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French Election Becomes ‘Nightmare’ for Nation’s Jews  (Roger Cohen, New York Times)
The alleged rape last weekend of a 12-year-old Jewish girl by boys who hurled antisemitic abuse at her has ignited simmering tensions in France over attitudes toward the largest Jewish community in Western Europe.
President Emmanuel Macron, a centrist whose decision to call snap elections this month shocked even his closest allies, responded by denouncing the “scourge of antisemitism” in French schools. The prime minister, Gabriel Attal, urged politicians to “refuse the banalization” of hatred toward Jews, a thinly veiled attack on Jean-Luc Mélenchon, the ardently pro-Palestinian leader of the left who on June 2 called antisemitism in France “residual.”
There were more than 360 antisemitic episodes in France in the first three months of this year, or an average of four a day, an increase of 300 percent over the same period last year, the government said. In the most recent one that shocked the country, the three boys are said to have dragged the girl into an abandoned building where she was repeatedly raped and insulted.
The three boys, ages 12 and 13, one of them previously known to the girl, are being investigated for rape, death threats and insults “aggravated by their link to the victim’s religion,” a prosecutor’s statement on Wednesday said. Two of them have been placed in pretrial detention, it added.
The place of Jews in French society has emerged as a prominent theme in the election because the once-antisemitic National Rally party of Marine Le Pen, whose anti-immigrant position lies at the core of its fast-growing popularity, has been one of the most emphatic supporters of Israel and French Jews since the Hamas-led terrorist attack of Oct. 7 on Israel.
Mr. Mélenchon’s France Unbowed, by contrast, has been vehement in its denunciation of Israel’s military operation in Gaza as “genocide.”

China Tests U.S. Red Lines with Attacks on Philippine Vessels  (Keith Johnson, Foreign Policy)
China is sharply increasing its violent attacks against Philippine vessels and sailors in disputed waters off the Philippine coast, with the latest Chinese assault this week maiming a Philippine sailor and wrecking a Philippine small craft. 
Beijing seems to be testing just how genuine are repeated U.S. assurances that it will defend its treaty ally in the Pacific—and whether its own unilateral vision of might-makes-right at sea will prevail over decades of a rules-based order.
On Monday, China Coast Guard ships intercepted Philippine vessels attempting to resupply their own sailors grounded on a shoal inside the Philippines’s own exclusive economic zone (EEZ), barely 100 miles off the western coast of the archipelago. The Chinese attack, including by ax- and knife-wielding Chinese crewmen, left one Filipino missing a thumb and with a Philippine rigid-hull inflatable boat in tatters. The Philippine Armed Forces chief of staff likened the Chinese assault to a pirate attack.
The latest Chinese escalation came just two days after the entering into force of a new coast guard regulation that allows Beijing’s military ships carte blanche to seize any foreign vessels anywhere it deems necessary, even if those foreign ships are inside their own waters or on the high seas. The measure, which pays no heed to international law, is part of the yearslong militarization of the China Coast Guard and meant to bolster Beijing’s ability to impose by force its long-planned annexation of a huge swath of open sea.
This week’s intensification follows a similar, but less violent, increase of Chinese belligerence last month, with repeated efforts to interfere with Philippine operations in its own territories and waters. (China’s incursions are increasingly brazen, with vessels sailing within miles of Palawan, just off the west coast of the Philippines.) For more than a decade, China has been claiming nearly the entirety of the strategic South China Sea for itself—by building artificial islands, ignoring international law, and chasing away other countries’ vessels with water cannons.
With the violent confrontation this week, the showdown over otherwise unremarkable features such as Second Thomas Shoal and Sabina Shoal is threatening more than just the Philippines. 

What the United States Can Learn from China  (Stephen M. Walt, Foreign Policy)
In any competitive realm, rivals constantly strive to do better. They search for innovations that will improve their position and they strive to imitate whatever appears to be working for their opponents. We see this phenomenon in sports, in business, and in international politics. Emulation doesn’t mean one has to do exactly what others have done, but ignoring the policies from which others have benefited and refusing to adapt is a good way to keep losing.
Today, the need to compete more effectively with China is perhaps the only foreign-policy issue on which nearly all Democrats and Republicans agree. That consensus is shaping the U.S. defense budget, driving the effort to shore up partnerships in Asia, and encouraging an expanding high-tech trade war. Yet apart from accusing China of stealing U.S. technology and violating prior trade agreements, the chorus of experts warning about China rarely considers the broader measures that helped Beijing pull this off. If China really is eating America’s lunch, shouldn’t Americans ask themselves what Beijing is doing right and what the United States is doing wrong? Might China’s approach to foreign policy provide some useful lessons for people in Washington?
To be sure, a big part of China’s rise was due to purely domestic reforms. The world’s most populous nation always had enormous power potential, but that potential was suppressed for more than a century by deep internal divisions or misguided Marxist economic policies. Once its leaders abandoned Marxism (but not Leninism!) and embraced the market, it was inevitable that the country’s relative power would increase sharply. And one could argue that the Biden administration’s efforts to develop a national industrial policy via the Inflation Reduction Act and other measures reflect a belated attempt to imitate China’s state-backed efforts to seize the high ground in several key technologies.
But China’s rise was not due solely to domestic reforms or Western complacency. In addition, China’s ascent has been facilitated by its broad approach to foreign policy, which U.S. leaders would do well to contemplate.