Showing posts sorted by date for query obama. Sort by relevance Show all posts
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Friday, December 18, 2020

  • Friday, December 18, 2020
  • Elder of Ziyon
Attorney Ibrahim Shaban writes a regular column for Al Quds and often publishes about Palestinian issues in other media. 

Today he wrote an antisemitic piece for Al Quds which was picked up by other Arab media in which he takes it for granted that American Jews have dual loyalty to Israel. 

The phenomenon of American Jews who occupy high positions in successive American administrations raises questions about their loyalty to the American state or the Israeli state. 

The matter is not a rare phenomenon that occurs occasionally, but rather a rampant phenomenon that occurs frequently, but this phenomenon is rarely addressed, for fear of being accused of anti-Semitism, mainly, and the striking Jewish force.

A simple look at the new American administration explicitly [shows this issue.] Here is the proposed new US Secretary of State (Anthony Blinken) of Jewish descent, and he will take over the Middle East issue and the Palestinian issue mainly. And here is Mr. Ron Klein, the Jew, who has been proposed to take over the position of chief of staff of the White House, which has wide powers. And here is the husband of US Vice President Kamala Harris, Mr. Douglas Craig Imhoff, of similar origins. And here is Alejandro Majoras as a proposal for the US Department of Homeland Security. On the proposed list is Janet Yellen, incoming Treasury Secretary, and many more.

This administration followed the path of successive US administrations that preceded it, as if the American nation had not given birth and the American womb was sterile. As if the new and old American administration had not escaped the issue of dual loyalty to American Jews, it decided to ignore it and sweep it under the rug.

This article will not be expanded to refer to all American Jews who held high positions in successive American administrations after World War II to the present day, as this indicates an inventory. The talk of Jared Kushner, Greenblatt, the Zionist Friedman and other aides of Donald Trump, is still buzzing in my ears. Before them was Dennis Ross' Jewish staff who served the days of Clinton and Obama in the late 1990s and the Camp David negotiations during the days of the late Abu Ammar and his famous position regarding the Al-Aqsa Mosque.

And here is Henry Kissinger, the American academic, deceitful Jew in the seventies, who manipulated Sadat and served Zionism with all his power in the 1973 war. There are many ambassadors, Jewish experts, and even doctors, who were recruited to serve Zionism under the banner of Judaism. Loyalty mixed, mingled, and American interest lost in the midst of dual loyalty.

Someone might say, the Jews are a cultured, liberal, educated and democratic group, so why is this strange, envy and jealousy of their appointment in the American administrations? Or do Muslims, Catholics, Hindus and Brahmins not enjoy such opportunities, and no one is surprised? Didn't Ilhan Omar of Somali origin and Rashida Talib of Palestinian origin succeed in the US congressional elections? Didn't people of Asian roots succeed in the US Congress? Wasn't Rima Dudin appointed to the legislative department in the White House in the incoming Biden administration? Absolutely, it is true, but the two matters are completely different.

There is no dispute that the Jewish community, regardless of its political leanings, holds high positions in the American community, in European society and outside official administrations. Many of the most prominent American lawyers are Jews, and among the most prominent American jurists are Jews, and law school graduates are Jews. Many of the owners of capital are Jews, and many of the print, audiovisual media are Jewish, and many university professors in the various colleges are Jews. But the Jews are not the same, some of them are liberal, some of them socialist, some of them are communists, and some of them are religious extremists, and some of them are secular and so on. Consequently, their positions are different on the issues at hand, but they converge greatly if the issue relates to Israel, its policies, and the Palestinians. Here emerges the issue of dual loyalty to America and Israel, and the extent of the attraction of the conflict around it.

The Jews occupy high positions and even participate in the American decision-making.  As for the [Muslim] names mentioned, they do not play a role at all in American politics, neither from near or far, in addition to the absence of a Palestinian Arab lobby that affects American policy. Even the Palestinian daughter of Dudin, whose work is secondary and far from creating American policy, and so is the Palestinian Rashida Tlaib. Add to that the fact the Jew has a state whose interests intersect with the interests of the United States of America and thus creates for him a problem of conflict of interests. Perhaps the case of the American spy Jonathan Pollard is still fresh in minds.

This happened in the recent past during the Camp David meeting at the end of the term of Democratic US President Clinton. Dennis Ross, the American Jew, vehemently objected to the position of the late Saeb Erekat regarding the alleged Temple. And President Clinton began to complain and incite against this basic Palestinian doctrinal, realistic, historical, and religious position and support Dennis Ross and the Protestant Christian mentality in general. Ross even asked Clinton to reference a book from the White House library that supported the details of the alleged temple. It is as though the American Jew will support the Israeli proposal in the end, even if it contradicts the American interest; rather he will prevail over it, even though he must basically prevail over the American interest and achieve international peace and security.

....Can we protest against the appointment of an American Jewish cabinet member, refuse to meet with him, or  boycott him, because of conflict of interest and double allegiance? An American Jew, whose Jewishness means he holds Israeli citizenship completely under Israeli law, also holds an American passport at the same time. Is this not only a contradiction, but a contradiction that must be avoided?

Neutrality, objectivity, and independence are conditions that must be met in every honest broker, so how can these conditions be fulfilled in a Jewish-American diplomat who is Israeli by default, even if he is a liberal or leftist? Or do these conditions apply to all peoples of the world except the Jews ?!

This is not anti-Semitism, but rather sheds light on the issue of conflict of interest, and the supposed dual loyalty of American Jews, regardless of their inclinations, and turning a blind eye to conflicts of interest.

One cannot serve two masters nor gather two swords in one sheath !!

One thing is certain: No Palestinian will publicly object to this antisemitism.

And it is articles like these that motivate anti-Zionist American Jews - leftists that Shaban throws into the same dual loyalty bucket -  to redouble their efforts to prove that they aren't like those other Jews, that Palestinians should love them because they are moral and pro-Palestinian and support terrorists like Leila Khaled and Rasmea Odeh and boycott Israel even more than Palestinians do.





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Thursday, December 17, 2020

From Ian:

Jonathan S. Tobin: Stop pretending that anti-Zionism isn’t anti-Semitism
One reason is that these anti-Zionists are, as Beinart claimed, speaking the language of the progressives who dominate the political and social culture of much of the American Jewish world. The other is that, as we have recently seen with respect to critical race theory and cancel culture, marginal ideas and movements that succeed first in academia are likely to eventually make inroads, if not to dominate the media and popular culture.

Among the infuriating aspects of this debate is the pretense on the part of groups like JVP and their fellow travelers that was aired at their Dec. 15 panel was that they are merely “critiquing” Israel. Mere criticism of Israel’s government isn’t anti-Semitism. What the BDS movement and anti-Zionists want is not a different Israeli government or changed policies. It wants to eliminate Israel and replace it with a binational state in which Jews will lose both sovereignty and their ability to defend themselves against hostile neighbors and Islamist terror groups that believe Jews have no right to a state in their ancient homeland, no matter where its borders are drawn.

Beinart, who only a few years ago was posing as the leading light of “liberal Zionism,” now advocates for just such an outcome and says those like Tlaib, who share his new goal, seek human rights for everyone. He says that when Tlaib and Hill advocate for “Palestine from the river to the sea,” they mean the Israeli Jews who live in between the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea no harm—or at least no harm as long as they surrender without a struggle.

Put that way, the harm, as well as the denial of Jewish rights and history that are part of their agenda, is clear. But when you state your case, no matter how awful its goal, in the language of progressives, you are on the same wavelength of a Jewish community that prioritizes the universalist element of Jewish identity over its parochial elements. Speaking up for a Jewish state can sound vaguely racist to young progressive ears, especially when they are—as is the case with so many American Jews—ignorant about the conflict and most of Jewish history except for basic knowledge about the Holocaust. In a largely assimilated community, the sense of Jewish peoplehood that previous generations took for granted is now very much up for grabs.

Equally important is the need for us not to underestimate the way academia can influence other sectors of society. Not long ago, the sort of “cancel culture” in which those who questioned critical race theory and radical notions about history were silenced was only something that happened on college campuses. But as we’ve learned this year, the leap from such outrages being solely a way to protect hypersensitive and intolerant college students from hearing opposing views has gone mainstream.

Similarly, hatred for Israel and anti-Zionism used to be a marginal phenomenon that was rarely heard in mainstream media. But Beinart now preaches Israel’s elimination on the opinion pages of the Times and on CNN. He’s far from alone in that respect. And people like Tlaib and her colleague Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.), who might have been canceled and shunned by respectable media outlets for their trafficking in anti-Semitic tropes about the dual loyalty of American Jews and buying American legislators in Congress to lobby for Israel, as well as support for BDS, are welcomed everywhere and treated as their party’s rock stars rather than the hatemongers they are.
Human Rights Icon Natan Sharansky Calls Out Progressives Who View Jews as ‘Oppressors’
Renowned human rights activist Natan Sharansky called out on Wednesday progressives who viewed Jews as “oppressors,” saying such an outlook contradicted the concept of individual justice.

The former Soviet refusenik was a featured speaker at the “Dismantling Antisemitism: Jews Talk Justice” online event hosted by the Combat Anti-Semitism Movement (CAM), In collaboration with the Tel Aviv Institute.

The forum was organized as a response to a controversial Jewish Voice for Peace (JVP) webinar on antisemitism held a day earlier that featured several participants, including US Congresswoman Rashida Tlaib and Professor Marc Lamont Hill, who have themselves perpetuated Jew-hatred.

