Last December, after years of negotiations with private companies and arguments with opponents in the Knesset, Benjamin Netanyahu managed to conclude a deal to begin the exploitation of the natural-gas fields beneath Israel’s coastal waters. On Sunday, the deal was struck down by Israel’s supreme court. Jonathan Tobin warns of the possible consequences:

The bounty from the Tamar field, which has already begun producing natural gas, and the far bigger Leviathan site, on which development has not yet begun, had the potential to make Israel the world’s next energy superpower. [It held the] prospect of not only energy independence but also of a large export business that would [both] enrich the Jewish state [and] enable [the creation of] economic alliances . . . that would make it far more secure.

The only worry about all this was not whether the gas could be brought out or whether it would play a part in transforming Israel’s economy. [It] was whether Israel’s fractious political system and overregulated economy, and a judiciary and bureaucracy that seem most comfortable when stifling innovation and growth rather than enabling it, would find a way to gum up the works and stop the gas fields from being exploited. Unfortunately, we now have the answer to that question. . . .

[A] high court that recognizes no limits on its power to intervene wherever it likes without a shred of authority that is actually rooted in law . . . could doom Leviathan and expectations about Israel’s energy future.

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.