Showing posts with label Daled Amos. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Daled Amos. Show all posts

Thursday, November 12, 2020




This past election, once again the perpetual question that inevitably came up was about 'the Jewish vote': which candidate won it -- and why does it even matter? The Democrats consistently brag that they own the Jewish vote, while the Republicans just keep on claiming that they are just on the verge of acquiring it.

This bipartisan fight over the Jewish vote can be traced back to Herbert Hoover.

In their 2012 book "Herbert Hoover and The Jews," Rafael Medoff and Sonja Wentling propose that the Jewish vote became a thing in the leadup to the 1944 presidential election, when Roosevelt ran for his 4th term, against Thomas Dewey. 

A review of that book notes that in contrast to Franklin Delano Roosevelt, it was Hoover -- 10 years after he was voted out of office -- who stood up for European Jews. Hoover publicly advocated for the US to open its doors to Jewish refugees and repeatedly spoke out for Jews during the Holocaust years.

The book also reveals that although, at the time, Rabbi Stephen Wise and the Jewish leadership were wary of Republican politicians in general and of Hoover in particular, Republicans such as
Hoover himself, Senator Robert Taft and Congresswoman Clare Boothe Luce espoused strongly pro-Zionist and pro-rescue planks that were incorporated into the Republican convention’s 1944 platform. Only this threat to their monopoly of the “Jewish vote,” Medoff and Wentling argue, forced FDR and the Democrats to adopt similar planks, which have ever since remained unshakable for both parties. [emphasis added]
But why would anyone ever bother with the Jewish vote to begin with? After all, for a voting bloc, there is not a lot to recommend it:
Jews are about 1.5% of the American population
o  That percentage is about half of what it was 50 years ago
o  And this percentage is continuing to shrink
o  As a bloc, it is not even unified -- with religious Jews tending to vote Republican and non-religious voting Democratic
o  While the vast majority of Jews support Israel, come election time Israel does not rank as a major issue
So what is the big deal?

In a 2016 video, Jonathan Sarna, a professor of American Jewish history at Brandeis, listed some of the reasons why politicians vie over the Jewish vote, even despite its small size:
Despite their small numbers, Jews turn out to vote in high numbers -- according to one estimate, 85% of all eligible Jews vote in presidential elections
o  Jews historically contribute large amounts of money to political parties -- both Democratic and Republican.
o  Jews happen to live in key states that presidential candidates want to carry, such as Florida
o  There are indications that the Democratic party is moving away from Israel, which may present an opportunity for Republicans to capture more of the Jewish vote


Four years earlier, in a 2012 article, Shmuel Rosner added another reason why politicians consider  is important, and why the attention to the Jewish vote is out of proportion to its numbers:
One would say it's the influence that Jews have in the media and their solid presence in notable positions. Others would point to their presence in celebrity circles and the arts, while still others would look to the over-representation of Jews in American politics, as advisors, consultants, pollsters, analysts and elected officials.

But you can really just call it the bellwether factor. Jews are seen as major political players because they believe that their vote really counts, because they project self-importance. They might not tip elections, but they appear as if they can. 
Going further back to 2010, Pew Research found indications that the perpetual prediction of Republican gains among the Jewish vote might actually be happening:
The religious landscape is far more favorable to Republicans than was the case as recently as 2008. Half of white non-Hispanic Catholics (50%) currently identify with or lean toward the Republican Party, up nine points since 2008. Among religiously unaffiliated voters, who have been stalwart supporters of Democrats in recent elections, 29% currently identify with or lean toward the Republican Party, up from 25% in 2008 (the proportion identifying as Democrats has fallen seven points since then). And 33% of Jewish voters identify with or lean toward the Republican Party, up from 20% in 2008. [emphasis added]
In a different article, Rosner finds indications that Jews are not actually trending Republican -- they are trending libertarian, meaning that losses in the Democratic share of the Jewish vote are not necessarily translating straight into Republican gains.

But either way, Democrats cannot take the Jewish vote for granted anymore -- despite what they may say publicly.

In 2006, a Washington Post featured an article Future of Orthodox Jewish Vote Has Implications for GOP, based not only on the conservative views of Orthodox Jews, but also on their higher birth rate.

I’m not quite ready to buy this prediction. After all, who’s to say whether today’s Orthodox babies will grow up voting Republican, Democratic, Green, or Libertarian. (or whether today’s Orthodox babies will stay Orthodox, become Renewal rabbis, or even succumb the Jews for Jesus subway ads) Still, it’s an interesting assumption that Orthodox communities will always produce kids and adults who vote according to Jewish self-interest, narrowly defined.
Yeah, and who's to say whether the Democratic party will some day stand idly by as the radical left progressives of their party openly attacked not only Israel but also accuse Israel's supporters of dual loyalty?

Then there is the argument on how to even define, and measure, the Jewish vote.

Yossie Hollander, chairman of the Israeli Institute for Economic Planning, claims Contrary to popular belief, most US Jews support Trump.

His reasoning?
No one is counting the Jewish vote correctly because they are overlooking certain components of the American Jewish population:
o  Israelis who emigrate to the US and are citizens with voting rights -- estimates of the size of this group range from 600,000 to one million. Pollsters do not know how to reach and measure this group and manage to measure only a very small percentage of it.

o  The ultra-Orthodox -- while people talk about them as a political component of the Jewish vote, Hollander writes that because the percentage of their children is relatively higher compared to the average population, the number of eligible voters is not the same ratio as in other populations, and so they end up not being surveyed.

o  Immigrants from the former Soviet Union and their children -- there are about 350,000 of them and for a variety of reasons, they are rarely surveyed.

o  The "Southwest Belt" -- Over the past 30 years, there has been massive immigration in US population centers from the north to areas in Orange County California, San Diego County, Nevada, Arizona, Texas, Atlanta, and Florida. Jews are part of this migration, and as a result, the Jewish communities there are growing rapidly, mostly in conservative areas. According to Hollander, most polling models still use the old population model. 
That is a criticism of the methodology behind the polls.
 Compare that with political consultant Jeff Ballabon, who takes a more sociological approach and compares the Jewish vote with the Irish vote.
Ever notice that no one talks about politicians going after "the Irish vote?"
To be statistically meaningful or politically relevant, a characteristic must impact voting behavior. For example, there are almost 35 million Americans of Irish descent, but it’s been decades since presidential campaigns engaged in sustained Irish voter outreach. That’s because it’s long been difficult to distinguish anything sufficiently unique – identifiably Irish - about their political behavior. Most vote precisely as their education, profession, income, and zip code alone would predict. The exceptions tend to be active, practicing Catholics who elevate concerns relevant to their faith...

