Last week, mass demonstrations erupted in Lebanon over proposed tax increases and have since then intensified, spreading throughout the major cities despite proposals of reform from the government. Meanwhile, the anti-government protests in Iraq, which began early this month, have subsided somewhat, but not yet abated. Hanin Ghaddar points out that in both cases, demonstrators are reacting to economic hardship and corruption by turning against governments controlled by the Islamic Republic:

Iran created proxies in both [Lebanon and Iraq], gave them power through funding and arms, and helped them infiltrate state institutions. Today, state institutions in both countries have one main job: instead of protecting and serving the people, they have to protect and serve Iranian interests.

Observers have called the current protests in Lebanon “unprecedented” for a number of reasons. For the first time in a long time, Lebanese have realized that the enemy is within—it is their own government and political leaders—not an outside occupier or regional influencer. In addition, political leaders have been unable to control the course of the protests, which are taking place across all sects and across all regions. . . . The scale shows that the protesters are capable of uniting beyond their sectarian and political affiliations. What brought them together is an ongoing economic crisis that has hurt people from all sects and regions.

But most significantly, the protests are unprecedented since Hizballah also took an unusual stance. Having prided itself for decades on protecting the impoverished and fighting injustice, Hizballah . . . decided to side with the authorities against the people in the streets. . . . Scenes of Shiite protesters joining other Lebanese in the streets terrified the party’s leadership. Lebanon’s Shiites have always been the backbone of Hizballah’s domestic and regional power. . . . But for the first time since Hizballah was formed in the 1908s, Lebanese Shiites are turning against it. In Nabatieh, the group’s heartland in the south of Lebanon, Shiite protesters even burned the offices of Hizballah’s leaders.

[Likewise], only Shiites took to the streets in Iraq [to demonstrate against the Shiite-controlled government]. Wherever Iran wins, mayhem prevails.

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.