“Today, there is an attempt to hijack the cause of human rights from Jews by so-called progressives,” Sharanksy remarked. “For the so-called progressives, all the world is the fight between ‘oppressors’ and ‘oppressed.’”

“’Oppressors; are always wrong and ‘oppressed’ are always right,” he continued. “There is no such thing as individual justice, it has to be for the group.”

Sharansky elaborated, “Jews are guilty of belonging to the wrong state, the State of Israel, the wrong group. Jews are accused as a group and Israel is accused as a Jewish State.”

“It is not the struggle for human rights, it is not the struggle for individual freedom,” he declared.

Also taking part in Wednesday’s event was US Assistant Special Envoy to Monitor and Combat Anti-Semitism Ellie Cohanim, who highlighted a “pernicious new form of anti-Semitism” that sought to negate the history of Jews from Arab countries and Iran.

“This erasure of history allows the accusation that Jews enjoy white privilege and are neo-colonialists,” she noted.
Antisemitism Webinar Features Pro-Palestinian Activists Railing Against Jews and Israel
Lamont Hill and Tlaib both previously expressed support for Palestinian freedom “from the river to the sea,” which is commonly used as a call to destroy Israel. As the last panelist to speak, Tlaib, who supports the BDS movement, cried on-screen when talking about how she has been “demonized” and accused of being antisemitic.

“Tell everybody, I don’t hate you. I absolutely love you,” she said. “If anybody comes through my doors or through any forum to try to push antisemitism forward, you will hear me being loud with my bullhorn to tell them to get the hell out.”

She added, “I hope all our Jewish neighbors know we’re in this together.”

The night’s moderator, JVP’s deputy director Rabbi Alissa Wise, told viewers that she is “instinctively repulsed” by the idea that Jews need Israel “as somewhere to go” when they are next at risk of genocide. She also said that a “free Palestine is required if we want a free world for everyone, including Jews.”

She later stated that those who want to call solidarity with Palestinians anti-Israel are “using antisemitism to manufacture hate.”

“People who want to maintain Israeli government control over Palestinian lives and land play a very dangerous game when they call solidarity with Palestinians a form of anti-Jewish hatred. It’s not antisemitism to see that Israel has its boot on Palestinians,” she stated. “Antisemitism is a tool used to manufacture fear and division.”

Roytman-Dratwa said “this event was an attempt to turn reality on its head. It is nothing short of dangerous hypocrisy by those who have stoked antisemitism to claim that they themselves are serious voices in tackling Jew-hatred. Nobody, including self-styled progressives such as Representative Tlaib and Professor Hill, should be allowed to dictate to Jews what constitutes antisemitism. They simply would not treat any other minority group in the same way.”
Chief Rabbi launches scathing attack on China’s persecution of Uyghur Muslims
The Chief Rabbi has launched a scathing attack on China’s persecution of its Uyghur Muslim minority, in an intervention that will add further pressure on governments, companies and consumers to take action.

Writing in The Guardian on Tuesday, Chief Rabbi Ephraim Mirvis said that, having heard several accounts from Uyghurs who had escaped, “and reflecting upon the deep pain of Jewish persecution throughout the ages, I feel compelled to speak out”.

He said speaking out was a duty, particularly at Chanukah, “when we recall attempts ‘to cause the Jewish faith to be forgotten and to prevent Jews from keeping their traditions’… These words refer back to the cruel oppression of Jews”.

Mirvis said the “weight of evidence” of persecution was “overwhelming,” with Uyghurs “beaten if they refuse to renounce their faith, women forced to abort their unborn children then sterilised to prevent them from becoming pregnant again”.

Lamenting “forced imprisonment, the separation of children from their parents and a culture of intimidation and fear,” he said in his discussions with senior figures he had “been left feeling that any improvement in the desperate situation is impossible”.

He added that, growing up in Apartheid South Africa, and ministering in Ireland during the Troubles, ‘impossible’ was a word he often heard – and in both cases, wrongdoing and conflict came to an end.

“Last week marked the 72nd anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights… That same year, the Convention for the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide was also adopted,” he wrote.
From Ian:

Caroline Glick: Trump's Legacy of Peace
For 72 years, U.S. presidents sought to achieve peace between Israel and the Arab world. For 72 years, they largely failed.

What for so long eluded presidents from Dwight D. Eisenhower to Barack Obama seems to have come effortlessly to President Donald Trump. In the space of just four months, together with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Trump has achieved four peace deals between Israel and Arab states—twice the number achieved by all his predecessors combined. Last Thursday, Trump announced Morocco has joined the United Arab Emirates (UAE), Bahrain and Sudan in the Abraham Accords normalization agreements with Israel. Three or four more Arab states are likely to join the circle of peace in Trump's final weeks in office.

Not only has Trump brought more peace to the Middle East, more comprehensively and faster than all of his predecessors combined, but he made it look easy. Israel's ties with its Abraham Accords partners are expanding massively by the day. Tourists from the UAE are streaming into the country. And with one in seven Israeli Jews descended from the Moroccan diaspora, the potential for business and cultural ties between Israel and Morocco is almost limitless.

Trump's sundry Middle East peace deals are humiliating for his predecessors. Not only did they fail where Trump has succeeded, but they insisted that his achievements were impossible.

For instance, John Kerry, who as Barack Obama's secretary of state oversaw the administration's failed Middle East peace efforts, insisted back in 2016: "There will be no separate peace between Israel and the Arab world."

Speaking at the Brookings Institution, Kerry continued emphatically: "I want to make that very clear with all of you. I've heard several prominent politicians in Israel sometimes saying, 'Well, the Arab world is a different place now. We just have to reach out to them. We can work some things with the Arab world and we'll deal with the Palestinians.' No. No, no, no and no. ...There will be no advanced and separate peace with the Arab world without the Palestinian process and Palestinian peace. Everybody needs to understand that. That is a hard reality."

The "several prominent politicians in Israel" certainly included Netanyahu. It was during the Obama administration that Netanyahu began developing close strategic ties with a number of Arab states—particularly Egypt, Saudi Arabia and the UAE. The sides came together due to mutual distress over the negative impact of Obama's Middle East policies.

What was it about Obama's policies that brought them together?
Jonathan S. Tobin: In praise of diplomatic quid pro quos
The ability of the Trump foreign-policy team to succeed in doing something its predecessors failed to do was based on two factors. One was that its members were not blinded by ideology when it came to Israel and the Palestinians, as were the Obama, Clinton and both Bush administrations. The other was that they took a more openly transactional approach to diplomacy.

The foreign-policy establishment likes to dress up agreements based on mutual interests in high-sounding language about principles. But the Trump team, which was composed to a large extent of people like White House senior adviser/presidential son-in-law Jared Kushner with a background in real estate, didn't get bogged down in such meaningless and ultimately counterproductive exercises, and stuck to dealing with the world as it is rather than as they'd like it to be. They strove to make deals that made sense for both sides. And as a result of what some consider a crass rather than a principled approach, they advanced the cause of peace far more than any of the experts who mocked them as shallow amateurs.

With American foreign policy about to fall back into the hands of Obama alumni, some are lamenting the Trump administration's achievements in expanding the circle of governments with normal relations with Israel as boxing them and ignoring their obsession with forcing a two-state solution that the Palestinians don't want. Instead, the Biden team should learn from their predecessors. More Trump-style quid pro quos – and less magical thinking and expert ideological condescension from Washington – will make the world a safer place.
What Happens to Israel When Democrats Are in the White House?
Biden and his team have been harshly critical of Trump’s symbolic efforts to tilt U.S. policy toward the Jewish state, such as moving the U.S. Embassy to Jerusalem and allowing the word “Jerusalem” to appear on the passports of Jews born in that city. But symbolic actions can have tangible effects. The muted reaction to the embassy move throughout the Middle East revealed the hollowness of the long-standing threat that the “Arab street” would greet any thaw with Israel with violence and revolution. Given how low the cost was, and the fact that the embassy move was directed by U.S. law, it is hard to imagine that a President Biden would expend any political capital on an effort to return the embassy to Tel Aviv. And indeed, Biden has indicated he does not plan to do so.

Another traditional lever used against Israel is U.S. military aid. Biden has both supported aid and threatened cutting it to Israel in the past, but aid to Israel is a bipartisan policy. The current levels are set out in a Memorandum of Understanding established under the Obama administration, and the Biden team has said it does not plan to make that aid conditional. Even more telling, U.S. aid is no longer the existential necessity for Israel that it once was—so threatening to limit it no longer provides the leverage over Israeli decision-making that it once did.

But it is very likely that the Biden administration will put more rhetorical pressure on Israel to strike a deal with the Palestinians. It’s not clear, however, what policy leverage the U.S. has to push Israel in this regard while the Middle East landscape is changing—or whether the Palestinians will even consider some kind of a deal in any case. Still, Biden could, as Obama did, support UN resolutions critical of Israel. He could also sternly lecture Israeli officials, as he has intermittently throughout his career. Biden is on the record unambiguously about restoring the U.S.–Iran nuclear deal.

Looking at all of this, one can discern the outlines of a policy framework toward Israel—call it Bidenism. It will be supportive of continued aid to Israel and unlikely to publicly question the wisdom of such aid. Rhetorically, Biden will repeatedly present himself as a friend of Israel and of Prime Minister Netanyahu, even as he questions whether Netanyahu is too far to the right and as he exerts private pressure for concessions with the Palestinians.

