Last week, an impressive roster of presidents, prime ministers, high-ranking officials, and even a prince came to Israel for Holocaust remembrance proceedings. Shmuel Trigano is skeptical about the wisdom of the exercise:

When the justification for Israel’s existence is predicated on the memory of victimhood, Europe can view the state as a type of humanitarian [shelter] for Jews, and less as a sovereign country. Consequently, Israel is not permitted, in the eyes of Europe, to realize its legitimate right to self-defense. The moment the Israeli soldier ceases being the emaciated extermination-camp survivor, he morphs into a monster in the eyes of the Europeans.

European recognition of Israel is based, therefore, on feelings of guilt toward the Jews—implying that the same guilt applies to the Palestinians. Europe turns a blind eye to Arab-Muslim anti-Semitism—which is the main source of modern anti-Semitism—in the belief that . . . Europe oppressed the Palestinians by contributing to the establishment of the Jewish state. . . . The reliance on the Holocaust in this regard means strengthening even further the myths that breed the new anti-Semitism—nakba, occupation, original sin.

Israel cannot respond to the existential accusations against it through constant self-justification and brandishing its victimhood for all to see. . . . Israelis must turn inward and find in themselves the self-confidence and self-assuredness of . . . political and historical sovereignty. [The Jewish state] must distance itself from victimhood to fight its enemies.

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.