Anti-Israel radicals, especially those shaped by academia, love to call Israel a “settler-colonialist” state. Benjamin Wexler examines the background of the phrase, and the ways in which is applied. Consider, for instance, an anti-Israel resolution the University of British Columbia’s student council was ready to put to a student-wide referendum.

Alongside much more expansive demands for BDS, the referendum called for the university to “end Hillel BC’s lease on unceded Musqueam territory.” There were other reasons given for the targeting of the campus’s main Jewish student organization, but the emphasis on unceded land should not be overlooked as a justifying factor. Other UBC locales did not receive such a disclaimer in the same referendum. The Nest Building is merely the Nest Building; the AMS Food Bank is merely the AMS Food Bank. But the Jews squat on unceded land.

The resolution was rescinded after a general outcry, but the accusation is significant: Jews aren’t just settler colonialists if they live in Israel; they (and not descendants of immigrants from the Middle East, Pakistan, Britain, or France) are settler colonialists even in Canada:

At McGill, pro-Israel counter-demonstrators were met with the chant: “Settlers, settlers, go back home.” Where is home? Not Israel, but not Montreal either, apparently. A prominent student activist with the McGill encampment . . . wrote online: “would just like to remind Quebec that the Zionist community is overwhelmingly Anglophone,” winking to the Quebecois nationalist idea of Jews as an outpost of Anglophone hegemony. Universite de Montreal instructor Yanise Arab only made the logic explicit by shouting: “Go back to Poland!”

The claim—made even more explicit by a megaphone-wielding protester outside a Montreal synagogue—that every Jew is a settler in whatever country he lives in is thus akin, Wexler argues, to the old Christian idea that the Jew “is cursed to wander the earth” as punishment for the rejection of Jesus. Such a doctrine has good use:

By way of anti-Zionist critique, a Muslim Arab finds another group to call invaders. By way of anti-Zionist critique, a white settler transforms her Christian name into an embodiment of multiculturalism. Indeed, multiculturalism itself is rescued from disrepute in the Canadian academy, ceasing to be a settler-colonial ideology justifying Canada’s land theft so long as it excludes “Zionists.” By way of anti-Zionist critique, a student union of settlers can finally make authoritative decisions over unceded indigenous land.

For all Wexler’s insight into a leftist milieu with which he is intimately familiar, he is willing to accept some of its most foolish conclusions, e.g., that Israel has taken a “fascist turn.” Yet he is clear-eyed enough to see that whatever turns the Jewish state has taken, the anti-Israel movement is rotten to the core.

Below, today’s newsletter will return to some other reflections on the one-year anniversary of the outbreak of the current war, but first something must be said of its recent progress. Israel has kept up its aerial and ground assault on Hizballah, and may have already killed the successor to Hassan Nasrallah, the longtime leader it eliminated less than two weeks ago. Matthew Levitt assesses the current state of the Lebanon-based terrorist group, which, in his view, is now “a shadow of its former self.” Indeed, he adds,

it is no exaggeration to say that the Hizballah of two weeks ago no longer exists. And since Hizballah was the backbone of Iran’s network of militant proxies, its so-called axis of resistance, Iran’s strategy of arming and deploying proxy groups throughout the region is suddenly at risk as well.

Hizballah’s attacks put increasing pressure on Israel, as intended, only that pressure did not lead Israelis to stop targeting Hamas so much as it chipped away at Israel’s fears about the cost of military action to address the military threats posed by Hizballah.

At the same time, Levitt explains, Hizballah still poses a serious threat, as it demonstrated last night when its missiles struck Haifa and Tiberias, injuring at least two people:

Hizballah still maintains an arsenal of rockets and a cadre of several thousand fighters. It will continue to pose potent military threats for Israel, Lebanon, and the wider region.

How will the group seek to avenge Nasrallah’s death amid these military setbacks? Hizballah is likely to resort to acts of international terrorism, which are overseen by one of the few elements of the group that has not yet lost key leaders.

But the true measure of whether the group will be able to reconstitute itself, even over many years, is whether Iran can restock Hizballah’s sophisticated arsenal. Tehran’s network of proxy groups—from Hizballah to Hamas to the Houthis—is only as dangerous as it is today because of Iran’s provision of weapons and money. Whatever Hizballah does next, Western governments must prioritize cutting off Tehran’s ability to arm and fund its proxies.