Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Thursday, October 22, 2020

10/22 Links Pt1: Arab Leaders Want the U.S. to Support Israel; Officials: Sudan set to normalize ties with Israel; Albania Becomes Second Muslim-Majority Nation to Adopt IHRA

From Ian:

Walter Russel Mead (WSJ $): Arab Leaders Want the U.S. to Support Israel

As the U.S. has reduced its regional footprint and ambitions, the Middle East has begun to change on its own. Saudi Arabia has opened its airspace to commercial flights from Tel Aviv to Dubai, while the UAE has shifted from not recognizing the Jewish state to building a warm peace and economic partnerships with Israel.

In the new Middle East, the younger generation is turning its back on religious radicalism, and Arab public opinion is moving to accept the presence of a Jewish state. The Palestinians have lost their position at the center of Middle East politics, and it is Turkey and Iran, not Israel, that Arab rulers are most concerned to oppose.

President Trump's peace plan, which many longtime Middle East experts dismissed as a ghastly blunder that would destroy the American role in Middle East peace negotiations, has turned out to be relatively popular on the Arab street. A Zogby survey found majorities in favor of the "Deal of the Century" in Egypt, Saudi Arabia and the UAE. 56% considered America "an ally" of their country, up from a low of 35% in 2018.

U.S. national security adviser Robert O'Brien told me that key Arab leaders have embraced the idea that better relations with Israel are critical to their states' security and even survival.

It is Turkey even more than Iran that keeps some Arab leaders awake at night. President Erdogan has aligned himself closely with the Muslim Brotherhood, a regional Islamist movement. Iran can only call on the minority Shiites for religious support, but Turkey can attract supporters from the Brotherhood's networks within the Sunni majority.

Ironically, the current Arab nightmare is that the next U.S. administration won't support Israel enough.

David Singer: Trump and Biden should debate foreign policy: China, Iran, et al

Trump and Biden need to debate their very different policies on China, Iran and the Middle East.

Long before the recent emergence of Hunter Biden’s alleged email files - whose authenticity still remains undisputed - Biden’s relaxed attitude to China strongly differed from Trump’s no-nonsense confrontational approach to handling China during the last four years.

On 23 October 2019 Biden – vying for the Democratic Party Presidential nomination – said:

“We talk about China as our competitor. We should be helping and benefiting ourselves by doing that. But the idea that China is going to eat our lunch — I remember the debates in the late ’90s, remember, Japan was going to own us? Give me a break.”

The CPD decision will deny intending voters their right to know Biden’s China policy stance and the implications this has for America.

Trump’s 2020 peace plan - providing for an independent Palestinian State in Gaza and up to 70% of Judea and Samaria (aka 'West Bank') to be negotiated between Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organisation - offers a pathway to ending the 100 years unresolved conflict between Jews and Arabs.

Biden’s response: “A peace plan requires two sides to come together. This is a political stunt that could spark unilateral moves to annex territory and set back peace even more. I’ve spent a lifetime working to advance the security & survival of a Jewish and democratic Israel. This is not the way”

CPD’s political stunt ensures Biden will escape explaining how his “way” will be better than Trump’s.

America’s voters are being taken for a ride by a highly-partisan Presidential Debates Commission.

And this is without eveb mentioning Ukraine and Russia.

Dennis Ross: Saudi Prince Bandar Tells Palestinians: We Won't Cover for You Any Longer

Shortly before we presented the Clinton parameters on peace to the Israelis and Palestinians in December 2000, I briefed Bandar bin Sultan, the Saudi ambassador to America. Once presented, I wanted Saudi Arabia to urge then-Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat to accept our bridging proposal to end the conflict. Bandar’s response is etched in my memory: “If Arafat rejects this, it won’t be a mistake, it will be a crime.”

Bandar said this privately to me.

After Arafat rejected the Clinton parameters, other Arab officials echoed similar, if less dramatic, views to me. But none were prepared to say anything publicly. None were prepared openly to criticize the Arafat decision or counter the Palestinian story misrepresenting what had been offered.

That was then — when the Palestinians could portray the diplomacy one way, and leading Arab figures would not challenge their story, even when they knew it was wrong.

But this is now, and the Middle Eastern landscape is changing when it comes to the Palestinian cause.

What was unthinkable before is no longer; the fear that Palestinians could arouse opposition to Arab leaders by claiming they were betraying Palestinian national aspirations is gone.

Last week Bandar bin Sultan — in a three-part interview on al Arabiya network, speaking to a Saudi and regional audience — engaged in truth-telling about the historic failures of the Palestinian leadership. From declaring that Palestinian leaders “always pick the wrong side” to bemoaning that “there were always opportunities, but they were always lost,” he debunked the Palestinian narrative. He spoke of the constant divisions among Palestinians and how the Saudi kingdom “had justified to the whole world the actions of Palestinians” even when “we knew, indeed, [they] were not justified.” But Saudi Arabia did so because, in Bandar’s words, they did not “wish to stand with anyone against them, nor did we wish to see the consequences of their actions reflected on the Palestinian peoples.” In other words, Saudi Arabia stood by Palestinian leaders even when they were wrong, producing in Bandar’s words, Palestinian “indifference” and a belief that “there is no price to pay for any mistakes they commit.”

All over Arabic media on Tuesday was the story that UAE journalist Hamas al-Mazrouei, who is close to the Crown Prince of Abu Dhabi, Mohammed bin Zayed, had done things that would upset any Muslim.

It all started when Mazrouei tweeted this out on Monday (autotranslated):

Very quickly a ridiculous rumor started, claiming that Mazrouei was interviewed by Maariv where he said that the Saudi government should reimburse the descendants of Jews of Khaybar for Mohammed's expulsion of their ancestors from the town, and it should offer citizenship and compensation to those same Jews.

Furthermore, the reports claimed that Mazrouei said that Mohammed treated the Jews badly. For good measure, a photo claimed to be of Mazrouei sitting near a (seemingly unopened) bottle of whiskey was circulated.

Needless to say, there was no such interview in Maariv.

BBC Arabic tracked down the rumor to two news sites, one Syria and the other from Yemen. It didn't do a very good job though, since the Yemen article linked back to an article from Turkey from late September, which seems to be the original source.

I would guess that Iran sat on this story and then fed it to Iran-friendly Arabic media at a time when it would have a good chance of spreading. If foreign nations are seeding Western media with fake stories, it is a hundred times easier for them to feed fake stories to Arab media where rumors are even less likely to be fact-checked.

