Elder of Ziyon 08/14 Links Pt2: Caroline Glick: Harris, Omar and the party's great march leftward; NY Democratic Socialists asks City Council candidates to pledge no Israel visits
Under the leadership of Obama White House alumni Jonathan Greenblatt, in recent years the ADL has tried to reinvent itself as a progressive group that focuses mainly on criticizing the other side of the political divide.
The ADL's fervent efforts to ingratiate itself among progressives places in stark relief the "Open Letter to the Progressive Community" signed by more than a hundred groups calling for ostracizing it. It shows that today's Democrat party is unwilling to accept Jews or politicians who are both progressive and pro-Jewish.
This brings us to Omar's primary victory. It wasn't particularly surprising that Omar won the poll. Her national profile has made her a lightning rod in national politics. While as a bigot she is justifiably hated by many, leftist donors and activists adore her and back her as an anti-Semite.
While predictable, three aspects of her win are particularly significant. First, the main difference between the Omar and the progressive black opponent she defeated is that unlike Omar, Antone Melton-Meaux isn't an anti-Semite. Rather than drawing praise from progressives for his lack of bigotry, Melton-Meaux was decried by progressive activists who accused him of being controlled by Jews.
The second significant aspect of Omar's win is that despite her open anti-Semitism, her reelection bid – and that of her anti-Semitic comrade Rashida Tlaib – was endorsed by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi. Pelosi even donated $14,000 to Omar's campaign from her political PAC. Pelosi was long viewed as a friend to both American Jews and to Israel. The fact that she monetarily supported an out and out anti-Semite speaks volumes about the direction of the party.
The final significant aspect of Omar's win is that it was a testament to the rapidly growing power of the radical left in the Democrat party. Two years ago, four female radicals with harshly anti-Israel positions were elected as first-time lawmakers. The joined together, called themselves "The Squad" and proceeded to drain all the air out of the policy discourse in their party.
As the Squad members rose in power and prestige, moderate Democrats insisted their voice was out of synch with their actual power. To be sure, the moderates argued, the likes of Omar and Alexandria Ocasio Cortez have the loudest microphones, but they represent but a fraction of the party's Congressional delegation.
So far, Tlaib and Omar handily won their primaries and three new candidates with their same brand of radical, anti-Israel positions just won their primaries replacing moderate lawmakers who either retired or were defeated. These victories point to two things. First, the squad has already nearly doubled its numbers in one Congressional term, and two, they have become, without a doubt, the rising force – and with Pelosi's backing, the dominant force in the Democrat party.
In light of all of this, it is self-evident Omar's primary victory was far more significant than Biden's selection of Harris as his running mate. Biden and Harris, weather vanes both, will not lead their party. They will follow their party's grassroots and donors as they lead the Democrats every further along on their great march into the anti-Semitic leftist abyss.
Lots of candidates for New York City Council are expected to seek an endorsement from the local Democratic Socialists of America chapter, a rising force in city politics, in next year's elections.
To apply for the endorsement, the candidates will have to decide if they will pledge not to travel to Israel if elected.
According to a screenshot of a candidate questionnaire from the DSA posted to Twitter by local reporter Zack Fink, candidates are being asked to "pledge not to travel to Israel if elected to City Council in solidarity with Palestinians living under occupation." (The party did not immediately confirm that it had distributed the survey.)
The group also asks candidates if they support the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement, which is part of the New York City DSA chapter's platform.
Some candidates declared their answers already on Twitter. "Easy: 1. No. 2. No," Eric Dinowitz, a teacher (and son of a state Assemblyman) who is running for City Council in the Bronx, posted late Thursday.
The questionnaire comes after pro-BDS activists were vindicated this month when Reps. Rashida Tlaib and Ilhan Omar, who have voiced support for the BDS movement, both won their Democratic primaries. Both represent overwhelmingly Democratic districts where they are likely to be reelected to Congress. A third congressional candidate who has indicated support for the BDS movement, Cori Bush in Missouri, also defeated a longtime incumbent in her primary.
With 35 out of 51 city council seats up for election this year due to term limits as well as open elections for citywide offices like mayor and comptroller, citywide elections in New York City next year present a rare opportunity to reshape most of New York City's government.
The DSA is considered to be a rising force in New York City after helping Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez defeat incumbent Joe Crowley in 2018. In this year's Democratic primary, DSA member Jamaal Bowman defeated Eliot Engel, a longtime incumbent and champion of Israel. Far from pledging to boycott Israel, Bowman has indicated his backing, last week telling City & State, "I am in full support of Israel."
A few years ago, I had an amazing learning experience when I visited Israel and I encourage my colleagues to be open-minded and travel there to form their own opinions. I refuse to be a part of this litmus test/cancel culture movement. Let's do more engaging not less. https://t.co/djZDrhTWg5
As it turns out, it isn't Rodney Muhammad who is on the spot in the controversy about the NAACP and anti-Semitism. The people who should really be worried about the controversy engendered by Muhammad are the Jewish members of the national board of the NAACP, like Rabbi Jonah Pesner, director of the Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism, who are being discredited by the organization's failure to draw a line in the sand about Jew-hatred.
Muhammad is the Philadelphia chapter president of the venerable civil-rights group who sparked controversy last month with a blatantly anti-Semitic Facebook post. The post combined pictures of African-American celebrities who had recently made anti-Semitic statements, and included the image of a Nazi-style caricature of a hook-nosed Jew above a fake quote from Voltaire that said: "To learn who rules over you, simply find out who you are not allowed to criticize." The obvious point was the false claim that powerful and sinister Jewish forces are working to suppress criticism of their fiendish hold on society by courageous but oppressed black people.
While Muhammad was bitterly criticized by various Jewish groups, as well as local politicians and public figures, he doesn't seem so concerned about his future as a public figure, even after such a gross display of prejudice. The national leadership of the NAACP was slow to issue a statement about the incident and when it did, its condemnation stopped well short of demanding Muhammad's resignation or his firing by the Philadelphia chapter.
As the African-American newspaper The Philadelphia Tribune reported, local black leaders such as Bishop J. Louis Felton, the first vice president of the Philadelphia chapter, said they had not received any instructions or guidance from the group's national office. Instead, the Tribune reported that NAACP president and CEO Derrick Johnson would be meeting with Muhammad, as well as local community and faith leaders, to "open a dialogue and continue the educational conversations." But the time for dialogue about this scandal is over. That statement could be reasonably interpreted as an indication that the national leadership has no interest in breaking with Muhammad, despite the fact that a state board could vote to The reluctance of the NAACP to take swift and decisive action is disappointing. Jews were active in the organization's founding. And there is a direct precedent in which the NAACP was faced with a similar situation in the not-too-distant past.
