Early yesterday morning, two rockets were launched into Israel from southern Lebanon, causing no damage. The IDF returned fire. According to most Israeli security experts, the rockets were fired by Hamas operatives—likely working with the imprimatur of Hizballah, which controls the area. The attack appears intended as retaliation for Sunday’s unrest on the Temple Mount, when Muslims responded violently to Jews praying at the site. Yaakov Lappin explains why the terrorist group chose to attack from Lebanon rather than from its normal base of operations in Gaza:

The first [reason] is that it has not been able to recover from the May conflict with Israel and did not want to draw Israeli fire towards Gaza. Hamas correctly assessed that Israel’s retaliation in Lebanon would be significantly smaller in scale that in Gaza. . . . A broader strategic consideration is Hamas’s desire to implement, albeit symbolically, a new “equation,” announced by Hizballah, according to which any perceived Israeli offensive activity near the Temple Mount will be answered with attacks.

Tal Beeri, [a retired Israeli intelligence officer and current security analyst], noted that, in recent weeks, Iranian-backed Iraqi militias and the Houthis in Yemen have pledged their allegiance to this same equation. The Iraqi Kataib Hizballah militia announced that it had joined the “regional equation” in June in the latest sign of a coordinated Iranian-led axis of radical entities operating against Israel.

Hamas in Gaza and Hamas in Lebanon tightly coordinate their activities, mainly through the terror organization’s headquarters in Turkey, according to Beeri.

It appears as if Hamas’s gamble was well-calculated, judging by Israel’s restrained reaction. Israel also seems reluctant to respond more forcefully in Lebanon at a time when the country is experiencing severe economic and humanitarian crises.

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.