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Are Amnesty, HRW and Oxfam antisemitic?

From Politico:

The Trump administration is considering declaring that several prominent international NGOs — including Amnesty International, Human Rights Watch and Oxfam — are anti-Semitic and that governments should not support them, two people familiar with the issue said.

The proposed declaration could come from the State Department as soon as this week. If the declaration happens, it is likely to cause an uproar among civil society groups and might spur litigation. Critics of the possible move also worry it could lead other governments to further crack down on such groups. The groups named, meanwhile, deny any allegations that they are anti-Semitic.

Secretary of State Mike Pompeo is pushing for the declaration, according to a congressional aide with contacts inside the State Department.

The declaration is expected to take the form of a report from the office of Elan Carr, the U.S. special envoy to monitor and combat anti-Semitism. The report would mention organizations including Oxfam, Human Rights Watch and Amnesty International. It would declare that it is U.S. policy not to support such groups, including financially, and urge other governments to cease their support.

The report would cite such groups’ alleged or perceived support for the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement, which has targeted Israel over its construction of settlements on land Palestinians claim for a future state.

It’s also expected to point to reports and press statements such groups have released about the impact of Israeli settlements, as well as their involvement or perceived support for a United Nations database of businesses that operate in disputed territories.

There is absolutely no doubt that these groups are structurally and systematically biased against Israel. They hire people to "research" Israel with a history of anti-Israel advocacy.

One example is Amnesty's Saleh Hijazi, Deputy Regional Director of the MENA Region, whose Facebook pages include support for terrorists Leila Khaled and Khader Adnan, a glaring piece of hypocrisy for a supposed human rights advocate.

Similarly, Omar Shakir had a well-documented history of supporting BDS against all of Israel (not just "settlements") and of being obsessively anti-Israel when he was hired by HRW - and that continued even as he was employed by them.

This results in these NGOs issuing anti-Israel reports that are longer, more numerous and more detailed than their reports on virtually any other nation, with only a smattering of reports about Palestinian human rights or Arab human rights abuses against Palestinians (which only exist when their anti-Israel obsessions were revealed so they wrote token reports for "balance.") In fact, in some cases these groups have supported terror-linked NGOs.

Israel is routinely accused of "apartheid" by these NGOs. There is literally no other nation in the world that they make similar accusations of.

These NGOs become obsessed about companies like TripAdvisor and AirBnB that operate in disputed territories. There is literally no other nation in the world that they make similar accusations of, let alone participate in huge funded campaigns against international companies.

Amnesty and HRW knowingly twist international law to pretend that Palestinians have a "right to return." As many as 60 million Europeans became refugees after World War II, but none of them have the same "right to return" that the 700,000 Palestinian refugees and their millions of descendants are considered to have today by these NGOs. The only purpose of this demand is to destroy the Jewish state demographically.

Do these obsessions cross the line into antisemitism?

By the IHRA working definition of antisemitism, there is no doubt that these groups are antisemitic because they hold Israel to standards that they do not apply to any other country.

Even if you do not accept the IHRA definition these NGOs seems to have a problem with Jews.

For example, this report from HRW denigrating religious Jews:

Rabbi Yitzhak Yosef, who holds the state-funded, statutory position of Israel’s Chief Sephardic Rabbi, said in a March 12, 2016 sermon, partly in response to Eisenkot’s admonition to limit the use of lethal force, that the Bible authorizes a shoot-to-kill policy: “‘Whoever comes to kill you, rise up and kill him first.’ … let them afterward take you to the High Court of Justice or bring some military chief of staff who will say something else … As soon as an attacker knows that if he comes with a knife, he won’t return alive, it will deter them. That’s why it’s a religious commandment to kill him.”
The Sephardic Chief Rabbi does not command police or soldiers, but he heads the Supreme Rabbinical Tribunal and is tasked with advising on the interpretation of religious law.
...
According to Israel’s Central Bureau of Statistics, about half of Jewish Israelis define themselves as religious or traditional, not including ultra-Orthodox Jews, who usually do not serve in the army. Conscription for non-ultra-Orthodox Jewish men is universal. Most soldiers are in their teens or early 20s, and after a few months of basic training, they can be sent to serve in the occupied West Bank.

This is an accusation that religious (and traditional) Jews are bloodthirsty fanatics who would kill Arabs at a drop of a hat - and against army regulations. That is antisemitic slander.

Or Amnesty-USA sponsoring a tour by Bassem Tamimi, who accuses Jews of stealing the organs of Palestinians.

Or this Amnesty employee that denied Egypt's expulsion of its Jews - meaning that Jews are the only group whose human rights are not to be defended.

Or these groups pushing to expel Jews - and only Jews - from their homes in disputed territories when there are also thousands of Israeli Arabs who live across the Green Line but are never called "settlers."

Or Ken Roth of HRW practically justifying European antisemitism as simply a response to Israeli actions.

Or Amnesty-UK which has hosted antisemites and BDSers at its headquarters but denied hosting Jewish Zionist groups.

Or when Amnesty's members voted against a resolution condemning antisemitism - a resolution that had nothing to do with Israel, and the only resolution that was defeated at that conference.

Or when Amnesty praised the "Youth Against Settlements" group - which is explicitly antisemitic.

Or Oxfam selling antisemitic literature on its site - copies of The Protocols of the Elders of Zion and other antisemitic books that Oxfam members owned, photographed and blurbed on their website without even considering this to be a problem.

Or Oxfam excusing and supporting Miftah when the latter published the blood libel.

There are dozens of such examples.

In total, it is obvious that these NGOs have a problem not just with Israel, but many of their members have problems with Jews.

Even so, it is unclear whether it is wise for the State Department to declare them antisemitic. Outside the Middle East, the groups seem to do some excellent work and have dedicated employees who really care about human rights. (If the NGOs really wanted to be objective, they would rotate their researchers to different areas of the world instead of allowing obsessive haters of Israel to choose to demonize Israel.)

Declaring the entire organizations themselves to be antisemitic could be counterproductive. But they do have an crazed focus on attacking the Jewish state, and that needs to be publicized.

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Last week, the UK Foreign Office issued a press release entitled "Quint statement on Israeli settlements:"

Statement from the governments of the UK, France, Germany, Italy and Spain:

We are deeply concerned by the decision taken by the Israeli authorities to advance more than 4,900 settlement building units in the occupied West Bank.

