Having fled Iraq after having their home seized by a Shiite militia taking orders from Tehran, Hussain Abdul-Hussain’s family relocated to Lebanon—another Arab nation under the thumb of Iran-backed guerrillas—where the recent bank collapse eliminated their savings. To Abdul-Hussain, who now lives in the U.S., the Lebanese economic woes are the direct result of over a decade of domination by Iranian proxy Hizballah. He urges presidential candidate Joe Biden to keep this in mind when formulating his policies toward the Islamic Republic:

The continued presence of Hizballah, a terrorist organization under U.S. law, kept Lebanon in a state of perpetual war. This stifled growth and forced the government to fund itself by borrowing from local banks, thus using depositors’ money. And to buy off the local oligarchy and make it support its unconstitutional militia, Hizballah used the state to reward loyal oligarchs. Reform thus became impossible, and corruption inseparable from the terrorist group’s very existence.

This is why my sister, my wife, myself, and many of our Lebanese-American friends felt disappointment when reading Biden’s promise to rejoin the nuclear deal with Iran, and give Israel more arms to defend itself against Iranian proxies. Biden’s statement signaled that he does not plan to help the Lebanese and the Iraqis get rid of Iranian militias, but only to manage and to contain them.

Contrary to what the media often claim, a two-state solution for the Israelis and the Palestinians is not the key to “true peace” in the Middle East. In fact, whatever happens to Palestinians does not affect our families and friends in Lebanon, Syria, or Iraq. What happens to the Iran regime, however, does. In our world, Israel is not the enemy, the Iranian regime is.

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.