Since 2011, Jerusalem has carried out over 100 strikes on Iranian forces in Syria to curb Tehran and its proxy army, Hizballah, from positioning sophisticated weaponry and military infrastructure on Israel’s northeastern border. Jerusalem has, however, refrained from attacking Hizballah’s similar infrastructure in Lebanon. Yet, writes Tony Badran¸ the Jewish state can’t turn a blind eye to the military build-up in Lebanon forever:

[W]ith Iranian assistance, Hizballah has embarked on what Israeli officials refer to as the “missile precision project”—an effort to upgrade its large arsenal of rockets with guidance systems, increasing their accuracy, and thereby changing the severity of the threat they pose. . . . [While] Iran and Hizballah had little choice but to absorb Israeli strikes in Syria, hitting targets inside Lebanon would precipitate retaliation. As Israel worked to reduce the threat from Syria, the threat from Lebanese soil therefore continued to grow. . . .

With Iran and Hizballah holding their positions in Syria, and no longer concerned about the collapse of their Syrian client Bashar al-Assad, the Lebanon problem is now firmly back at center stage. Hizballah and its Lebanese government are betting the bipartisan embrace by U.S. policymakers of the fiction of Lebanese state institutions—which in reality are controlled by, and provide institutional cover for, Hizballah—will complicate any Israeli decision to act against the strategic threat being posed by Iran. [But] it seems unlikely that Israel will accept a large arsenal of guided missiles controlled by Iran and targeting its major population centers and strategic sites as part of a new regional status quo.

Instead of confining itself within Hizballah’s preferred rules of engagement, and thereby cementing the group’s dangerous delusion that it has achieved deterrence—a delusion that is likely to lead to further aggression—Israel might consider throwing the ball in Hizballah’s court. If [the terrorist group] thinks itself immune in Lebanon, even now that the Syrian war is decided, it should think again. . . .

While the political and [diplomatic] risks of such a conflict are very real, as are the lives of Israeli civilians, to say nothing of the Lebanese who are being used as human shields by Iran and Hizballah, these risks would only worsen with a large alteration of the strategic status quo in Iran’s favor, which is likely to lead to an exponentially greater loss of life on the Israeli side of the border.

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.