The expansion of settlements violates international law and further imperils the viability of a two-state solution to bring about a just and lasting peace to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. It is also a counterproductive move in light of the positive developments of normalisation agreements reached between Israel, the United Arab Emirates and Bahrain. As we have emphasised directly with the Government of Israel, this step also undermines efforts to rebuild trust between the parties with a view to resuming dialogue.

We therefore call for an immediate halt to settlement construction, as well as to evictions and to demolitions of Palestinian structures in East-Jerusalem and the West Bank.

We call for the full implementation of UN Security Council resolution 2334 with all its provisions. We emphasise that we will not recognise any changes to the 4 June 1967 lines, including with regards to Jerusalem, unless agreed to between the parties. The suspension of plans to annex parts of Occupied Palestinian Territories must become permanent. We call on both sides to refrain from any unilateral action and resume a credible dialogue, as well as direct negotiations on all final-status issues.

It turns out that the Quint is a new group.

As the Jerusalem Post notes, the group exists because the EU cannot agree on a unified Middle East policy, so the large Western European nations want to keep their pretense of influence in the region.

And this is not the first statement by the group:

Last Friday was not the first time the Quint made an appearance. That distinction apparently came last year in September, when the five European countries issued a statement expressing “deep concern” at Netanyahu's announcement just prior to that month’s elections of his intention to annex the Jordan Valley.

So the group has made two statements, both against Israel.

No stand-alone statements in favor the the Abraham Accords.

Apparently, that is the only purpose of this group.

Because the world needs another forum to condemn Jews living in their historic heartland.

Isn't that special.

(h/t Irene)

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Why is There Still a World Zionist Organization? (Vic Rosenthal)

Vic Rosenthal's weekly column

The Zionist Organization and its parliament, the Zionist Congress, were established by Theodor Herzl in 1897 (the “World” was added to their names later). Their function was to develop and implement a program of Jewish settlement in Eretz Yisrael. The Zionist Congress included delegates from a wide range of ideological streams; the bottom line was a Jewish home in our historic homeland (although other locations were considered in the early years), but the nature of that home – even whether it should be a sovereign state – was subject to dispute.

Today’s World Zionist Congress (WZC) appoints the heads of several organizations that control large amounts of property and funds that come from Jewish charities abroad and the Israeli taxpayer. These include the Jewish National Fund (JNF) which manages most of the land in Israel, the Jewish Agency which facilitates Jewish immigration to Israel, the United Israel Appeal which raises funds, and others.

These organizations are closely connected to the government of Israel, but they are independent bodies. This can be confusing. For example, someone applying to make aliyah to Israel must deal with both the Jewish Agency (the sochnut) and the Israeli consulate.

The most important fact about the WZC is that its sub-organizations spend about $1 billion annually. These organizations, whose utility ended on 14 May 1948, have hundreds of employees (many of whom are politically connected individuals), and hundreds of contractors and programs are supported by them. To the extent that they perform useful functions, they could and should be done by the government of Israel. The waste of funds that come from the high taxes paid by Israelis and the generous donations of diaspora Jews is colossal. Many highly-paid functionaries do essentially nothing, and are there because somebody important owed them a favor.

But in addition to being wasteful, these organizations are dangerous, because they represent an easily-opened door to infiltration by those who not only want to benefit from the fruits of the Jewish state, but to attack it in the process.

Recently many diaspora organizations, particularly in the US, which were originally established to benefit the Jewish people as a whole, the State of Israel, or individual Jews, have been pressured to include representatives of anti-Zionist groups like J Street. In 2012, “Open Hillel” was formed in order to try to change the guidelines of college Hillel houses for acceptable programs, in the words of one reporter, to “legitimize and include groups that advance anti-Israel (and sometimes anti-Semitic) agendas in mainstream Jewish campus life.”

In 2014, J Street applied to become a member of the Conference of Presidents of Major Jewish Organizations, and was turned down after an acrimonious debate. Last week, a guy that previously worked for Bernie Sanders, and previously was the State Department’s liaison to Congress to promote Obama’s Iran deal, became Executive Director of the American Jewish Congress.

The WZC has also become a focus of conflict between right-wing and left-wing factions. Delegates from the Diaspora are chosen by elections, while Israelis are apportioned according to the parties in the Knesset. Although the Left was battering at the gates here as well, a new group of American delegates has recently been added, a slate called “Eretz Hakodesh” that appealed to non-Zionist Haredim. It’s platform did not include the words “State of Israel” or “Zionist.” A campaign in the Orthodox and Haredi communities gave the religious and right-wing bloc a slight edge over the Reform/Conservative/Left bloc among the total of 521 delegates (complete results by country are here, in Hebrew).

It’s possible to take comfort in the fact that the American Hatikvah slate, which included such “Zionists” as Peter Beinart, got only ten seats. It’s absurd that they or anti-Zionist Haredim should be represented at all.

The largest delegation from the US is the one representing the Reform movement, with 39 seats. Together with Reform delegates from other countries, they hold a total of 63 seats. Considering that “Reform Zionism” means misinformed American Jews telling Israelis how to run their country (because the US is doing such a good job at home), they too are not in the “helpful” category.

72 years after the founding of the state, Zionism as an ideology is still relevant. But the World Zionist Organization is not.

Indeed, it’s long past time to end this jobs program for shady politicians that didn’t make it into the Knesset, former mayors that were not re-elected, and so forth. The unnecessary bureaucracy only makes life harder for people who must interact with it, like prospective olim. And just like Israel’s bloated unity government with its 36 ministers – at least 18 of which are unnecessary – it is obscene to shovel cash into a black hole when Israelis and diaspora Jews are struggling in a wretched economic environment.

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.

10/21 Links Pt2: The Dangers of Politicized History; Jonas Salk and Antisemitism; Paris police nab seven in attempted ramming of officer near Israeli embassy

From Ian:

The Dangers of Politicized History

At the time of Sharpton’s comment the historiographical flaws of Bernal’s thesis had been meticulously laid bare a year earlier by esteemed Wellesley classicist Mary Lefkowitz in her article “Not Out of Africa,” and later in books like Black Athena Revisited (1996) and Not Out of Africa (1997). Her thorough research undercut one of the major arguments of Afrocentrism, that ancient Greek culture was a “stolen legacy” filched from African peoples, a thesis based on egregious mangling of historical facts. For example, at a 1993 lecture at Wellesley by Yosef A.A. Ben-Jochannan, author of the Afrocentric classic Africa: Mother of Western Civilization, Ben-Jochannan claimed that Aristotle had plagiarized his philosophy from the Library of Alexandria in Ptolemaic Egypt. During the Q&A, Lefkowitz asked Ben-Jochannan how would that have been possible, “when that Library had only been built after his death.”

