In January, China’s President Xi Jinping visited Iran, Saudi Arabia, and Egypt. His visit is a sign of China’s growing involvement in the Muslim Middle East, as Alon Levkowitz writes:

[O]ver the past decade, China has become the second largest trading partner of Iran, Saudi Arabia, and Egypt. The lifting of sanctions on Iran will allow China to . . . become its biggest trading partner. This has clear implications for Saudi Arabia, which is China’s main supplier of crude oil. As soon as Iran is able to export, China will be able to diversify. . . .

The warmth exhibited by Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei toward China during President Xi’s visit to Iran suggests the potential for a greater role down the road for Beijing in the geopolitics of the region. . . .

It is worth noting that despite Beijing’s protestations that it does not intend to get deeply involved in the Middle East, China offers an appealing alternative: Beijing is understood to have no intention of sending military forces to the region the way Moscow or Washington would, but has veto leverage at the UN Security Council and billions of dollars available for investment. China therefore has the capacity to change the Middle East balance of power in the long run. . . .

The Israeli government should, accordingly, continue to improve its economic and political relations with China. But Israel should not lose sight of the constant tension between Washington and Beijing on issues in Asia.

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.