While few refugees from the Syrian civil war have fled to Israel, the Jewish state faces an influx of others similar to that now inundating Europe. Gideon Sa’ar discusses the threat posed to Israel by permeable borders, and what can be done:

Over the past decade, Israel has been challenged by large-scale migration from Africa, mainly from Eritrea and Sudan. Tens of thousands infiltrated into Israel from the Sinai border in order to find employment. . . . [Eventually], it was decided that a fence was to be built on the Israeli-Egyptian border, while the preventive and deterrent measures employed included the legal recourse of holding infiltrators in prolonged detention. An integrated policy was later introduced, designed to reduce the number of migrants in city centers and in Israel as a whole, and to encourage their voluntary departure. . . . [But after the Israeli supreme court struck down some of these measures], the entry of migrants into Israel resumed in the second half of 2015, although on a smaller scale. . . .

An additional challenge facing Israel revolves around illegal residents and the possibility of a non-military mass storming of its borders. Israel does not have adequate control over those coming from Palestinian Authority territory, and the Israel Security Agency estimates that there are 50,000 illegal residents in Israeli territory at any given time. More than a few terrorist attacks in the current wave were carried out by illegal residents. . . .

Israel must realize that its standard of living and proximity to conflict-torn areas in the Middle East and Africa expose it to the ongoing risk of illegal immigration. In response to this challenge, Israel must therefore adopt a clear, resolute policy. The failure of Europe in coping with mass immigration should act as a warning sign, as Israel faces the challenge of protecting its character as the nation-state of the Jewish people.

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.