In August of 2000, Lee Alcorn, president of the group's Dallas chapter, sparked controversy by denouncing the selection of Sen. Joseph Lieberman (I-Conn.) as the Democratic candidate for vice president. Alcorn said he opposed Vice President Al Gore's running mate because "if we get a Jew person, then what I'm wondering is, I mean, what is this movement for, you know? … So I think we need to be very suspicious of any kind of partnerships between the Jews at that kind of level because we know that their interest primarily has to do with money and these kind of things."
NAACP president Kweisi Mfume responded immediately. He not only condemned Alcorn's remarks as "repulsive, anti-Semitic, anti-NAACP and anti-American," he also immediately suspended him from the organization.
The appropriation of the Jews transforms a people into a set of leftist slogans. And then Democrats from Barack Obama to Rep. Alexandria Ocasio Cortez are free to support policies that lead to the murder of actual Jews in the name of their leftist abstractions of Jewish values.
The American political system doesn't recognize constituencies as abstractions, but as people. The Democrats are building a new one-party state in which elections are irrelevant and primaries exist to broker arrangements between intersectional non-profits funded by billionaires. Actual Jewish communities are an annoying inconvenience in this Marxist political system.
Democrats with Jewish last names will still exist, they just won't represent anyone except the roster of non-profits like Bend the Arc, J Street, Jewish Voice for Peace, Jews for Racial and Economic Justice or If Not Now, that are not only actively working to get Jews killed, but that don't represent anyone except George Soros or Buffett's son. And attacking Soros for his radical extremism is the only thing that Democrats will even recognize as antisemitism anymore.
The pattern ought to be a familiar one from how leftist regimes dealt with Jewish populations.
There's not much of a future for Jewish communities in this model. The cities and suburbs where Jews live are under siege in the name of social justice. Jewish communities are simultaneously losing their representation within the Democrats in the name of social justice.
Jewish Democrats who imagine that Israel is the problem are about to learn they're the problem.
The problem, as in the USSR, is that many Jewish communities are bourgeois enclaves filled with middle class professionals, two-parent families who raise their children to succeed, go to a good college, get an even better job, get married, and raise their own children in a suburb with safe streets, challenging schools, and the rest of what used to be the American Dream.
Like most suburbanites, they aren't actually radical. They just stupidly enable the radicals. And the radicals, once they take power, are not going to tolerate them. They're going to get rid of them. It's already happening. And, unlike the 70s, there won't be any suburbs to run away to.
A decade ago there were six Jewish House Democrats out of New York. Now there are two.
What happened in the short span of a decade is that the radical future of the Democrats arrived. And there's no room in that radical new world that the Democrats are building for the Jews.
The chief of staff for Democratic vice-presidential pick Kamala Harris applauded the 2020 presidential candidates who chose to skip the 2019 AIPAC Policy Conference.
Karine Jean-Pierre, then national spokesperson and senior adviser for the left-wing group MoveOn, wrote in Newsweek that the Democratic candidates, particularly those who called themselves progressives, "made the right call," and that AIPAC's policies and values "are not progressive."
"You cannot call yourself a progressive while continuing to associate yourself with an organization like AIPAC that has often been the antithesis of what it means to be progressive," she wrote.
Harris did not attend the 2019 conference, though she has been to them in years past.
Jean-Pierre slammed AIPAC for opposing the 2015 Iran nuclear deal, which the United States withdrew from in May 2018, reimposing sanctions lifted under it, along with enacting new ones. She further criticized having Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu speak, considering his indictment for alleged fraud and bribery, and that "under his leadership of Israel, according to the United Nations, Israel may have committed war crimes in its attacks on Gazan protesters."
Without calling out Democrats by name, Jean-Pierre slammed those on the left side of the aisle who attended the conference for rebuking Reps. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) and Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.). Since entering Congress, Omar and Tlaib have been accused of an anti-Semitic and anti-Israel agenda with the former accusing AIPAC, the largest pro-Israel lobbying organization, in February 2019 of paying members of Congress to back Israel, saying it was "all about the Benjamins."
Democratic Senate candidate Sara Gideon repeatedly killed bills to outlaw female genital mutilation during her tenure as the speaker of the Maine House of Representatives.
Gideon leveraged her leadership position in the Democrat-controlled legislature to kill two separate bills that would have criminalized the practice of severing the clitoris of infant girls and sewing their vaginas shut. Instead, the Democrat supported a different law that would have funnelled $150,000 to her political allies to educate Mainers about the practice instead of criminalizing it, according to a former state legislator who spearheaded the push to stop the mutilation.
Under Gideon's leadership, Maine Democrats argued that the bill was racist toward the state's large immigrant community from Somalia, a country where the practice is "nearly universal" according to the United Nations. The Democrats also argued that the practice rarely takes place in Maine and is already outlawed by existing federal and local laws.
Gideon's efforts have helped make Maine one of only 12 states that have not banned female genital mutilation. Such a legacy threatens to complicate her cultivated image as a champion of women's rights, one built on her consistent support for abortion access and the #MeToo movement. The image strategy has paid off, translating into hundreds of thousands of dollars in donations and outside money support from national pro-abortion groups. Gideon did not respond to a request for comment.
F. A. Cole, a survivor of female genital mutilation who testified before the Maine legislature, expressed deep frustration for the bill's failure. "The Democrats, especially the Speaker of the House Sara Gideon, did everything she could in her power to just kill this bill," she told the Washington Free Beacon. "I could not understand why."
An interministerial committee is reevaluating the effectiveness of a law that bans BDS activists from entering the country, Strategic Affairs Minister Orit Farkash-Hacohen (Blue and White) said Thursday.
The committee, which includes representatives from the Strategic Affairs, Justice, Foreign and Interior ministries, is reviewing the criteria by which Israel denies entry to Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement activists. It was told to have a report ready within 45 days of its formation last week.
Farkash-Hacohen said she was taking a neutral position and wants to make sure the policy is working three years after its implementation. "It is important to reexamine… a tool that hurts freedom of movement," Farkash-Hacohen said.
"We need to not only be right, but also to be smart and save the tool only for the last resort," she said.
"BDS is part of a larger campaign, and we are focused on the big goal of ending antisemitic, violent delegitimization of Israel," Farkash-Hacohen said. "That is why I instructed my team to examine the criteria for barring the entry of BDS activists."
The Israeli military announced on Thursday that it is clearing some minefields in the Golan Heights in order to promote agriculture and tourism.
