Earlier this month, the celebrated Lebanese-born French author Amin Maalouf was interviewed by an Israeli television station, sparking an outcry from the Lebanese BDS movement, which in turn led to defenses of Maalouf in the Lebanese press and social media. Surveying the ensuing debate, Hanin Ghaddar takes Maalouf’s defenders to task:

Some [of those speaking in his defense] said that Maalouf is entitled to communicate freely with an Israeli entity because he’s more French than he is Lebanese. According to others, Maalouf has won enough honors, such as becoming a “an immortal” in 2012 by being the first Lebanese to join the elite ranks of the French Academy, [that] he is therefore above the law! Others defended him based on the content of the interview, [since] it was about culture, not politics. Some even went to the extent of saying that what he did was a big mistake, but they are generous enough to forgive him because he is the “pride of the Lebanese.” . . .

What about the rest of us? These arguments [do nothing more than assert] that those who are not privileged with Maalouf’s French nationality, prestigious status, or the luxury of living in the West should not have the same freedom. A true debate cannot be based on exclusive rights or entitlements. A true debate should revisit the taboo itself, and challenge the law, because no law is sacrosanct, and no cause is sacrosanct, including the Palestinian cause. . . .

The defenders of Maalouf—by missing the main issue at hand—turned this debate against us, [the Lebanese 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.