Consider this scenario: A legislator from the Midwest targets Israel with a passion and vitriol that smacks of anti-Semitism. The legislator alleges that Israel's supporters in Washington are bought off with Jewish money and that they have too much influence over our politics. When many Americans express their outrage at such comments, the legislator invokes the right to free speech and insists that the sentiments expressed were all for the just cause of getting American policy on a more reasonable and moral path.

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Two years ago this month, Zalmay Khalilzad, the distinguished diplomat who has served as America's ambassador to both Iraq and Afghanistan, praised President Trump for adopting "a realistic position regarding peace talks" with the Taliban, "moving away from President Barack Obama's pursuit of reconciliation regardless of the deteriorating military situation."

A year later, Mr. Khalilzad was appointed U.S. Special Representative for Afghanistan Reconciliation. Since then, he has adopted an unrealistic position regarding peace talks with the Taliban, moving toward President Obama's pursuit of reconciliation regardless of the deteriorating military situation.

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A senior German diplomat appointed to head an EU barter system that would enable European companies to sidestep U.S. sanctions on Iran stepped down after giving an interview in which he criticized the existence of Israel and praised Tehran's ballistic missile program.

The episode — the latest of a series of occurrences that have laid bare the anti-Israel foundation of Germany's foreign policy — is an embarrassing setback for the German government and will complicate its efforts to salvage the Iran nuclear deal.

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Here are a few things I know firsthand about being in jail. First and foremost, you have virtually no control over your life and surroundings. You can't get so much as an aspirin without authorization. In most jails, you can't wear a belt, or shoelaces, or keep a razor in your cell. You have no privacy, no sense of dignity, and no rights. And in a well-run jail, high-profile prisoners have virtually no chance of killing themselves.

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In late July, Mousa Ghazanfarabadi, the conservative head of Tehran's Revolutionary Court, announced publicly that the Iranian regime had identified a new "hostile government" with whom interaction was henceforth banned, punishable by up to a decade in prison. That entity wasn't the Trump administration, which has launched an escalating campaign of economic pressure against the Islamic Republic over the past year. That entity wasn't Israel, which Iranian officials have blamed over the years for everything from promoting global homosexuality to using pigeons as nuclear spies. Rather, the target of the blacklisting was a petite forty-two-year-old Iranian-American activist named Masih Alinejad.

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MOST STATE license plates bear mottos that are uplifting ("The Spirit of America," "Live Free or Die,"), descriptive ("10,000 Lakes," "America's Dairyland"), or welcoming ("Aloha State," "Great Faces, Great Places"). Only the District of Columbia's is bad-tempered. The epigram on its license plate is a complaint: "Taxation Without Representation.")

Washington, D.C., is the nation's 20th largest city by population and the 122nd largest by area, but it's the only one that complains because it's not a state. The license-plate logo is meant to be a protest that D.C. residents pay federal taxes but don't elect voting representatives to Congress.

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A corruption scandal involving sexual misconduct, nepotism, retaliation against whistleblowers and lots of business-class travel has gripped the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East. It represents a new low for Unrwa and an indictment of the idea of an international agency dedicated to a single interest. But it's also a unique opportunity to see behind the curtain of a billion-dollar U.N. bureaucracy and phase it out.

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The Trump administration last week announced steps that could lead to the importation of prescription drugs from Canada, where prices are lower. It is a goal supported by President Trump, but long opposed by many Republicans.

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Ankara's hair-raising human-rights record, including an ongoing attempt to erase all vestiges of other religions and cultures in Turkey, is one reason that it has been prevented from realizing its long-standing dream of membership in the European Union. It does enjoy status, however, as a member of NATO, and remains a signatory to the 2007 "United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples," which reads in part:

"Indigenous peoples have the right to maintain and strengthen their distinct political, legal, economic, social and cultural institutions, while retaining their right to participate fully, if they so choose, in the political, economic, social and cultural life of the State. [Article 5]...

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Located along Italy's southern coastline in the region of Calabria, near the very tip of the boot-shaped Italian peninsula, the village of Bova Marina appears an unlikely place to witness Jewish history unfold.

The small town, home to just over 4,000 people, lies nestled between quiet beaches with stunning views of the Ionian Sea and rugged, untamed hills stretching out amid large tracts of agricultural farmland.

Quaint and rustic, like countless other diminutive Italian settlements in the area, there is little on the surface to suggest even the remotest connection with the people of Israel.

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