The recent revelations of the UK Labor party leader Jeremy Corbyn’s membership in private, anti-Semitic Facebook groups, together with reports of his defense of an anti-Semitic mural, led to a major protest in London on Monday and a near-unprecedented rebuke from Britain’s organized Jewish community. The latest disclosures come on the heels of numerous signs that Labor has an anti-Semitism problem, and that Corbyn, if not an anti-Semite himself, is quite tolerant of anti-Semitism in others. In response, he has offered a series of denials and non-apologies. Bret Stephens comments:

If you take Jeremy Corbyn at his word, then the leader of Britain’s Labor party is no anti-Semite. It’s just that, like the Wild West preacher who keeps accidentally wandering into Fannie Porter’s house of ill repute, Corbyn has an odd knack for stumbling into the arms of the Hebraically disinclined. . . .

[Is] Corbyn an anti-Semite? Not necessarily. He vehemently denies it. You can never know with certainty what’s in a person’s mind or heart unless he tells it to you straight. Motives can be complex. Self-delusion plays its role.

Then again, what does that matter? Corbyn is sixty-eight and has been a member of Parliament for 35 years. He has risen to the pinnacle of British politics. Until he became leader of the Labor party nearly three years ago, he proudly and defiantly flaunted his association with people whose anti-Semitism is not remotely in doubt. You can stumble upon Fannie Porter’s house once and call it an honest mistake. Corbyn tripped into it a half-dozen times. Inadvertence long ago ceased to be an excuse.

Corbyn is now urgently seeking meetings with Jewish leaders while saying he is “sincerely sorry for the pain which has been caused.” Note the passive voice. Meanwhile, anti-Semitic incidents in Britain hit a record high last year. Corbyn’s rise may not be the cause of it, but it’s unmistakably a symptom. Countries that care about the safety of Jews don’t elevate leaders who have spent their careers being dismissive of it.

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.