In Israel, a bitter controversy has been raging for several weeks over the government’s decision—finally executed last week—to destroy homes built illegally in the Bedouin village of Umm al-Hiran in the Negev. Moshe Arens draws some parallels to other happenings in Israel, recent and less recent, and calls for a rethink:

Just connect the dots, from the destruction of the homes of the settlers in Gush Katif more than eleven years ago [during the withdrawal from Gaza] to the destruction of the homes of the Bedouin in Umm al-Hiran last week: destruction that is carried out in the name of the law, and yet causes great human tragedies. You can pencil in a dot if you like for Amona, [a West Bank settlement built in contravention of Israeli law and] destined for destruction by a ruling of the High Court of Justice.

The forcible uprooting of many families from the homes they have lived in for many years causes immeasurable grief, suffering, and sometimes even bloodshed, as was the case in Umm al-Hiran. And all this in the name of the law or a decision of the High Court of Justice, a decision that is at once both verdict and sentence: the homes must be destroyed, regardless of the consequences. . . .

The scenes from Gush Katif may already have receded from our memories, but they were brought back to mind last week. It does not matter that in Gush Katif, Jewish families were being uprooted from their homes while in Umm al-Hiran, it was Bedouin families who were left homeless. In both cases the people affected were Israeli citizens, and the human tragedy is the same. Is there no way to prevent a recurrence of such tragedies?

Possibly the Knesset should consider passing a law that would prevent the destruction of homes that have been occupied by a large number of families for longer than a certain number of years, regardless of land-ownership claims by the state or by individuals, making it mandatory that recognized individual claimants be compensated. This would leave to the courts the decision on recognizing the validity of the claims and the size of the compensation.

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.