In a tweet, the IDF said that 50 dunams (12.35 acres) of land near the kibbutzim of Afik and Kfar Haruv had been made safe and handed over to the local regional council.
"The IDF sees great importance in strengthening and developing the settlements in the north through agriculture, tourism and economics," the military stated.
It added that it would "continue to work to clear the mines from areas of the Golan Heights and return them to the residents."
Israel took control of the Golan Heights from Syria during the 1967 Six-Day War, and the area again saw fierce fighting six years later during the Yom Kippur War. The strategic plateau was annexed by Israel in 1981.
Erdogan's Turkish regime is granting passports to 12 senior operatives of Hamas terrorist cell, giving them greater freedom to plot attacks against citizens around the world.
Lucky for the terrorists, UNRWA will still count these new Turks as 'refugees'.https://t.co/sVvQivxXuC
Saudi owned Asharq Al-Awsat: - "The campaign was launched by a right-wing Israeli organization "Palestinian Media Watch"…[which] has been working for more than 30 years against the PLO and the Palestinian Authority, claiming that they are running anti-Jewish policies, approaches and practices that support terrorism." - "PMW played a central role in the campaign against paying salaries to Palestinian detainees serving sentences in Israeli prisons, as well as to the families of the deceased."
Asharq Al-Awsat, a Saudi owned news outlet that is known for being a leading Arab daily newspaper, published an article describing the work of Palestinian Media Watch. In the article, special attention was given to PMW's central role in the new initiative to have the Palestinian Authority funded Commission for Prisoners' Affairs designated by the US administration as a "sponsor of terror," and designated by the Israeli government as a "terror organization".
The article cites PMW's report which was adopted by Congressman Doug Lamborn in his letter to President Trump, recommending that the PA Head of the Prisoners' Commission Qadri Abu Bakr and the Commission itself be designated as "sponsor of terror" in accordance with Executive Order 13224.
Following Lamborn's letter, a number of MK's similarly wrote to Israeli Defense Minister, Benjamin Gantz, calling on him to declare the Commission a terror organization.
Partnering PMW in the new campaign is the Middle East Forum.
The chairmen and ranking members of both the House Foreign Affairs and Senate Foreign Relations Committees have been quietly exercising veto powers to block arms sales to Turkey for more than a year, Defense News reported Wednesday.
The vetoes come in response to Turkey's acquisition of S-400 missile defense systems from Russia—a move that signifies Ankara's growing relationship with Moscow. Following Turkey's missile defense purchase last year, Washington iced Turkey's involvement in a U.S. fighter jet program.
Some experts say that Moscow is using the S-400 system as a "diplomatic tool."
"With arms sales, a lot of people focus on the initial exchange of money, but that's really not the main value here," Foundation for Defense of Democracies senior director Bradley Bowman told the Washington Free Beacon. "[What] a lot of people don't really track is that when another country buys a major weapons system, they are going to use it for 20-30 years. … There are huge diplomatic and national security benefits from that. When Russia gets those benefits, it's not just a one-year thing but a decades-long thing."
The Kremlin is also extending its S-400 diplomacy to India, which is reportedly flirting with fast-tracking the purchase of its own missile defense systems.
Republican lawmakers are now encouraging the White House to take a tougher stand on Turkey's growing friendship with Moscow.
"Turkey's purchase of the Russian S-400 is unacceptable and undermines NATO's mission to deter Russian aggression," Rep. Michael McCaul (R., Texas), who has helped block arms sales to Turkey as the ranking member of the Foreign Affairs Committee, said in a statement to the Free Beacon.
"The Administration must impose the sanctions required by law in response to this purchase. Turkey must reverse course on this destabilizing action to renew the United States' confidence in our defense relationship," he added.
The global community should help Lebanon rather than impose its will on the country, Iran's foreign minister said while in Beirut on Friday, following the catastrophic blast at the city's port that killed 172 people and pushed the government to resign.
Iran backs Lebanon's powerful armed movement Hezbollah, which along with its allies helped form the outgoing government. The United States classifies Hezbollah as a terrorist group.
Mohammed Javad Zarif was speaking after meeting President Michel Aoun, who had earlier met with US and French officials in a flurry of Western diplomacy that has focused on urging Lebanon to fight corruption and enact long-delayed reforms to unlock foreign financial aid to tackle an economic crisis.
"There should be international efforts to help Lebanon, not to impose anything on it," Zarif said in televised comments.
He earlier remarked that the Lebanese people and their representatives should decide on the future of Lebanon. "It is not humane to exploit the pain and suffering of the people for political goals," he said.
Lebanese had been staging angry protests against a political elite blamed for the country's many woes even before the Aug 4. blast, which injured 6,000, damaged swathes of the Mediterranean city and left 300,000 homeless. Some 30 people remain missing.
Honest Reporting: Beirut Blast: Just the Beginning?
Republican congressional leaders are pressuring the Trump administration to abandon its efforts to extend a United Nations arms embargo on Iran, and instead push the international body to reimpose all economic sanctions on Tehran that were lifted as part of the landmark nuclear accord.
The U.N. Security Council is expected to vote Friday on a U.S.-sponsored measure to indefinitely extend an arms embargo on Iran that is set to expire in mid-October. The Trump administration has expended great capital in recent months pushing its allies to back the measure. The administration earlier this week unveiled a revamped version of the measure meant to entice support from European allies such as France, Germany, and the United Kingdom. But Russia and China—which both have veto power on the Security Council—are standing in the way. The two countries want to see the arms ban expire so they can increase their sale of advanced weaponry and other military equipment to Iran.
Republican hawks in Congress are frustrated with the diplomatic battle, and are now calling on the Trump administration to invoke "snapback," a mechanism written into the original nuclear deal that allows member nations to unilaterally reapply all international sanctions on Iran that were lifted as part of the agreement. The Trump administration maintains that it can legally invoke snapback, but has been unclear about whether it will exercise the right. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and other senior U.S. officials said their focus is on the arms embargo resolution.
Rep. Joe Wilson (R., S.C.), chairman of the Republican Study Committee's Foreign Affairs and National Security Task Force, told the Washington Free Beacon that his coalition of conservative lawmakers wants the administration to invoke snapback immediately. With Russia and China standing in the way of the arms embargo extension, snapback is the only way to stop Iran from engaging in a weapons buying spree.
US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo on Friday called for the world to unite around a long-shot American bid to indefinitely extend a United Nations arms embargo on Iran.
As members of the UN Security Council voted remotely on a US resolution to prolong the embargo that is widely expected to fail, Pompeo said it was "nuts" to allow Iran to buy and sell weapons at will. Pompeo spoke well before an announcement of the results of the vote, which many diplomats believe will end in an embarrassing defeat for the Trump administration.