The use of the term “Jewish” interchangeably to mean both ethnicity (like “Irish”) and faith (like “Catholic”) obfuscates it, but the same phenomenon is true for America’s Jews.  [emphasis added]
According to Ballabon, a large segment of American Jews, like Irish Americans, are arguably not uniquely Jewish in their own political behavior:
The American Left seethes with enmity towards President Trump and is thoroughly wedded to the Democrats. The vast majority of Jews who follow suit proudly confirm that they do so as progressives with universal concerns; not parochially – not as part of a “Jewish Vote.” Even when they profess concern over antisemitism, it’s glaringly limited to those alleged by progressives to be malefactors. [emphasis added]
Whether radical groups put the word "Jewish" in their name or name their group after a popular saying in Pirkei Avot, that often appears to be the full extent of their identification with their fellow Jews.

Meanwhile, as for the latest fight for bragging rights to the Jewish vote, the results of this last presidential election seem to validate that the Jewish vote is no longer limited to being a Democratic cheerleading squad.

While Biden easily got the majority of the Jewish vote -- there are indications that Trump improved his numbers for the Jewish vote, which made it possible to win the state of Florida, where an AP exit poll indicated he received 43% of the Jewish vote compared to 56% for Biden. Nationally, exit polls indicated Trump received the highest percent of the Jewish vote for a Republican in decades (30%), while the Jewish vote for Biden was low for a Democrat (68%).

There are hints that the conservative element of the Jewish vote may finally be coming into its own -- and the same Jewish vote that helped Biden in some states was successfully siphoned off by Trump to win others.

But at what cost is the Jewish vote being split?

For Jewish liberals, Trump is an ally of antisemites and a proto-authoritarian whose character and conduct, statements mark him as a unique threat to democracy. They can’t understand why even one Jew would consider voting for him.

...It’s not for nothing that the Jewish Democratic Council has produced ads that more or less accuse Trump of being a Nazi and, despite the offensive nature of these analogies, have found them resonating with many liberal Jews.
Tobin points out that Jews, like the rest of America, are divided into 2 political cultures which feed off of different circles on social media -- circles that usually don't include the other side. The overwhelming majority of non-Orthodox Jews identify with the social justice agenda of the Democratic Party and think it forms the core of Judaism and place it higher as a priority than support for Israel. On the other hand, Orthodox Jews, and non-Orthodox Jews who identify as politically conservative, see support for Israel as a decisive issue.

At home, the Orthodox and conservative groups don't see Trump’s embrace of nationalism as a threat. Instead, they see it as the best way to defend Jews against the antisemitism of the intersectional left which is assuming a more prominent and vocal role in the Democratic Party. 

Even Jews who are members of the same, educated classes who find Trump so offensive, share the distrust that the working-class has for the mainstream media that made it their mission to defeat him, working together with the liberal social media to censor conservative views and unflattering stories about Democrats.
The choice boils down to how much value you place on having a president who may be flawed, but is historically pro-Israel and supportive of a conservative political agenda, as opposed to the cherished hope of Trump opponents: that a moderate liberal like Biden can restore a sense of pre-2016 normalcy, while also keeping in check the Democrats’ radical wing.
In comparison with everything we hear about the need to address the divide between American Jews and Israelis, this developing rift within the Jewish community itself, as reflected by the split in the Jewish vote, is being overlooked. 

But it is unlikely to go away.


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Monday, November 02, 2020



A couple of weeks ago, Stacey Matthews -- who also writes under the pseudonym Sister Toldjah -- wrote a post for Legal Insurrection, NC Gov. Roy Cooper Caught on Hot Mic Telling Joe Biden They’ll Drag Cal Cunningham Over Finish Line. Cunningham is the Democratic Senate nominee for North Carolina who, despite a scandal, may win his election anyway.

That is the opinion of North Carolina's Democratic Governor Roy Cooper, who was overheard on a hot mic as he assured Joe Biden:
“I think we’re gonna all get across the line. I think Cal’s gonna get across the line, too. I know that’s frustrating. We’ll get him across.” [emphasis added]
There was a time when scandals had consequences, but Cunningham is laying low for the duration of his campaign and may just win.

Speaking of Joe Biden, there is no clear indication of what effect the questions surrounding his son Hunter will have on the presidential election. Like Cunningham, Joe Biden has not mounted a counter-attack against the accusations.

Then again, why should he?

The only thing getting more attention than the apparent scandal surrounding Biden's son, is the transparent attempt of the media -- both social and mainstream -- to bury the issue.

Writing last week about Glenn Greenwald's resignation from The Intercept, which Greenwald helped found, Matt Taibi reports on pressure for journalists to help the Democrats cross the finish line:
In the last few weeks I’ve heard from multiple well-known journalists going through struggles in their newsrooms, with pressure to avoid certain themes in campaign coverage often central to their worries. There are many reporters out there — most of them quite personally hostile to Donald Trump — who are grating under what they perceive as relentless pressure to publish material favorable to the Democratic Party cause.
We'll soon see how successful that pressure has been.

Putting domestic politics aside, there is an apparent effort, on an international level, to help an old favorite finally cross the finish line.

In an exclusive interview with Al-Monitor, the Permanent Observer of Palestine to the United Nations, Riyad Mansour, sounded upbeat about the interest of the world community in participating in the suggested conference due to take place after the inauguration of a new US president in 2021.

The Security Council discussions revealed near-unanimous support for the initiative presented by Abbas at the UN General Assembly on Sept. 25. [emphasis added]
France has come out in support of The Abraham Accords, saying that while preferring a two-state solution, they are open to other possibilities, if both sides agree.


The US of course is fully in support of The Abraham Accords and has made a point of letting Abbas know that the Palestinian Authority is no longer going to get a free ride.

Nevertheless, according to Al-Monitor:
Comments at the Security Council session showed that France, Germany, Belgium, China and others all spoke in support of the conference. Even the United States and Israel, who are opposed to the idea, were forced to engage with the concept and take it seriously in their deliberation.
Just what "forced to engage" means is not clear.

U.S. Ambassador Kelly Craft was skeptical that a conference would produce results, but said the Trump administration, Israel’s closest and most important ally, was open to the possibility raised by Abbas.

“We have no objection to meeting with international partners to discuss the issue. But I have to ask, how is this different than every other meeting convened on this issue over the past 60 years?” she asked the council.

Israel’s new U.N. Ambassador Gilad Erdan opposed the Palestinian call, accusing Abbas of refusing “every peace offer made by the state of Israel” and attacking Israel’s recent agreements with the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain and Sudan instead of viewing them as “a new opportunity to kick-start negotiations.”
The fact is that there is no indication that there is anything new being offered here. 

Is this a serious attempt to achieve a two-state solution or just an attempt to help Abbas out of a jam, 'saving' him from having to make the kinds of concessions required for peace, and failing to do so -- proving how irrelevant he really is?

What makes all of this possible of course are the presidential elections this week.

This conference is only feasible if Biden becomes president, since he would be expected to support this old, failed approach to peace.

Joe Biden, as Obama's vice president, would never have seen the potential of diplomacy that would focus on the benefits of normalizing relations between Israel and Arab countries. During the Obama administration, their foreign policy achievements were restoring diplomatic relations with Myanmar and Cuba while strengthening Iran.

