Last year, the American Studies Association became the only major U.S. academic organization to endorse a boycott of Israel. It has recently backed down from the boycott, but it is now trying to shield its upcoming annual conference from press scrutiny by making the process of getting a press badge “as complicated, arbitrary, and daunting as getting a press pass for the North Korean Politburo meeting.” This reaction, writes Eugene Kontorovich, only shows how much something is wrong at ASA:

Of course, ASA is well within its rights—it could have entirely excluded journalists. That would have looked much better than creating a byzantine mechanism for cherry-picking those who can attend. It is also understandable that they do not want their conference to be constantly under the microscope for evidence of national-origin discrimination. Of course, the best way to avoid that would have been to not adopt a discriminatory policy.

While the ASA’s original boycott was discriminatory, and possibly illegal, the press policy is something that is arguably worse for a scholarly organization: ridiculous, heavy-handed, and self-parodying. This is an organization whose statement this week defending themselves from discrimination charges boasted of its “spirit of openness and transparency,” and described the conference as a “broad and inclusive event.”

As we mentioned in yesterday’s newsletter, Israeli special forces carried out a daring boots-on-the-ground raid on September 8 targeting the Scientific Studies and Research Center (SSRC) in northwestern Syria. The site was used for producing and storing missiles which are then transferred to Hizballah in Lebanon. Jonathan Spyer notes that the raid was accompanied by extensive airstrikes in Syira,and followed a few days later by extensive attacks on Hizballah in Lebanon, one of which killed Mohammad Qassem al-Shaer, a senior officer in the terrorist group’s Radwan force, an elite infantry group. And yesterday, the IDF destroyed a weapons depot, an observation post, and other Hizballah positions. Spyer puts these attacks in context:

The direct purpose of the raid, of course, was the destruction of the facilities and materials targeted. But Israel also appeared to be delivering a message to the Syrian regime that it should not imagine itself to be immune should it choose to continue its involvement with the Iran-led axis’s current campaign against Israel.

Similarly, the killing of al-Shaer indicated that Israel is no longer limiting its response to Hizballah attacks to the border area. Rather, Hizballah operatives in Israel’s crosshairs are now considered fair game wherever they may be located in Lebanon.

The SSRC raid and the killing of al-Shaer are unlikely to have been one-off events. Rather, they represent the systematic broadening of the parameters of the conflict in the north. Hizballah commenced the current round of fighting on October 8, in support of Hamas in Gaza. It has vowed to stop firing only when a ceasefire is reached in the south—a prospect which currently seems distant.