The leader of the British Labor party has a long history of defending and even praising brutal dictators—from Hugo Chavez to Slobodan Milosevic to Bashar al-Assad—and expressing his admiration for terrorists, not to mention advocating his country’s unilateral nuclear disarmament. Yet, argues James Kirchick, too many on the British and American left are willing to dismiss Jeremy Corbyn’s unsavory views as unpleasant quirks, thus allowing these attitudes to be considered normal. He writes:

Perhaps the most disturbing phenomenon to have become “normalized” in Britain thanks to Corbyn is anti-Semitism. It should hardly come as a surprise that a man who called Hamas and Hizballah “friends,” attended pro-Palestinian events organized by a Holocaust-denier, invited a purveyor of the blood libel for tea at the House of Commons, and hosted programs on an Iranian propaganda network would embolden Jew-haters within Labor’s ranks.

That was indeed the finding of a 2016 cross-party parliamentary inquiry into anti-Semitism, which concluded that Corbyn had “created what some have referred to as a ‘safe space’ for those with vile attitudes toward Jewish people” in his party. The nature of this “safe space” was illustrated when Labor chose not to expel the former London mayor, Ken Livingstone, for repeatedly (and inaccurately) claiming, in a series of interviews and public statements, that Adolf Hitler “supported Zionism.” . . .

Corbyn supporters, [however], view the entire anti-Semitism controversy engulfing their party as a cynical, partisan campaign orchestrated by unscrupulous Jews “weaponizing” charges of anti-Semitism to defame his good character. . . .

[M]any Corbyn defenders insist that, when the future leader of the Labor party was attending IRA rallies or standing on stages draped with Hizballah flags, he was merely encouraging “dialogue.” This is disingenuous, at best. For whether the cause was Northern Ireland or Palestine, it was only the most violent and rejectionist elements with whom Corbyn associated during his decades as a parliamentary backbencher. And he always did so in clear support of their tactics and objectives, not as some neutral arbiter facilitating “dialogue.”

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.