In an interview with Bret Stephens published in the New York Times on January 11, the outgoing IDF chief-of-staff Gadi Eisenkot stated bluntly that Israel had struck “thousands” of Iranian targets in Syria in recent years. The same day, Benjamin Netanyahu made a similar on-the-record statement at cabinet meeting. These admissions mark a break from Jerusalem’s longstanding reluctance to claim responsibility for airstrikes it has carried out in the midst of the Syrian civil war—a policy that dates back even earlier, to such events as the destruction of a Syrian nuclear reactor in 2007. Eyal Zisser explains the rationale behind breaking with this policy of “strategic ambiguity”:

More than anything, a policy of silence helps keep the enemy in the dark about how exposed and vulnerable it is to Israeli operational and intelligence-gathering capabilities. Silence also . . . allows [Syria and Iran] to save face—as any direct Israeli claims of responsibility would force them into a corner and compel them to retaliate. [Nonetheless], there was never much ambiguity in the true sense of the word. . . . [T]he people on the other side of the border certainly have no doubts about what is going on. Even without official claims of responsibility, our neighbors never thought these attacks were the work of anyone else. A long line of defense ministers and generals have a history of intimating—and sometimes stating outright—that Israel has been responsible.

It is ridiculous, therefore, to argue, [as some have done], that the recent claims of responsibility in Israel specifically prodded the Iranians to escalate their own response against Israel [as in a barrage of missiles aimed at the Golan Heights last week]. After all, in Tehran and Damascus alike, policy isn’t determined by headlines in Israel, [but ultimately by] the reality on the ground.

And on the ground, Israel has indeed managed to delay and even block Tehran’s efforts to establish a military foothold in Syria. As this is a paramount Iranian strategic interest, Tehran is determined to change the rules of the game, especially now that the war in Syria is almost over and Israeli-Russian relations aren’t as warm as they used to be. The time has come to dispense with ambiguity, which never really existed in the first place, and replace it with clear declarations that highlight Israel’s red lines vis-à-vis Tehran.

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.