As the growing wave of antisemitism continues to sweep across American universities and urban centers, the White House has reportedly come up with a plan to actually do something about it. Government Executive reports that the Biden administration has assigned the Justice Department and Homeland Security to designate people who will reach out to college administrations and local civilian officials. They will receive reports of suspected, potential violence and discuss additional resources that Washington can provide to be better prepared to deal with them. Of course, they couldn’t just leave the issue as antisemitism, so they included potential “islamophobia” as well.

The Biden administration is assigning federal agencies with new responsibilities to assist universities and local law enforcement responding to hateful acts aimed at Jewish and Muslim students, which the White House said have risen since the outbreak of the Israel-Gaza war earlier this month.

The Homeland Security Department is hosting calls with campus police departments and the Justice Department is engaging in dialogues with colleges and impacted communities in direct response to incidents that have taken place at colleges since Hamas’ Oct. 7 attacks and Israel’s subsequent military action. College campuses have seen an “alarming risk of reported antisemitic incidents,” a White House official said on Monday, spurring the administration into action.

DHS and Justice are both working with state and local officials to assess threat environments and share information about available resources, the official said.

The details of precisely what sort of aid and resources are being offered remain a bit vague, but this is still a hopeful sign. Presumably, there will be personnel made available to shore up campus security and local police forces where required. DHS, in particular, could potentially be quite helpful with the use of facial recognition technology to identify the worst offenders at various anti-Israel rallies.

DHS has already tasked 125 protective security advisors and 100 cybersecurity advisors to work with schools. The Education Department is getting involved as well. They are upgrading their procedures for processing discrimination complaints. At the same time, they are clarifying that any discriminatory action toward Jewish, Muslim, Sikh or Hindu people will be treated as a violation of the 1964 Civil Rights Act, making it easier to take action against the perpetrators.

The “both sides” nature of the announcement is still a bit offputting, though perhaps understandable. It’s not as if we’ve suddenly seen a wave of attacks on Muslims around the country, with a couple of exceptions like that maniacal landlord who stabbed a 6-year-old Palestinian-American child to death in Illinois. But the pro-Israel rallies around the country have been almost entirely peaceful. In fact, they’ve been the victims of attacks by pro-Hamas sympathizers rather than the perpetrators.

That’s not the way the Council on American Islamic Relations sees things, however. CAIR claims to have received 774 complaints of bias since October 7. That’s more than twice the 312 antisemitic incidents reported by the Antidefamation League against Jews. So is there really that sort of disparity between the two types of activity or are the Muslims just more likely to complain? The general trends in reporting would suggest that attacks against perceived Jews and Jewish-oriented organizations are far more common.

This week Bibi Netanyahu rejected calls for a ceasefire by quoting the Bible, saying, “There is a time for peace and a time for war. This is a time for war.” That’s true in Israel and Gaza. Back home in the United States, however, this needs to be a time for peace. Some of these pro-Hamas protesters need to calm the hell down and go home. They represent only a tiny sliver of the population and they probably shouldn’t risk starting something they won’t be able to finish.