Recently Hamas approvingly quoted Germany’s Foreign Minister Sigmar Gabriel, who had compared Israel with apartheid-era South Africa. Gabriel, for his part, seems to get his information about the Jewish state from those committed to defaming it. The editors of the Jerusalem Post write:

Gabriel touted his hyper-critical attitude toward Israel during a panel discussion organized by—of all groups—the Kreuzberg Initiative against Anti-Semitism. The public event was held in Berlin in mid-December, as thousands of demonstrators—most of whom were migrants from Muslim countries—thronged the streets, burned Israeli flags, and denounced Donald Trump’s decision to recognize Jerusalem as Israel’s capital. . . .

Gabriel reportedly [brought up] his [previous] harsh criticism of Israel during a 2012 visit to Israel that included a tour of Hebron. After the tour—which was likely organized by one of the many groups that use freedoms provided by Israel’s democracy to present a tendentious, pro-Palestinian account of the Israel-Palestinian conflict—Gabriel wrote on his Facebook page that Israel is an “apartheid regime” and advocated including Hamas in the “political process” in the Middle East. Gabriel later apologized after Jewish groups took him to task. . . .

In April of last year, Gabriel once again showed his partiality to Israel’s many detractors, when during another short visit to Israel he insisted on meeting with representatives of [the “human-rights” groups] B’Tselem and Breaking the Silence. The vast majority of Israelis view the political agendas of these two organizations as dangerous and overly sympathetic to a Palestinian population that has repeatedly chosen terrorism and violence over peace and negotiations. . . .

[Many serious] dangers . . . can result when men like Gabriel, leaders of liberal Western democracies, grant legitimacy to a slanted narrative of “the conflict.” Now, with Gabriel being enlisted by Hamas, we are given a concrete example of how progressives are exploited by terrorist organizations to advance their own totalitarian agendas. If Germany’s foreign minister insists on perpetuating the false claim of apartheid against Israel, can the German government object when thousands of migrants from the Middle East take to the streets of Berlin and call for Israel’s destruction?

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.