In January, the lower house of the Irish parliament voted in favor of a measure, already approved by the Irish senate, to criminalize the purchase of goods or services from Jewish settlements in the West Bank and Golan Heights. Two months prior, the lower house of the Chilean parliament voted, by a margin of 99 to 7, to call upon the government to reconsider trade deals with Israel so as to restrict commerce in lands acquired in 1967. Amir Prager writes:

Ireland and Chile have long been a platform for global anti-Israeli activity, including for the boycott, divest, and sanction (BDS) movement. Last October, 50 Irish lawmakers, including a lower-ranking government minister, called for an arms embargo on Israel. In April 2018 the Union of Students in Ireland and the Dublin City Council expressed their support of BDS. . . .

Chile, [for its part], is home to the largest community of Palestinian expatriates outside of the Middle East. The Los Rios province, in the south of the country, announced in April 2018 that Israel is responsible for war crimes and for maintaining an apartheid regime, and called on the Chilean government to condemn Israel’s actions and reevaluate existing collaboration with the Israeli military. . . .

At this point, the direct impact of both proposals is not significant. The Chilean proposal is not binding. The Irish proposal, while detailed and binding, requires additional steps to become legislation and might actually run into procedural and political hurdles that could neutralize it altogether or remove its obligating aspects. . . . Nevertheless, in the medium and long terms the impact of both proposals could become significant. The proposals highlight the illegitimacy that different countries ascribe to Israeli activities in the West Bank and the growing willingness to take substantive action against it and . . . provide moral support for organizations that delegitimize the state of Israel.

Confirming the proposals against the backdrop of reports that a blacklist of companies operating in the settlements is about to be published by the UN Human Rights Council might motivate anti-Israel organizations and activists to promote similar campaigns in other countries and forums, some of which might be more important to Israel and could also lead to the adoption of more severe decisions. In addition, there is growing concern that an official decision about boycotting settlement products could encourage additional formal or informal boycotts on Israeli companies associated with the settlements, for example, through the activity of Israeli banks that provide loans and mortgages for residential and commercial purposes in the settlements.

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.