When the U.S. embassy in Jerusalem opened in 2018, it took over the functions previously provided by the American consulate in the city, which was promptly shuttered. The White House now hopes to reopen the consulate to serve as a mission to the Palestinians. Eugene Kontorovich explains why Israel is right to oppose the move:

The U.S. embassy in Jerusalem already provides consular services to the Palestinians. It is unheard of to have an independent consulate in the same city where a country has an embassy.

The U.S. does not want to open a consulate merely to have a place for diplomatic liaisons with the Palestinian Authority (PA). If that is all it wanted, it could easily do this by opening a mission in Abu Dis or Ramallah—where most other countries conduct their relations with the PA. . . . But by instead demanding that Israel accede to a consulate in Jerusalem, the administration is showing [that it wishes] to recognize Palestinian claims to Jerusalem. If the PA has no legitimate claim to Jerusalem, there can be no reason to have a consulate there.

Opening the consulate would turn the clock back to before the U.S. recognition of Jerusalem. The Biden administration knows it does not have domestic support to unrecognize Jerusalem completely—so it is catering to far-left demands by undoing the natural consequences of recognition. This would be a big deal: since the creation of the state, no Israeli government of any political inclination has allowed the opening of a diplomatic mission not to Israel. This would be unprecedented. While there are a few European consulates in Jerusalem not accredited to Israel, these predate the creation of the state.

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.