Bidenism will seek a return to the problematic Iran deal in some form but will continue to profess its concerns about Iran getting nuclear weapons and will be unlikely to try to stop Israel from allying with Sunni Gulf states as a counterweight to Iran. Bidenism will not seek to move the U.S. Embassy from Jerusalem—but it won’t encourage other nations to move their embassies from Tel Aviv. And Bidenism will likely be muddled when it comes to the woke left’s intersectional hostility toward Israel—willing to condemn certain outrageous and anti-Semitic statements but ever careful not to offend and, on occasion, will even apologize if its condemnations produce too much blowback.

Israel’s relationship with the outgoing administration was extraordinary. We shall not see its like again. The question going forward is whether the Biden administration will take the recent successes into account as it makes its own way in the Middle East—or whether the powerful urge to restore the status quo ante of the Obama administration will set the course for the next four years.

Wednesday, December 16, 2020

Vic Rosenthal's weekly column


Here we go again. Another yawning gulf between Israelis and American Jews, “a rupture that threatens Jews everywhere, the trust between Jews in Israel and the Diaspora, and in the long run, Israel,” say Evan Morris and Dennis Jett.
It’s not bad enough that the Israeli religious establishment does not show respect for Reform “Judaism,” or that we can’t appreciate how much Barack Obama really “[had] our back,” or that we keep electing “right-wing” governments with Bibi Netanyahu as PM, or that we keep failing to understand how an enemy state in mortar range of our center of population and our single international airport would actually be good for us.
It’s much worse than any of that. In fact, we are “going off the rails” and have “betrayed our American cousins.”
We did this by preferring Donald Trump to Joe Biden.
Oh sure, Trump did what no American president cared to do, carried out the will of the Congress and moved the embassy to the capital of the Jewish state. Clinton, Bush, and Obama loved to talk about our “unbreakable relationship,” but when it came down to the legitimacy of our presence in Jerusalem, they religiously signed that waiver every six months. Trump even instructed the oft-antisemitic State Department to allow those born in Jerusalem to have “Jerusalem, Israel” on their passports. Compare that to the Obama Administration’s refusal to say what country Jerusalem was in – they even scrubbed “Jerusalem, Israel” from official websites.
No big deal, Morris and Jett said. “Trump is not a reliable ally and could never be … Given the right circumstance or perceived slight, Trump would turn on Israel.” So then Trump went and recognized Israeli sovereignty over the Golan Heights, and sponsored the development of a peace plan that was for the first time based on reality, rather than Henry Kissinger’s 1974 promise to the Arabs to reverse the result of the 1967 war.
Trump did even more. He spurned the view that the Palestinians should be given unlimited aid regardless of their behavior, and enforced the Taylor Force act that demanded aid be reduced when it was used to pay terrorists. He ended the perpetual support for the descendants of the Arab refugees of 1948, and disproved the idea – expressed by John Kerry (ironic video) in 2016 – that appeasement of the Palestinians was a precondition for normalization with the larger Arab world.
And now, although already a lame duck, Trump continues to promote normalization between Israel and multiple Arab and Muslim countries. We’re still waiting for him to “turn on us.” Are you surprised that Israelis overwhelmingly prefer Trump to Biden, who promises to re-enter the Iran deal and go back to giving the Palestinians a free pass in an interminable “peace process?” How could it be otherwise?
Nevertheless Morris and Jett insist that Trump is Bad For The Jews. They say he represents “emerging Fascism.” And how do we know this? Because Trump “alternately excused and encouraged” “the white supremacists that marched in Charlottesville.” In fact, he did no such thing. The accusation is a perfect example of the Big Lie technique: it has been repeated countless times, and has now entered the realm of conventional wisdom. But it still isn’t true.
Morris and Jett say Trump supporters “promulgate conspiracy theories based on antisemitic lies.” Maybe some do, just like some of the remarkably vicious members of the American Left who are on the other side. Israelis are not in touch with the details of American politics, nor do we follow the swirling winds of accusations thrown at each other by the two sides. But I have yet to hear anything antisemitic from Trump himself.
Antisemitism is clearly burgeoning in America, and that is rightly a serious concern for American Jews. But the attempt to blame Trump for it – while ignoring the anti-Trump extremists like the Pittsburgh shooter, the Farrakhanists, the Black Hebrews, and the misozionist Left – is dangerously mistaken, despite its wholesale adoption by the Trump-hostile media.
Apparently Morris and Jett think as little of Netanyahu as they do of Trump, calling our PM “boorish” for waiting about 12 hours after other foreign leaders to congratulate Biden on the election. This is the cheapest shot imaginable, considering that the official announcement came on Shabbat, 7 November, and Netanyahu tweeted his congratulations on Sunday.
The piece concludes with an accusation that Israelis are “willing to ignore the very real threat to our democracy, to our way of life and safety, just to help advance [their] own parochial needs.” I admit to being struck almost dumb by this. The Iran deal and the conflict with the Palestinians could have existential consequences for Israel. America has enormous power and influence, which its presidents often wield in our region, sometimes to our great disadvantage, as in the case of President Obama. Israel, on the other hand, has little power to influence America; PM Netanyahu pulled out all the stops to derail the pernicious Iran deal, without success. Perhaps our concerns are “parochial,” but they are quite serious. And I remind them that Donald Trump received more votes than any previous American presidential candidate, even if he did not win the election.* So the vileness of Trump is not a forgone conclusion.
The entire article has an unfriendly, even threatening tone, as if to suggest that if we don’t fall in line with the 77% of American Jews who voted for Biden, we’ll be sorry.
The two authors are not just a pair of idiots, as the content of the article suggests. Morris is a specialist in biomedical engineering and radiology and a psychiatrist who teaches at Yale. Jett is a former ambassador who had a long career with the US State Department, and now teaches International Affairs at Penn State. Both were Fulbright scholars who worked in Israel.
But they share the arrogance of Americans who don’t understand the interests and apprehensions of Israelis, and who would prefer that we play our role as a banana republic that is an American satellite, quietly.
_________________________
* No, I’m not going to comment on whether the election was fair.

From Ian:

Sohrab Ahmari: Trump’s peace deals mean the anti-Israel boycott movement is dead
The BDSers achieved a measure of success, in Europe especially. Performing artists would often cancel concerts in Israel under BDS pressure — and sometimes lead the charge, as in the case of the likes of Tilda Swinton, Roger Waters and Coldplay’s Chris Martin. European theaters would refuse to host Jewish (not even Israeli) film festivals, even as BDSers preposterously insisted that their movement isn’t anti-Semitic. Western universities or individual departments would mount academic boycotts of Israel. Then, last year, in perhaps the most alarming move, the European Court of Justice ruled that EU states must label West Bank products as “made in settlements.”

Was Israel’s economy ever in serious peril? Probably not. Europe remains the Jewish state’s biggest trade partner, though boycotts and labeling could bite if widened to include firms that operate in Israel or Palestinian territories. The real danger, however, was moral-cum-political. If BDS succeeded, it would make permanent Israel’s status as an abnormal country, rather than a normal fixture of the Mideast map. That would demoralize the Israeli people and compound the hostility they already face in global forums like the United Nations.

Well, so much for all that. Today, a little more than a year since the EU labeling decision, you can find Israeli products — prominently displayed, sometimes with Israeli flags to promote them — on the shelves of grocery stores in the United Arab Emirates.

How far can BDS go in a world where once-sworn enemies of the Jewish state enjoy Israeli citrus products and myriad cultural exchanges? Who exactly do Western champions of the Arabs represent, when the Arabs themselves want to live peacefully alongside Israel and accept the Jewish state’s fundamental legitimacy? Isn’t it more than a bit condescending for, say, Roger Waters — place of birth: Great Bookham, Surrey, England — to tell Arabs whom they can do business with?

To be clear, I’m not suggesting BDS will disappear tomorrow. The wider Arab world is making peace with Israel, but Palestinian leaders aren’t about to give up what is admittedly a very nice grift: billions of dollars in international aid in exchange for refusing to accept reality. BDS helps lend a veneer of global credibility to their rejectionism. And fanatic college professors and students can always use “anti-Zionism” to mask old-fashioned hatred, singling out one state and one state only — the one that happens to be Jewish — for opprobrium.

But the fact remains that the Abraham Accords have revealed a silly side to the BDS movement: For God’s sake, when Sudan, once one of the world’s most virulently anti-Israel states, has made its peace with Jerusalem, BDS looks like a boutique cause for gentry leftists, the kind who put their pronouns in their Twitter bios. The real world — and the Middle East — have just moved on.
Sudan revokes citizenship of Hamas leader, Khaled Meshaal, dealing blow to terror groups
In a blow to the Islamic movement in Gaza and other terror organizations, Sudan is revoking the citizenship of former Hamas leader Khaled Meshaal along with 3,000 other citizenships that were granted to foreigners, according to several reports in Arab media.

The Sudanese government made this change as part of its being removed from the list of state sponsors of terrorism, in a clear indication that it will fight terrorism rather than support it. The news was widely reported in Sudan and other Arabic media.

Earlier, Meshaal had expressed his dissatisfaction with the normalization of relations between Sudan and Israel.

After the demise of the previous Sudanese regime, which was supportive of Islamist and terrorist movements including Hamas, the new government has been attempting to change Sudan’s image as a shelter and conduit for terrorists. The revoking of citizenship from foreigners with links to Islamic and terrorist movements is a step in that direction.

Sudan is also now requiring a visa for Syrians before entering the country in order to prevent the flow of terrorists into Sudan.

