For some time, Washington’s policy toward Lebanon has rested on the fiction that the country’s government and military are separate from Hizballah and are therefore deserving of American support. Giora Eiland argues that by threatening to cut off that support, the U.S can undermine Hizballah and, in turn, increase pressure on its patrons in Tehran:

Lebanon’s elected president, prime minister, and parliament have control only over the civil activities in the country, whereas military power lies only in the hands of Hizballah. Therefore, it is about time for the U.S. to present Beirut with an ultimatum: if it wants to continue being seen as an independent country, it must demand that Hizballah demilitarize and renounce its heavy weapons.

If Lebanon refuses, the U.S. would boycott it along with any organization that would agree to do business with it. . . . There are [several] reasons why Lebanon may renounce Hizballah. [One] is that a silent majority of Lebanese oppose Hizballah and are justifiably concerned about the destruction that would be inflicted on them and their country if the Shiite terror organization drags them into a military campaign against Israel.

[Another] is that [Hizballah] is facing a severe financial crisis. It must treat thousands wounded in the Syrian civil war, pay the families of Lebanese fighters who lost their lives in that war, and pay the pensions of militants who joined the organization 30 years ago and are now retiring. [Moreover], unlike in Syria, Russia does not have strong interests in Lebanon, and it certainly does not have any interest in empowering Iran there.

Hizballah, Eiland concludes, might be forced to back down in the face of U.S. sanctions on Lebanon; if it did, Israel would be significantly less threatened, a third Lebanon war would be less likely, and Iran’s regional position would be compromised.

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.