RUTHFULLY YOURS

Like it or not, China will play an important role in Western Asia, because the imperative of energy security and the rollout of the “One Belt/One Road” require it to do so. As China engages with this unruly region, the seeming irrationality and self-defeating behavior of its minor powers are a source of endless frustration to China, which looks at Western Asia through the rational eyes of commercial interest, and offers investments on the grand scale that stand to benefit all of its states.

When we last spoke some months ago in Beijing, Turkey’s President Erdogan infuriated you. Turkey meddled where it had no competence—in nuclear negotiations with Iran, with the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, with Hamas in Gaza, with ISIS in Syria, and with Uyghur rebels in China’s Xinjiang province. Not long from now, I predict, you will be furious at Iran’s meddling in Syria, Iraq, Lebanon, and perhaps Azerbaijan. Why, China asks, do the petty pretenders to empire in Western Asia risk their own well-being with adventures of this sort?

Gerald Walpin is a New York lawyer who graduated from Yale Law Schoolcum laude and served as a U.S. inspector general from 2007 to 2009. He is the author of “The Supreme Court vs. The Constitution” (Significance Press 2013).

Can you imagine an Ivy League university today scheduling student group-alumni dinners at which they exclude black, women, Hispanic, Asian, Native American, and gay groups from the dinner tables, and limit attendees to Jewish, Catholic and Christian groups? Unbelievable in today’s academia.

If somehow it occurred, demonstrations — in which I would have joined, if I were then a student — would have brought the school to a standstill, until the school canceled the dinners or tendered invitations to excluded groups.

Junior New York Senator Kristen Gillibrand’s August 6 announcement supporting President Barack Obama’s Iran nuclear deal should not go unpunished.

Junior New York Senator Kristen Gillibrand’s August 6 announcement supporting President Barack Obama’s Iran nuclear deal should not go unpunished, both in view of the demographics of the state she represents and the unprecedented presidential incitement against Jews and the State of Israel.

For Israel, the stakes in the outcome of this deal could not be higher. While Secretary of State John Kerry dismissively argues that although Iran has a “fundamental ideological confrontation” with Israel, it has not yet taken active steps toward Israel’s annihilation. But Jews with sensitive antennas understand better.

Can Charles Schumer ever be master of the Senate? It’s hard to imagine on the basis of the lackluster nature of his opposition to President Obama’s nuclear-arms deal with the regime in Iran.

“Master of the Senate” is the title of the volume of Robert Caro’s biography of Lyndon Baines Johnson that covers LBJ’s leadership in the upper house of Congress. It includes his maneuvering to pass the 1957 Civil Rights Bill.

What a ruthless, manipulative, bombastic, cunning leader LBJ was. He twisted arms, threatened, cajoled, pontificated and sulked — and outworked his colleagues, too — to get his way in the world’s greatest deliberative body.

Particularly on a matter of conscience, like civil rights. Can anyone imagine LBJ taking the kind of powder that Mr. Schumer is taking now on Mr. Obama’s plan to appease Iran?

LBJ, of course, didn’t face the kind of gutter attacks that Mr. Schumer is facing. The New York Post, in an important editorial on Monday, reported that “anti-Semitism is all over the drive to make Chuck Schumer shut up about his opposition to the nuke deal.”

The administration has been pulling out all the stops. Yet with every passing day, what I at first called “Schumer’s finest hour” is turning into a shocking collapse, as the senator privately shrinks from the fight.

Swiss to lift ban on transport of Iranian crude oil and other sanctions beginning Thursday. Is it inviting other countries to flout the sanctions through it?

Even before Iran has met conditions contained in the Nuclear Iran deal, the ever-eager Swiss have begun lifting sanctions on Iran in a show of support for the Nuclear Iran deal negotiated by the U.S. and its P5+1 partners with Iran. They are also darn happy with their good relations with Iran.

The Swiss Federal Council announced the decision it reached on Aug. 12 to officially list sanctions beginning on Thursday, Aug. 13. The Swiss government had been engaged in direct dialogue with Iran and had already suspended the sanctions in Jan. 2014.

In opinion pieces in Italian daily Corriere della Sera and German paper Die Welt, Yesh Atid leader Yair Lapid lambasts international community’s eagerness to embrace Iran while turning against Israel • Nuclear deal has made the West appear weak, he says.

Yesh Atid leader Yair Lapid leveled harsh criticism at Europe over the weekend, stating in opinion pieces in two major European newspapers that the EU’s policy of preferring Iran over Israel was “scandalous.”

It’s the 14th edition of Paris Plages, a charming operation that transforms the banks of the Seine, from the Quai du Louvre all the way to rue de Crimée, into a summer playground. From mid-July to mid-August the quais are dressed up as sandy “beaches” with deck chairs, picnic tables, fun & games, rental bikes for kids, restaurants, cafés, ice cream stands, a lending library, and—for want of a dip in the river—a stretch of cool-off mist. It’s all done in nice French taste with a pretty blue & white striped and bright yellow color scheme, t-shirted monitors, and an international crowd.

One day each summer a guest country is invited to bring an exotic accent to the Paris Plages river beach. Tomorrow, August 13th, it’s Tel Aviv sur la Seine and, don’t you know, the slithery creatures are climbing up the riverbanks, determined to strangle the very thought of Tel Aviv and the Israel that goes with it. From pseudo-intellectual analyses of the stalemate in the peace process, attributed exclusively to Israel, to ill-concealed threats to smash up the whole thing if the City Hall doesn’t cancel it, the “debate” spins around a few simplistic notions. Should Tel Aviv be coddled because it’s not really Israel, it’s more of a Levantine Paris on the Mediterranean, populated by peace-making leftist gay-friendly secular progressives who detest Netanyahu like we do, or should Tel Aviv be kicked off the river bank until it can be kicked out of the world, no less guilty than the last baby-burning Occupier on a West Bank hilltop whose army massacred all of Gaza one year ago.