A professor emeritus of Islamic and Middle Eastern studies at Bar-Ilan University, Raphael Israeli is a leading expert on the Arab citizens of the Jewish state. In an interview with Nadav Shragai, he expresses concern that, rather than integrating into Israeli society, parts of this population are increasingly rejecting it. Israeli takes as evidence the extreme anti-Zionist, pro-terrorist positions held by the Knesset members representing Arab parties, and disputes the frequently heard argument that these politicians are more extreme than the voters who elect them:

[The] Arab public, that is supposedly not represented by the Arab leadership, votes for them again and again. . . . Until a year ago, it might have been theoretically possible to assume that half of the Arab population opposed the sort of extremism [expressed by these politicians], but the spike in Arab voter turnout for the Joint Arab List in the last two elections shows that the public and the party are one.

Arab Israelis, who are 20 percent of the population, want to integrate, but they vote [in large numbers] for a confederation of parties that define Israel as a state that commits theft and robbery. . . . For them, Zionism is colonialism. . . . There is no process of moderation, only radicalization. The Joint Arab List is [a group of] parties that emphasize their Palestinian-hood rather than their Israeli-hood.

Nonetheless, Israeli would be happy to see more moderate Arab politicians, like Issawi Frej of the far-left Meretz party, take part in governing the country:

Someone like Frej [is] not a Zionist. He’s a moderate person who is willing to coexist [with Jews in a Jewish state]. I would make him part of the government. It could be a unique step toward goodwill. But how can someone [like the Joint List’s leader Ayman Odeh], who demands that the Law of Return or Nation-State Law be revoked, or demands [the ability to] veto operations in Gaza, be part of the government or what holds the government up? Only suicidal people would extend their hand to anyone who wishes to undermine the foundations of their state.

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.