In recent decades, Sudan was designated a state sponsor of terrorism by the United States for hosting Al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden and other wanted terrorists. Hamas used the country as a funnel for smuggling Iranian weapons to Palestinians in Gaza between 2009-2012.

Sudan was removed from the list of state sponsors of terror after the new regime has made efforts in combating terrorism in cooperation with the American administration under the supervision of Secretary of State Mike Pompeo.
Gulf normalization isn’t about fearing Iran, it’s about embracing Israel
“You think you have chutzpah? We have chutzpah.”

It was an unexpected line from a senior Emirati official, delivered recently in an off-the-record video conference call between current and former Israeli and Emirati officials.

The conversation had turned to business ties, innovation and the cultural differences between the two countries. The official wanted to explain something important about the new Israeli-Arab normalization agreements that Abu Dhabi had helped start: not only why they are happening, but why they seem so inexplicably warm and genuine.

The United Arab Emirates is most visible in this regard, but it isn’t the only one. Bahrain, too, is investing in a warm peace. And Sudan, while agonizing over the step itself — a breach of decades of ideological commitments vis-à-vis the Palestinians — has shown signs of wanting the normalization to reap more benefits than mere diplomatic contact or its removal from the US terror sponsors list.

There is no shortage of benefits that have accrued to the countries that normalized relations with Israel in the waning days of the Trump administration. The Emiratis asked for F-35s, the Moroccans recognition of their claim over Western Sahara, the Sudanese an end to their 27-year stay on the terror list and protection from lawsuits linked to the previous regime.

Tuesday, December 15, 2020

From Ian:

Observers Say EU-Funded Review of Palestinian Textbooks Reeks of ‘Incompetence, Concealment’
Benjamin Strasser, a German politician of the Free Democratic Party, also expressed his concern and told JNS, “false school materials can cement hatred and prejudice for decades. Neither German tax revenues nor our contributions to the Palestinian Authority may be used to promote antisemitism and hatred against Israel.”

Steve McCabe MP, chair of Labour Friends of Israel (LFI), blamed the British government for spending taxpayers’ money “on a review which appears deeply flawed and which we may never have the chance to see.”

He accused the government of “hiding behind the EU to escape accountability for its own inaction,” and demanded that the United Kingdom “immediately suspend all PA aid related to the delivery of the PA curriculum until wholesale and urgent revisions are guaranteed.”

LFI vice chair and Member of Parliament John Spellar sent a letter to the government on this same issue, asking for an explanation.

In an emailed statement to JNS, a spokesperson for the Delegation of the European Union to Israel defended the flawed GEI study as “being carried out according to best international standards with native Arab speaking experts being part of the research team.”

The statement said that the EU’s Final Report “will be finalized by the end of the year. … Given that the final report has not even been published yet, any criticisms at the stage are clearly premature in our view, in particular as they have been based on alleged leaks regarding a preliminary report which had no other value than to inform the scoping of the study. … We should clarify that the EU does not fund and will not fund Palestinian textbooks.”
Howard Jacobson: A Jew Is a Jew Is a Jew
Reflecting on the proximity between the deaths of two towering figures in, respectively, literature and the arts, Howard Jacobson sees a certain symmetry between the philo-Semitic Gentile and the uncomfortable Jew:

Quite what Miller supposed he achieved by refusing his Jewishness in “the face of other Jews,” or in what spirit he affirmed it only to those who hated it, is hard to fathom. But in both instances he stripped Jewishness of its amity, making it a thing of hostility and even confrontation. Wouldn’t it have been easier just to say he was a nonpracticing Jew?

Well, not if you were Alec Berman, the hero of Betty Miller’s novel Farewell Leicester Square, whose Jewishness lay like a curse on him and those who loved him. A thing “he never forgets for one moment ... it’s always there, at the back of his mind, whatever he does and wherever he is. It haunts him …” Betty Miller was Jonathan Miller’s mother. Farewell Leicester Square was written, remarkably, when she was only 22 and described the agitations of a young Jewish filmmaker in 1930s London. The London Jonathan Miller had to make his way in, 20 years later, was less hostile to Jews and so less likely to induce such paranoia as Betty Miller described. But it’s a reasonable assumption that her son read his mother’s novel at an impressionable age. He grew up in an upper-tier intellectual milieu, bristling with discomfort in the matter of being alien. Not for him, one might imagine him deciding, the enervating Jewish self-consciousness of Alec Berman.

Nothing unusual or reprehensible in that. You have to get yourself up off the canvas. But Miller continued uncomfortable and sneering. Israel displeased him in the usual, unthinking ways. To the question where else Jews could look to for refuge come the next catastrophe, he posited a sort of Darwinism of destruction: The time might have come, he said, for Judaism to die out.

Clive James sometimes gave the impression that he’d have liked to be a Jew. That’s a luxury, of course, that only a non-Jew can afford. And, unlike Miller, he was a schmoozer. I knew him well enough to benefit from his schmoozing but not so well as to get beyond it. His curiosity, though, was always genuine, as was his disappointment when he learnt I hadn’t made myself a Talmudic scholar, hadn’t learnt Yiddish, and couldn’t read more than a few words of Hebrew. He learnt Russian in order the better to read Tolstoy and would certainly not have written a novel about Jews without mastering both their ancient and their modern languages. I don’t think it was his intention to make me feel I’d failed his expectations, but I did. He was a staunch supporter of Israel and saw through the fashionable denunciations of Zionism made by people “dedicated to knowing as little as possible about the history of the conflict between the Israelis and the Palestinians.” If there was one thing that tried his magnanimity it was partisanship built on ignorance. His own knowledge was formidable and principled, as witness Cultural Amnesia, his extraordinary 800-page tribute to 20th-century art and thought—not a feat anyone could have pulled off had they not liked keeping company with the imaginations of Jews. Maybe Jonathan Miller possessed as wide a store of knowledge but, if he did, he didn’t employ it to such generous purpose.
From Ian:

How the GCC summit could reshape the Middle East
In the coming days, this region looks forward to another important event: the Gulf Cooperation Council Summit, a GCC leaders summit that annually sheds light on the most important issues of the hour.

The summit will wrap up December’s main achievement, the International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS) Manama Dialogue that concluded on December 6, with the Abraham Accords getting the lion’s share of attention and participants being loud and clear about where they stand regarding threats from Iran, its nuclear program, the significance of unified international efforts to fight extremism, and how the Abraham Accords have changed the face of the Middle East.

Statements from politicians, officials, and security specialists all had one issue of common concern: Without international coordination and cooperation, the world will only be allowing extremist regimes to continue being destructive members in the international community.

If we actively investigate the most important statements made, we will clearly see that Israel has become a stronger team player in Middle East politics following the historic agreements signed with Bahrain, the United Arab Emirates, Sudan, and now Morocco. Perhaps Israeli Foreign Minister Gabi Ashkenazi’s statement regarding the negotiations with Palestinian leaders was a pivotal point in this event that needs to be further analyzed. Ashkenazi’s statement was both clear and came forward as very genuine as he emphasized: “We were born in the region. We know the challenges and it’s a question of leadership.”

Ashkenazi also was more open about directly pointing fingers at Turkey’s aggressiveness in the Eastern Mediterranean, hoping that ErdoÄŸan’s foreign policies toward countries in the Middle East will change as he hosts Hamas’ headquarters, providing them state assistance that has over the years enabled Hamas members to move around more easily with passports provided by Turkey. This was an important clarification of where Israel stands when it comes to its relations with Turkey and its strong stance toward unacceptable Turkish foreign policies.
Israel’s President Praises Bahrain’s King Hamad for Making Peace With Israel
Israeli President Reuven Rivlin on Monday praised Bahrain’s King Hamad bin Isa Al Khalifa for his “brave and historic decision to establish a warm peace with Israel.”

In a phone conversation with Al Khalifa ahead of Bahrain’s National Day, which falls on Dec. 16, Rivlin said the recent signing of the Abraham Accords was “already a model for other countries in our region,” according to a statement from his office.

“We have chosen to invest from the very beginning in cooperation in the fields of economy, innovation and health,” he said. “I am full of hope that the Palestinians will also take steps to build mutual trust, cooperation and peace.”

Earlier on Monday, Rivlin welcomed a delegation of opinion leaders and activists from Israel, Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates at the President’s Residence in Jerusalem, greeting them both in Arabic and in Hebrew.

“Peace is made between peoples and nations,” he told the delegation, led by Amit Deri of the Sharaka Project. “Your visit here is another step in the path of building warm relations between our countries.”

The Sharaka (Arabic for “cooperation”) Project “aims to lead social initiatives that bring Israel’s voice to strengthen familiarity with the State of Israel in the Arab world, and create cooperation between young people in Israel and Arab states.”

One member of the delegation, Majid Al Sarrah from the University of Dubai, said “to visit Israel for the first time as part of a delegation is a historic moment. Israel is a prime example of tolerance in the region. This is a new era of peace and stability between peoples.”
Trump deserves the Nobel prize for his work to forge peace in the Middle East
By rights, US President Donald Trump’s groundbreaking peace initiative in Israeli-Arab relations should make him a shoe-in for the Nobel Peace Prize. There is, after all, a long list of previous recipients of the award whose recognition stems from their own contribution to improving relations between Arabs and Jews. Former US President Jimmy Carter won the award for his role in the 1970s Camp David negotiations that resulted in the peace treaty between Israel and Egypt. More recently we have seen Yasser Arafat, the reformed Palestinian terrorist, and former Israeli prime ministers Yitzhak Rabin and Shimon Peres, appointed Laureates for their contribution to the 1993 Oslo Accords, even though Mr Arafat’s subsequent refusal to sign up to Bill Clinton’s Camp David agreement in 2000 consigned the region to another two decades of conflict.

