At the start of the academic year, Liel Leibovitz has some advice for college students facing the increasing hostility toward Israel. Among his suggestions is to “attack whenever you can”:

No matter what your major, you might have heard that old adage about the best defense being a good offense. . . . Much of the pro-Israel activism on college campuses these days [is defensive]. If the BDSers are staging a public event, [the logic goes], let us do the same, and if the college walk is blocked by pro-Palestinian activists, their shirts stained with fake blood, staging a theatrical “die-in” to protest some alleged Israeli atrocity or other, let us make sure we’re there on the sidelines to present the other side, a well-reasoned pamphlet at hand. I’m not belittling these tactics. There’s evidence to suggest that they might be working. . . .

But, whenever you can, which ought to be often, you must attack. When Iran continues to rev up its execution rate, for example, it may be time for a die-in of our own, or, at the very least, for a demand that any student organization critical of the Jewish state but silent about the Islamic Republic explain its tacit support for this abysmal violation of human rights. Insist that pro-Palestinian groups only deserve that distinction if they commemorate the scores of Palestinians starved and slain by the Assad regime every day.

Analyzing the recent direct Iranian attack on Israel, and Israel’s security situation more generally, Michael Oren looks to the 2015 agreement to restrain Iran’s nuclear program. That, and President Biden’s efforts to resurrect the deal after Donald Trump left it, are in his view the source of the current crisis:

Of the original motivations for the deal—blocking Iran’s path to the bomb and transforming Iran into a peaceful nation—neither remained. All Biden was left with was the ability to kick the can down the road and to uphold Barack Obama’s singular foreign-policy achievement.

In order to achieve that result, the administration has repeatedly refused to punish Iran for its malign actions:

Historians will survey this inexplicable record and wonder how the United States not only allowed Iran repeatedly to assault its citizens, soldiers, and allies but consistently rewarded it for doing so. They may well conclude that in a desperate effort to avoid getting dragged into a regional Middle Eastern war, the U.S. might well have precipitated one.

While America’s friends in the Middle East, especially Israel, have every reason to feel grateful for the vital assistance they received in intercepting Iran’s missile and drone onslaught, they might also ask what the U.S. can now do differently to deter Iran from further aggression. . . . Tehran will see this weekend’s direct attack on Israel as a victory—their own—for their ability to continue threatening Israel and destabilizing the Middle East with impunity.

Israel, of course, must respond differently. Our target cannot simply be the Iranian proxies that surround our country and that have waged war on us since October 7, but, as the Saudis call it, “the head of the snake.”