At Pomona College, a highly selective school in California, the student government passed a resolution declaring that it would not use its funds to patronize a long list of companies that do business with Israel. The same resolution also states an “end goal” of requiring all student groups and clubs to adhere to the boycott, on pain of losing funding, throughout the five-college Claremont Consortium of which Pomona is a part. Thus a campus Hillel house could be banned for buying goods from Israel, let alone organizing a trip there. Jonathan Marks comments:

When the resolution was first discussed without a word of objection, the outgoing senior-class president explained that it was “a great concrete example of how we can stand in solidarity with all [sic] students.” The mission of Associated Students of Pomona College (ASPC) to foster an “inclusive campus climate” has room for everyone, except for Zionists, who may feel less than included by the ASPC’s use of an anti-Israel litmus test to allocate money it takes in from mandatory student fees.

There is nothing the [Pomona] administration can or should do about a duly elected student government choosing not to use Expedia to book its trips, though Expedia’s sole “crime” appears to be listing lodgings in the West Bank and east Jerusalem. But . . . a college that promises to protect free expression cannot abandon that promise by farming out funding decisions to a student government.

Using the threat of defunding to compel pro-Israel groups to participate in an anti-Israel boycott, apart from being perverse, violates the expressive rights of those groups. For that matter, using that threat to compel any group to participate in a boycott it does not care to participate in, violates that group’s rights. So far, the administration’s response has been to express “deep concern.” It needs to do better.

Early Friday morning, Israel attacked military installations near the Iranian cities of Isfahan and nearby Natanz, the latter being one of the hubs of the country’s nuclear program. Jerusalem is not taking credit for the attack, and none of the details are too certain, but it seems that the attack involved multiple drones, likely launched from within Iran, as well as one or more missiles fired from Syrian or Iraqi airspace. Strikes on Syrian radar systems shortly beforehand probably helped make the attack possible, and there were reportedly strikes on Iraq as well.

Iran itself is downplaying the attack, but the S-300 air-defense batteries in Isfahan appear to have been destroyed or damaged. This is a sophisticated Russian-made system positioned to protect the Natanz nuclear installation. In other words, Israel has demonstrated that Iran’s best technology can’t protect the country’s skies from the IDF. As Yossi Kuperwasser puts it, the attack, combined with the response to the assault on April 13,

clarified to the Iranians that whereas we [Israelis] are not as vulnerable as they thought, they are more vulnerable than they thought. They have difficulty hitting us, but we have no difficulty hitting them.

Nobody knows exactly how the operation was carried out. . . . It is good that a question mark hovers over . . . what exactly Israel did. Let’s keep them wondering. It is good for deniability and good for keeping the enemy uncertain.

The fact that we chose targets that were in the vicinity of a major nuclear facility but were linked to the Iranian missile and air forces was a good message. It communicated that we can reach other targets as well but, as we don’t want escalation, we chose targets nearby that were involved in the attack against Israel. I think it sends the message that if we want to, we can send a stronger message. Israel is not seeking escalation at the moment.