The subsequent assault on Lefkowitz, documented in her 2008 book History Lessons, was an early example, of today’s “cancel culture,” and taking on the powerful black-identity politics academic lobby with such biting criticism was personally costly for Lefkowitz. Black studies professors and Afrocentric ideologues leveled against her vicious attacks, ranging from being dismissed as an “obscure drudge in the academic backwaters of a Classics department,” by the truly obscure black studies professor Wilson Jeremiah Moses; to the antisemitic smear of Lefkowitz as a “homosexual” and a “hook-nosed, lox-eating . . . so-called Jew,” by Khalid Abdul Muhammad of the Nation of Islam, whose active support of Afrocentrism was welcomed by many black studies professors.

Lefkowitz’s experience in defending history from political propaganda should have alerted both the academy and larger society to what was happening to higher education. But as we see today with the “1619 Project” and the nonsense of “white privilege,” Critical Race Theory, and “systemic racism,” politicized history has entrenched itself in the universities, and escaped from the rotting groves of academe to pollute K-12 curricula with Black Lives Matter and “1619” propaganda. Moreover, such fake history is poisoning our politics with an illiberal “cancel culture” that violates the First Amendment and the long tradition of academic freedom enshrined in the “1940 Statement of Principles on Academic Freedom and Tenure,” promulgated by what’s now known as the American Association of Colleges and Universities. Worse yet, federally mandated policies based on ill-written civil rights laws have provided campus ideologues with powerful weapons to intimidate and silence any voice not singing in harmony with the “woke” identity-politics chorus.

What appears to be just another attempt by “woke” activists to bully an industry and indulge its anti-Semitic bigotry against an Israeli actress should not be lightly brushed off as the politically correct hysteria du jour. Nor should we forget the academic scandal from nearly thirty years ago that helped to institutionalize this particular variety of fake history and illiberal assaults on free speech. Today we all can see the consequences of such negligence, as intellectual and professional malfeasance once confined to the university classroom is now fueling violence in our streets and furthering the corruption of our K-12 and university curricula.

The Jesuits used to say, give me the child, and I’ll show you the man. The left has had several generations of our children now for over fifty years, and their men and women are rampaging through our biggest cities, controlling our corporate boards, censoring social media, polluting our culture, demagoguing in our legislatures and courts, and actively working to dismantle the Constitutional order that protects our unalienable rights and political freedom.

It’s time to start seriously reforming our schools.

Gal Gadot replaces Elizabeth Taylor as Cleopatra in clip

Forget the silly Twitterstorm over whether Gal Gadot is too white to play Cleopatra – Reface, the app that uses Deep Fake technology to swap faces in videos, has created a clip of the classic 1963 movie Cleopatra, replacing star Elizabeth Taylor’s face with Gadot’s.

Two things are instantly clear from this clip, which shows Gadot in many of the costumes Taylor wore in the film. The first is that Gadot has a slight resemblance to Taylor that has gone unremarked upon until now. The second is that she has a suitably regal presence to shine in the role.

The clip is scored to a rap song in Arabic, which is both a tribute to the Egyptian setting and, possibly, an ironic nod to the controversy. The sets and costumes in the film are incredibly lavish, which makes sense because this was the most expensive film ever made until then, with a budget of more than $100 million. There was also a media storm that swirled around the set, as Taylor fell in love with her married co-star, Richard Burton, who played Mark Anthony. She left her husband, singer Eddie Fisher, and Burton left his wife, and the starring couple were married and divorced twice.

Taylor reportedly was initially not allowed to enter Egypt because she was Jewish. She converted to Judaism in 1959, influenced by Fisher and her third husband, producer Mike Todd. During the hostage crisis at Entebbe, Taylor offered herself as a replacement hostage and later appeared in a small role in the movie, Victory at Entebbe.

Jonas Salk and Antisemitism

When President Dwight Eisenhower invited Jonas Salk — who discovered the polio vaccine — to the White House, the president reportedly choked back tears of gratitude. The polls indicated that “apart from the atomic bomb, America’s greatest fear was polio.”

Salk — the Jewish doctor in a lab coat — entered America’s pantheon with Mickey Mantle, Elvis Presley and Marilyn Monroe. The Jonas Salk Ward of Jerusalem’s Shaare Zedek Hospital was named after him.

Yet Salk denied that his Jewish origins had anything to do with his achievements, and also dismissed concerns about “religious discrimination.”

Salk, in fact, was brought up in the East Bronx. His mother hailed from Minsk, his father from Lithuania. The family kept kosher but was otherwise non-observant. A hard-working boy — whose heroes were Moses and Lincoln — he yearned for academic success. He reportedly had an unassuming personality in an era when Jews were not supposed to be “pushy.” Yet Salk was accused by the scientific community of not sharing credit for the vaccine.

Whether or not he admitted it, Salk’s Jewish origins shaped his career. His mentor at NYU’s medical school, Thomas Francis, Jr., an infectious disease specialist, pulled strings to get his protégé — “a member of the Jewish race” — a fellowship at the University of Michigan. There, he won the admiration of Basil O’Connor, president of the National Foundation for Infantile Paralysis, known as the March of Dimes. After World War II, Salk, then at the University of Pittsburgh, competed to develop a polio vaccine with Dr. Albert Sabin, another “Jewish boy” from New York. Salk’s “dead virus” vaccine was the initial winner, though later Sabin’s “live virus” vaccine eclipsed it.

Salk wanted his own research institute in California. His first preference was Palo Alto, but his friend, physicist Leo Szilard, joined Roger Revelle of the Scripps Institution of Oceanography to convince him to choose San Diego’s exclusive seaside community of La Jolla.

The problem was that La Jolla contrived to maintain antisemitic restrictive covenants even after the Supreme Court’s ruling in Shelley v. Kraemer (1948) that such covenants could not be legally enforced.

