During the month of Ramadan, which ended on June 3, Egyptian television traditionally runs special miniseries, many of which air in other Arabic-speaking countries as well. Haisam Hassanein notes that in this year’s Ramadan programs, Jews were, as in the past, portrayed in a consistently negative light. While diplomatic and military ties between Cairo and Jerusalem have been stronger than ever in recent years, Hassanein also points out that the current regime has tightened its control of the media, so that these soap operas don’t merely reflect the judgments of media personnel:

Some of the major negative themes propagated to the Egyptian public this past Ramadan [include]: American think tanks, funded by Zionist businessmen, conspire against Egypt and have close ties with Israel; Israel works for the United States, which aims to make the Jewish state seem powerful in order to cajole regional leaders into buying American weapons and accepting the U.S. military presence; NGOs are suspicious entities that hire people from all over world, meaning there must be Israeli security agents and proxies among their ranks; terrorism in the Sinai is a Zionist plot to distort the image of Islam; Islamic State is an Israeli creation. . . .

Yet these themes contradict some of President Sisi’s own public remarks, perhaps reflecting the juggling act he feels compelled to perform in order to maintain domestic legitimacy, placate local religious institutions, and simultaneously bolster Cairo’s foreign relations. . . .

According to Annex III, Article V of the 1979 Egypt-Israel peace treaty, “the parties shall seek to foster mutual understanding and tolerance and will, accordingly, abstain from hostile propaganda against each other.” Building on that article, Congress should mandate that the State Department submit an annual report on anti-Semitic portrayals in Egyptian media and Washington’s efforts to combat them.

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.