A new history of the creation of modern Hebrew ends with speculation about whether the Hebrew language could become the basis of an Israeli identity that could unify Jewish and Arab citizens. In his review, Philologos evaluates the merits of this proposal:

[T]he great majority of Israeli Arabs are not about to start adopting Hebrew as their mother tongue in the historically foreseeable future. Although the process will be quicker among Christians and Druze, it will probably, in the best of cases, take quite a few more generations among them, too. Already today one hears many Israeli Arabs incorporating numerous Hebrew words and expressions in their Arabic speech, and Hebrew is becoming more and more a part of their lives; yet to the best of my knowledge, there is still not a single Arab family in Israel in which Hebrew is the language of the home, and until the first such linguistic signs appear, assimilation is at an early stage. The “Hebrew Republic,” alas (for I, too, would like to see it come to pass), is still far away.

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.