As president, Biden (and Kamala Harris) would be amenable to the insistence of the progressive wing of the Democratic party to take up the cause of the Palestinian Arabs -- something not at the top of the agenda of the Gulf states.

Also, there is every reason to believe that Biden, and Harris would push for relaxing sanctions on Iran and for the re-establishment of the Iran deal in one form or another which would only set much of the Arab world on edge and help to push many of those Arab countries into the arms of Israel, to begin with.

The future of the Middle East will depend to a great extent on this week's elections and on Europe's old habits and knee-jerk response to the region, as it attempts to save Abbas and the Palestinian Authority from the changing Arab world.



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Friday, October 30, 2020

By Daled Amos

On October 17, Natalie Hopkinson -- an associate professor at Howard University -- wrote a glowing opinion piece in The New York Times on antisemite Louis Farrakhan. Entitled The Women Behind the Million Man March, the article recounts the role played by Cora Masters Barry, wife of then DC Mayor Marion Barry, in mobilizing the women who played a significant role in the success of the march.

Hopkinson notes that
A key supporter of the event was Marion Barry, who had just returned to the Washington mayor’s office after a stint in federal prison. [emphasis added]
Nothing, however, is mentioned of Farrakhan's Jew-hatred and homophobia.

If you read the oped and knew nothing about Farrakhan, you would think he was a gentleman.
When criticism was made of this whitewash of Farrakhan, Hopkinson responded by reminding her critics that she is a 'scholar':

But Hopkinson was just warming up, falling back on Black oppression and negating the oppression of others:



Rafael Medoff, the founding director of The David Wyman Institute for Holocaust Studies, compares Hopkinson's depiction of Farrakhan with the New York Times interview that Anne O'Hare McCormick did in 1933, Hitler Seeks Jobs for All Germans.

Medoff points out that Hitler did not waste any time persecuting Germany's Jews once he took office:
During Hitler’s first months in power, there was extensive coverage in the American press of his anti-Jewish policies, such as the mass firing of Jews from their jobs, public burnings of books by Jewish authors, and sporadic anti-Semitic mob violence. To counter this negative attention, Hitler in July 1933 granted Anne O’Hare McCormick of the New York Times his first exclusive interview with an American reporter since becoming chancellor of Germany.
To her credit, McCormick did in fact take the opportunity to ask about Germany's treatment of its Jews -- but did not follow up when her subject replied:
"It is true we have made discriminatory laws, but they are directed not so much against the Jews as for the German people, to give equal economic opportunity to the majority.

"You say the Jews suffer, but so do millions of others. Why should not the Jews share the privations which burden the entire nation?
According to Medoff, unlike Hopkinson's devotion to Farrakhan, there is no indication that McCormick was actually sympathetic to her subject and his views.

But the fact remains that in both cases, favorable pieces in The New York Times contributed to positive images for their subjects -- and only McCormick bothered to attempt a balanced article.

These days, whitewashing hate -- especially hatred of Jews -- seems to be in style.

This month, Jordan deported terrorist Nizar Tamimi, husband of Hamas terrorist Ahlam Tamimi, the mastermind of the Sbarro massacre. He is now in Qatar. Meanwhile, Ahlam Tamimi, whom Jordan has refused to extradite to the US despite their extradition treaty, risks the possibility of being apprehended and being turned over to the US if she leaves to join her husband.

What is a terrorist to do?

You turn to the media -- in this case, the always obliging BBC, whose program 'Trending' featured a whitewashing of the terrorist couple by BBC Arabic’s Rania ‘Attar:
Not once during the entire 6 minutes of broadcast could one detect the slightest hint of criticism towards either of the two from BBC Arabic. The social media solidarity campaign supporting them was uncritically portrayed as a matter of freedom of speech for the weak and persecuted. No less notable were the selective omissions from the couple’s violent history: the programme referred to Ahlam as though she was merely “accused of involvement” in the Jerusalem bombing (despite her own public admission of the crime) and failed to mention the reason for Nizar’s imprisonment at all.

The programme, entitled “#Jordan: Ahlam_Tamimi_Your_Voice_is_Loud_and_Clear”, was hosted by BBC Arabic’s Rania ‘Attar; one of Trending’s regular presenters. Describing the Tamimis as “freed detainees from Israeli prisons”, ‘Attar told her audience how the two met in the halls of an Israeli military court, got engaged while in prison and married once they were both released in the 2011 Gilad Shalit prisoner exchange, against a background of sentimental pictures of their newfound life in Amman, Jordan.

The BBC host continued with the latest developments in the couple’s story, explaining that Jordan had not renewed “detainee” Nizar’s permit to reside in the kingdom with his wife (herself a Jordanian citizen), resulting in his expulsion to Qatar earlier this month. She then quoted Nizar’s brother Mahmoud who claimed that the decision to expel the husband was related to the American extradition request currently pending against his wife and that the family considers it an indirect Jordanian acquiescence to American dictates.

Next it was explained what had triggered the social media campaign which gave the programme its hashtag-style name. Last Tuesday a radio host was supposedly documented censoring Tamimi as she was on air, making her plea to King ‘Abdullah II to let her husband back into Jordan. The Jordanian-Palestinian solidarity campaign which followed used the hashtag “#Ahlam_Tamimi_Your_Voice_is_Loud_and_Clear”. Among the many comments shown, ‘Attar featured those that praised Tamimi as a woman “of great value” and “honour”, whose story should be heard by “everyone”.

The host concluded the programme with a full, uncensored video of Ahlam Tamimi addressing the King for a second time. Only afterwards were viewers made aware of what ‘Attar referred to as “the main landmarks of Ahlam’s life”, with the following statements being used to elaborate on her terrorist activity:
“First woman to join al-Qassam battalions, Hamas’s military wing […]

“She was accused of involvement in the ‘Sbarro’ restaurant bombing in Jerusalem […]

“In 2013, American Department of Justice ranked her on the list of ‘most dangerous wanted terrorists’, under the accusation of conspiring to kill Americans in the ‘Sbarro’ restaurant bombing in Jerusalem”
While the program was first broadcast on October 8th, protests against the program finally led to its being removed from Facebook, Twitter and YouTube on October 16th and from the BBC Arabic website itself on October 19th.

Following an editorial review we found that this segment was in breach of our editorial guidelines and we removed the clip from our digital platforms last week. We accept that the segment should not have been shown and apologise for the offence caused.
This example of BBC moral deafness is matched only by Sarah Montague, the presenter of BBC’s Radio 4 Today program. Back on August 12, 2001, Montague called Arnold Roth -- whose daughter was one of Tamimi's victims. The family was sitting Shiva.
Montague asked whether Roth would be willing to come onto Radio 4 Today by phone the following morning to be in a two-sided interview with a man called al-Masri, the father of the human bomb [who carried out the Sbarro massacre]. This would enable the audience to hear “the two sides” of the atrocity. [emphasis added]
Two sides?
Only if you believe that a terrorist who targets children in a pizzeria is another man's freedom fighter.

