Europe’s Double Standards Come Back to Haunt It

In January, Margot Wallstrom, Sweden’s foreign minister, called for an investigation into incidents where Israeli security forces have shot Palestinian terrorists in the midst of committing acts of murder. Tom Wilson wonders if she will make similar calls regarding French and German police:

Yesterday, when an . . . Islamic State devotee in Germany began attacking commuters on a busy train, he was quickly shot and killed by security. Similarly, the horrific truck attack last week in Nice was brought to an end only when the French police shot and killed Mohamed Lahouaiej Bouhlel, who also appears to have been linked with IS. . . .

[T]he question is not whether Wallstrom’s comments about Israel were acceptable; we already knew that they were not. Rather, the question here is whether the Swedish foreign ministry is going to be consistent because a standard has now been set. As such, Margot Wallstrom has a choice on her hands. Either she can come out and call for equivalent investigations into the actions of the German and French police—and provoke popular and diplomatic fury from across Europe—or she could not hold European countries to the same standard she holds Israel to and, in doing so, confirm that she operates a bigoted and discriminatory attitude toward the Jewish state.

When Wallstrom made her comments in January, many will have assumed the latter to be the case. But if she cares to, recent events have now provided her with an opportunity to prove otherwise.

Read more at Commentary

More about: Car intifada, Europe and Israel, Islamic State, Israel & Zionism, Sweden, Terrorism

How Columbia Failed Its Jewish Students

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.

Read more at National Review

More about: Anti-Semitism, Columbia University, Israel on campus