Commenting on the recently defeated anti-Israel motion before the American Historical Association (AHA), Jeffrey Herf notes the “hubris” of its supporters, “fostered by decades of easy victories at the UN or in academic associations that had already been taken over by the radical left.” The debate over the motion revealed much else about the motion’s sponsors, many of whom have ties to the BDS movement:

The response from supporters of the [anti-Israel] resolution revealed that they were indeed part of a political project that seeks to delegitimize the state of Israel. They admitted to singling out Israel, but denied that this had anything to do with anti-Semitism. Rather, they [claimed they were doing] so because they opposed colonialism and racism everywhere. . . . They appealed to the “moral responsibility of intellectuals” to “oppose injustice,” thus assuming, [without ever seeking to prove], that Israel perpetrated injustices and deserved moral condemnation. . . .

One of the younger faculty members supporting the resolution revealed his limited understanding of the role of professional organizations when he blurted out that he wanted the AHA to be a progressive, not a conservative, organization. He dug himself into a deeper hole when he asked why we shouldn’t support a resolution that reflected what he taught in his classes. . . .

[F]aced with a combined assault on the factual accuracy of their accusations [against Israel, and the widespread conviction that the AHA shouldn’t involve itself in political issues], the resolution’s advocates made an abysmally poor case for themselves. . . . One interesting aspect of the debate . . . was that some of the more well-known historians who had signed the anti-Israel resolution declined to speak up [in its defense] in front of their peers.

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.”