"We ask nations to urge the UN Security Council to renew the arms embargo on Iran," Pompeo said in Vienna, where he met with the UN nuclear watchdog's head, Rafael Grossi, and with senior Austrian officials. "We can't allow the world's biggest state sponsor of terrorism to buy and sell weapons. I mean, that's just nuts."
The anticipated defeat of the resolution in New York likely would set the stage for a showdown between world powers over whether all international sanctions lifted under the 2015 Iran nuclear deal can or should be reimposed.
"We're urging the whole world to join us. This isn't about the JCPOA," Pompeo said, using the acronym for the nuclear deal known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action.
Whatever the result of the vote, the Vienna-based International Atomic Energy Agency that Grossi heads will continue to play a major role in the future of the nuclear deal, and Pompeo called for all nations to show "support for IAEA Director General Grossi's critical mission to ensure that all countries comply with their international nuclear safeguard requirements."
"That mission is all the more important given the Islamic Republic of Iran's failure to address the IAEA's questions about its nuclear activities," Pompeo said. "The international community must speak with a single voice: Iran must provide full, transparent and immediate cooperation with the IAEA."
Iran briefly seized an oil tanker flying a Liberian flag in the Strait of Hormuz, an official in the U.S. Central Command (CENTCOM) told the Associated Press Thursday.
CENTCOM released a black-and-white video showing what were supposedly Iranian special forces rappelling from a helicopter onto the deck of the tanker. Iranian naval forces held the vessel for five hours before releasing it, a U.S. military official told AP.
Maritime intelligence group Dryad Global told AP it is also probable that two additional ships were stopped by Iran's Revolutionary Guard in the Persian Gulf over the last week.
The International Maritime Security Construct, a United States-led consortium of countries tasked with maintaining security in the Persian Gulf and the Gulf of Oman, denounced Iran's boarding of the oil tanker.
"Iran's use of its military forces to conduct an armed boarding of a commercial vessel in international waters constitutes a blatant violation of international law that undermines freedom of navigation and the free flow of commerce," a statement from the consortium reads. "This type of reckless, aggressive behavior by Iran destabilizes the region and threatens the rules based international order."
Tehran has repeatedly flexed its naval muscles in recent weeks. In late July, CENTCOM reported an Iranian exercise in which the Revolutionary Guard Corps launched a missile at what appeared to be a mock American aircraft carrier.
American Islamic Preacher Fadel Soliman: Islam Is Under Constant Attack because It Is the Religion of Resistance; Muslims Must Be Proud of Belonging to a Religion That Irritates Corrupt and Unjust People pic.twitter.com/YX8tg6BK02
California Governor Gavin Newsom has been called on by a broad coalition of education, civil rights and religious groups to veto a bill that would make ethnic studies courses a California State University (CSU) graduation requirement.
Referring to the field of "Critical Ethnic Studies" referenced in the AB 1460 legislation that is awaiting Newsom's signature, the groups — in a letter to the governor organized by the AMCHA Initiative — wrote, "We are deeply concerned that without adequate safeguards, these courses could become vehicles for one-sided political advocacy and activism that will both subvert the academic mission of the university, and incite bigotry and harm against some CSU students. "
"In particular," the letter continued, "we fear that the anti-Zionist orientation of Critical Ethnic Studies — the version of ethnic studies likely to be taught in response to AB 1460 — coupled with the willingness of many ethnic studies faculty to bring anti-Zionist advocacy and activism into their professional spaces, will foster a toxic climate for Jewish and pro-Israel students and foment harm against them."
"While faculty have every right to engage in political advocacy and activism outside the university, recent studies suggest that many Critical Ethnic Studies faculty are bringing their extramural support for BDS and their anti-Zionist politics into their conference halls and classrooms," the letter further noted.
AMCHA Initiative Director Tammi Rossman-Benjamin commented, "This type of anti-Zionist political activism directly corresponds to a rise in anti-Semitic incidents on campus."
An amazing thing happened this week, when 128 Jewish and pro-Israel organizations worked in unison to address the issue of antisemitism on Facebook. All 128 signed an open letter calling on Facebook to adopt the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance's "Working Definition on Antisemitism."
Why did so many organizations work together to sign the letter?
Facebook tries hard to remove hate speech on its platform. The Civil Rights Audit reported that in March, Facebook succeeded in removing 89% of hate speech before anyone could see the posts and report it. The European Union has data that shows 96% of the time, Facebook responded to reports of online hate within 24 hours and removed 87.6% of the posts that were reported.
The problem is Facebook's policies, which state: "We only remove content that directly attacks people based on certain protected characteristics. Direct attacks include things like: Violent or dehumanizing speech – for example, comparing all people of a certain race to insects or animals; statements of inferiority, disgust or contempt – for example, suggesting that all people of a certain gender are disgusting; calls for exclusion or segregation – for example, saying that people of a certain religion shouldn't be allowed to vote."
Some antisemitic posts easily fall into these categories and are removed, but the lack of a clear definition of antisemitism allows too many antisemitic posts to remain on the platform, from where it can be shared worldwide.
For example, content that promotes the idea that Jews control the banks and the media, and are a threat to society – aka the antisemitic tropes based on the Protocols of the Elders of Zion – do not directly attack anyone, and thus do not fall into Facebook's "hate speech" category. This has allowed posts to spread that incite antisemitism among the masses.
Under the heading "Is it used in bombs?" readers are told that "It has also been used in several terrorist acts, including the Oklahoma City bombing in 1995."
August 11th: Beirut explosion: Where else is ammonium nitrate being stored? by Christopher Giles, Shruti Menon and Zulfiqar Ali, BBC Reality Check.
"Following the destruction caused by ammonium nitrate exploding at Beirut's port, there are concerns globally about its storage. The chemical is widely used around the world, as a fertiliser or for explosives in mining. But there are strict regulations about where it can be kept and for how long. And its location is often kept secret because of its potential for making bombs."
The article presents examples from India, Yemen, Iraq, Australia and "UK ports".
August 12th: Beirut blast: The other countries with dangerous dumps of explosives by Frank Gardner.
"The devastating explosion in Beirut is a grim reminder of a deeply troubling fact: the thousands of tonnes of ammonium nitrate unsafely stored in that city's port is not the only site at risk of spontaneous detonation."
The article presents examples from the Philippines, Guinea-Bissau, Libya, Ukraine and Abkhazia.
"Munitions experts are now hoping that if anything positive can possibly come out of the tragedy in Beirut, it will be a renewed global urgency to make these stockpiles safe, before it is too late."
