Last week, some 100 demonstrators gathered in the Ukrainian city of Lviv, waving placards bearing anti-Semitic slogans and expressing their opposition to the Ukrainian government. Vladislav Davidzon argues that there was more to this protest than meets the eye:

The incident is the latest attempt to weaponize accusations of anti-Semitism in the conflict between Russia and Ukraine. Proving that the government in Kiev and the population of western Ukraine is infested with neo-Nazis has since the very beginning of the conflict been the core strategy of the propaganda coming out of Russian media organs. . . . This rhetoric directly echoes the Soviet Union’s labeling of any actor that opposed its geopolitical interests as “counterrevolutionary.” [The goal is to] delegitimize Ukraine by . . . fatally associating it with fascism. . . .

Ukrainian media reported that members of the demonstration had been seen (and filmed) collecting 50- and 100-Hryvnia bills for their participation. . . . When the assembled journalists demanded that the protesters explain their demands, some barked out feeble and enraged generalities. Other protesters could be seen hiding their faces behind their hands in front of the camera and behind the banners in shame. Some . . . had the tell-tale pink and puffy faces of chronic alcoholics, which might suggest that political activism was not their primary concern.

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.