And, so pronounced is the liberal bias that informs the committee’s outlook, that former President Barack Obama received the award in 2009 simply for being elected to office.

Thus, if there were any degree of consistency in the Nobel committee’s deliberations, Mr Trump – who has done more than any other president in recent history to further the cause of peace in the Middle East – would be a worthy contender for the prize.

Last week Morocco became the latest Middle Eastern country to sign up to the Abraham Accords, the Trump administration’s peace initiative that has made a significant contribution to breaking the stalemate in Israeli-Arab relations.

The bold initiative, the result of years of painstaking diplomacy by Jared Kushner, Mr Trump’s son-in-law, has already resulted in a major thawing in relations between Israel and the Gulf states, with Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates agreeing to establish diplomatic ties, and several other Gulf governments – including Saudi Arabia – said to be giving serious consideration to following suit.

Monday, December 14, 2020

From Ian:

Plans being finalized for dramatic 1st visit by Netanyahu and Rivlin to Bahrain and UAE
After a week of reporting from the United Arab Emirates, I am now in Bahrain, covering the rapidly warming relations between Israel and these Gulf countries since the signing of the Abraham Accords on Sept. 15.

Today, I can report that Bahrain’s King Hamad bin Isa Al Khalifa spoke by telephone with Israeli President Reuven Rivlin.

Officially, Rivlin called to congratulate the Bahraini monarch ahead of “National Day,” marking the 49th year of the Gulf country’s independence from the British empire. Celebrations begin here on Wednesday and go through Thursday, with all national offices and most work places closed.

However, ALL ARAB NEWS can report that based on conversations with Israeli, U.S. and Gulf Arab sources, plans are being arranged for a dramatic first state visit by senior Israeli leaders to Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates.

Rivlin has been invited to visit Bahrain, and has invited Bahraini leaders to visit Jerusalem. The same is true with the UAE.

Netanyahu has also been invited to visit both countries.

It is not yet clear whether both Rivlin and Netanyahu would travel together, or whether the trips will be separate.

ALL ARAB NEWS can report that Netanyahu has requested that none of his Cabinet ministers travel to either Gulf country prior to his own visit.

I would not rule out a December visit by at least Netanyahu or Rivlin, but January is also a possibility.

National Day in the UAE was Dec. 2.

Bahrain’s National Day commemorates the day that the first emir — King Isa bin Salman Al Khalifa — ascended to the throne in 1961. Independence was formally gained from the British on Aug. 15, 1961.

These holidays slowed down the planning somewhat.

It will be a huge story in the region for either or both Israeli leaders to make their first state visits to the Gulf states.


JCPA: The Temple Mount in Jerusalem: From Religious Conflict to Religious Normalization
A first look at the new and different Muslim tourism expected to reach Israel following the peace treaties with the UAE and Bahrain.

The controversy that has been dividing the Muslim world for years around visits to “occupied” Jerusalem and how the normalization agreements re-shuffled the cards in this Muslim domestic debate.

What do rabbis think of Muslim tourism to what is also Jews’ holiest site?

Expectations and the potential – what did Muslim tourism look like before the peace accords, and what would it look like after them?

How should Israel prepare for the Muslim wave of tourism in order to create a success story and prevent the Palestinians from disrupting this unprecedented tourism?
US special envoy: UAE, Bahrain shine a light on world during Hanukkah
Jews are receiving a warm welcome in the United Arab Emirates, US Deputy Special Envoy to Combat Antisemitism Ellie Cohanim said Monday. She recently spoke to members of the local community and Jews and Israelis who have come from all over the world to Dubai. “When you work on combating antisemitism you spend so much time fighting the darkness and this is all about shining the light and it is a model society for the region and the world,” she says.

“The amount of coexistence you see in the Emirates and the religious pluralism and tolerance you see walking the streets of the UAE is profound. The warm welcome Jews are receiving here is incredible and a historic moment for all of us to observe.” This is a sentiment many have echoed over the last two weeks as Jews and Israelis have been welcomed in the UAE in the wake of the Abraham Accords. Cohanim’s trip to the UAE was a long time coming during a difficult year with COVID travel restrictions. As part of the office led by Elan Carr, the Special Envoy for Monitoring and Combating Antisemitism, Cohanim focuses on antisemitism in the Middle East, North Africa and Latin America.

She is well-placed for this work because her family was forced to flee Iran after the Islamic Revolution of 1979. She speaks with passion about the changes that are happening now in the region and which have led to a new opening and tolerance for Jews. She met with Rabbi Elie Abadie who recently moved to Dubai to serve as the community’s rabbi. Abadie, who was born in Beirut, is a scholar and expert who is an example of the international aspect of the Jewish community of the UAE.

In contrast to Bahrain where there has been an organized Jewish community since 1860, much of the Jewish life and embrace of Hanukkah celebrations in the UAE is new. She also met Ross Kriel of the Jewish Community of the Emirates and Rabbi Levi Duchman of the Jewish Community of the UAE, the leading heads of the Jewish communities there.

Saturday, December 12, 2020



Israel normalizes ties with Bhutan
Israel established full diplomatic relations with Bhutan for the first time on Saturday night.

Ambassador to India Ron Malka and his Bhutanese counterpart Vetsop Namgyel signed the final agreement normalizing ties on Saturday night. The countries’ foreign ministries held secret talks over the past year towards the goal of forging official ties, which included delegations between the two capitals Jerusalem and Thimphu.

The effort to make relations between the two countries was not connected to the Abraham Accords, in which four Arab countries – United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Sudan and Morocco – normalized ties with Israel in as many months, with American mediation. In fact, Bhutan does not even have official diplomatic relations with the US.

Bhutan is a Buddhist kingdom in the Himalayas, bordering on India and the Tibet Autonomous Region of China. It has gone to great lengths to keep itself isolated from the rest of the world in order to avoid outside influences and to preserve its culture and natural resources. The country limits tourism, especially from outside South Asia.

The landlocked country has formal diplomatic relations with only 53 other countries – a list that does not include the US, UK, France or Russia – and has embassies in only seven of them.

Neither does the country have ties with China, having closed its border to the country on its north after China’s 1959 invasion of Tibet.


August 2019: Kingdom of Bhutan: Israel’s new friend in the Himalayas?
At first glance, the State of Israel and the Kingdom of Bhutan — two small Asian countries separated by nearly 5,300 kilometers of bone-dry deserts and snow-capped mountains — appear to have little in common besides the fact they occupy the same continent.

Highly urbanized Israel, no bigger than New Jersey, is one of the most wired countries on Earth. Of its nine million inhabitants; 88% have smartphones and 75% are Jews. Immensely popular with tourists, Israel will receive 4.7 million foreigners of all religions this year.

Isolated Bhutan, by contrast, is nearly twice Israel’s size but has barely 800,000 people, all of them Buddhists. Fewer than 200,000 tourists annually visit this Himalayan Shangri-La, which as late as 1980 had just 1,200 phone lines in service. Television came to Bhutan only in 1999.

Despite mutual feelings of admiration, the two countries don’t have diplomatic relations … not yet. But the day that happens, Yeshey Tshogyal — who prefers to see similarities instead of differences — would make an ideal choice as the Forbidden Kingdom’s first ambassador to Israel.

“The people here are very warm and welcoming. They’re also open-minded, at least the ones I’ve met,” the 22-year-old told me in Tel Aviv just before her flight back to New York, where she’s pursuing a double major in psychology and intercultural communications at Baruch College.

Last week, Yeshey wrapped up a two-month internship at the Israel-Asia Center, a nonprofit organization based in Jerusalem.
Seth Mandel: How the Trump administration banished the ghosts blocking the path to peace
In July 2009, President Barack Obama met with Jewish leaders at the White House. America, he told them, had been mistaken in trying to adhere to its goal of “no daylight” with Israel. During the previous eight years of the George W. Bush administration, Obama told Jewish leaders, “There was no space between us and Israel, and what did we get from that? When there is no daylight, Israel just sits on the sidelines, and that erodes our credibility with the Arab states.” Obama wanted to put some space between the U.S. and Israel, and proceeded to do exactly that. His experiment was a flop: He was the least successful president regarding the Arab-Israeli conflict since the end of the Cold War.

Trump sought to correct this. He recognized Jerusalem as Israel’s capital and moved the U.S. Embassy there. Trump also had the U.S. recognize Israeli sovereignty over its Golan Heights in the north. When Friedman was announced as the pick for ambassador to Israel, liberal figures insisted he was too pro-Israel and too supportive of what they viewed as the Israeli Right. But success followed.

Kushner, thus, began his push for peace with the wind at his back: Pundits and so-called “experts” had all promised there would be bloodshed from Trump’s Jerusalem moves, but none had materialized because they fundamentally misunderstood the region’s politics. The Palestinians rejected Kushner’s “economic peace” model out of hand, just as they have rejected every peace plan before it. But it turned out he had some surprising takers.

The Palestinians’ legitimate drive for statehood and self-determination had taken on an outsize role in the region’s affairs. Ramallah effectively was given a veto over Arab normalization with Israel. But when Trump called their bluff over Jerusalem, it shattered the myth that you had to go through the Palestinians if you wanted public cooperation and reconciliation with Israel. Trump’s decision to leave the Iran nuclear deal also showed America’s Sunni Gulf allies that he could be trusted to restore the bonds broken by Obama’s attempts to favor Iran over traditional allies.

