While Israel’s navy played a crucial role in its victory in the Yom Kippur War and does much now to keep weapons shipments from arriving in Gaza, it has always been dwarfed by the other branches of the IDF. Seth Cropsey, who served as undersecretary of the Navy in two U.S. administrations, believes that the Jewish state will need to develop its maritime capabilities much more in the coming years—and that America has an interest in helping:

[Since the 1970s], Israeli [military] planners could rely on the U.S. Sixth Fleet to protect the Jewish state’s western border from seaborne attack. No more. The U.S. Sixth Fleet’s permanent presence today consists of a single command ship and four ballistic-missile defense destroyers based in Spain, outside the Mediterranean. . . .

Growing economic interests are likely to shift the Israeli military’s focus to the sea, which in turn will reveal the large security benefits a robust naval presence offers the Jewish state. . . . Even if Israel’s neighbors did not include Islamic State, an al-Qaeda affiliate, an Iranian terrorist group masquerading as a political party, and a Russian proxy regime, sea shipment is the only viable option for bulk goods. . . .

Aside from its deterrent value, seapower gives Israel greater conventional strategic depth and flexibility. . . . Increased seapower would [also] be useful in a conflict with Iran, and all the more applicable as the regime in Tehran uses new sources of wealth to extend its reach into the Red and Mediterranean Seas.

A strong navy and an Israeli government increasingly engaged with the sea support the common interest that Washington and Jerusalem have . . . in maintaining open navigation and free trade. The two share regional rivals (Iran foremost among them), and both benefit from political stability. The irregular threats that face Israel are also threats to the United States. When dealing with Russia and Turkey, low-end insurgencies like Islamic State and Hamas, and mixed threats like Hizballah and Iran, the U.S. benefits from a stronger Israeli navy.

The Israeli government’s greatest maritime challenge in the next decade will not be expanding its navy or cultivating external energy assets, but reframing its view of the sea. It faces a transition from an economic to a geostrategic view of the sea, and must take a hard look at the role of seapower in its national strategy.

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.