Thursday night, Islamic Jihad, an Iran-backed group based in Gaza, fired rockets at the area around Tel Aviv; the IDF responded promptly with airstrikes, and the rocket-fire soon ceased. Hamas, which governs Gaza, canceled the weekly Friday border riots out of apparent eagerness to avoid a confrontation with Israel. Meanwhile, Gazans have begun protesting their declining standards of living and lack of freedom, leading Hamas to suppress the demonstrations with live ammunition, arrests, and beatings. Eyal Zisser writes:

Iran, which controls [Islamic Jihad] and its leaders, and which gives it money and provides it with the type of missiles used in Thursday’s attack, is directly responsible. Iran doesn’t hide its desire to spark a conflagration in Gaza with the aim of sabotaging and even halting Israel’s efforts to dislodge
the Islamic Republic from Syria. The Iranians also want to embarrass Israel . . . by exploiting the fact that this is a sensitive period, ahead of the upcoming April 9 general election.

Hamas, however, is also responsible for the missile attack, because it hasn’t taken action against Islamic Jihad and other recalcitrant groups in Gaza, which continue targeting Israel. Hamas lends a hand to the escalation along the border [in the form of weekly riots and the launching of explosives carried by kites and balloons] as a matter of routine, hoping to improve its negotiating position with Israel and to receive aid dollars from Qatar.

In this regard, the missile attack [near Tel Aviv] indicates the collapse of this conception and essentially of the illusion—created by Hamas and Israel alike—that it’s possible to control the flames Hamas is fanning along the Gaza border and prevent them from spreading. At the end of the day, those who shoot at Israeli communities near Gaza will also shoot at Tel Aviv.

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.