In 2018, two books appeared in Hebrew on the subject of the so-called Palestinian “right of return,” which, if recognized, would allow for the influx of the descendants of Arab refugees from the Israeli War of Independence into an Israel that has already surrendered control over the West Bank. The War over the Right of Return, by Adi Schwartz and Einat Wilf, explains why there is no legal, moral, or historical basis for such a right, and why recognizing it would be a disastrous mistake. In Nakba in Hebrew: A Political Journey, Eitan Bronstein-Aparicio and Eleonore Merza-Bronstein—both professional self-hating Jews—make the opposite case. Reviewing both books, Emmanuel Navon writes of the latter:

Bronstein describes at length his efforts to identify the remnants of Arab villages abandoned in 1948 and to make Israelis feel guilty about their erasure. . . . Bronstein lists villages whose names were Hebraized after Israel’s independence, such as Beit Guvrin (formerly Bait Jibrin) and Ein Ayala (formerly Ain Azal). But a similar list could be made of villages with Arabized names: Saffuriya (formerly Tzippori in Hebrew), Nablus (formerly Neapolis in Greek), and Latrun (formerly Le Toron in medieval French), for example. . . . The renaming of conquered cities is hardly an Israeli invention.

Bronstein’s “solution” to the Israel-Palestinian conflict is the practical implementation of the Palestinian “right of return,” [of which] the inevitable outcome would be a binational state with a Jewish minority. Anyone familiar with the Middle East, and with the history of the Jews in Arab lands, knows that such a state would not resemble Canada, Belgium, or Switzerland—but rather Lebanon, Iraq, or Syria. Fortunately, for Bronstein and Merza, they have foreign passports that would allow them to run for their lives after “solving” the Israel-Palestinian conflict.

Back in his native Argentina, Bronstein will undoubtedly look for the remnants of former Inca villages destroyed by the Spanish. But then, the Incas themselves were an empire, one that colonized the Diaguitas in the mid-15th century. Bronstein could decide instead to do justice on behalf of the Mapuches. But they, too, conquered other tribes, such as the Puelches and the Querandis. In other words, Bronstein’s Manichean theory of “colonized” versus “colonizers” does not stand the test of historical scrutiny, and is therefore a myth.

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.