Last week, Erwin Chemerinsky, the dean of Berkeley law school and a distinguished constitutional lawyer, hosted members of the school’s graduating class for a dinner at his house. Anti-Israel activists had already put up posters with grotesque caricatures of a cannibalistic Chemerinsky reading “No dinner with Zionist Chem while Gaza starves.” At the dinner itself, some of the guests stood up (with a microphone) and began ranting about the evils of Israel. The professor and his wife asked them to leave, and the students have since accused her of Islamophobia and of violating their First Amendment rights.

David Schraub comments on the incident:

Protests like this are exploitations of trust, they rely on and take advantage of the host’s unguarded openness and welcoming. . . . To take advantage of that, to extract costs on that openness, invariably leads to more closedness, more guardedness, and more cloisteredness—a loss for everyone, and one that can and should be mourned.

Schraub then takes a closer look at why the protesters picked Chemerinsky as a target:

The most specific thing I’ve seen people point to in justification of “why Chemerinsky” is an editorial he wrote this past October—just a few weeks after 10/7—recounting the anti-Semitism he’s experienced as a Jew at Berkeley in the wake of the Hamas attack. The usual suspects make the usual claims in response: that Chemerinsky’s claims about anti-Semitism are wrong, unfair, smears, [and] conflations of anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism, and those sins justify what might otherwise seem an obviously abusive overreach of a protest. On that point, one thing I haven’t seen commented on much is the deep and dangerous chilling effect this sort of position has (and is intended to have) on Jewish faculty speaking on the subject of anti-Semitism.

Schraub, a law professor himself, also explains why the protesters’ complaints about their freedom of speech being violated have no merit. If only there were some institution where they could have studied such things.

In a momentous meeting with the Syrian president Ahmed al-Sharaa in Riyadh, President Trump announced that he is lifting sanctions on the beleaguered and war-torn country. On the one hand, Sharaa is an alumnus of Islamic State and al-Qaeda, who came to power as commander of Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), which itself began life as al-Qaeda’s Syrian offshoot; he also seems to enjoy the support of Qatar. On the other hand, he overthrew the Assad regime—a feat made possible by the battering Israel delivered to Hizballah—greatly improving Jerusalem’s strategic position, and ending one of the world’s most atrocious and brutal tyrannies. President Trump also announced that he hopes Syria will join the Abraham Accords.

This analysis by Eran Lerman was published a few days ago, and in some respects is already out of date, but more than anything else I’ve read it helps to make sense of Israel’s strategic position vis-à-vis Syria.

Israel’s primary security interest lies in defending against worst-case scenarios, particularly the potential collapse of the Syrian state or its transformation into an actively hostile force backed by a significant Turkish presence (considering that the Turkish military is the second largest in NATO) with all that this would imply. Hence the need to bolster the new buffer zone—not for territorial gain, but as a vital shield and guarantee against dangerous developments. Continued airstrikes aimed at diminishing the residual components of strategic military capabilities inherited from the Assad regime are essential.

At the same time, there is a need to create conditions that would enable those in Damascus who wish to reject the reduction of their once-proud country into a Turkish satrapy. Sharaa’s efforts to establish his legitimacy, including his visit to Paris and outreach to the U.S., other European nations, and key Gulf countries, may generate positive leverage in this regard. Israel’s role is to demonstrate through daily actions the severe costs of acceding to Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s ambitions and accepting Turkish hegemony.

Israel should also assist those in Syria (and beyond: this may have an effect in Lebanon as well) who look to it as a strategic anchor in the region. The Druze in Syria—backed by their brethren in Israel—have openly expressed this expectation, breaking decades of loyalty to the central power in Damascus over their obligation to their kith and kin.