Much like the ancient ghosts of ethnic conflict that haunt the Balkans, the Middle East was a place where the Palestinians didn’t hold the only veto; history had one too. But the Trump administration approached it with an unsentimental proposal: Don’t be ruled by inherited rivalries and the trauma of the past; if you have the chance to make your lives better right now, take it. The United Arab Emirates and Bahrain did, striking recognition deals that include trade and civil aviation plus joint efforts to combat anti-Semitism. Sudan joined the party, agreeing to normalize relations with Israel and having the U.S. remove it from a list of terror-sponsoring states. On Dec. 10, Morocco entered the normalization-with-Israel parade in return for the U.S.’s recognition of its sovereignty over Western Sahara, a former Spanish colony.

None of this is to say this tack will always work — it won’t. But in several fraught regions weighed down by the bloodshed of history, it offered a path out of the desert. Future administrations, very much including the incoming Biden White House, should study these lessons carefully, adding one more tool to America’s diplomatic arsenal.

Friday, December 11, 2020

From Ian:

Caroline Glick: The new Greeks
While many American Jews were scared that Netanyahu's courageous challenge of Obama's central foreign policy would provoke anti-Semitism, in fact, it empowered many Americans to oppose the deal. Republicans rallied against it. Every Republican presidential candidate in 2016 pledged to abandon the deal, and President Donald Trump kept his promise.

By being a leader, Netanyahu also empowered the American Jewish community to defy Obama, even as he and his advisors channeled anti-Semitism by demonizing the deal's opponents as being in the pockets of nefarious donors and foreign interests.

AIPAC launched a major campaign to oppose the nuclear deal in Congress and tens of thousands of otherwise uninvolved American Jews attended demonstrations across the US to voice their opposition to the deal that paved the way for Iran to become a nuclear power.

Netanyahu explained that in dealing with leaders like Obama, with whom he had profound disagreements, "You seek compromise where you can, but you have to avoid compromise where you can't and you have to distinguish between the two and that's what I tried to do."

This lesson in leadership is perhaps the key message of our time. Like the Greeks of yesteryear, the progressive elites today insist that, to be accepted in polite society, Jews have to give up an essential part of their identity – and their civil rights. The Greeks demanded that the Jews give up the Torah. The progressives demand they give up their Jewish peoplehood. These are things that cannot be compromised, only fought, even when those demanding their forfeiture are Jews themselves.
Commentary Magazine Podcast [Israel bit starts 16min]: Will Biden Screw Up the Middle East?
Dan Senor, co-author of Start-Up Nation and host of the new “Post Corona” podcast, joins us today to talk about the electoral college and who intimidated whom (answer: Democrats sought to intimidate Trump electors in 2016) and how the transformative Abraham Accords might be derailed by a Biden administration just as Bibi Netanyahu finds himself in existential trouble as his trial is getting ready to begin. Give a listen.
David Collier: Glasgow University publishes antisemitic conspiracy theory
Glasgow University is ranked as a top UK university. The University is a member of the Russell Group. It runs a platform called esharp which is an ‘international online journal for postgraduate research.’ The University is very proud of the outlet. It states that all the paper are ‘double blind peer reviewed’. The university claims that the ‘rigorous and constructive process is designed to enhance the worth of postgraduate and postdoctoral work.’

A paper on the ‘Israel lobby’ appeared in issue 25 volume 1 (June 2017). It was written by Jane Jackman, an academic product of the universities of Durham and Exeter. There isn’t much to be found about Jackman online. She spoke at events in Exeter and SOAS and was an active member of the British Society for Middle Eastern Studies (BRISMES). In 2017 Jackman was being supervised by Willaim Gallois at Exeter. Unsurprisingly, the conspiracy theorist and ‘liar’ Ilan Pappe was a co-supervisor.

There is almost no sign of public activity from Jackman on social media. There is an inactive Twitter account in her name, which only follows accounts linked to Israeli advocacy or the fight against antisemitism. Given her academic focus on the ‘Israel lobby’, it is a safe bet to assume it is hers. She did spend some considerable time commenting on blogs and articles, including mine.

Jackman’s paper was titled ‘Advocating Occupation: Outsourcing Zionist Propaganda in the UK‘. The key thrust of the argument is that people like myself (I feature prominently) have been recruited by Israel to spread disinformation. I have studied the entire article. My key questions would be –

How did Glasgow University ever permit this to appear in their journal? How is it possible that this was peer reviewed?

The paper isn’t just laden with conspiracy, antisemitism and errors – much of the time the reference material does not even support what the article is suggesting. The work is beyond shoddy. Jackman makes unsupportable outlandish statements, that are far more fitting for gutter press journalism such as the Independent than an academic journal. The paper frequently contradicts its own logic. This is in no way an academic piece of work. It should be hung on the walls at Glasgow university as a reminder of the shame that they ever allowed this to be published. The only justification for ‘peer reviewers’ to have accepted this piece is that they agreed with its content and wanted it published. The entire process is rife with heavy antisemitism. Who were the editors that sat around a table and accepted this submission?
Cary Nelson: Who Is Harming Palestinian Academic Freedom?
Not in Kansas Anymore: Academic Freedom in Palestinian Universities, by Cary Nelson (University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 2020)

It is fundamental and axiomatic on the international left, an unexamined article of faith, that the State of Israel suppresses the academic freedom of Palestinian students and faculty. Not in Kansas Anymore: Academic Freedom in Palestinian Universities, a new 180-page book by Cary Nelson sets out for the first time to ask what evidence supports this claim and determine whether or not it is true. The evidence gathered here shows that Palestinian students and faculty in fact do not have the protections they need to exercise freedom of speech; indeed they are coerced and threatened to conform. But it is not Israelis who do so.

An excerpt from the book is below: From 1978 to 1991, Professor Sari Nusseibeh taught philosophy at Birzeit University on the West Bank. He had studied at Oxford and received a doctorate in Islamic Philosophy from Harvard. In September 1987, at the end of a lecture on John Locke, he learned that a group of masked students armed with clubs were outside his classroom seeking “a traitor” — whom he shortly learned was himself. Keeping his colleagues at bay with knives, they beat him “with fists, clubs, a broken bottle, and penknives.” Thanks to adrenaline, he was able to escape his attackers, though “my heart was pounding hard enough to pop my eardrums.” His colleagues, now free to help, drove him to the hospital where his forehead wound was stitched up and his broken arm set. The reaction of the university and the public was essentially non-existent. He had been identified as a traitor for participating in discussions of Israeli-Palestinian possibilities for peace.

Nusseibeh’s narrative is far from unique. When higher education institutions worldwide carry the name “college” or “university,” we often assume that these institutions are roughly similar everywhere. It’s true that an accounting or engineering course in one country will resemble courses in the same subject elsewhere. But a Religion course in a theocracy that imposes a state religion on its people will be different from a course of that same name in countries where religious and democratic freedoms prevail. Similarly, a course on Government or Politics in a dictatorship will not resemble comparably named courses elsewhere.
From Ian:

Raphael Ahren: A rich Jewish past, and present: Why Israel’s deal with Morocco is so resonant
Thursday’s surprise announcement about Morocco agreeing to establish diplomatic relations with Israel was not a Hannukah miracle, as many Israeli politicians gushed when they lit their holiday candles, though the timing was indeed brightly appropriate. Rather, it had been a long time coming, as the North African kingdom has deep cultural and religious ties with the Jewish state, and had long been expected to join the current wave of Arab countries normalizing ties with Israel.

As opposed to Egypt and Jordan, which signed peace treaties with Israel decades ago, and in contrast to the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain and Sudan, three Arab nations that normalized relations with Israel this year, Morocco and Israel have a profound and ancient Jewish connection, and the Moroccan Jewish community, though small, still thrives today.

Moroccan Jewry’s origins date back 2,000 years, to the destruction of the Second Temple and exile. In the modern era, the community reached a high of some 250,000 in the early 1940s, when Sultan Mohammed V resisted Nazi pressure for their deportation. Numbers dwindled with the establishment of Israel, and today only some 2,000-3,000 Jews remain, but hundreds of thousands of Israelis are proud of their Moroccan origins. US President Donald Trump’s senior envoy Jared Kushner on Thursday put that number at “over a million.”

The mimouna party, which the community traditionally celebrates right after Passover ends, has become a fixture on the Israeli cultural calendar, with countless people barbequing in parks and politicians rushing to as many mimouna celebrations as possible, eating mufletot and other Jewish-Moroccan delicacies.

While Israeli tourists have begun discovering the Gulf only very recently, they have been flocking to Rabat, Marrakech, Casablanca, Tangiers and Fez via third countries for many years. Once the two countries establish diplomatic relations and open direct air-links, that number can be expected to increase dramatically.

Following the 1995 Oslo Accords, Morocco and Israel opened mutual “liaison offices,” but they were closed a few years later after the Palestinian Second Intifada broke out in 2000.

Both Moroccan King Mohammed VI and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu cited the long and deep ties binding Morocco and Israel in their statements on the historic agreement.
Seth Frantzman: Are Morocco-Israel relations a surprise, or natural next step? - analysis
US PRESIDENT Donald Trump is gambling here because President-elect Joe Biden is supposed to take office in a bit over a month. It’s one thing for the US to push peace, because peace is always good, but recognizing Western Sahara will likely anger Team Biden, which is for preserving some of these international multilateral status quo issues.

