Reflecting on the ten-year anniversary of Israel’s second Lebanon war, Moshe Arens assesses its outcome. To its credit in his view is the fact that it lasted for 33 days and was followed by ten years of quiet on the northern border. Israel, he notes, has fought four such inconclusive wars with its neighbors, interspersed with similar periods of quiet before they finally gave up their goal of destroying it. But can such a strategy work against Hizballah?

[T]he behavior of terrorists and their leaders differs from that of Arab rulers, whose primary concern is their political survival. Terrorists, who think in messianic terms and on a messianic time scale, are prepared to lose many battles, confident that in due time victory will be theirs. [Furthermore], the acquisition of ballistic rockets and missiles by terrorist organizations has introduced a new dimension into their conflicts with Israel, providing them, despite being much weaker militarily, with a deterrent capability that Jerusalem must take into account. . . .

The ten years after the second Lebanon war were a period of mutual deterrence, also influenced by Hizballah’s deep involvement in the fighting in Syria. But they were also years of massive increase of Hizballah’s rocket and missile arsenal. Hizballah will come to the next confrontation with Israel far better prepared and more capable of bringing destruction to Israel’s cities. The lesson is clear: another round of fighting that does not put an end to the terrorists’ military capability means they will come back for more, better prepared than ever.

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.