Between June 26 and August 15, there were eight cases where terrorists in the Samarian city of Jenin launched rockets at Israeli communities. None of the rockets harmed persons or property, but there is reason to worry that future efforts will be more successful. Uzi Rubin traces the development of Hamas’s rocket arsenal in Gaza from simple, homemade projectiles built from easy-to-acquire items, to military rockets smuggled from Iran, to sophisticated, locally manufactured weapons that can hit targets anywhere in Israel and carry large payloads. With this progression in mind, he considers the situation in the West Bank:

Presently, the terrorist organizations’ capabilities in the Jenin district are more or less equivalent to Gaza’s capabilities in the early 2000s, namely the capacity to manufacture simple rockets in the private machine shops in Jenin and other Palestinian communities. Israel would like to return the genie to the bottle somehow—that is, to roll back even this rudimentary rocket production capability. Judging by the Gaza precedent, this seems nearly impossible. As noted above, even the presence of IDF boots on the ground inside Gaza could not prevent the terrorists there from producing a limited amount of simple, kitchen-made yet lethal rockets.

In the case of Gaza, the transition from the first to the second phase of the threat—from locally home-produced rockets to imported military-grade rockets—happened when the IDF had already vacated the Gaza Strip. In contrast, the IDF maintains a significant presence in Samaria. It stands to reason that once smuggled military-grade rockets become known, the IDF will act energetically to block the smuggling routes and shut down depots and launching pits inside the Palestinian cities.

It is not inconceivable that the terrorists and their Iranian sponsors might aspire to move directly from Phase 1 to Phase 3, from kitchen-grade rockets to producing quality, long-range rockets in advanced production lines manned by well-trained local operators. [But], if the IDF maintains its military presence in the West Bank, it can be assumed that the Palestinian efforts to set up a rocket industry will be met by energetic Israeli efforts to frustrate the enterprise.

In October, a young Mauritanian national murdered an Orthodox Jewish man on his way to synagogue in Chicago. This alone should be sufficient sign of the rising dangers of anti-Semitism. Nathan Diament explains how the Anti-Semitism Awareness Act (AAA) can, if passed, make American Jews safer:

We were off to a promising start when the AAA sailed through the House of Representatives in the spring by a generous vote of 320 to 91, and 30 senators from both sides of the aisle jumped to sponsor the Senate version. Then the bill ground to a halt.

Fearful of antagonizing their left-wing activist base and putting vulnerable senators on the record, especially right before the November election, Democrats delayed bringing the AAA to the Senate floor for a vote. Now, the election is over, but the political games continue.

You can’t combat anti-Semitism if you can’t—or won’t—define it. Modern anti-Semites hide their hate behind virulent anti-Zionism. . . . The Anti-Semitism Awareness Act targets this loophole by codifying that the Department of Education must use the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s working definition of anti-Semitism in its application of Title VI.