The general feeling in the UAE and other states in the region, which have been watching peace deals closely, was that when Trump lost the election, many states would wait on peace. The theory was that had Trump won, then Oman, Qatar, Morocco and other states could follow suit. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu raised eyebrows when he went to Saudi Arabia in November and Foreign Minister Gabi Ashkenazi spoke via video at the Manama Dialogue Conference this year.

However, comments by Saudi Arabia’s Turki al-Faisal, a key figure in the kingdom, were critical of Israel at the Manama conference. Was that due to daylight with Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman or due to a perceived slight by Ashkenazi? The crown prince of Saudi Arabia has appeared keen on warmer relations with Israel for years but has wanted something in return – and is cognizant of Riyadh’s role in the region, the Saudi initiative, the Iranian threat, the changes in the US and also the position of his father, King Salman. These are complex webs of relations and realities that mean one change can lead to a domino effect that leads to peace with countries like Morocco.

These deals can be tenuous. Israel is supposed to send an agriculture delegation to Sudan, but it wonders if Israel and the US are serious. Abu Dhabi also wants Israel to take the Palestinian issue seriously. Morocco will still want more from Israel on the Palestinian issue and its civil society will pressure the government on this issue.

Nevertheless many things are happening in the region. US B-52s have flown to the region as part of a show of force to Iran. Tehran is building tunnels at its Natanz nuclear facility to hide centrifuges. The US is withdrawing from Somalia and the Senate has not blocked the F-35 sale to the UAE.

It’s almost natural that breaking news from Morocco could mean one more deal before the US administration changes.
Moroccan Jews laud peace deal as 'Hanukkah miracle'
President Donald Trump's announcement that Israel and Morocco have agreed to normalize relations may have astounded the world, but the news comes as no surprise to the Jewish community in the north-African country.

"There was a lot of talk about this subject last year," says Kobi Yifrach, an Israeli who has lived in Morocco for the past five years and runs a local museum in Marrakesh.

"There used to be an Israeli Embassy here between 1995 and 2000, and even after that, the relationship between Israel and Morocco remained friendly. Time has finally come to build the relationship [between the two countries]. Until now, it was behind the scenes, and now it's time to bring it to the forefront, with pride and love.

"My Muslims friends have been calling me for hours to congratulate the Jewish community on the announcement," says Jacky Kadosh, leader of the Moroccan Jewish community. "We heard the news immediately after lighting the first Hanukkah candle. It's a Hanukkah miracle."

Ilan Hatuel, an Israeli businessman in Morocco who is close to André Azoulay, senior adviser to King Mohammed VI of Morocco, added that the news was accepted in Morocco with "great excitement."

"The royalty has preserved Jewish history in Morocco for over 500 years. We have worked very hard to reach this moment. From now on, there will be direct flights from Marrakesh to Casablanca and Rabat. The Jewish community is in the seventh heaven, and the Moroccans are very excited too," Hatuel said.

Orin Avraham, a local yeshiva student, also spoke of the joyful celebrations that followed the announcement. "The decision will lead to the strengthening of the Jewish community in Morocco." He added that there is no anti-Semitism in the country, saying that "everyone [in Morocco] says 'hello' to the Jews and loves them.

Thursday, December 10, 2020

From Ian:

Israel, Morocco Agree to Normalize Relations in Latest US-Brokered Deal
Israel and Morocco agreed on Thursday to normalize relations in a deal brokered with the help of the United States, making Morocco the fourth Arab country to set aside hostilities with Israel in the past four months.

As part of the agreement, US President Donald Trump agreed to recognize Morocco’s sovereignty over the Western Sahara, where there has been a decades-old territorial dispute with Morocco pitted against the Algeria-backed Polisario Front, a breakaway movement that seeks to establish an independent state in the territory.

Trump sealed the agreement in a phone call on Thursday with Morocco’s King Mohammed VI, a senior US official said.

Morocco is the fourth country since August to strike a deal aimed at normalizing relations with Israel. The others were the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain and Sudan.

Under the agreement, Morocco will establish full diplomatic relations and resume official contacts with Israel, grant overflights and also direct flights to and from Israel for all Israelis.

“They are going reopen their liaison offices in Rabat and Tel Aviv immediately with the intention to open embassies. And they are going to promote economic cooperation between Israeli and Moroccan companies,” White House senior adviser Jared Kushner told Reuters.

“Today the administration has achieved another historic milestone. President Trump has brokered a peace agreement between Morocco and Israel — the fourth such agreement between Israel and an Arab/Muslim nation in four months.


Trump Administration Plans to Release List of BDS Groups
The Trump administration plans to release a list of organizations that support the anti-Israel BDS movement, a senior Trump administration official told JNS.

The groups are still in the works and being decided this month, according to the official.

The move follows US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo’s announcement last month in Israel that America would withdraw funding from groups that support the BDS movement, which he called “anti-Semitic.”

In a statement released by the State Department afterwards, Pompeo said he has instructed the Office of the Special Envoy to Monitor and Combat Anti-Semitism, led by Elan Carr, “to identify organizations that engage in, or otherwise support, the Global BDS Campaign” in which Carr’s office “will consider whether an organization is engaged in actions that are politically motivated and are intended to penalize, or otherwise limit, commercial relations specifically with Israel or persons doing business in Israel or in any territory controlled by Israel.”

He continued: “To ensure that department funds are not spent in a manner that is inconsistent with our government’s commitment to combat anti-Semitism, the State Department will review the use of its funds to confirm that they are not supporting the Global BDS Campaign. Furthermore, the State Department will conduct a review of options consistent with applicable law to ensure that its foreign assistance funding is not provided to foreign organizations engaged in anti-Semitic BDS activities.”
Norwegian Parliament Endorses Cutting Aid to Palestinians Over Antisemitism and Incitement in Educational Materials
The Norwegian parliament has endorsed cuts in aid to the Palestinian Authority (PA) in response to racism, antisemitism and incitement to violence in Palestinian educational materials.

The cuts would amount to 30 million Norwegian krone, equivalent to $3.4 million.

The Progress Party led the push to cut the aid funds, with MP Himanshu Gulati saying, “Not a single krone should go to Palestinian education until this is clarified and they have stopped” using educational materials containing hate speech.

He added that he “regrets that it has taken us so many years to take a strict line against these things. It is very good that it is now happening.”

MP Sylvia Listhaug, deputy leader of the Progress Party, said, “The Palestinian school curriculum abounds with calls for violence and hatred against Israel and for martyrdom to be glorified. It is quite clear that Norway cannot support this, therefore we want to cut this item.”

Foreign Affairs Committee member MP Geir Toskedal of the Christian Democrats remarked, “We have long been uneasy about both textbooks and teaching programs in the Palestinian territories. It is very important that the school focuses on peace and cooperation.”

Wednesday, December 09, 2020

From Ian:

Natan Sharansky’s real-life Hanukkah fairy tale - opinion
Sharansky’s story counters the lie our foes – and some fellow Jews – peddle about Judaism, Israel and Zionism today. Those who claim that Judaism is “just” a religion have to acknowledge the power of peoplehood, of national pride, that courses through that story, just as those secular types who say the religion is meaningless, should admit the tale’s spiritual, theological magic.

In fact, the entire holiday refutes all these false choices. Try telling the Hanukkah story without any religious dimension, or while pretending the Jews are not a people with a national consciousness, or while claiming we have no ties to the land. The fight was about our freedom of religion. The Maccabees were nationalist warriors. And the Temple that had to be purified was in Jerusalem in Eretz Israel, the land yearning to be liberated.

Similarly, try telling the Hanukkah story as an either-or fanatic, choosing only freedom or only identity, only liberalism or only nationalism. Hanukkah reminds us that we need freedom just as we need the air we breathe; it represents the world of possibilities and open doors. But we also need our own particular identity, just as we need the substantive food that sustains us, just as we need guardrails and milestones, maps and a sense of mission, in the journey of life once the doors swing open.

And through it all, we feel blessed by that sense of Jewish national consciousness, that Zionist sense of peoplehood, that reminds us that wherever we are, whatever challenges we face, when we are part of this amazing network called the Jewish people we are never alone.

NATAN TOLD his story as we filmed an episode of “Drinking with Adam” (Bellos) for Wine on the Vine. I noted how remarkable it is that despite my never having suffered, spending the 1980s studying history at Harvard, and Natan’s having spent much of the ’80s suffering in the gulag, we remain ideologically on the same page.

Natan wondered: “Who really suffered most?” He quipped: “In the gulag, I had moral clarity; at Harvard, there was moral confusion.”

How sad that our universities so often fail to stand for moral clarity – or for open, critical inquiry. And how unnerving that the problems transcend partisanship, as cancel culture on the far Left oddly parallels the bullying totalitarianism of the far Right.

But how lucky we Jews are to have this holiday of freedom, along with freedom fighters in our own lives who stand up for personal liberty, for national identity, for the constructive, creative confusion of both – and against the false choices so many wish to impose on us. Happy Hanukkah.
Remembering Hanukkah 1917 and the Liberation of Jerusalem
On December 9, 1917, British forces accepted the Turkish surrender of Jerusalem. Two days later, British forces officially entered the walls of the city.

As the world was engulfed in brutal armed conflict of an unprecedented scope, fighting raged in the Holy Land between Allied troops and the Ottoman-Turks (allied with the Central Powers) who had ruled the land for most of the past 400 years. On October 30, the strategic city of Be’er Sheva fell to the allies who then drove towards Jerusalem.