Always a pleasure meeting up for a chat with @HenMazzig. He didn’t expect a Spanish Inquisition either! Our full discussion on disputations is available on my new #YouTube channel 📺▶️ https://t.co/LHEvY2oByC pic.twitter.com/KtjMaBd5VK
— Jonny Gould (@jonnygould) October 20, 2020

Joe Biden had his first meeting with an Israeli leader, Golda Meir, on the eve of the Yom Kippur war, right after meeting with officials in Cairo. During the then junior senator’s meeting with Meir, Biden suggested that Israel make a unilateral withdrawal from settlements for peace, criticizing the settlement policies of the Labor Party, and suggesting they represent a form of “creeping annexation.” Though Biden assured Meir that Egyptian officials were convinced of Israel’s military superiority, 40 days later, Sadat initiated a surprise attack against Israel.

This is the gist of a bombshell tweet from Israel’s Channel 13 reporter Nadav Eyal containing excerpts from a classified memo from an Israeli official who attended that fateful meeting. While it may have been the first meeting between Biden and an Israeli prime minister, it was certainly not the last. In subsequent meetings with Israeli prime ministers, Biden threatened Menachem Begin with withholding U.S. aid, and publicly upbraided Benyamin Netanyahu because it had been announced in a town council meeting that 1600 homes were to be built in future in the Jewish Jerusalem neighborhood of Ramat Shlomo (more about this here).

Here is the tweet:

1/Golda Meir and Joe Biden, the Israeli memo.
By far, the story Biden most frequently tells about his relationship with Israel leadership is his first meeting with Golda as a young senator. Here's Biden describing the encounter and Golda's punch linehttps://t.co/UsroQHRwog
— נדב איל Nadav Eyal (@Nadav_Eyal) October 15, 2020

Here is the content of Eyal's tweet, edited for readability:

Golda Meir and Joe Biden, the Israeli memo.

By far, the story Biden most frequently tells about his relationship with Israel leadership is his first meeting with Golda as a young senator. Here's Biden describing the encounter and Golda's punch line:

I've published this evening a classified memo documenting the meeting, made by a senior Israeli official present in the room. A fascinating meeting.

Biden comes from Egypt, some 40 days before Sadat ordered a surprise attack which will become the Yom Kippur war. He tells the Israeli PM that all the officials he met in Cairo assured him that they accept "Israel's military superiority.” Of course, they lied (not [Biden’s] fault, of course. Israel was misled by its own intelligence community).

American Politics.

Biden criticizes the Nixon administration for being "dragged by Israel" [into supporting Israeli policies]. He says, according to this government memo, that there is no debate in the Senate about the Middle East because the Senators are "afraid" to say things that Jewish voters will dislike. (He SAYS THAT TO GOLDA)

He criticizes the Israeli labor platform arguing that it’s leading to a creeping annexation of the occupied territories. Considering Israel's military dominance, Biden suggests it will initiate a first step for peace by unilateral withdrawals. This will be done from areas with no strategic importance—not the Golan.

Golda responds with a long speech about the history of the Zionist movement from its very establishment. The instability of Arab regimes, the unfairness of Supreme Court decisions.

Golda rejects Biden comments on the Labor platform, rejects his offers of unilateral withdrawal and continues to argue that Israel can make no major mistakes considering the situation of the Jewish people after the Holocaust. The official making the notes remarked that Biden was full of respect to the PM yet his "enthusiasm as he spoke" signaled his lack of experience in the diplomatic field.

REMARKS: Biden warning to the PM on the eve of the war that Israel must make some concessions is prophetic. Some historians argue that Golda's refusal to consider Egyptian diplomatic initiatives led to war. Biden's suggestion that Israel make unilateral concessions is interesting. The only time Israel opted for such a move is in 2005 when Ariel Sharon as PM initiated Israel's withdrawal from the Gaza strip. Much more to say.

Part of the original Hebrew document from the unnamed Israeli official:

It is important to note that it was the Labor Party that initiated the policy of settling all parts of Jewish indigenous territory, including Judea and Samaria. From the Jewish Virtual Library:

In the past, Labor was more hawkish on security and defense issues than it is today. During its years in office, Israel fought the 1956 Sinai War, the Six-Day War and the Yom Kippur War. Labor agreed to UN Resolution 242 and the notion of trading land for peace. Nevertheless, successive Labor governments established settlements in the disputed territories and refrained from dismantling illegal settlements, such as those established in 1968 at Qiryat Arba in Hebron by Rabbi Moshe Levinger, and others set up by Gush Emunim. By 1976, more than thirty settlements had been established on the West Bank; however, their population was fewer than 10,000.

Joe Biden paints that early meeting with Golda as something precious that cemented in his mind how important Israel is to the Jewish people. It is clear, however, that Joe Biden has always been against the Jewish people settling their indigenous territory. The very thought of Jews planning to build homes in Jerusalem makes him furious. Therefore, contrary to the love fest with Golda he has often described, Biden used the first chance he had to meet with an Israeli prime minister to broach the subject of unilateral concessions.

One wonders how much clout the young senator wielded at that time. Not to mention the timing of subsequent events, with the surprise attack on Israel by Egypt occurring just 40 days after Biden’s meeting with Meir. Is it possible that Golda Meir incurred wider U.S. displeasure by refusing to entertain Biden's suggestion of unilateral concessions? Was Egypt perhaps emboldened by this state of affairs to attack Israel without fear of American intervention?

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10/21 Links Pt1: Caroline Glick: The Foreign Policy Debate Americans Should Hear; Ruthie Blum: Arab-Israeli Politicians Against Peace

From Ian:

Caroline Glick: The Foreign Policy Debate Americans Should Hear

Then Trump came into office. Trump made clear that his doctrine of America First meant America would work with allies who shared its interests and goals. He emphasized that the U.S.'s goal was to defeat the forces of radical Islam and terror. When along with Israel, Arab state after state lined up to join him, Trump realized that the tectonic plates had shifted and true peace was possible for the first time. And he sent his team to achieve it.

The Palestinians, so used to being feted by U.S. administrations convinced that without the Palestine Liberation Organization's permission, no peace could ever be reached between Israel and the Arab world, were left on the sidelines, screaming anti-Semitic curses at Trump, his family and his advisors.