But how about if you just hijack airplanes?

On August 29, 1969, Leila Khaled was a member of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), the terrorist group that hijacked TWA Flight 840 from Rome to Tel Aviv, diverting it to Damascus.

On September 6, 1970, Leila Khaled and an accomplice, attempted to hijack El Al Flight 219 from Amsterdam to New York City as part of a series of almost simultaneous hijackings carried out by the PFLP:
Soon after takeoff, [pilot Uri] Bar-Lev and his co-pilot got word that two terrorists were hijacking the plane. They had shot and gravely wounded an El Al flight attendant and had put a gun to the head of another, demanding to be let into the cockpit, which Bar-Lev had immediately locked.
Bar-Lev saved the passengers by putting the plane into a steep dive. Khaled was captured -- and later released by Great Britain in a hostage exchange.

Fast-forward to 2020.

On September 23, Leila Khaled was scheduled to give a talk at San Francisco State University, entitled “Whose Narratives? Gender, Justice, & Resistance.” Khaled was helpfully described as a "Palestinian feminist, militant and leader."

In the end, the talk was stopped by Zoom and Facebook, right at the point where Khaled said "people have the right to fight those who occupy their land by any means possible, including weapons," and despite multiple attempts to hold the talk online since then, so far it has continued to be (mostly) blocked.

Associate professor Rabab Abdulhadi, director of the Arab and Muslim Ethnicities and Diasporas Initiative (AMED) was to be the moderator -- and at this point, Abdulhadi's comments defending having a terrorist speak to the students is predictable:
Abdulhadi claimed the outrage over her invitation to Khaled was manufactured by the "Israel Lobby Industry," and said opposition to her was "catering to donors, catering to the right-wing agenda and catering to Islamophobia." Abdulhadi doubled down on her comments later on in the video, stating that the university president "only talked to Zionists, only talked to one brand."

"The university is participating in a very discriminatory, racist, defamatory, smearing campaign by the Zionist bullies and their right-wing, neoliberal and wealthy allies," Abdulhadi said. She also claimed the talk with Khaled was only canceled because of the university's desire to retain wealthy Jewish donors, alleging the school's president told donors she would "crush the Palestinians" and "crush AMED studies."
The reason for the opposition to giving a podium to a terrorist is stated in a September 17 letter from 86 organizations, a letter Abdulhadi avoids addressing:
We fully acknowledge that faculty members like Prof. Abdulhadi have every right, as private citizens, to express anti-Zionist views and engage in anti-Zionist activism. However, we believe Abdulhadi's continuous and intentional use of her SFSU position and the name and resources of the University to indoctrinate students with her own personal animus towards the Jewish state and its supporters and to promote anti-Israel activism, does not constitute a legitimate use of academic freedom, but an abuse of it.
The full letter points to a few of Abdulhadi's AMED activities, such as:
In 2013, AMED co-sponsored an on-campus event that involved students using stencils to create placards and T-shirts with the image of a keffiyeh-clad Leila Khaled holding an AK-47 rifle accompanied by the message, “Resistance is Not Terrorism,” and other stencils with the message, “My Heroes Have Always Killed Colonizers.” In the wake of public outrage over the event’s unambiguous lionizing of a convicted terrorist and promotion of terrorism against Israel, Prof. Abdulhadi defended the event as a legitimate use of academic freedom. [emphasis added]

The BBC's fawning coverage of Hamas terrorist Ahlam Tamimi and Abdulhadi's manipulation of terrorist hijacker Leila Khaled as a resistant icon is reminiscent of the episode of Rasmea Odeh, who was convicted in 1970 and imprisoned in Israel for 10 years for the supermarket bombing in Jerusalem which killed 2 Hebrew University students --  Edward Joffe and Leon Kanner. 

Odeh later lied about her conviction when she entered the US and was eventually convicted of immigration fraud and deported from the US -- but not before she became a cause celebre and described by The Rasmea Defense Committee as an “icon of the Palestine liberation movement.”

It is one thing to give Hitler a pass, or to whitewash Farrakhan -- but in the case of Ahlam Tamimi, BBC Arab deliberately hid facts from its audience, such as Tamimi's pride when she actually admitted to the murder of innocent schoolchildren. It is not clear if the goal of the program was

 And in the cases of Leila Khaled and Rasmea Odeh, there is an attempt to go a step further and to not only use terrorists to energize protest against Israel but also use their public appearances to encourage outright hatred.

Taken in the context of the increase in antisemitic rhetoric from within the progressive wing of the Democratic party and the rise in the number of antisemitic attacks by radicals on both the right and the left, Jews will continue to be a target in the US.



We have lots of ideas, but we need more resources to be even more effective. Please donate today to help get the message out and to help defend Israel.

Tuesday, October 20, 2020

By Daled Amos

After writing my last post, Not your father's Middle East, I came across an article in Al-Monitor -- For Arab youth, the future is in the Gulf. It makes the same point made by Zvi in the comments to my post, namely that the Arab youth wants change, and sees the UAE as the example to follow in that direction.

Earlier this month, a Dubai public relations company acdaa-bcw, published a survey of Arab youth -- here defined as being between the ages 18 to 24, which according to the report number over 200 million people.

According to the survey, it is
the largest of its kind of the region’s largest demographic, and covers five of the Gulf Cooperation Council states (Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Saudi Arabia and the UAE), North Africa (Algeria, Egypt, Libya, Morocco, Sudan and Tunisia), and the Levant (Jordan, Iraq, Lebanon, Palestinian Territories, Syria and Yemen). [p. 6]
In the survey, Afshin Molavi, a Senior Fellow at the Foreign Policy Institute of the Johns Hopkins University, writes that the results of the survey remind him of the fall of the Soviet Union, after which:
the historian John Lukacs famously said, “the isms have all become wasms.” I am reminded of this line as I reflect on the 12th Annual ASDA’A BCW Arab Youth Survey, a remarkable annual barometer of youth sentiments across a vital part of the world. For many young Arabs, it seems, the idea of an ‘-ism’ - an all-encompassing ideology to solve their problems - seems almost as anachronistic as a landline telephone. Pragmatism, not ideological ‘isms’, rules the day among young Arabs, and in an era of pandemic-driven insecurity and political upheaval, this essential fact offers us hope for the region’s future. [p. 28]
Time will tell whether Molavi's comparison pans out, but the poll results do indicate a potentially dynamic shift in where the Middle East is headed.

And in the survey, the model that the Arab youth point to as the example for a better life and a better future is the United Arab Emirates -- for the 9th straight year.