Remarkably, none of those reports makes any mention of cases in which Hizballah was found to have stored ammonium nitrate in countries including Thailand (which the BBC did report), Cyprus, the United Kingdom and most recently Germany (which the BBC did not report).
In the wake of last week's disaster in Beirut, on August 10th the BBC's Middle East editor offered his 187.6 thousand Twitter followers a "guide" to the Middle East in the form of an episode from his 2017 BBC Radio 4 series 'Our Man in the Middle East' which was relaunched by the BBC earlier this year and some episodes of which have been discussed here in the past.
So what sort of answers to their "questions about the Middle East" do listeners get from that promoted episode? One example comes at 02:13 when Bowen tells listeners: "In 2008 I saw how fighting could sweep through the mountains above Beirut like a forest fire, driven on by the hot wind of sectarian hate. Lebanon's power sharing system had broken down and different sects were reaching for their guns. Lebanon's leaders were mostly warlords turned politicians. They knew how hard it is to stop a civil war once it's started. That time they contained the making of a new one within a week."
The events described so opaquely by Bowen began in early May 2008 after the Lebanese government of the day discovered that Hizballah had a secret fibre-optic communications network allegedly financed by the 'Iranian Fund for the Reconstruction of Lebanon'.
The video-sharing app TikTok has become a magnet for extremists who spread antisemitic and racist content to recruit new followers, the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) warned in a new report this week.
"Despite TikTok's efforts to moderate and/or remove extremist content via community guidelines that cover a wide range of problematic content, from hate speech to discussions of self-harm, a cursory review of the platform by ADL's Center on Extremism found that white supremacists and antisemites are using a range of methods on the platform to recruit new adherents and share hateful content," the ADL said.
Employing a wide range of hashtags, adding captions to existing videos and overdubbing material posted by other users are among the techniques utilized, the ADL noted.
Crudely antisemitic messages have been inserted into some of the most popular content on the platform, the report observed.
The report noted, "One TikToker took a video of Swedish YouTuber PewDiePie and added a voiceover to make him appear to say, 'Hey guys PewDiePie here. Death to all Jews. I want you to say after me, death to all Jews. And you know, Hitler was right. I've really opened my eyes to white power and I think it's time we did something about it.'"
It continued: "Another user created a voiceover for a clip from the animated movie The Incredibles, which portrayed Mr. Incredible as a 'Goyim' (a disparaging Yiddish and Hebrew word for non-Jews) and his supervisor as a hateful and manipulative Jew bent on enacting globalist policies. Yet another video creates an antisemitic skit using a video clip from Regular Show, an animated sitcom. In the TikTok skit the character Mitch 'Muscle Man' Sorenstein gives his girlfriend, Starla, a rose. She responds by saying, 'A Jew would never do this for me.' Mitch responds, 'Actually, Starla I have a confession to make, I'm Orthodox.' Starla laughs maniacally and says, "You've been kicked out of 109 different countries!'"
The ADL also found dozens of TikTok profiles that use combinations of white supremacist symbols, terms and slogans as screen names or handles.
Common white supremacist numeric symbols in use on the platform include "14" to represent a popular white supremacist slogan, "2316" the numeric symbol for "white power," "88" to represent "Heil Hitler" and "13/52" which is shorthand reference to a racist claim about Black Americans, the report pointed out.
The editor of The Canary, a controversial hard-left blog, has compared Israel to the Nazis in a tweet.
Kerry-Ann Mendoza, whose website is under investigation by the Government's Independent Advisor on Antisemitism, wrote: "Jewish families were once dragged from their homes so Nazi families could move in. It wasn't wrong because of the ethnicity of the victims. It was wrong because it was wrong. Apartheid Israel does it daily. 'Never again' must be universal."
According to the International Definition of Antisemitism, "Drawing comparisons of contemporary Israeli policy to that of the Nazis" is antisemitic.
Ms Mendoza recently attacked Campaign Against Antisemitism using violent language, saying "The antisemitism witch hunt is seriously about to face off with #BlackLivesMatter I'm telling you now, those anti-Black, anti-Palestinian racists are gonna get their asses dragged all over town. And they have no clue. Because…entitlement."
Campaign Against Antisemitism has welcomed as a "positive start" the Ivors Academy's announcement that it shall be establishing an Ethics Committee to review past awards, after we called on the professional association for music creators to rescind Wiley's 2019 Ivors Inspiration Award following the grime artist's antisemitic rampage on social media.
Joe Glasman, an award-winning composer, Ivors member and former Ivors award panellist, as well as a senior volunteer at Campaign Against Antisemitism, initiated contact with Ivors last week, noting that Wiley had "spent the last several days on an antisemitic tirade" and wrote that it would be "untenable for an individual who holds such horrific antisemitic views to continue to be held up as worthy of such an award by the Academy, an honour bestowed specifically upon those whom the Academy considers to be inspirational role models for composers and young artists."
Mr Glasman went on to note that the Academy is "rightly dedicated to diversity, equality and inclusivity" but that this means that the Academy "must be a safe space for all minorities, and that includes Jews."
Following correspondence with Campaign Against Antisemitism over the past week and after its AGM today, Ivors has now released a statement announcing that "any statements of discrimination and intolerance made by Academy members or award winners affects us all, not just those who are targeted for prejudice or abuse. We adopt a generous and supportive outlook, fostering collaboration and growth, not division and hate. These are values our members must sign up to on joining our membership; they are also expectations we should have of our award winners in future. […]
"When we recognise individuals in our awards, we are giving them a high honour that comes with responsibilities for the recipient and for the Academy. We wish to codify these obligations going forward and are today announcing the establishment of an Ethics Committee which will review our award decisions in future, and carefully revisit how others have been treated in the past. Part of their work will be to review our current members' codes of conduct and put in place an ethics framework to govern the giving and rescinding of honours and awards. We can only achieve consistency if we first establish solid guidelines that ensure an objective and robust approach. We intend to have the Ethics Committee formed and giving us guidance by November this year when the entries for next year's awards begin to be received.
"Family Guy" creator Seth MacFarlane is adapting Herman Wouk's epic World War II novels "The Winds of War" and its sequel, "War and Remembrance," into a limited TV series for NBCUniversal.
Wouk, who died last year at 103, wrote numerous popular works of fiction — "Majorie Morningstar" (about a young Jewish woman who wants to become an actress), "Youngblood Hawke" (about a young writer supposedly modeled on the novelist Thomas Wolfe) and "The Caine Mutiny," for which he won the Pulitzer Prize.