As for Iran, to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons and destabilize the regime that seeks to dominate the Middle East to the detriment of U.S. national security and the survival of U.S. allies, Trump vacated the U.S.'s signature on the Obama-Biden nuclear deal with Iran. He implemented a strategy of "maximum pressure" to economically and politically destabilize the regime, while supporting U.S. regional allies in their acts to defend themselves against Iranian aggression. The administration is now adding new sanctions to block weapons sales to Iran. News sales will be possible for the first time in 20 years because the Obama-Biden nuclear deal put a sunset clause on the UN weapons embargo, freeing Iran to purchase advanced weapons on the open market beginning this month.

Biden has pledged to reinstate the U.S.'s commitment to the nuclear deal and end economic sanctions on Iran, thus freeing the most prolific state sponsor of terrorism to develop a nuclear arsenal within a year. He has also pledged to restore the Palestinians and their opposition to Israel's very existence to the center stage of a renewed U.S. policy of hostility toward Israel.

In Asia, Biden and Obama strengthened U.S. ties with Beijing, to Beijing's advantage. Obama told U.S. workers that their manufacturing jobs would not come back. In the 1990s, Biden shepherded China to most-favored-nation trading status and World Trade Organization membership, setting the course for the outsourcing of the U.S manufacturing base to China.

But Trump revitalized manufacturing in the U.S. through his trade tariffs, his corporate tax cuts and his trade deals with Canada, Mexico and China. Trump has confronted China's growing rivalry head-on, recognizing that the superpower competition between the U.S. and China will likely define international power politics in the coming decades.

These and other issues might have been discussed in a presidential debate centered on foreign policy. Unfortunately, thanks to Welker and the Commission on Presidential Debates, the public won't have the opportunity to hear such a discussion. Instead, it will be subjected to brief regurgitations of talking points before Welker moves on to another topic.

Daniel Pipes: Why I'm Voting for Trump We Elect a Team, Not a Person

Rather than the person, I advise a focus on a party's overall outlook. Does it take pride in American history or emphasize its faults? Does it favor the original Constitution or a living version of it? Does it emphasize individualism or equality? Does it focus on the free market or government oversight? Does it see the United States more as a force for good or ill in the world?

From these first principles derive the myriad of specific policies that characterize an administration and make it unique. These, not the president's appearance or college grades, determine his place in history and the trajectory of the country. Indeed, that the team's views and policies are often sharper-edged than the president's further emphasizes the central importance of his outlook.

Personally, I favor the first in each of those dualities: a proud view of the United States, caution about the Constitution, and an emphasis on individualism and free markets. In this election, only one of the two major parties agrees with my outlook. Despite my intense aversion to Trump's immorality, vulgarity, and egotism, these now worry me less than the Democrats' uniquely radical program. And so, I publicly endorsed him. To quote journalist Bernard Goldberg, "He is a detestable man. And I hope he wins."

Why then did I vote Libertarian in 2016? Because Trump appeared to be a populist out to wreck the Republican party, the conservative movement, and even American democracy. Then, to my surprise, he governed as a conservative on those issues I consider most important. So, consistent with the argument presented here, I put aside my distaste and fears.

Caroline Glick: Anti-Netanyahu Left Cloaks Itself In Zionism And Democracy

Now, revoltingly, a mere hundred years after their forebears began arriving at the ports of Jaffa and Haifa, and 29 years after “Operation Solomon,” Haskel and his comrades have lost contact with their mother ship. “Zionism” for them is not an article of faith or even an ideological position. It is a marketing tool they use to present themselves as the rightful rulers of Israel. For the past decade, leftist parties have used it to hide their radical positions. In 2015 the leftist party called itself “The Zionist Union” while pushing a post-Zionist platform. In 2019, the leftist party called itself “Blue and White” to hide its ideological nihilism and blind quest for power.

The “Ingathering of Exiles” (kibbutz galuyot) that captivated the imaginations and steered the dreams of Jews through millennia of persecution, expulsions and massacre is for Haskel and his colleagues merely the name of a highway junction in Tel Aviv that they send protesters to block on a semi-regular basis.

Haskel instinctively attacked the police officers as ungrateful wretches because he either forgot or never really understood the purpose of the country. For him, the fight is about taking power away from the irritating Jews who keep faith with his grandparents’ vision and seizing it for himself and his friends in the name of his grandparents’ legacy.

Aside from the media that gives slobbering coverage to anyone who opposes Netanyahu, Haskel and his comrades’ most powerful ally in their lawbreaking, contemptuous protests is Attorney General Avichai Mandelblit. Like them, Mandelblit uses loaded language to try to give an ideological veneer to his self-aggrandizing behavior.

Ruthie Blum: Arab-Israeli Politicians Against Peace

This brings us to the Knesset representatives of Israel’s Arabs. Odeh not only voted against the Abraham Accords, but told the Hezbollah-affiliated Lebanese TV station al-Mayadeen that they are based on a “flawed assumption” about Iran being the “fundamental issue.”

Pooh-poohing the Iranian threat — to a network whose sponsors are Iranian proxies — he said, “The Israeli occupation is the fundamental problem.” Al-Mayadeen is used to and regularly promotes Israel-bashing. Having help from an Arab Knesset member who isn’t even as radical as some of the others on his list must have been especially welcome.

Speaking of which, Joint List MK Abbas Mansour, chairman of the United Arab List Party, explained to Israel’s Kan Radio on Monday why he couldn’t unequivocally condemn the beheading of a history teacher by a Chechen Islamist in a suburb of Paris on Friday.

Mansour said that the teacher should not have shown his students caricatures of the Prophet Muhammad, even in the context of a lesson on freedom of expression, since such depictions are offensive to Muslims. Try as they might, the interviewers did not manage to get him to concede that in this case, the cartoons were part of an educational exercise or that democracy involves free speech.

Instead, he ranted about the pluralism of Islam and its respect for all people and religions to prove his point that causing offense to Muslims goes against such values. In his eyes, apparently, decapitation does not.

Given the Palestinian honchos’ unwillingness to coexist with Israelis at the expense of their own people’s well-being, it is logical for the likes of Odeh and Mansour to be on their side against the Abraham Accords. What makes no sense at all, however, is that the Joint List — the third-largest faction in the Knesset — is more hostile to Zionists than the sheikhs of Abu Dhabi and Manama.

From Middle East Eye:

Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison is facing mounting criticism from pro-Palestine activists over his decision to attend an event on Tuesday honouring the legacy of late Israeli prime minister Yitzhak Rabin.

