In the wee hours of Monday morning, Esther Horgen, a mother of six, was found dead in a forest in Samaria, murdered in an especially brutal fashion. Later the same day a terrorist opened fire near the Temple Mount in Jerusalem; fortunately, police managed to shoot him dead before he was able to cause serious harm. Yoav Limor comments:

Horgen was the third person killed in terrorist attacks in 2020. This is a drop compared to the last two years—nine killed in 2019 (seven civilians and two members of the security forces) and sixteen killed in 2018 (nine civilians and seven members of the security forces). The drop is partly attributed to successful preventative measures implemented by the Israel Defense Forces and Shin Bet, but also to the coronavirus pandemic.

[The pandemic] has contributed to the low figures, but it has changed nothing in terms of motivation. Both organized terrorists—specifically guided by Hamas in Gaza—and localized cells, continue to plot attacks. As always, “lone-wolf” terrorists who act independently are also a constant concern. The murder of Horgen, it appears, was perpetrated by one of these lone-wolf terrorists, unlike the shooting attack in Jerusalem’s Old City later on Monday.

Israel’s security forces now must focus on two objectives. First, the terrorists behind both attacks on Monday must be apprehended before they act again (in the case of the Jerusalem cell, it is clearly armed and dangerous). Second, the security forces must nip in the bud any potential wave of copycat terrorism inspired by these attacks. The main challenge right now is to curb this wave before it swells.

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.