After a prolonged period of sporadic unrest and acts of terror, the situation in Israel has erupted this week. Almost nonstop rocket fire from Gaza began on Monday, with Hamas firing some 100 rockets at Tel Aviv in a short span of time last night, leaving at least three dead. Meanwhile riots have broken out in several cities, and an Arab mob in the city of Lod burned three synagogue and two schools, amidst other damage to persons and property. Yoav Limor, assessing the situation, explains that Hamas has renewed its ongoing war on the Jewish state:

Since the start of Ramadan, Hamas has been systematically building its case with regard to Jerusalem, in an attempt to seize ownership of the unrest [already going on there]. It began by launching rockets at the Gaza envelope communities two weeks ago, and continued with warnings sent last week by [the commander of its military], Mohammad Deif. The ultimatum issued by the organization on Monday—the removal of all police officers from the Temple Mount and [the Jerusalem neighborhood of] Sheikh Jarrah—which was backed by the rocket fire, was the climax. By doing so, Hamas sought to heat things up in the city, and also to signal to Israel and the entire region: we make the calls in Jerusalem. Any damage to it will also see a response from Gaza.

This is an equation that Israel cannot live with. Not only because the residents of the Gaza envelope (and beyond) must not be made hostage to Hamas’s whims, but because the organization never had nor should have any status or ownership in Jerusalem. Its efforts to become the patron of the Palestinian cause and of Jerusalem—part of which lies in the cancellation of the elections for the Palestinian Authority—are a tangible danger. If left unchecked, they could end up accelerating the organization’s attempts to take over the West Bank as well.

Therefore, Hamas leaves Israel no choice but to respond—and to respond disproportionately. The IDF had already wanted to respond forcefully two weeks ago, but was stopped by the political echelon that then preferred the attempts to calm the area, in the hope of getting through Ramadan in peace. Now, . . . Israel has no choice but to exhaust [military] efforts as much as possible.

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.