In his final report before leaving office, Israel’s outgoing comptroller Yosef Shapira focused on the poor state of the capital city: garbage can be found on streets and sidewalks, historical sites are not being properly preserved, and some social services are inadequate. David M. Weinberg urges the national government to assist Jerusalem in making the improvements suggested by Shapira, and points to some additional, and perhaps graver, problems:

The city needs a minimum of 6,000 new apartments a year just to keep up with natural growth. . . . Urban renewal and downtown high-rise projects constitute a drop in the bucket. Unfortunately, there has been near-zero construction in Jerusalem over the past decade, throughout the Barack Obama years and even since Donald Trump became the U.S. president. American pressures are a key factor because almost all available land for Jerusalem housing is over the stale Green Line, [which marks the de-facto border prior to the Six-Day War]. . . .

Israel’s second major challenge is countering the subversion of Israeli sovereignty in eastern Jerusalem by radical Islamic groups, foreign actors like Turkey, and the Palestinian Authority. . . . None of these has any interest in improving the lives of Jerusalemite Arabs, but rather seeks to undermine Israeli administration of the city. And some of the bad actors pump messaging supportive of terrorism against Israel and Jews. Overall, they discourage Jerusalemite Arabs from behaving as residents of the city with equal rights and duties and aim to prevent their healthy interaction with the Israeli government and its institutions, and with Israeli society in general.

Israel must push back hard. Mainly, this means real and good governance; and more intensive civilian investment in the eastern part of the city. Foreign intruders are most active in civilian fields and geographic areas where Israeli administration and services are inadequate.

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.