The memorial made headlines last month when activists successfully pressured Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, known as AOC, into withdrawing from the event.

American Muslims for Palestine (AMP), a leading Palestinian advocacy organisation, said in a statement earlier this week that they met with Ellison, who was elected as the first Muslim in Congress in 2007, to discuss their concerns over the event.

"Despite a lengthy discussion in which AMP presented the facts, Attorney General Keith Ellison is moving forward with participating in the memorial event," AMP said.

Mondoweiss (above) also complained about Ellison, noting what a pro-Israel shill he supposedly is: "

While he was running to chair the Democratic National Committee in 2016, Ellison publicly condemned the BDS movement. “I have long supported a two-state solution and a democratic and secure state for the Jewish people, with a democratic and viable Palestinian state side-by-side in peace and dignity,” Ellison said in a statement at the time. “I don’t believe boycotting, divesting and sanctioning Israel helps us achieve that goal.”

Ellison had been involved with Louis Farrakhan's Nation of Islam, he supported the one-sided Goldstone Report and he voted against giving Israel funding for defending itself from Hamas rockets, and in 2010 he said that American foreign policy is “governed” by Israeli interests. He's not exactly a pro-Israel politician.

But compared to the "Squad," he's positively a moderate.

At the APN event honoring Rabin, Ellison was reported to have called him a human rights abuser before he turned to peace.

On APN Rabin call, Keith Ellison says Rabin was involved in human rights abuses ("breaking the bones") but says "it's brave to fight and risk your life in defense of your country...but if you want to demonstrate true bravery you have to go to your people [and make peace]" pic.twitter.com/itufXF3j4G
— Zaid Jilani (@ZaidJilani) October 21, 2020

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The Left is AGAINST the first US government conference on fighting online antisemitism

Today and tomorrow, the US State Department is holding the first government conference ever on the topic of online antisemitism.

As Elan Carr, U.S. Special Envoy to Monitor and Combat Anti-Semitism, writes in The Hill:

Anti-Semitism online is ideologically diverse. Haters from the far-right far left utilize similar tactics, misusing modern media to spread the ancient hatred with unprecedented speed and reach. The adage has never been truer: “A lie can travel around the world and back again while the truth is lacing up its boots.”

Some foreign governments compound the crisis, using their state apparatus's full force to spew anti-Semitic disinformation at home and across the globe.

A recent European study found that radicalization to the point of violence is accomplished much more quickly on the internet than through face-to-face interaction.

The results can be devastating. We have seen murderous attacks on synagogues and schools, vandalism of community buildings, relentless harassment of Jewish university students, and acts of terrorism from those radicalized to violence. The type or source of threat may vary by region and country, but no part of the world has been entirely spared the scourge.

Americans understand that we cannot legislate hatred out of existence, nor can we purge it from the internet. Our bedrock First Amendment protection of freedom of expression means that even despicable speech cannot be subjected to government censorship or punishment.

But much more can be done to counter the vicious hatemongers. We must address this urgent challenge by creating working alliances among social media giants, ethnic and faith communities, human rights advocacy organizations, and governments. Our conference aims to begin forging such alliances and crafting practical policy solutions.

Who can be against such an initiative?

The people who defend Leftist antisemitism, that's who.

IfNotNow, which pretends to be a Jewish group and also pretends to be against antisemitism, tweeted up a bald-faced lie about this conference, claiming that it was not going to address any far-Right antisemitism:

The conference program (as well as the article above) shows that the conference is looking at all sources of antisemitism, Right and Left as well as militant Islamic.

But the most popular charge that the Left makes against the Right - besides calling them "Nazis" - is to claim that Christian Zionists like Mike Pompeo are really antisemites. as Mairav Zonzsein does here:

This theme that Christian Zionists are all antisemites who are working behind the scenes to arrange a world war that will usher in the Rapture is a mantra among the Left. In fact, there is an entire online conference on that exact theme tomorrow, featuring such noted non-experts on Christian Zionism as Linda Sarsour and Peter Beinart, sponsored by this group:

Saying that Christians believe in their messiah coming means that they will try to force it to happen is quite a logical fallacy. (It is interesting that these people have no such fears about Iran forcing the coming of their own messianic Mahdi, a topic that the Ayatollah explicitly discusses all the time.)

These same Leftists can't quite bring themselves to acknowledge that President Trump is the first president since Gerald Ford who has not initiated a war action.

Nor do they want to talk about Trump's own accomplishments in fighting antisemitism, listed by Carr in the Hill article:

President Trump has made combating Jew-hatred a top national priority. The administration designated a violent white supremacist group as a terrorist organization, ensured Holocaust education for future generations of schoolchildren, issued an executive order protecting besieged Jewish college students, sent senior government delegations to stand with survivors of violent anti-Semitic attacks in Pittsburgh, Poway, Jersey City, Brooklyn, Halle, and so many other places, and strongly supports the State of Israel against those seeking to delegitimize the Jewish state.

The Left was AGAINST most of these initiatives and made fun of the rest, showing that they are more interested in fighting Trump no matter what he does than in fighting antisemitism of any type.

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Using science fiction for anti-Israel propaganda

Last year, a much heralded book was released called Palestine +100, with Palestinian Arab writers writing about how the region could look in the year 2048.

Here's the book's blurb:

Palestine + 100 poses a question to twelve Palestinian writers: what might your country look like in the year 2048 – a century after the tragedies and trauma of what has come to be called the Nakba? How might this event – which, in 1948, saw the expulsion of over 700,000 Palestinian Arabs from their homes – reach across a century of occupation, oppression, and political isolation, to shape the country and its people? Will a lasting peace finally have been reached, or will future technology only amplify the suffering and mistreatment of Palestinians?

Notice the phrase "a century of occupation." This means, of course, that Israel itself is completely illegitimate - if the "occupation" began in 1948 then Israel is an illegal entity on both sides of the Green Line.

This is the most insidious type of propaganda, where statements like these are written as if they are an established fact, and the readership - who is generally not attuned to the nuances of language that people steeped in the conflict understand - subconsciously accept these descriptions as true.

Sure enough, that is exactly what happened when Jonathan Strahan, in my opinion the best SF editor around, described this book in the introduction to his "The Year's Best Science Fiction Vol. 1

The Saga Anthology of Science Fiction 2020" - and he parroted the false Palestinian claim without any caveat:

Journalists and others know that they are walking in a minefield when they write about the Middle East, and they will get complaints from both sides, so they at least try to be careful in their language. But when Palestinian propaganda is transferred to other media, the lies can multiply without the same scrutiny.

