Decades ago, Human Rights Watch (HRW)—and its predecessor, Helsinki Watch—concerned itself with the fate of Jewish dissidents being terrorized by the Soviet government. But those days are long gone, and the organization now fixates on finding imaginary sins for which to condemn Israel, while ignoring anti-Semitism—unless, of course, it can be traced to the far right. Ben Cohen writes:

When it has come to such matters as boycotting Israel or left-wing agitation against Jews in the guise of “Zionists,” or the persistence of crudely anti-Semitic beliefs among Europe’s Muslim communities, [HRW] has invariably dismissed Jewish concerns about anti-Semitism by holding up the banner of “free speech” or by suggesting—as its director Ken Roth did in 2014—that Israel’s occupation of Palestinian territories is the reason why Jews on the continent keep getting insulted, spat at, beaten up, and even kidnapped and murdered.

But when members of the German extreme right gathered to protest coronavirus-related restrictions, wearing yellow stars and carrying banners with anti-Semitic slogans, an HRW representative jumped at the chance to lament this “sad reminder” of the persistent hatred of the Jews. As Cohen notes,

there have been plenty of “sad reminders” of the stubbornness of anti-Semitism before the coronavirus came along. The problem for HRW, perhaps, is that those earlier episodes did not emanate from the right. Take France, where eleven Jews have been murdered by anti-Semitic terror or brutal violence since 2006—not a single one of them at the hands of far-right thugs. Because the killers in all these instances came from immigrant backgrounds, HRW has always felt uneasy addressing this particular form of anti-Semitic violence, and simultaneously reassured in the mistaken belief that once the Israeli “occupation” ends, then Muslim anti-Semitism will disappear as well.

[W]hile HRW understands that anti-Semitism is a core element of the extreme right’s worldview, it sees its appearance in other contexts as a marginal aberration.

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.