After discovering explosives planted along the Israeli-Syrian border, the IDF on Wednesday morning struck a joint Syrian and Iranian military headquarters near Damascus. Ron Ben-Yishai places the attacks in the context of Tehran’s efforts to turn Syria into a base for attacking the Jewish state:

A new strategic challenge has surfaced in Syria following a recently signed agreement between Tehran and Damascus, which will allow Iran to transfer state-of-the-art air defense designed to combat Israeli aerial attacks. This agreement is evidence of a new phase in Iran’s presence in Syria, with increased shipments of anti-aircraft and missile systems to Syria—most of which are Russian-made or acquired from Moscow—meant to bolsters Bashar al-Assad’s air defenses.

Tehran also threatened to send advanced surface-to-air missiles to Syria, the same ones that shot down an American drone over the Persian Gulf in 2019. There were several attempts to deliver these systems, but according to foreign reports they were always thwarted by the Israel Air Force upon arrival in Syria.

It can be assumed that the installations attacked early Wednesday by the IDF were part of this effort, with Israel sending a clear message that it will not allow Iran to bolster Syria’s anti-air apparatuses with Russian-made equipment.

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.