A letter from Heinrich Himmler—the head of the SS and the key official behind the planning and implementation of the Holocaust—to Amin Haj al-Husseini, the former grand mufti of Jerusalem, was recently discovered in Israel’s National Library. Dated to 1943, the letter expresses German solidarity with Palestinian Arabs in undoing the “criminal” Balfour Declaration. Joy Bernard writes:

The Nazi commander . . . wrote to the Muslim leader that “the joint recognition of the enemy, [i.e., the Jew], and the joint battle against him are what creates the firm allegiance between Germany and freedom-seeking Muslims all over the world.”

Himmler went on to tell the mufti . . . that his country was closely following the Palestinian resistance against the Balfour Declaration. “The National-Socialist movement of Greater Germany has made its fight against world Jewry a guiding principle since its very beginning,” Himmler wrote. “For that reason [the movement] has been closely following the battle of freedom-seeking Arabs, especially in Palestine, against the Jewish invaders,” the Nazi leader added.

He finished his warm letter to the mufti by writing: “In this spirit, I am happy to extend to you, on the anniversary of the Balfour Declaration, warm wishes for the continuation of your battle until the certain final victory.”

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.