Since 2006, Washington has given some $2 billion in aid to the Lebanese Armed Forces (LAF), hoping first to empower it to replace Hizballah in the southern part of the country, and later on to defend against al-Qaeda and Islamic State, and to prevent the spillover of the Syrian civil war into its territory. Yet not only has Hizballah grown stronger in the intervening years, but it now also exercises a great deal of control over the LAF—while building up its own ability to attack Israel and effecting a blood-soaked intervention in Syria. A bill currently before Congress would cut funding to the LAF—funding that ultimately benefits Hizballah—but a group of Democratic representatives has managed to neuter it, writes Adam Kredo:

While the original bill had bipartisan support in both chambers, House Democrats recently attached an amendment to their version of the legislation that nixed the funding cut [to the LAF]. The House last week passed a watered-down version of the bill that leaves the LAF funding fully intact. The wrangling over the legislation came just days before Hizballah launched a foiled attack on Israel from southern Lebanon, where the LAF and international forces have been tasked with stopping such terror strikes.

The Countering Hezbollah in Lebanon’s Military Act was passed out of a House committee late last week without key portions that would have conditioned U.S. aid to the LAF, effectively barring it from receiving money until it cleanses its ranks of Hizballah forces. . . . The final version now [merely] requires the State Department to issue a report detailing ways in which the United States can stop Hizballah’s smuggling of arms along its border with Israel.

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.