A London dispatch, on November 24, reported that the mosque containing the tomb of the prophet Samuel was bombarded. The ancient site of Mitzpeh, 5,000 yards west of the Jerusalem-Nablus road, was stormed by the British. The major battle for Jerusalem was in full swing. British cavalry ferociously fought their way into Jerusalem.

On December 11, the second day of Hanukkah, British troops marched into Jerusalem. British commander General Edmund Allenby respectfully entered its walls by foot through the Jaffa Gate.

Excited crowds lined Jerusalem’s streets to welcome the city’s liberators. Their very presence signified an end to the terrible suffering the people of Jerusalem had endured during the war.

One British officer described his entry into Jerusalem and the reception by its residents this way: “Swarms of children, Arab, Jew, and Christian, ran with us as we marched along, and the populace clamored to any point of vantage, waving and clapping their hands, cheering and singing. Jews clad in European dress came running up, singled out any one of us, wrung him by the hand, and — talking excitedly in broken English — said that they, the people of Jerusalem, had been waiting for … two and a half years.”
Germany sorry for snubbing Aboriginal protest at persecution of Jews
The German government has officially apologised after its consulate in Melbourne refused 82 years ago to accept a letter of protest from the Australian Aborigines' League about the Nazi persecution of the Jews.

On Sunday Felix Klein – the Commissioner for Jewish Life in Germany and the Fight against Anti-Semitism – issued the historic apology via video link on behalf of Chancellor Angela Merkel's government.

The apology was screened at an event marking the anniversary of the 1938 delegation of the Australian Aborigines’ League – led by Aboriginal spokesman William Cooper [Yad Vashem] – to the German consulate in Melbourne.

According to The Argus newspaper, the delegation wanted to convey a resolution voicing "on behalf of Aborigines of Australia, a strong protest at the cruel persecution of the Jewish people by the Nazi government of Germany, and ask that this persecution is brought to an end".

The Australian Aborigines' League, which used Mr Cooper's home in Footscray as its meeting place, drew a parallel between the treatment of Aboriginal people and a pogrom against Jews carried out by the paramilitary wing of the Nazis on November 9-10, 1938, that became known as Kristallnacht.

The league felt moved to protest at the violence from the other side of the world, and a delegation walked from Footscray to the German consulate in Melbourne on December 6, 1938.

But the consulate refused to admit the delegation.

"Officially, on behalf of the government of Chancellor Angela Merkel, we are sorry that the 1938 Consul General in Melbourne would not accept the letter of the Australian Aborigines' League, nor forward it onto the political leadership here in Berlin as would have been the right and morally correct thing for a consulate official to do," Dr Klein said on Sunday.

Yorta Yorta activist and educator Lois Peeler said she was happy to accept the apology on behalf of her people.

"It’s a long time coming but we accept the apology," she said.

Monday, December 07, 2020

From Ian:

It's a Mistake to Go Back to the JCPOA
- Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu interviewed by Michael Doran, Dec. 3, 2020 (Hudson Institute)

Netanyahu: Jews have been fighting for our place under the sun for almost four millennia. And we haven't made this extraordinary odyssey for it to end by a whim of ayatollahs who are ideologically committed to destroy us. That's not something that an Israeli leadership should sit by and allow to happen.

Some Arab leaders have come to realize, especially in the last decade, that Israel, far from being their enemy, was their indispensable ally in securing stability, peace and prosperity in the Middle East. Some of them say so fairly openly, most of them say so quietly.

They're concerned with Islamic radicalism of a Shiite or a Sunni variety. They're concerned with developing their economies for the betterment of their peoples. They're concerned with countering Iran's aggression and terrorism, which is spread all over the area. And they see Israel as the power in the area that is willing to stand up, and often speak up, for something that they all agree with.

Far from blocking Iran's path to the bomb, the Iran nuclear deal (JCPOA) paved its way with gold, literally, with an enormous amount of money that was put into Iran's coffers. They promptly used it to fund an unbelievable campaign of conquest. Right after the JCPOA, you see them expanding into Iraq, into Yemen, into Iraq, seeking to establish military bases in Syria, supporting Hizbullah with greater funds, supporting the Islamic Jihad and Hamas.

If the idea was this tiger will be tamed, in fact, what the JCPOA did was to open the gates of the cage and let the tiger loose to a campaign of plunder and conquest that was threatening to overrun the Middle East in horrible ways.

Iran with nuclear weapons is a very dangerous thing for the United States. It's developing ICBMs which it wants to tip with a nuclear payload (because you don't use ICBMs for anything else) to reach America. You say that's not a real problem? Well, take North Korea, a smaller country that has a fraction of Iran's GDP. You understand what the arming of North Korea with ICBMs and nuclear weapons means to the United States. Iran is many times more dangerous than North Korea because it has a radical ideology. It chants death to America, death to Israel. They mean it.

We have peace breaking out now. And I think the United States has a vested interest to expand that peace, to support those countries that seek to broaden the circle of peace, and to constrain or roll back Iran and its proxies that seek to bring us back to a violent medievalism. The fact that we're willing to stand up and protect ourselves, but thereby also protect the neighborhood, our allies in peace, I think is a vital interest of the United States.


Dore Gold in Bahrain: "Abraham Accords a Whole New Paradigm for Diplomats"
- Amb. Dore Gold interviewed by Omar Shariff

At the 2020 Manama Dialogue in Bahrain, sponsored by the International Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS), Israeli diplomat Dore Gold, President of the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs, said, "The Abraham Accords represented a whole new paradigm for diplomats. It gave the Arab states the freedom to make peace with Israel, while not denying the Palestinians the right to join the process when they are ready. This new structure will make peace more likely."

"Senior leadership in the [Iranian] Revolutionary Guards and even more importantly the senior religious leadership in Qom have spoken about the need 'to wipe Israel off the map.' You cannot wipe a country off the map without physically destroying its population. Among polite company we call that genocide." (Gulf News-Dubai)

See also Questions for Saudi Prince Turki al-Faisal - Amb. Dore Gold Amb. Dore Gold asked Saudi Prince Turki al-Faisal a number of questions at the 2020 IISS Manama Dialogue in Bahrain on Sunday:

"Do we want to be caught up in the accusations of the past, many of which are false, or do we want to present the young generation in the Middle East with a positive vision and really give leadership for a better future?...Do you, Prince Turki al-Faisal, think we have something to learn from each other...with respect to the challenge Israel has faced from the north, from Hizbullah, since the early 1980s, and the challenge you face from the south, from the Houthi militants?"
Plagued by intelligence failures, Iranian security apparatuses aim to clean house
Hossein Shariatmadari, Kayhan's editor-in-chief and Khamenei's representative, directed an editorial (Nov. 28) at Iran's leaders: "How can the Zionist regime, which is on the brink of decay today and surrounded by resistance forces on all sides, so easily murder our nuclear scientists?!"

He added, "Today, all the attention of the Iranian people and the Iranian regime must be focused on two targets: the first, the harsh retaliation against the criminal Zionists that will make them regret, and the second is identifying internal elements and possible infiltrators of the enemy into Iran's intelligence security systems."

Shariatmadari also called for "attacking the important port city of Haifa, destroying the strategic facilities, and causing heavy human casualties" to reach a "real deterrent point." Dr. Sadollah Zarei, an Iranian scholar and political analyst, wrote in Kayhan that Iran's reaction to suspected Israeli airstrikes that killed IRGC forces in Syria wasn't enough to deter Israel, while "striking Haifa … will definitely lead to deterrence because the United States and Israel are not ready to participate in a war and a military confrontation."

In Iran, the dilemma is growing with regard to how and where to respond to Fakhrizadeh's assassination, and how far to stretch the regime's restraint. So far, Iran has not responded as it is "required" to by the threats it issued following the deaths of Hezbollah international operations chief Imad Mughniyeh, Soleimani, operatives associated with Hezbollah's precision missile program, IRGC personnel in Syria, important figures among the pro-Iranian militias in Iraq, and others.

It is possible that Iran will continue its policy of restraint and choose to strike "easier" targets that are allied to the United States and Israel, such as the oil facilities and strategic infrastructure in Saudi Arabia. Such an attack took place on Sept. 19, 2019, with precision cruise missiles hitting the Saudi oil processing facilities in Abqaiq and Khurais.

In this regard, on Nov. 23, the Iranian Mehr news agency broadcast a video of an Aramco oil distribution site in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, being hit by Quds-2 missiles launched by the Houthis in Yemen. Iran could be waiting for the new US administration, which might limit Israel's aggressive activities while negotiations are in the offing and test Israel-American relations, which reached new heights during Trump's presidency.

With the long-range missile attacks on Abqaiq and Khurais and periodic Houthi missile launches against strategic targets in Saudi Arabia, Iran demonstrated that it has the operational know-how to launch surprise attacks on strategic sites, including in Israel, with stealthy, precision cruise missiles.

One way or another, Iran must conduct a thorough house-cleaning in response to the repeated infiltrations and attacks on its security and intelligence establishments. These recurring intelligence operations have targeted Iran's scientists, nuclear infrastructure (such as the explosion in the Natanz enrichment facility in July 2020) and sometimes its electricity and oil facilities. As it has in the past, the regime will publicize over the next few weeks and in the run-up to presidential elections the arrests of people ostensibly involved in the attacks and espionage, so that it may salvage some of its honor among the Iranian people, who are exposed to details of the calamities via social media, international reports and the joyful Iranian opposition.

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