The author, an observant Jew, also wrote "This Is My God," a book summarizing the tenets of Judaism intended for both Jews and non-Jews.
"The Winds of War" and "War and Remembrance" established the author's reputation as a master of historical fiction — works featuring stories of personal conflict set against significant events. In this case, the books follow the experiences of Navy officer Victor Henry and his family from the German invasion of Poland through the dropping of the atomic bomb on Hiroshima, Japan. Seth MacFarlane is inducted into the Television Academy Hall of Fame on Jan. 28, 2020 at the Television Academy's Saban Media Center in North Hollywood, Calif. (Dan Steinberg/Invision for the Television Academy/AP Images)
The two books had already been turned into a seven-part ABC miniseries in 1983 starring Robert Mitchum, Ali MacGraw and Jan-Michael Vincent. The miniseries, which remains among the most popular in television history, won five Emmy Awards and was nominated for 11.
Israeli startup PulseNmore has signed a multi-year agreement with Israel's largest healthcare provider, Clalit Health Services, to provide tens of thousands of its pregnant members the handheld tele-ultrasound device developed by the startup.
The device enables pregnant women to perform at-home ultrasound scans, and get feedback from a physician or sonographer, limiting the need for hospital and doctor visits during COVID-19 and beyond.
Clalit Health Services, with 4.6 million insured members, is the first healthcare provider to purchase the device, PulseNmore said in a statement.
"At home tele-ultrasound scanning is a major leap forward in digital medicine and prenatal health," said Dr. Elazar Sonnenschein, founder and CEO of PulseNmore. "We have successfully miniaturized the traditional ultrasound system to create a solution that is both affordable and accessible for expectant families."
According to Clalit, pregnant women often make unnecessary visits to the emergency room with concerns about their baby's well-being.
The handheld ultrasound device will provide "vital information" to healthcare providers to determine if a baby is healthy, helping expectant mothers to "have peace of mind at home and avoid unnecessary visits to the ER," said Sonnenschein.
Revenge of the Elders of Zion By Dan Sofer 311 pages; $14.99
Dan Sofer is a literary phenomenon. It took him something like 27 years from the time he decided to become a writer to having his first novel published, and when he did so he had already decided that An Unexpected Life was to be the first of a trilogy which he called The Dry Bones Society. That first novel, and the two books that followed, proved enormously successful. Now comes his next novel, Revenge of the Elders of Zion. It is not surprising that Sofer's novels have a Jewish dimension. He left his native South Africa for Israel finally in 2001, but he had already spent four years in Yeshivat Har Etzion in the late 1990s, and also somewhere along the way, in his own words, "drove a tank in the Jordan Valley."
He clearly knows something of life in the United States as well, for Revenge of the Elders of Zion takes place mostly in modern New York – but with a highly imaginative, and hugely entertaining, episode set in a long-lost island somewhere in the Atlantic inhabited by survivors of imperial Russia.
Indeed, imaginative and entertaining is an apt description of the novel as a whole. It does not fit neatly into any standard genre. It is essentially a fast-moving thriller, with a twist-and-turn of a plot that keeps the reader glued to the book, unable to resist turning the next page. Yet at the same time the book is replete with dark humor that can occasionally induce outright laughter.
David Zelig, the last surviving heir to a film production company that has fallen on hard times, is appalled by the antisemitic acts of terror that keep occurring in the States. To justify their activities, the anti-Jewish groups quote the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, which claims that a secret society of Jews is out to control the world. David decides to create a society based on the myth. Perhaps his new clandestine operation will be able to prevent the next synagogue shooting.
David pulls in two old friends, and together they create The Trio. Almost immediately they are caught up in a terrifying new world of ruthless secret societies intent on achieving their objectives by any means. By extension they also find themselves bound into the anti-terrorist activities of the FBI and the CIA. The plot thickens to include the most extreme anti-Jewish attack ever planned in the USA, the theft of a priceless collection of Fabergé eggs, and an ancient, and highly embarrassing, Christian relic worth as many millions as the eggs themselves – but not to all parties.
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.
The International Union of Muslim Scholars said that any agreement the UAE makes with Israel is "high treason."
The group, which is associated with the Muslim Brotherhood, has on its website a truly bizarre chronology of events that supposedly led to the agreement, and the Elders of Zion are the main people behind it. It is an allegory, but only barely.
Historians and news analysts agree that the beginning [of the events] was in 2011, the year of the Arab Spring, when the advisors of the "Elders of the Children of Israel" volunteered to convince the UAE that this Arab Spring is a real danger to them, and that any success for it is a nail in their coffins, and that this requires swift actions and a comprehensive confrontation, in order to eliminate this danger in its presence and uproot its roots and extensions.
The UAE said: We are a small country, and simple people, we sell our oil and protect our home. And our army is barely enough for us even inside the UAE, so how can we face this Arab Spring, these revolutionary peoples, and these deeply rooted movements?
The Elders of Zion said: You can trust us and rely on us, because we have enough expertise and capabilities, networks and plans, ideas and supporters. We only need funding, the battle requires huge and long-term financing.
The UAE said: This is entirely on us, so what is this money and wealth suitable for if we do not use it to protect ourselves and secure our judgment?
The Elders of Zion said: So we agree; Funding is upon you and the rest is upon us .. Thanks to Gulf money and Jewish genius, states, armies, parties, the press will be with us and at our disposal ... and everything we need.
The UAE said: Yes, this is excellent, but we have a special problem that preoccupies us. We want your help in solving or overcoming it, so that we can go comfortably facing our common enemy.
The Elders of Zion said:….You will become Little Israel, and we will be Greater Israel ...We will truly adopt you, and you will be safe under our care and protection.
The UAE said: This is great, but adoption in Islam is not permissible, so how do we tell people?
The people of Zion said: We will not talk about our adoption of you. Rather, we will say: normalization with you ..
For the Gulf States in particular, normalization of ties with Israel has historically been tied to the full withdrawal of forces to the pre-1967 lines and recognition of a Palestinian State. These principles were affirmed almost two decades ago through something known as the Arab Peace Initiative. The UAE had previously endorsed that initiative. Now the UAE and Israel have agreed to sign agreements to establish reciprocal embassies in their countries without any agreement for Israel to remove its forces from the West Bank.
The UAE is not the first Arab country to formally recognize Israel. Egypt signed the Camp David Accords in 1979 in return for the Sinai, while Jordan signed its agreement in 1994 at the height of the Oslo Peace Process. It's notable that the UAE has signed its agreement with Israel when there are no peace negotiations whatsoever.
