At the University of California, Berkeley, a strange but revealing twist on the usual campus anti-Israel activism took place. Two faculty members, Steven Hayward and John Yoo, invited the Knesset member Simcha Rothman to come speak about judicial overreach in Israel and his controversial attempts at reform. “But,” writes Hayward, “it got weird.”

The protestors inside the lecture hall who shut down the event were mostly left-wing Jews. Outside the lecture hall was the rabble of anti-Semitic, pro-Hamas demonstrators who took the event as an opportunity to attack any Jews at hand—even left-wing Jews.

Although as mentioned the chief of police and vice-chancellor were present, there were no serious efforts to arrest any of the disruptors. The official explanation was that the police feared that “both sides” would escalate into physical violence.

And despite the [administration’s] boast that such things cannot be allowed to happen again, they will until Berkeley and other universities get serious about arresting and prosecuting disruptors, as well as expelling students who participate. I’m not holding my breath.

October 7 is just around the corner. I expect this first anniversary of that atrocity will see significant campus demonstrations and unrest around the country.

It’s interesting to note that since October 7, university presidents and administrators have suddenly discovered the virtues of free speech, and pundits have accused right-leaning critics of the anti-Israel protests of hypocrisy for supposedly abandoning their commitment to freedom of speech. But this story shows the absurdity of the actions of the former and the arguments of the latter: preserving free speech in fact requires punishing violent and disruptive behavior.

Yesterday, Israel’s Channel 12 reported that Israeli representatives have been involved in secret talks, brokered by the United Arab Emirates, with their Syrian counterparts about the potential establishment of diplomatic relations between their countries. Even more surprisingly, on Wednesday an Israeli reporter spoke with a senior official from Syria’s information ministry, Ali al-Rifai. The prospect of a member of the Syrian government, or even a private citizen, giving an on-the-record interview to an Israeli journalist was simply unthinkable under the old regime. What’s more, his message was that Damascus seeks peace with other countries in the region, Israel included.

These developments alone should make Israelis sanguine about Donald Trump’s overtures to Syria’s new rulers. Yet the interim president Ahmed al-Sharaa’s jihadist resumé, his connections with Turkey and Qatar, and brutal attacks on minorities by forces aligned with, or part of, his regime remain reasons for skepticism. While recognizing these concerns, Noah Rothman nonetheless makes the case for optimism:

The old Syrian regime was an incubator and exporter of terrorism, as well as an Iranian vassal state. The Assad regime trained, funded, and introduced terrorists into Iraq intent on killing American soldiers. It hosted Iranian terrorist proxies as well as the Russian military and its mercenary cutouts. It was contemptuous of U.S.-backed proscriptions on the use of chemical weapons on the battlefield, necessitating American military intervention—an unavoidable outcome, clearly, given Barack Obama’s desperate efforts to avoid it. It incubated Islamic State as a counterweight against the Western-oriented rebel groups vying to tear that regime down, going so far as to purchase its own oil from the nascent Islamist group.

The Assad regime was an enemy of the United States. The Sharaa regime could yet be a friend to America. . . . Insofar as geopolitics is a zero-sum game, taking Syria off the board for Russia and Iran and adding it to the collection of Western assets would be a triumph. At the very least, it’s worth a shot. Trump deserves credit for taking it.