Which is exactly what happened here.

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10/20 Links Pt2: The Era of Farrakhan; The Case Against The New York Times; The silence of the anti-fascists; The BLM Movement and Antisemitism

From Ian:

The Era of Farrakhan

“You are wicked deceivers of the American people. You have sucked their blood. You are not real Jews, those of you that are not real Jews. You are the synagogue of Satan, and you have wrapped your tentacles around the U.S. government, and you are deceiving and sending this nation to hell.” —Louis Farrakhan

One thing irresponsible actors on both sides of the political spectrum now agree on—perhaps the only thing—is that the medieval bigot Louis Farrakhan and his followers are serious people who “represent” or can “speak for” black America.

And the poison is spreading.

It is being spread by Donald Trump, now partnering with rapper and Farrakhan fan Ice Cube, who enjoys tweeting anti-Semitic memes and images, like one depicting Jewish bankers seated around a Monopoly board resting on the backs of Black men. It is being spread by Barack Obama, headlining an event with the discredited Women’s March leader and Farrakhan acolyte Tamika Mallory. And it is being spread by the editors of The New York Times, who this weekend ran a fawning op-ed about the women behind Farrakhan’s Million Man March without so much as a nod to his overt and grotesque bigotry--which led the late John Lewis to boycott the event. When Jewish readers expressed anguish at this whitewashing, the author of the piece took to Twitter to tell them to stop “centering” themselves in this conversation. Can you imagine that being said by a contributor to the Times to any other minority group targeted for violence? And in the very year when there was a mass murder of Jews perpetrated by someone driven by the ideas that Farrakhan promotes?

The normalizing of America’s leading conspiratorial anti-Semite by both parties, in the hope of bringing out more African American voters, is one more symptom of the deeply corrosive and morally repulsive politics that has trashed the American liberal tradition. It makes a mockery of the left’s flood of outrage over Donald Trump’s failure to forcefully denounce white supremacists, while Trump’s courting of one of Farrakhan's outspoken fans, reportedly through the good offices of his son-in-law Jared Kushner, makes a mockery of the idea that he is a bulwark against Jew-haters on the progressive left. As for The New York Times, we look forward to the forthcoming magazine issue devoted to explaining that Farrakhan, and not Martin Luther King Jr., was actually the lead character in the fight for racial justice in America, in a series of essays to be given out next year in public schools.

The Case Against The New York Times

In familiar laceration mode, the Editorial Board of The New York Times Sunday Review recently (October 18) offered “The Case Against Donald Trump.” Page one (of nine) presented the editors’ indictment litany, familiar to any Times reader: “Lies Anger Corruption Incompetence Chaos Decay.” Columnists cited Trump’s “Unapologetic Corruption,” “Demagogy” and “Fake Populism,” while the editors mourned “A Nation Adrift” amid “An Economy in Tatters,” “A Planet in Peril” and “Women’s Rights Under Attack.” So what else is new at the Times?

One journalist who contributed to the tirade caught my attention: Serge Schmemann, who had become the Times Jerusalem Bureau Chief shortly before the assassination of Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin in November 1995. Among President Trump’s claimed successes, “dubious at best and illusory at worst,” he wrote, was its Middle East peace plan. For Schmemann it was nothing more than “a bag of gifts for the Israeli right, effectively undermining America’s potential as a mediator with the Palestinians.”

His familiar expression of the Times party line about Israel prompted a review of Schmemann’s coverage of Israel in the mid-1990s. He preposterously blamed Rabin’s assassination on “the bellicose settlers of Hebron” — a favorite Times trope — who “spew the violent religious ideology that fired Yigal Amir,” Rabin’s assassin. But Amir, who grew up in the town of Herzliya, north of Tel Aviv, was not a settler nor did he live in Hebron.

Schmemann was most detached and moderate when reporting Palestinian terrorist attacks. Following the massacre by a suicide bomber that killed 26 Israeli passengers on a Jerusalem bus, he mentioned “Israeli rage and grief” but focused on Prime Minister Shimon Peres’ “tough tone” in a Knesset speech.

“In the fury of the moment,” Schmemann wrote, Israelis “reverted to their basic instinct: that war against terrorism must be constant and total” — rather, presumably, than occasional and minimal.

Tom Gross: Conversations with friends: New York Times columnist Bret Stephens

Bret Stephens, a Pulitzer Prize winning columnist for the NY Times and before that the Wall St Journal, talks about his upbringing in Mexico, his family background in Europe, and becoming a journalist. Bret and Tom Gross discuss America’s place in the world, the ongoing ‘culture wars’ in the US, the pitfalls of Donald Trump’s presidency (but whether it is dangerous for some to suggest he’s a ‘fascist’ or ‘Nazi’), what Trump has got wrong but what he may have got right regarding China, the Mideast and the Balkans, and Bret’s own role at the New York Times, and the Times’ role in the world.

From the UAE Ministry of Foreign Affairs:

Her Excellency Reem bint Ebrahim Al Hashimy, UAE Minister of State for International Cooperation, affirmed during her meeting with the Commissioner-General of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees in the Near East (UNRWA), Philippe Lazzarini, that the UAE was one of the first countries to provide support to UNRWA.

Moreover, Her Excellency underscored that the UAE believes in the role that UNRWA plays in improving the lives of Palestinian refugees and stressed that the UAE's long-standing, historic, and unwavering commitment to the Palestinian people contributes to maintaining regional security and stability.

Between 2013 and 2020, the UAE provided Palestinians with more than US$840 million, $218 million of which was allocated to UNRWA, $166 million to the education sector, and $19 million to humanitarian assistance and social services-oriented programs in Gaza, the West Bank, Jordan, Syria, and Lebanon.

The UAE is chairing the current session of the UNRWA Advisory Committee and aims to focus during its 2020-2021 presidency on key areas such as the digitization of education; empowering women, girls, and youth; and environmental sustainability.

It sounds like the UAE is continuing to fund UNRWA, and probably other Palestinian issues (although I doubt any more direct payments to the Palestinian Authority.)

Will Palestinians accept this money now?

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It's not Arab fathers' Middle East any more, either (Daled Amos)

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.

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