And that is the most striking element of the normalization agreement. It reflects two realities of today's Middle East: First, Israel and most Gulf states have been quietly cooperating for the past 20 years. The Israelis and the Emiratis in particular have shared intelligence and private diplomatic initiatives to roll back Iranian influence in the region.
The other important reality is that no one in the Middle East can say with a straight face that Israel is the source of the region's instability. Experience is a cruel teacher. Israel had nothing to do with the collapse of the U.N.-recognized government in Yemen — the Iranian-supported Houthis did. Israel had nothing to do with the collapse of Syria — that was the fault of the country's dictator, Bashar al-Assad. And Israel had nothing to do with the rise of Islamic State in Syria and Iraq. In all of these cases, the regimes and groups most vocally opposed to Israel also served as the region's chief arsonists.
This is something Arab leaders in the region understand better than many advocates for Palestinian sovereignty in the West. As Osama bin Laden once observed, "When people see a strong horse and a weak horse, by nature they will like the strong horse." In assessing the region, the UAE's leaders have seen one state thrive as its neighbors burned. They have chosen the strong horse.
Indeed, even before the rise of The Squad and their allies, a contingent of progressive congressional Democrats sought to bar the disbursement of U.S. military aid to Israel under the guise that its treatment of Palestinians was "inconsistent with the values of the United States." These lawmakers aren't going out on a limb—they are responding to the demands of the Democratic base. In 2019, A Gallup survey found that, while most Americans maintained favorable views toward Israel, "liberal Democrats" had become more sympathetic toward Palestinians overall.
Joe Biden does not appear eager to cater to this wing of their party. He has said that he will preserve the U.S. embassy's new home in Jerusalem. He would return to the Iran nuclear accords only if and when Iran is no longer in violation of its terms—an unlikely prospect. He has even praised, albeit obliquely, the work the Trump administration did to yield today's achievement. "The UAE's offer to publicly recognize the State of Israel is a welcome, brave, and badly-needed act of statesmanship," Biden said in a statement. "A Biden-Harris Administration will seek to build on this progress and will challenge all the nations of the region to keep pace."
Perhaps Joe Biden is friendlier to Israel than his party's progressives, but these statements are not the product of an abiding affection for Israel. They are acknowledgments of the world as it is. There is no going back to the status quo circa 2015. The United States cannot abandon its strategic commitments to the region and its partners in pursuit of the fanciful idea that Iran will suddenly become a responsible actor, or that the Sunni states it is currently at war with by proxy will acquiesce to their own defeat. If he becomes America's 46th president, Biden will have to govern—and preserving America's interests in the Middle East involves maintaining its alliances and partnerships.
Biden's left flank remains committed to the hidebound notion that Israel is the true obstacle to peace in the region, but the region itself has moved on. What seems to look like progress to progressives would, in fact, be regression.
Hosted by Abe Greenwald, Christine Rosen, John Podhoretz, Noah Rothman
The historic announcement that Israel and the United Arab Emirates will pursue a peace accord reflects changing dynamics in the Middle East that the European and American left simply refuse to acknowledge. But there will be no turning the clock back.
The impending peace agreement between Israel and the United Arab Emirates is more than just a stunning diplomatic breakthrough. It represents a fundamental shift in the paradigm of peace-making.
For more than 50 years, that paradigm has been based on seemingly unassailable assumptions. The first of these was that the Israeli-Palestinian conflict was the core dispute in the Middle East. Resolve it, and peace would reign throughout the region. The premise was largely dispelled by the Arab Spring of 2011 and the subsequent civil wars in Syria, Libya, Iraq, and Yemen. Still, a large body of decision-makers, especially from Europe and the United States, continued to regard a solution to Israel-Palestine as the panacea for many, if not most, of the Middle East's ills. Then-secretary of state John Kerry's intense shuttle diplomacy, which paralleled the massacre of half a million Syrians in 2012-14, proceeded precisely on this assumption.
The next assumption was that core of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict was settlement-building in Judea/Samaria, East Jerusalem, and Gaza. Freeze it and the dispute would be easily mediated. This, theory, too, collapsed in the face of facts. Israel withdrew from Gaza, uprooting 21 settlements, in 2005, and then froze settlements for much of 2009-10. The conflict nevertheless continued and even worsened, but that did not prevent foreign policymakers from persisting in the belief that peace is incompatible with settlements.
And, in addition to ceasing construction in the territories, Israel was expected to give virtually all of them up. This was the third assumption — that peace with the Arab world could only be purchased with Israeli concessions of land. This belief is as old as Israel itself. The first Anglo-American peace plans — Alpha and Gamma — were predicated on Israeli concessions in the Negev and elsewhere. After 1967, the principle applied to areas captured by Israel in the Six Day War and, after the return of Sinai to Egypt in 1982, to Judea, Samaria, and Gaza. The same secretary of state Kerry repeatedly warned Israel that failure to forfeit those areas would result in its total international isolation.
Yet another assumption held that "everyone knows what the final agreement looks like." With minor modifications and territorial swaps, this meant that a Palestinian state would be created along the pre-1967 lines with a capital in East Jerusalem. The Palestinians would give up the so-called right of return for Palestinian refugees, agree to end the conflict with Israel and to cease all further claims, and to accept the formula of "two states for two peoples." Israel, in turn, would remove dozens of settlements, redivide its capital, and outsource West Bank security either to the Palestinians or some international source. Of all the assumptions, this was the most divorced from reality. Not a single aspect of it was achievable. In fact, no one knew what final agreement looked like.
For years, I have heard from Gulf leaders about their desire to establish relations with Israel and it's no secret that Israel was excited by the prospect as well. As news spread today about the UAE and Israel formally announcing the normalization of relations, many asked me why now and what do I predict will happen next? My answer is simple — this is just the beginning of normalization between Gulf states and Israel and, in fact, I will be so bold as to predict that at least one more Gulf state will establish diplomatic ties with Israel by the end of 2020.
There are a few main factors in the timing. First is the global pandemic. As I shared in my op-ed for Arab News in June, the Gulf states had a powerful incentive to work constructively with the State of Israel when it came to combatting COVID-19. Both the Gulf and Israel are deeply concerned about the disruptive impact of COVID-19 on their societies, and the Gulf is particularly concerned about the economic damage they have incurred due to the crash in the global price of oil. Given the high stakes, these countries are increasingly looking to Israel to help them find solutions. This public health crisis presented the perfect opportunity to transcend political differences and we saw that when UAE Ambassador to the UN Lana Zaki Nusseibeh told an Israeli journalist in May that her government would be willing to work with Israel on a vaccine. Shortly thereafter, the UAE worked directly with Israel to send two Etihad planes with medical supplies.
