In that other front of the war against the Jews and the Jewish state—the one being waged on college campuses—Gil Troy looks at a question I considered this spring: the role played by departments of Jewish studies:

In this hostile, unscholarly, illiberal environment [in American universities], it’s reasonable to expect the Association for Jewish Studies (AJS) to lead the charge against formal boycotts and [the] informal, demoralizing, and immoral shunning of Israelis simply for being Israeli.

The AJS Executive Committee issued an official anti-boycott statement in September. It began with a clear and admirable statement, writes Troy, but

then the Executive Committee went weaselly. Its letter “recognizes the right of individual faculty members to exercise their freedom by choosing not to partner or cooperate with other individual faculty members or academic institutions with whom or with which they disagree and to do so absent the threat of institutional reprisal or sanction.”

Translating this high-falutin’ doublespeak, the AJS proclaimed that while departments and universities should not boycott Israeli universities formally, it’s ok if individual professors informally boycott Israeli, Zionist, or even Jewish professors.

That’s the shutdown currently posing the great threat—individuals snubbing Israeli colleagues, either because they “disagree” with Israel, or just want to avoid anything reeking of Israel, which illiberal liberals now smell around anyone who rubs elbows with Israelis.

Yesterday, the Iranian foreign minister flew to Geneva to meet with European diplomats. President Trump, meanwhile, indicated that cease-fire negotiations might soon begin with Iran, which would presumably involve Tehran agreeing to make concessions regarding its nuclear program, while Washington pressures Israel to halt its military activities. According to Israeli media, Iran already began putting out feelers to the U.S. earlier this week. Aviram Bellaishe considers the purpose of these overtures:

The regime’s request to return to negotiations stems from the principle of deception and delay that has guided it for decades. Iran wants to extricate itself from a situation of total destruction of its nuclear facilities. It understands that to save the nuclear program, it must stop at a point that would allow it to return to it in the shortest possible time. So long as the negotiation process leads to halting strikes on its military capabilities and preventing the destruction of the nuclear program, and enables the transfer of enriched uranium to a safe location, it can simultaneously create the two tracks in which it specializes—a false facade of negotiations alongside a hidden nuclear race.