The deal cementing the Jewish state’s recently formed governing coalition is intricate even by the standards of such documents, and includes a complex set of stipulations, most of which are unprecedented, meant to prevent both Benjamin Netanyahu (slotted to serve as prime minister for eighteen months) and Benny Gantz (who will serve for the subsequent eighteen months) from outmaneuvering the other. Echoing the opinion of several other analysts, David M. Weinberg complains that these terms force both Netanyahu and Gantz into “straitjackets that deliver punishing and painful electric shocks the split second either of them steps out of line.” But Weinberg believes this may be for the best:

Israel cannot afford a fourth consecutive election amid the coronavirus pandemic. And Israel’s most critical challenges—including the possibility of military conflict with Iran and/or its proxies—can best be tackled by a broad right-left government.

Even more important is the absolute and urgent need to tone down this country’s political heat; to restrain Israel’s raging political fevers after eighteen months of furious campaigning. Thus, handcuffing Knesset members into near paralysis may be a good thing. Muzzling and manacling them by super-rigorous coalition discipline could be good for [the] political system and a balm for our national soul. Israel needs a year or two—or three—of relative quiet and recuperation.

Compromise may not be possible [on many issues], but at least the new government can lower the flames. Indeed, bringing about a climate of relative calm is the greatest contribution the hybrid Netanyahu-Gantz government can make. The coalition may be a quasi-democratic, quasi-autocratic behemoth—a weighed-down, self-flagellating, and illogical creation—but national “unity,” however temporary and fragile, is necessary and worthwhile.

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.