Wednesday saw another shameful display at Columbia University as an anti-Israel mob stormed the library while students were studying for finals, leaving graffiti on walls and furniture with such slogans as “Columbia will burn for the martyrs.” But if things have been bad at American centers of higher education, they may be even worse at Britain’s. Stephen Pollard offers an illustrative and troubling example:

At Queen Mary University in east London, some students decided to hold a silent vigil on October 7, 2024 to mark the anniversary of the Hamas massacre. The vigil, comprised of a small group of students, was soon surrounded by hundreds of fellow students with banners and megaphones, shouting “Globalize the student intifada” and other slogans.

There is, as you well know, nothing unusual about this. It is, appallingly, a scene routinely witnessed when Jewish students seek to remember the victims of October 7 (and, of course, it happens beyond campus, too). But this time the university’s security staff intervened. A rare but welcome event, you might think. Except their target was not the baying mob barracking the small gathering of Jews but rather the small gathering of Jews, who were removed to a safe room, as the students described in a StandWithUs report.

Nothing better sums up the state of anti-Semitism on campus. Not only is it allowed to run rampant, unchecked, and unstopped; it is actually supported, either by a failure to act, sending the clear message that it is permissible, or—as in the incident above—by removing the peaceful Jews rather than those harassing them.

The incident reminds me very much of the reaction to pogroms in tsarist Russia, where police would be sent in to quell the disorder, and immediately arrest the Jews, since it seemed impossible to them that anyone else could be the guilty party. And the current British government, Pollard goes on to explain, is no more likely than the Romanovs to take meaningful action.

Critics of the American bombing raid on Iran have warned that it could lead to dangerous retaliation, and risk dragging the U.S. into a broader conflict. (How this could be a greater risk than allowing the murderous fanatics who govern Iran to have nuclear weapons is a separate question.) Yesterday, Iran indeed retaliated. Noah Rothman writes:

On Monday, Iranian state media released a high-production-value video revealing [the government’s] intention to strike U.S. forces inside neighboring Qatar. A bombastic statement from Iran’s Supreme National Security Council accompanying the video claimed that Iran had launched a salvo of ten missiles at the U.S.-manned Al Udeid Air Base, which “pulverized” American forces. In reality, the missiles seem to have all been intercepted before they reached their targets. No casualties have been reported.

In fact, the Iranians quietly gave Qatar—the Gulf state with which they have the best relations—advance warning of the attack, knowing that the Qataris would then pass it on to the U.S. Thus prepared, American forces were able to minimize the damage. Rothman continues:

So far, Iran’s retaliatory response to U.S. strikes on its nuclear program looks a lot like its reaction to the 2020 attack that killed the Revolutionary Guard commander Qassem Suleimani—which is to say that it seems like Tehran is seeking an offramp to avoid a potentially existential conflict with the United States.

Now, it’s important to note that this is only a face-saving climb-down if that’s how we want to interpret it. The only reason why we remember the Iranian operation aimed at avenging Soleimani’s death as a cease-fire overture is because we decided to take it that way. We didn’t have to do that. One-hundred-and-ten U.S. service personnel were treated for injuries as a result of that direct and unprecedented ballistic-missile attack on U.S. forces in Iraq. . . . The U.S. could have regarded that strike as an unacceptable precedent, but the Trump administration had made its point. By simply deeming deterrence to have been restored, the U.S. helped bring that condition about.

It appears that is precisely what the U.S. has done this time. Last night both Washington and Tehran announced a cease-fire, one that includes Israel. Whether it will hold remains to be seen; Iran already managed to get in a deadly, eleventh-hour attack on civilians in Beersheba. If Jerusalem knew such an arrangement was in the cards—and there is every reason to think it did—then its military activities over the past few days start to make a great deal of sense.

Since June 13, there has been some lack of clarity about whether Israel’s goal is to destroy Iran’s nuclear and ballistic-missile capabilities, or to destabilize the regime. Now it seems that the IDF has been doing precisely what it has done in the final phase of almost every prior war: try to inflict as much damage as possible upon the enemy’s military infrastructure before the U.S. blows the whistle and declares the war over—thus reestablishing deterrence and leaving its enemy’s offensive capabilities severely weakened.

In the next item, I’ll turn to some of the nonmilitary targets Israel chose.