During his long career in the IDF, Major General Yom Tov Tamir served as a tank officer in the Six-Day War (in which he was wounded), the War of Attrition, the Yom Kippur War, and the First Lebanon War. In 1964, he and a handful of other Israeli officers were selected—at America’s behest—to go to West Germany for training in armor tactics, where they served wearing German military uniforms. He discusses these experiences with John Spencer, an expert on urban warfare at West Point, giving particular attention to his role in the fighting along the Suez Canal in the 1973 war, when an Egyptian surprise attack overwhelmed Israeli defenses. Tamir concludes by explaining the significance of the IDF motto “The tank is iron, but the man is steel.” That is, human capabilities and morale are more important than any piece of technology. (A two-part podcast. Audio, 44 and 27 minutes, respectively.)

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.