Speaking to the Washington Post on Tuesday about the importance of maintaining the U.S.-Saudi alliance, President Trump named Israel as “one reason” for an American presence in the Middle East. This is not the first time the administration has made such an assertion. To Herb Keinon, it is a dangerous one:

The last thing Israel wants the average American to think is that U.S. troops in the Middle East are risking their lives—and at times losing them—to protect Israel. Israel has been careful never to ask for U.S. troops to be deployed in the region. It has lobbied Washington long and hard for weapons and funds to buy arms, saying “Give us the wherewithal to defend ourselves.” But it has never asked America to do the actual defending. . . .

Israel’s position is that the U.S. is engaged in the Middle East because it is a U.S. interest to be engaged in the Middle East, since it is vital for U.S, security and for Washington’s strategic position in the world to be involved in this region and keep it from falling into the hands of Islamic radicals—be they Sunni or Shiite. Those radical forces would like nothing more than to see a Mideast without any American presence or influence. . . .

Jerusalem wants to see the U.S. engaged, influential, and active in the region. . . . This sentiment is in no way unique to Israel. Saudi Arabia, the rest of the Persian Gulf countries, Egypt, and Jordan are all fearful of a situation where the U.S. would withdraw within itself. Were that to happen, other actors would fill the vacuum, as was the case in Syria, where in 2015 Russia moved in as the U.S. waffled during the Syrian civil war. And two things are certain if other actors fill the vacuum left by the U.S.: first, those actors will be much less benign; second, they will be much less concerned about Israel’s interests.

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.