the United States.

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.