The Knesset passed a new law earlier this year banning active members of anti-Israel boycott campaigns from entering the country. Recently the regulation generated much outrage—even from some supporters of the Jewish state—because it was applied to five members of an interfaith delegation. Miriam Elman defends what she sees as sensible policy:

There’s a radical irony to the hysterical response [by the members of the delegation] to being barred from Israel, an irony no doubt lost on the boycotted boycotters. . . . But laying this aside, those who oppose the law are wrong. [It doesn’t] make it difficult for the vast majority of people who criticize Israel to get tourist visas. . . . To meet the criteria [for being barred from entry], one must hold a senior-level position in certain targeted organizations, be a key activist in the boycott movement, be a [public] figure who openly supports the boycott, or operate on behalf of the targeted organizations. . .

Rather than stifling free speech, [as its critics claim], the law is a long-overdue corrective to the absurd situation that’s developed in Israel in recent years, in which high-profile foreign nationals have routinely taken advantage of the country’s freedoms in order to work against it. . . .

Why would people who so detest Israel want to go there, study there, or screen their films there? . . . Prominent representatives of major BDS organizations who go to Israel, like the five hardcore BDS activists who were prevented from boarding their flight this past Monday, don’t arrive to do touristy things like creating life-long memories at the country’s holy sites, natural wonders, cultural venues, or world-class restaurants.

Instead, they visit so that they can engage in anti-Israel political activity and collect new material for delegitimizing the state and vilifying its people once they get back home. . . . More than a few can be found out and about harassing and obstructing IDF and security personnel at protests. Such activities go beyond simply “advocating for” a boycott.

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.