Al-Monitor points to the events that would have formed the experiences of those who took the poll, and what they would have missed:
The oldest of the Arab youth cohort would have been born in 1996. This means they missed the Iranian revolution and the Iran-Iraq war, the Egyptian and Jordanian peace agreements with Israel, the first Palestinian intifada, and the Lebanese and Algerian civil wars, and probably have only the vaguest memories, if any at all, of Saddam Hussein’s tyranny in Iraq and his overthrow in 2003 or the second intifada, to name just a few of the seminal events that shaped the region.

This cohort’s formative memories are instead of the Arab Spring uprisings of 2011, the wars in Syria, Yemen and Libya, the coronavirus pandemic, and governing elites who seem to be doing more than fine themselves and stay in power for really long periods of time, but are unable to provide jobs, pick up the trash or keep the electricity running for the citizens they supposedly serve.
That Arab Spring may have fizzled, but it did have an effect -- and young Arabs may be protesting again against the status quo:
Following the events of the Arab Spring, when young Arabs in many countries took to the streets, calling for reforms and an end to corruption, four nations witnessed a change in government – Egypt, Libya, Tunisia and Yemen. Eight years later, 2019 recorded a similar surge in youth-led protests, especially in Algeria, Iraq, Lebanon and Sudan, once again, leading to changes in leadership. 

When asked specifically, to young people in these four nations, 82 per cent of young people in Lebanon, 89 per cent each in Algeria and Iraq, and 88 per cent in Sudan said they supported the anti-government protests. 

Young Arabs in Iraq (82 per cent) are most optimistic that the protests will lead to real positive change. [p. 19]
The survey also covers how young Arabs feel about the Palestinian issue:
One in four (25 per cent) young Arabs said resolving the Palestinian-Israeli conflict must be a top consideration, while encouraging technological innovation was cited as a key driver of progress by more than one in five (22 per cent) young Arabs. [p. 25]
When asked to rank their priorities, corruption and jobs ranked as more important, while defeating terrorism was equally important.

So what about the Abraham Accords?

The survey does not cover reaction to the Abraham Accords. Al-Monitor also points out that 
The survey took place before the UAE normalized ties with Israel, but the guess here is that that decision is unlikely to dent the positive perception of the Emirates among youth. The Palestinian issue still holds sway in Egypt, Jordan and Lebanon as a top foreign policy priority, not so in the Gulf, where concerns about Iran dominate, according to polling by David Pollack of the Washington Institute for Near East Policy last year.
That is likely true.

In any case, events seem to be leading in a direction that will bring prosperity -- and peace -- in the Arab world.

There was a time when we thought of Arab in-fighting as a good thing, as something that kept the Arab world divided and less of a threat against Israel. But real peace in the Arab world, especially the kind that sees Israel as an ally for peace and prosperity -- and not just as a military ally against the Iranian threat -- could be even better for Israel in the long term.




We have lots of ideas, but we need more resources to be even more effective. Please donate today to help get the message out and to help defend Israel.

Monday, October 19, 2020


  
What do the UAE and Bahrain get out of the Abraham Accords?

Putting aside an ally against the threat of Iran there are benefits in terms of trade and commerce.

And technology.

WIRED quotes Kushal Shah, of the consulting company Roland Berger on how the UAE, already an innovation hub in the MidEast, benefits from the agreement:
“The Israel tech sector is super advanced, so obtaining some of that knowhow—the sharing of studies, research and development—will help expand and improve the UAE’s talent pool. Education for the UAE tech sector will be massive. The post-grad learning opportunities are substantial.”
But while Israel is an acknowledged leader in global technology, it's not as if Israel is late to the game.

Yehoshafat Harkabi wrote a doctoral thesis a month before the outbreak of the 1967 Six Day War. It was later published and then appeared in English as Arab Attitudes To Israel. In a chapter on Israel, he has a section on Favourable and Ambivalent References.

In the introduction to his book, Harkabi writes:
The Arab attitude to Israel is, of course, affected by the vicissitudes of time and war can certainly change public attitudes and make descriptions of previous situations out of date. It seems, however, that my description of the attitude is still valid. [p. xv; all quotes are from the English edition]
Let's see if Harkabi is right.

He writes that the many pejorative Arab statements he quotes in his book are not the whole story. Instead, there were statements made in the Arab world that praised Israel and presented it as a model to be imitated. In 1955, no less than Nasser himself recommended in a speech in Gaza:
All I ask of you is to persevere, and unite, and act, and be patient, and take an example and a lesson. [emphasis added; p. 337]
A lesson in what?

Harkabi sums it up that in the Arab praises of Israel,
major prominence is given to her efficiency and modernity, her achievements in technology and science, her thorough planning instead of improvisation. Israel stands for dynamic enterprise and achievement. [emphasis added]
Of course, these compliments are not for the sake of praising Israel, but rather to point out attributes that the Arabs should imitate -- especially the Palestinian Arabs. Harkabi refers to Arnold Hottinger's book, The Arabs: Their History, Culture and Place in the Modern World where he writes of the Palestinian Arabs that they view Israel's victory in 1948 as being because of her modernity, an ideal to be imitated.

This recognition of Israeli accomplishments in science and technology even led to arguments among the Arabs themselves.

In 1962, The Syrian prime minister, Nazim al-Qudsi spoke to students and noted the high percentage of engineers and physicians in Israel -- and emphasized the need for Syria and other Arab countries to follow suit. For that, he was severely criticized by Cairo Radio and the Egyptian press.

A Damascus Radio commentator snapped back:
Qudsi drew the attention of the Arab nation to the truth: Israel our enemy is not--as Nasserist propaganda describes her--weak and unstable in her social structure; she is a State with various possibilities and human potential. By revealing this truth, Qudsi is stimulating the Arabs to comprehensive action and progress in all fields. [p. 337]
Aref al-Aref, a journalist, historian and former mayor of East Jerusalem, wrote in his book The Disaster about how Jews study and delve into matters. Similarly, Walid Qamhawi -- who later led the Palestinian National Fund -- praises Israel numerous times in his book Disaster and Reconstruction. [p. 338]

So, no, Israel did not just suddenly appear on the world stage as a modern leader in technology.
And it's not as if the Arab world is only now recognizing that fact and wanting to emulate it -- the same attitude of admiration for Israeli technological prowess existed back then too.

So why is it only now that countries in the Arab world, including those who already have covert relations with Israel, willing to step forward to sign agreements -- and even normalize relations -- with Israel?

One reason, of course, is the threat of Iran

But another reason is how the Middle East has changed.

In the course of a wide-ranging interview he did back in August with Yishai Fleisher, Dr. Mordechai Kedar explains the Abraham Accords against the background of Middle East history over the past 30+ years.

Dr. Kedar notes how radical leaders such as Abdul Nasser of Egypt, Hafez Al-Assad of Syria, Saddam Hussein of Iraq and Muammar Gaddafi of Libya once dominated the Middle East, under the aegis of the then Soviet Union and wanted to unite the Arab world.

