On Wednesday, the Knesset elected Israel’s next present, Isaac Herzog, who will assume office on July 9. Later the same day, Yair Lapid presented a coalition agreement to the current president, Reuven Rivlin. If the proposed coalition survives until its formal ratification by the Knesset, Naftali Bennett—who has spent the last several years trying to outflank the incumbent Benjamin Netanyahu from the right—will become the next prime minister. The agreement stipulates that Lapid, who leads the center-left party Yesh Atid, will replace Bennett after two years.

Daniel Gordis explains that the new government, although “rickety,” actually demonstrates the solidity of the Israeli center, and not only because it pulls together eight parties from across the political spectrum. He goes on to make some other observations:

Bennett will be Israel’s first religious, kippah-wearing prime minister. That reflects many important shifts in Israeli life. . . . Lapid, to my knowledge, will be the first prime minister who belongs to a Reform synagogue.

One New York Times headline declared that many Palestinians were viewing Israel’s developing political story with “little more than a shrug.” That’s not terribly surprising, since when it comes to the Palestinians, Israelis are fairly united, left and right. There’s no deal with the Palestinians looming anywhere on the horizon, regardless of which parties form the coalition.

[As if to explain why], another New York Times article noted that “The presence of Mr. Bennett at the threshold of power is testament to how Mr. Netanyahu has helped shift the pendulum of Israeli politics firmly to the right.” This, though, ignores the fact that the Palestinians have repeatedly rejected overtures from Israeli leaders. . . . Israeli politics moved to the right not because of Netanyahu, . . . but because even centrist and left-of-center Israelis have despaired of the Palestinians making a deal.

The two-state solution is alive and well—in the imaginations of Americans. Closer to home, it’s tragically seen as an idea out of a Disney movie: a sweet and enchanting idea for an ending to the story, utterly unrelated to the world we actually inhabit.

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.