Responding to the president’s recent visit to Saudi Arabia and Israel—which suggested a renewal of America’s commitment to its traditional Sunni Arab allies as well as to the Jewish state—Charles Krauthammer writes:

Islamic State is Sunni. Al-Qaeda is Sunni. Fifteen of the 9/11 hijackers were Saudi. And the spread of Saudi-funded madrassas around the world has for decades inculcated a poisonous Wahhabism that has fueled Islamist terrorism. Saudi Arabia and the other Gulf states publicly declaring war on their bastard terrorist child, [as they now have done], is significant. As is their pledge not to tolerate any semiofficial support or private donations. . . .

A salutary side effect is the possibility of a détente with Israel. That would suggest an outside-in approach to Arab-Israeli peace: a rapprochement between the Sunni states and Israel (the outside) would put pressure on the Palestinians to come to terms (the inside). It’s a long-shot strategy, but it’s better than all the others. . . .

[But] making the Israel-Palestinian issue central, rather than peripheral, to the epic Sunni-Shiite war shaking the Middle East today [would be] a serious tactical mistake. It subjects any now-possible reconciliation between Israel and the Arab states to a Palestinian veto.

Ironically, the Iranian threat that grew under Barack Obama offers a unique opportunity for U.S.-Arab and even Israeli-Arab cooperation. Over time, such cooperation could gradually acclimate Arab peoples to a nonbelligerent stance toward Israel. Which might in turn help persuade the Palestinians to make some concessions before their fellow Arabs finally tire of the Palestinians’ century of rejectionism. . . . In the meantime, the real action is on the anti-Iranian and anti-terrorism fronts. Don’t let Oslo-like mirages get in the way.

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.