Hillel, the primary Jewish campus organization in the U.S., has a policy of not “partnering” with groups that oppose Israel’s right to exist or that support the Boycott, Divest, and Sanction (BDS) movement, or to host speakers with such agendas. Now the Open Hillel movement is campaigning to change this policy. While its supporters claim that they are working for freedom of speech and toleration of diverse opinions, Andrew Pessin argues they are likely to achieve the opposite:

[Hillel] offers no restrictions whatsoever on individuals. The most ardently anti-Israel Jewish students and professors are welcome to participate in Hillel events, attend their programs, and debate and defend their views to their hearts’ content. Hillel remains entirely “inclusive” of all Jewish students, regardless of their political beliefs, as it should be. . . .

[Furthermore, Hillel’s] restrictions are minimal and reasonable. Hillel does not limit the many criticisms of Israeli policies people may want to make, and is entirely open to individuals and speakers who genuinely seek to improve [Israel’s] policies through constructive criticism. It is merely off-limits to [groups and speakers] who seek, ultimately, to damage the state and destroy it. . . .

[W]hat campuses desperately need these days, far more than they need more anti-Israel voices, are places where pro-Israel voices can be cultivated. If you want the academy to be a place of genuine freedom of speech, a place where thoughtful and well-articulated and carefully conceived opinions get to battle in the marketplace of ideas, then you should want a place where pro-Israel voices can be nurtured. What Open Hillel seeks to do, to the contrary, is to take one of the few natural places to cultivate the pro-Israel voice on campus and dilute it, weaken it, diminish it, destroy it. They want Hillel to start looking more like J Street and Jewish Voice for Peace—without of course demanding that J Street and Jewish Voice for Peace start looking more like Hillel.

While conventional wisdom in the Western press believes that the war with Hamas has left Jerusalem more isolated and scuttled chances of expanding the Abraham Accords, Gabriel Scheinmann points to a very different reality. He begins with Iran’s massive drone and missile attack on Israel last month, and the coalition that helped defend against it:

America’s Arab allies had, in various ways, provided intelligence and allowed U.S. and Israeli planes to operate in their airspace. Jordan, which has been vociferously attacking Israel’s conduct in Gaza for months, even publicly acknowledged that it shot down incoming Iranian projectiles. When the chips were down, the Arab coalition held and made clear where they stood in the broader Iranian war on Israel.

The successful batting away of the Iranian air assault also engendered awe in Israel’s air-defense capabilities, which have performed marvelously throughout the war. . . . Israel’s response to the Iranian night of missiles should give further courage to Saudi Arabia to codify its alignment. Israel . . . telegraphed clearly to Tehran that it could hit precise targets without its aircraft being endangered and that the threshold of a direct Israeli strike on Iranian nuclear or other sites had been breached.

The entire episode demonstrated that Israel can both hit Iranian sites and defend against an Iranian response. At a time when the United States is focused on de-escalation and restraint, Riyadh could see quite clearly that only Israel has both the capability and the will to deal with the Iranian threat.

It is impossible to know whether the renewed U.S.-Saudi-Israel negotiations will lead to a normalization deal in the immediate months ahead. . . . Regardless of the status of this deal, [however], or how difficult the war in Gaza may appear, America’s Arab allies have now become Israel’s.