In the past few days, the IDF and Shin Bet have conducted a series of successful raids in Nablus against the terrorist group known as the Lions’ Den, killing one of its leaders and destroying a bomb factory. A relatively new organization, based in Samaria and opposed to the Palestinian Authority, the Lions’ Den is responsible for numerous attacks in recent weeks. Residents of Nablus are now reportedly frustrated that leaders of Hamas and Islamic Jihad haven’t intervened on their behalf, as Yoni Ben Menachem writes:

It is Hamas that in recent months has pushed the residents of the West Bank and east Jerusalem towards a new armed intifada against Israel while promising that it would actually support such an intifada and assist it by firing rockets from the Gaza Strip. Hamas also leads a large support campaign for Lions’ Den via social media and even transferred more than a million dollars to finance its activities. However, despite this support, no rockets were fired from the Strip towards Israel.

Senior Hamas and Islamic Jihad officials threatened yesterday that the Gaza Strip “will join the conflict in the event of an imminent escalation in the West Bank,” as if there had been no escalation until now. Why has the Gaza Strip remained silent so far?

There are several reasons: a) pragmatism on the part of the Hamas that wants to keep receiving monthly Qatari financial aid to the Gaza Strip, the continued entry of thousands of workers from the Gaza Strip to work in Israel, and the humanitarian relief and rehabilitation of the Gaza Strip from the damage done in recent wars; b) Hamas has still not restored the tunnel system and rocket production that was severely damaged in the war of May 2021; c) Israel learned the lessons from its military operation in May 2021 and formulated a new strategy of . . . severing the connection between the Gaza Strip, on the one hand, and east Jerusalem, the West Bank, and Israeli Arabs, on the other.

The big question is whether the deterrence of Hamas and Islamic Jihad will continue even if Israel conducts a large military operation in Nablus and Jenin to eliminate the terrorist infrastructure.

To Peter Berkowitz, the rot in American institutions of higher learning exposed by Tuesday’s hearings resembles a disease that in its early stages was easy to cure but difficult to diagnose, and now is so advanced that it is easy to diagnose but difficult to cure. Recent analyses of these problems have now at last made it to the pages of the New York Times but are, he writes, “tardy by several decades,” and their suggested remedies woefully inadequate:

They fail to identify the chief problem. They ignore the principal obstacles to reform. They propose reforms that provide the equivalent of band-aids for gaping wounds and shattered limbs. And they overlook the mainstream media’s complicity in largely ignoring, downplaying, or dismissing repeated warnings extending back a quarter century and more—largely, but not exclusively, from conservatives—that our universities undermine the public interest by attacking free speech, eviscerating due process, and hollowing out and politicizing the curriculum.

The remedy, Berkowitz argues, would be turning universities into places that cultivate, encourage, and teach freedom of thought and speech. But doing so seems unlikely:

Having undermined respect for others and the art of listening by presiding over—or silently acquiescing in—the curtailment of dissenting speech for more than a generation, the current crop of administrators and professors seems ill-suited to fashion and implement free-speech training. Moreover, free speech is best learned not by didactic lectures and seminars but by practicing it in the reasoned consideration of competing ideas with those capable of challenging one’s assumptions and arguments. But where are the professors who can lead such conversations? Which faculty members remain capable of understanding their side of the argument because they understand the other side?