On Tuesday night, Israel appears to have struck a military base on Tel al-Hara, a mountain overlooking the Golan Heights that is the highest point in the area. Ron Ben-Yishai explains:

For decades, Tel al-Hara has served as an intelligence base for the Syrian army, as well as for Iran and Russia, whose forces operate there with Syria’s permission. . . . In late 2018, the Syrian army—with Russian assistance—took control of the area [from al-Qaeda-linked rebels], including Tel al-Hara. According to an Israeli agreement with the Russians, only the Syrian army is allowed to remain in the region, while Hizballah, Iran, and the other Shiite militias operating on its behalf were to be pushed back at least 80 kilometers east of the Damascus-Daraa road, which runs close to Tel al-Hara.

The agreement was honored initially, and only the Syrian army used the mountain. . . . It is however fair to assume that [now] Hizballah, the Iranians, and their proxies in Tel al-Hara intend to use it to gather intelligence for a variety of purposes: to facilitate future infiltrations into Israeli territory and attacks on civilian and military targets; to aim missiles, rockets, and artillery; to monitor IDF and IAF activity as well as deployments that could indicate whether Israel is planning an operation that may disrupt Iranian and Hizballah plans. . . .

Israel had announced several times that it would not allow the consolidation of an Iranian-led radical Shiite front in Syria. The attack may also have served to remind the Russians to ensure that the mediated understandings it has reached with Israel, the U.S., and Jordan are to be honored. If not, Israel would have to take care of the problem itself. Russian military police units are stationed on the Syrian side of the Golan Heights, who could easily ascertain the facts on the ground at Tel al-Hara.

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.