The Soviet Union cast a crucial UN vote in favor of the creation of a Jewish state in 1947. Then it very quickly turned against Israel, as Shammai Siskind explains:

[A]nti-Zionist sentiment had been brewing within the Soviet leadership well before the emergence of Israel. Vladimir Lenin himself allegedly saw the Zionist project as a form of bourgeois colonialism. . . . By the early 1950s, however, having realized that Israel would not become a Soviet-type socialist state, and recognizing the Arab states’ far greater geostrategic, geopolitical, and economic importance, Moscow took an increasingly anti-Israel line. Soviet support for the Arabs moved from the diplomatic to the material in 1955 when Moscow signed a large-scale arms deal with Egypt (via Czechoslovakia) that included heavy-weapons platforms.

Jerusalem in turn gravitated toward Washington as the cold war took shape. Since Israel faced Soviet weapons in its wars with Egypt and Syria, it shared a common interest with Washington in gathering intelligence on the latest technology. Israeli efforts led to some stunning coups, such as Operation Diamond, in which it acquired a Soviet-made MiG-21 fighter jet, at the time one of the most sophisticated aircraft in the world. Siskind writes:

In 1963, Israeli agents in Tehran learned of an Iraqi fighter pilot, Munir Redfa, who was considering leaving Iraq after years of discrimination within the military due to his Christian roots. A Mossad agent contacted him, and after building a relationship, convinced him to meet with more senior officials.

In a meeting with government agents in Israel, Redfa agreed to fly his MiG to Israel in return for $1 million in payment plus the smuggling of his family out of Iraq. Within a few weeks after his arrival in Israel, Israeli Air Force pilots used his aircraft in a number of test flights. They analyzed the jet’s strengths and weaknesses and flew it against their own fighters. They mastered the aircraft, marveling at its speed and maneuverability. This proved invaluable during the June 1967 Six-Day War, when Egypt and Syria were both armed with MiGs.

A month later, Israeli authorities loaned the MiG to their U.S. counterparts, who were able to evaluate the plane themselves under the “Have Donut” program. . . . U.S. personnel also had a chance to peruse the training and tactical manuals delivered by Redfa, which no doubt substantially aided U.S. efforts to counter Soviet air power. The transfer of the MiG-21 was a major boost in U.S.-Israel defense relations.

Israel also delivered to the CIA the “secret speech” by Nikita Khrushchev in which the Soviet premier denounced Stalin’s crimes, and later obtained crucial documents about the USSR’s missile technology.

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.