Currently, the Yemeni city of Aden is controlled by the Transitional Council: one of the military groups fighting the Iran-backed Houthi rebels. The Council is now in the process of destroying a Jewish cemetery for a major residential construction project. Edy Cohen comments:

The construction project will bring about the final erasure of the last remnants of the Jewish community in Aden, whose roots are considerably older than Islam itself.

In the 20th century, the [Jewish] community, which numbered over 7,000 in the mid-1940s, lived under British control, but the [1947] UN Partition Resolution resulted in widespread riots. On December 2, 1947, 82 Jews were murdered and dozens wounded, and most of the Jewish businesses in Aden were looted. Synagogues were burned and hundreds of Jewish homes were looted and torched. The murdered Jews were most likely buried in the Jewish cemetery in the city center that is now being destroyed.

By 1965, the community had dwindled to about 450 souls, but two years later, after the Six-Day War and on the eve of the British evacuation a few months later, not a single Jew remained. Those who left had no choice but to leave their property behind.

Who will stop this act of profound disrespect to the dead? . . . Recently, members of the World Islamic Union visited Auschwitz in an effort to [improve relations between] Jews and Muslims. Muslim condemnation of the Aden destruction, which is contrary to the provisions of Islam, would strengthen that goal. In addition, the Transitional Council in Yemen has good relations with the United Arab Emirates, which is known for its efforts to promote religious tolerance. It is time for someone to act so the Jews of Aden can continue to rest in peace.

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.