While Jerusalem has never officially acknowledged possession of nuclear weapons, there is little doubt in anyone’s mind that it has them. Critics of Israeli “nuclear ambiguity” argue that it has encouraged other Middle Eastern states to pursue such weapons and interfered with global nonproliferation efforts. Refuting this contention, Robert Farley also defends the Jewish state’s reasons for possessing a nuclear arsenal:

[I]t is difficult to argue that any nuclear proliferant has developed its program specifically in response to Israel’s (with the possible exception of Syria), and it is hardly clear that the Israeli example made much difference to decision-makers in India, North Korea, or Pakistan. . . . Declaring a “nuclear-free zone” in the Middle East might have changed minds in Tehran about the utility of a deterrent, but more likely Iran would have continued to pursue what it saw as its national interest. . . .

[It is possible that] the Israeli nuclear program may not have made much difference at all, either to Israel’s security or to regional nonproliferation efforts. Since the development of the program, but largely unrelated to its existence, the political situation has tipped in Israel’s favor, the conventional balance has grown to favor Israel, and the threat profile presented by Israel’s opponents has moved in an unconventional direction [by embracing terrorism and rocket attacks rather than regular warfare]. . . .

This isn’t to say that Israel was wrong to embark on a nuclear program, or that it should unilaterally give up its nukes now. The political developments of the 1970s and 1980s, including the defanging of Egypt, the cauldron of the Iran-Iraq conflict, and the end of the cold war, were difficult to foresee from the vantage point of the mid-1960s. Perhaps most importantly, the ironclad relationship between Israel and the United States did not exist when the Israelis established their program. Given the decision, taken in the late 1940s, to try to make Israel the epicenter of Jewish global life, nuclear aspirations to defend that epicenter hardly seem unreasonable.

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.