In such a situation, more-traditional Arab countries such as Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Kuwait and Oman felt under threat from these radical leaders who considered those countries as counter-revolutionaries because they stuck with the old traditions and did not actively partake in their attacks on Israel.

But now, over the past 10 years, things have changed.
The Arab countries that once were in the forefront, no longer are.
Syria is suffering from a bloodbath
o  Iraq is dysfunctional
o  Libya is a swamp of problems
o  Egypt has its own problems with the Nile, rapid population growth and unemployment
Under such conditions, the dream of Arab nationalism has been a failure.
And Israel is not the enemy anymore.

Egypt made peace, albeit a cold one, with Israel.
Likewise, Jordan has a 'cold' peace with Israel.

Between Egypt and Jordan on the one hand, and these dysfunctional states on the other, Saudi Arabia and the other traditional countries feel free to pursue their own interests -- and those interests include living in peace, developing their countries and preparing the day when their oil runs out.

That means working with those countries that are leading the way in progress.
And that means working with Israel.

That segment begins at 22:54 below automatically.

  

That is quite a change.

But this is not to say that the road to real peace is certain and secure.

It is not.

Dr. Kedar points out that during the 1990's, both Qatar and Tunisia had good relations with Israel to the extent that Israel opened commercial offices in those countries flying the Israeli flag. Those were not embassies, but they were still official.

Both countries canceled their agreements with Israel following the outbreak of the second intifada.

An agreement can be breached.
It remains to be seen whether the Abraham Accords will meet expectations.



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Tuesday, October 13, 2020

By Daled Amos

Movie star Gal Gadot is not a controversial movie actress, but she has attracted some controversy.

It started with Gadot's title role in the 2017 movie Wonder Woman, when it became an issue whether Gadot was white or a woman of color.

For its part, ComicBook.com alerted its followers that There IS A Person Of Color In The Lead Role:
Wonder Woman hits theaters tonight in some places, but there seems to be a misconception out there about the film's lead character, and it's frankly a bit absurd. So consider this a PSA -- if you will -- for those who have called out concerns about there being no person of color in the film.

It might come as a shock, but there are people of color in the film, and one of them is in the lead role.

Yep, with a quick google search, it turns out that Gal Gadot is not actually Caucasian, but is in fact Israeli. [emphasis added]

 

photo
Gal Gadot. Youtube screencap


Now Gadot is taking on a new and very different role -- and again there is controversy, this time over her being cast in the lead role of a movie about Cleopatra.



Typical of the response to the mistaken impression that Cleopatra was an Arab is an article in The Jerusalem Post -- which notes that Cleopatra was Greek, not Arab.

(On a side note, the article also points out that the above Sameera Khan is a former journalist for RT, who left the network after her enthusiastic praise for Stalin’s gulags)

But for me, the interesting part about the outcry for an Arab to portray Cleopatra is that it illustrates the lack of awareness of the actual connection of Egypt with Arabs and Islam -- and of Arab conquest and colonization both inside and outside the Middle East.

In his book, The Crisis of Islam, Bernard Lewis, touches upon the change in Egyptian identity after the Arab conquest: 
There can be few, if any, nations with a better claim to nationhood--a country sharply defined by both history and geography, with a continuous history of civilization going back for more than five thousand years [than Egypt]. But Egyptians have several identities, and for most of the last fourteen centuries, that is, since the Arab-Islamic conquest of Egypt in the seventh century and the subsequent Islamization and Arabization of the country, the Egyptian identity has rarely been the predominant one, yielding pride of place to the cultural and linguistic identity of Arabism and for most of their history, to the religious identity of Islam. [p. 19]
In another of his books, What Went Wrong? Lewis outlines in more detail the many other Muslim conquests:  
Seventh century: Muslim armies advancing from Arabia conquer Syria, Palestine, Egypt, and North Africa, all then part of Christendom

o  Eighth century: Muslim forces conquer Spain and Portugal and invade France

o  Ninth century: Muslims conquer Sicily and invade Italy, sack Ostia and Rome

o  Thirteenth century: the Tatars of the Golden Horde conquer Russia. After the Khan of the Golden Horde and his people convert to Islam. Russia, and much of Eastern Europe, are subject to Muslim rule -- until the late fifteenth century. Meanwhile, the Ottoman Turks conquer Anatolia, capture the ancient Christian city of Constantinople, invade and colonize the Balkan peninsula, and threaten the very heart of Europe, twice reaching as far as Vienna. [pages 4, 6]

 That's some list:

  • Syria (then under Christendom)
  • Palestine (then under Christendom)
  • Egypt (then under Christendom)
  • North Africa (then under Christendom)
  • Spain
  • Portugal
  • France
  • Sicily
  • Sacking Rome
  • Russia 
  • Anatolia
  • Constantinople
  • Balkans
  • Vienna

We know that the Muslim invasion of Europe was turned back, as Lewis himself describes tongue-in-cheek:

But again European Christendom was able to oust the invaders and again, now more successfully, to counter-attack against the realms of Islam. By this time the jihad had become almost entirely defensive--resisting the Reconquest in Spain and Russia, resisting the movements for national self-liberation by the Christian subjects of the Ottoman Empire, and finally as Muslims see it, defending the very heartlands of Islam against infidel attack. This phase has come to be known as imperialism. [Crisis, p35-36. emphasis added]
Apparently, Zionism is not the first nationalist self-liberation movement to be labeled 'imperialist' by the Muslim world.

As for the movie itself, will there be nearly as much excitement when they announce who will play the part of Marc Anthony?


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Friday, October 09, 2020



France is a card-carrying member of the European Union.
 
As such, there are certain basic positions that France shares with the EU -- such as the "two-state solution."

In fact, one year ago, Josep Borrell, the incoming EU foreign policy chief, made the EU position clear:
The European position is to defend the two-state solution. I hope this continues to be the EU position.
France has been equally clear as well.

Just last month, on September 24, France participated in a meeting in Amman, Jordan:
The Ministers of Foreign Affairs of Egypt, France, Germany and Jordan, met in Amman today to continue their coordination and consultation on means to advance the Middle East Peace Process towards a just, comprehensive and lasting peace. The meeting was attended by the EU Special Representative for the Middle East Peace Process.

The Ministers declared:

...We stress that the resolution of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict on the basis of the two-state solution, that ensures the emergence of an independent and viable Palestinian state on the basis of June 4, 1967 lines, living side by side a secure and recognized Israel, is the path to achieving comprehensive, enduring peace and regional security.
What a difference two weeks make!

On Wednesday, the French ambassador to Israel, Eric Danon, indicated that in light of the Abraham Accords, France was open to peace possibilities other than the two-state solution:
The envoy indicated that France prefers a two-state solution, but that doesn’t mean they can’t accept something else, adding that his country will accept any solution agreed upon by the Palestinians and the Israelis.
Clearly, France is not ready to dump the two-state solution altogether.

Also, it is clear that France is still supportive of the Palestinian Authority, the Palestinian Arabs and the idea of their having their own sovereign state.

But by the same token, France also recognizes that Trump has changed the rules, and unlike during the Obama administration, the Palestinian Arabs are no longer in the driver's seat:
The Palestinians must take into account their weak position on the international and Arab arenas, stressed Danon...They warned that Palestinians could lose everything now.
A French diplomatic in Paris confirmed that what was once the personal opinion of Danon was now becoming official French foreign policy:
French diplomacy is having a hard time putting all its weight on the two-state solution, as it becomes unrealistic on the ground,” the diplomat pointed out. “What the ambassador said is self-evident. That it is important to resume negotiations as soon as possible. The Palestinians have never been so weak. They could lose everything.” [emphasis added]

Why is France now suddenly seeing the light?

 It might be because of Frances's diplomatic relations with the Gulf states

France, one of the five veto-wielding members of the U.N. Security Council, has close ties with Gulf Arab states, in particular Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates, and rarely publicly criticizes internal political issues. [emphasis added]

And that includes Bahrain in addition to the UAE.

The UAE is also a major client for French weapons.

It would be in France's interests to support the UAE and Bahrain, not only in terms of the new agreements with Israel, but also to support the new potential for different options for peace.

So it is not just a matter of some countries wanting to ally themselves with Israel in order to get into Washington's good graces -- now there are advantages of allying with the Gulf states too. And if support for the Abraham Accords is the price to pay to reap the benefits of better relations and agreements with rich Arab states, it may not be just the smaller developing countries that see an opportunity.

Which is just one more way that Abbas's kleptocracy is left out in the cold.

Part of the goal of the Abraham Accords is to further weaken the PA.

Based on France's new stand -- that seems to be working.




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Tuesday, October 06, 2020

By Daled Amos


The mastermind of the Sbarro Massacre, responsible for 145 casualties and 15 deaths -- including 2 Americans -- is in the news again. Now the attempt to extradite Hamas terrorist Ahlam Tamimi from Jordan to the US focused on her husband, Nizan, who was deported and ended up in Qatar.

Apparently, the goal is to encourage Ahlam to leave Jordan to join him there. 

This way, the standoff between Jordan and the US would be brought to an end. Till now, Jordan has claimed that its extradition treaty with the US is invalid -- despite the fact that Jordan honored the treaty in 1995 to extradite terrorist Eyad Ismoil, a Jordanian national, for his part in the bombing of the World Trade Center in 1993.

So why not just deport Ahlam as well?

No Jordanian may be deported from the territory of the Kingdom.
While Ahlam is a Jordanian national and is protected by this clause in their Constitution, Nizar only has Palestinian citizenship, and is not. 

Not that this has stopped Jordan in the past.

In 1999, Jordan kicked 4 Hamas leaders out of the country, including Khaled Meshal, and Hamas spokesman Ibrahim Ghosheh -- also to Qatar.


But there is a big difference between deporting Nizan, the murderer of Chaim Mizrachi, and deporting his wife, the mastermind of the Sbarro massacre, and a popular celebrity in Jordan. Thus far, Tamimi has evaded justice. At one point, she was arrested by Interpol in 2017 for extradition to the US, but ended up spending only 1 day in prison. 

Deporting Nizan to Qatar, possibly in an attempt to lure Tamimi out of Jordan, might be easier.

Tamimi herself is aware of this. She is quoted by Quds Press:
The timing is very bad, but it seems that the Jordanian side is betting that I will join my husband to Qatar, and this is not at all possible, being there is a warrant with Interpol distributed at all airports around the world, for my extradition to Washington. [Google Translate from Arabic]
Benjamin Weil, director of the Project for Israel’s National Security, for the Endowment for Middle East Truth (EMET), echoed this in an interview with JNS:
On the one hand, Qatar doesn’t have an extradition treaty with the United States. On the other hand, she risks getting stopped by the Interpol on her way to Qatar. The United States has a lot of leverage over Jordan and was unsuccessful in extraditing her, despite its extradition treaty with the Jordanians.
Meanwhile, Tamimi is fighting to have Nizan returned to Jordan.

Currently, she has filed a complaint with the National Center for Human Rights in Jordan. As to why she would do this after her husband has been deported instead of doing so in an effort to prevent his deportation altogether, she offered this:
We could not do anything before the deportation of Nizar because the Jordanian authorities threatened to forcibly deport him to the Palestinian territories and hand him over to the Israelis. We did not want to repeat the same scenario of arrest and Israeli jails, so we had to comply.
The fact that Jordan is doing anything at all is in response to current US pressure.

In 2018, the Trump administration signed a five-year aid agreement with Jordan worth $6.4 billion, raising the annual amount of aid by $275 million to $1.3 billion. But while raising the amount of aid, the US has also been raising the stakes for Jordan. While the Trump administration has not been public and forceful in getting Tamimi extradited to the US to face justice, he has been increasingly willing to apply financial pressure.

During his confirmation hearing in June, Henry Wooster, Trump’s nominee for ambassador to Jordan, was asked about options for leverage to secure Tamimi from Jordan in order to bring her to justice:
US generosity to Jordan in Foreign Military Financing, as well as economic support and other assistance, is carefully calibrated to protect and advance the range of US interests in Jordan and in the region.
The current situation may be the most that the US can get out of Jordan, which is supposedly fearful of a backlash.

Will it be enough?


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Tuesday, September 29, 2020




One of the expected benefits of the Abraham Accord is that Arab support for the Palestinian Authority, especially financial support, would no longer be automatic. Ideally, that would pave the way towards the Palestinian leadership realizing the need to change strategy and actually show up at the negotiating table.

The PA got a kick in the pants a week before the official signing of the Abraham Accord, when they attempted to get the Arab League to publicly condemn the accord -- to no avail. Instead of condemning the agreement, the Arab League refused to even acknowledge the Abraham Accord might be against the Arab consensus.

The Palestinian government's funding dropped by half with respect to foreign aid in the first seven months of the year, from $500 million in 2019 to $255 million in 2020, dropping in Arab aid during the same period by 85% – from $267 million in 2019 to $38 million in 2020.
Part of the drop in Arab aid is because of Covid, but part of it is because Trump has explicitly asked the wealthier Arab countries not to send money to the Palestinian government.

But if developments in the Arab world are tending towards bigger financial problems for the PA, there are other developments outside of the Middle East that are promising even more problems.

We are long past the time when diplomats and the media threatened Israel with isolation if they did not make the 'necessary' unilateral concessions to the Palestinian Arabs. Instead, between Israel's various technological and medical advances combined with Netanyahu's diplomacy, Israel is making headway in international relations that seem to dwarf the successes that Abbas made not so long ago.

Aaron David Miller, a Middle East analyst, wrote last week about how the Abraham Accords confounded the predictions of the experts -- including himself. Miller credits Netanyahu with the diplomatic successes that have helped make this possible, such as:
o  In 2016, Benjamin Netanyahu became the first Israeli prime minister in decades to travel to East Africa, where he met with leaders in Ethiopia, Kenya, Rwanda and Uganda
o  In 2017, he became Israel’s first prime minister to visit South America
o  Israel has expanded trade relations in east Asia
o  Netanyahu has established closer ties with Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, who, in 2017, became the first Indian prime minister to visit Israel.
o  Israel now has better relations with all 5 permanent members of the UN Security Council 
(China, France, Russian Federation, the UK, and the US) than at any time in its history
o  MASHAV, Israel’s international development agency, has programs in medicine, agriculture and education in developing countries around the world
Miller's point is the possible implications this wave of Israel's diplomatic successes could have for Abbas and the Palestinian Authority:
It may be the case that some of these countries see cooperation with Jerusalem as a way to stay in Washington’s good graces, especially during the Trump years. But it also suggests that much of the international community is no longer prepared to tie their own interests to the Palestinian cause and that they see real advantage in dealing with and benefiting from Israel’s technology and expertise. 
Even in the EU, there are signs that Europe is waking up to how their money is being used. According to that Jerusalem Post article:
Last June, European Parliamentarians called for a thorough investigation into how European taxpayers’ money is ending up in the hands of Palestinian terrorists, insisting that any loopholes in the law through which the money is slipping must be closed.
Added to that is the new economic agreement between Serbia and Kosova -- with Serbia saying it would move its embassy to Jerusalem, and Kosovo (which is Muslim) ready to establish diplomatic ties. Both Serbia and Kosovo are working towards acceptance into the EU. If successful, they would join countries such as Hungary, Poland, the Czech Republic, and Slovakia who have been sympathetic to Israel.

This could be important, because joint statements issued by the European Union in the name of EU member states require unanimous agreement. Back in February, when the EU was looking for unanimous agreement on condemning Trump's peace plan -- Hungary and Austria, among others, blocked the move. As a result, instead of a powerful condemnation, the EU was reduced to a statement by High Representative for Foreign Affairs Josep Borrell -- alone.

Currently, the EU is making it clear they disapprove of Serbia's plans to move their embassy to Jerusalem. But even if Serbia gives in so that they will be accepted by the EU, this is still the addition of 2 states to the EU that could end up being part of a growing block within the EU that sympathizes with Israel.

That could further undercut the EU's support for the PA.

And Trump still has a month to go till the November elections.



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Thursday, September 24, 2020



With all of the original back-and-forth of the arguments over the Abraham Accords, we were treated to an array of claims that the peace agreement between Israel and the UAE--Bahrain is not such a big deal.

Maybe there is something to that. 

After all, consider Obama's disastrous deal with Iran and the role it played in creating the instability and outright fear that generated an incentive for Arab countries to develop ties with Israel. 

Indeed, one of the most unusual moments of my trip was to hear certain Arab security officials effectively compete with one another for who has the better relationship with Israel. In this regard, times have certainly changed. [emphasis added]
And the Democrats have made it clear they intend to re-establish the Iran Deal if Biden becomes president.

Not that peaceful Arab relations with Israel are impossible without distrust of bad US policy. After all, there have been levels of Israel-Arab diplomatic relations before Obama, and they existed without a need for US leaders to intercede.

The difference is that those diplomatic communications were carried out privately, behind the scenes.

In fact, they were successful enough that those private relations were offered as a reason against the Abraham Accords, as argued by Israeli activist Boaz Ha'etzni:
Ha’etzni points out that Israel always had relations with Jordan, since 1948, yet secret relations. And because they were secret, Israel never had to pay a price, until an official peace deal was made in 1994. Thanks to the deal, Israel then had to give away Israeli land [the Island of Peace, or Al-Baqoura] and hand over a huge amount of water each year to Jordan that hurts Israel during the drought years. In addition, since the deal was signed, Jordan has to prove to the Arab world and to its own citizens that peaceful relations with Israel is just a show. Hence, Jordan is one of the worst states in the UN always co-sponsoring and supporting anti-Israel resolutions. [emphasis added]
So what is the benefit of a public and official agreement like the Abraham Accord? 

In addition to the usual economic and military reasons for the accord, a key benefit is not about Arab states improving ties with Israel -- but rather improving ties with the US.

Full and normal relations with Israel raise the UAE and Bahrain to a new category: from “friendly Arab countries that sell us oil” to “best Arab friends of our own best friend, Israel.”

Not only does that strengthen the U.S. insurance policy, it also lines up the pro-Israel lobby in America on the side of the UAE and Bahrain. They’ve always had their own hired lobbyists in Washington, but they never had any grassroots support in America. Now they will.

It’s an upgrade, and it’s become a need-to-have in a time of American retrenchment. It’s also an open-sesame for bigger and better arms deals, and a deterrent against would-be aggressors, above all Iran. [emphasis added]
This is for the long term and goes beyond self-defense against Iran.

Another opinion goes even further in teasing out the US angle.

He says that although many talk about the Iranian context as the main motivation for the alliance created with Israel, and it is certainly possible that there is something to that, "but the Iranian interest is expressed in something much bigger," he says, explaining that the UAE as well as Bahrain and Saudi Arabia desperately want Trump re-elected next November "because if the Democrats return to power it will be a disaster for them. They will strengthen Iran, bring back the nuclear deal, and lift the sanctions. They're willing to give a lot for Trump to win. [emphasis added]
Just the threat of Joe Biden becoming president may have been enough to make peace possible.

If so, Obama and Biden are not the first Democrats to inspire the Arabs to derail their plans for the Middle East. In describing his trip to the Middle East, mentioned above, Satloff writes:
Arabs and Israelis (in that case, Anwar Sadat and Menachem Begin) came together to thwart President Jimmy Carter's international conference idea by pursuing an initiative on peacemaking on their own. 
At a conference on Sadat and His Legacy, Martin Indyk described the situation like this:
in 1977...the Carter administration was pushing to get the Syrians and Egyptians and everybody else to Geneva for an international conference. For Sadat, such a conference was anathema, because that meant that his policy would be tied to Syrian policy. Further, he believed the Syrians would never go to Geneva, there would never be a conference, and he would not be able to make the peace that he was so keen on making. He took a shortcut to Jerusalem as a way of diverting Washington from its purposes and getting it to back his purposes. [emphasis added]
Of course, like those Democratic presidents, Trump himself was now less intent on changing the region.

The first plan, the long awaited 'Deal of the Century,' was an attempt to obtain the elusive peace between Israel and the Palestinian Arabs.

And there is a reason that, despite, multiple plans and attempts, such a plan has remained elusive.

This time, by working with countries with an interest in a peace agreement -- regardless of the degree of enlightened self-interest involved -- there is a real potential for a change in attitude in the region.

And as part of that change lies the potential for changing the attitude of the Palestinian Arabs, and the Palestinian Authority -- now that the PA sees that neither the US nor a united Arab world is going to strongarm Israel for them.







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