The other key factor is the increase in regional tensions with Iran. In many ways, this issue has been something both countries have faced for years, but they needed a catalyst to spark action; something that the more timely COVID-19 pandemic triggered. However, the UAE — and many of its neighbors — recognize that Israel could be a tremendous help there as well due to its mighty military.
By making this bold move, the UAE has paved the way for other Gulf states to establish relations with Israel. In the last three years, I've heard from three other Gulf states about their genuine desire to establish relations with Israel. They've shared, "Rabbi, with our resources and wealth and Israel's brain trust and technological prowess and innovation, we can become the most powerful region in the world." It was always a question of who would make this move first, but once the first Gulf state made this announcement, others said they would follow. Now that the UAE has made this announcement, we will see at least one more Gulf state establish diplomatic ties with Israel by the end of 2020.
Thursday's announcement that Israel and the United Arab Emirates have agreed to establish full diplomatic relations merits all the "historic" epithets with which it was unveiled in Washington by US President Donald Trump and greeted in Jerusalem by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
Israel's foundational desire to establish good relations with its neighbors, and its strategic interest in widening peaceful ties in the region, has for the first time yielded an accord-in-waiting with a non-adjacent Middle East state — an influential and technologically advanced regional player. And it holds the promise of further warming relations with others prepared to break the taboo on normalization.
It bolsters Israel's existing peace partners, Egypt and Jordan. It constitutes a blow to Israel's enemies, led by Iran.
And it postpones Netanyahu's counter-productive promise of unilateral West Bank annexation.
Trump's plan comes to life The announcement marks a resounding success for the president and his administration, notably senior White House adviser Jared Kushner, seven months after Trump's "Peace to Prosperity" vision for an Israeli-Palestinian agreement was unveiled at the White House.
The UAE, as was noted in the joint statement issued by Trump on behalf of the US, Israel and the UAE on Thursday, was present when that vision was unveiled. Now, Abu Dhabi's agreement to ties with Israel gives the administration's plan tangible resonance.
The breakthrough, as announced Thursday, includes an Israeli commitment to "suspend" Netanyahu's oft-declared intention to begin annexing the 30 percent of the West Bank allocated to Israel in the Trump plan. Instead, the joint statement specifies, Israel will "focus its efforts now on expanding ties with other countries in the Arab and Muslim world."
A Channel 12 report late Thursday suggested that a US, Israel, UAE signing ceremony, just a few weeks from now, might attract other regional participants newly prepared to publicly associate with Israel. Kushner, in a briefing, said further ties were now "more inevitable."
A Historic Peace Treaty with the United Arab Emirates
Mossad head Yossi Cohen made several clandestine trips to the UAE in the past year, and the Mossad arranged for secret shipments of medical equipment from Israel to the UAE after the onset of the pandemic, the Times reported.
Cohen has met often with representatives of the UAE, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Jordan and Egypt in a years-long effort to build relations with the Gulf States, the Times said.
Channel 12 added that establishing relations with Arab states is considered the responsibility of the Mossad.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu earlier this year announced his intention to annex the Jordan Valley — some 30 percent of the West Bank — and all settlements on July 1, with backing from US President Donald Trump's administration. That angered and concerned the UAE which lambasted the move both publicly and privately, the Walla news site reported.
But the report said the matter ended up as an opportunity after Yousef al-Otaiba, the UAE ambassador to the US, proposed in late June the idea of normalization in exchange for halting annexation plans to Trump's special representative for international negotiations, Avi Berkowitz.
Trump senior adviser Jared Kushner reportedly liked the idea and told Berkowitz to work on it, and on June 27 Berkowitz came to Israel and met three times with Netanyahu in as many days.
An Israeli delegation will travel to the United Arab Emirates early next week to meet with the Gulf state's top leadership, according to a Friday report, a day after the two nations announced an agreement to normalize relations.
Channel 12 news said a senior Israeli official would lead the team, while the Ynet news site reported this would be Mossad chief Yossi Cohen, who is said to have led normalization efforts over the past year.
The Prime Minister's office said that National Security Adviser Meir Ben-Shabbat would lead the preparations for the talks "in coordination with all the relevant parties."
The statement gave no details on when the talks would take place or who would lead the delegation.
Some aspects of the normalization agreement may be signed during the visit, Channel 12 said. It also said the sides would schedule a meeting between the leaders of the two nations to take place within the next few weeks.
US President Donald Trump said on Thursday he believed a deal-signing ceremony at the White House could take place in about three weeks.
Meanwhile on Friday the UAE's Foreign Minister Anwar Gargash said the positive reactions to the agreement from around the world were "encouraging."
"Peace for Peace," Bibi repeated several times amid his brief remarks to the nation on Thursday evening.
Celebrating the announcement of the "full normalization" of relations between the United Arab Emirates and Israel two hours earlier by President Donald Trump on Twitter, Netanyahu was downright giddy. "Together, we have a fantastic future," he enthused, even lapsing from his customarily formal and polished delivery and laying on a little slang.
Benjamin Netanyahu, by any measure, is an extraordinarily accomplished, brilliant, polished, and unpredictable man. So many times, he has been at the brink of political destruction, and each resurrection is more astonishing than the last.
On Thursday morning, Netanyahu woke to a nation that was slaughtering him in the polls and beyond exasperated with his mismanagement of the Coronavirus crisis. The economic devastation in Israel is widespread and, likely, in the early days yet. His government was in danger of immediate collapse.
There's no doubt that the truly historic agreement announced late Thursday afternoon, Israel time, had been in the works for some time, but I wouldn't rule out the possibility that its announcement may have been pushed ahead a touch by the sharp-edged reality of Israeli politics.
It was important to all involved that it be announced and implemented on Netanyahu's watch. For all its unpredictability, the Middle East craves and needs stability. A ground-breaking agreement and moment like this would be best served with the principals in power.
And now, the chances of Netanyahu becoming much more popular in Israel, overnight, are very real.
Today's announcement demonstrates all of this. Where Obama cozied up to Iran and cooled towards Israel, President Trump has unabashedly supported Israel while confronting Iran. This peace agreement has come, not in spite of the U.S. moving its embassy to Jerusalem and killing Iranian general Qasem Soleimani, but precisely because of those moves. Israelis and more than a few Arabs have breathed an enormous sigh of relief at America's renewed strength.
Consider the key concession Israel has made here: It has agreed to suspend its plan to summarily annex a significant fraction of the West Bank. If you look at the U.S.-sponsored peace plan from earlier this year, you will see that, in the case of a two-state solution, Israel would still maintain control of the border between the West Bank and Jordan. In other words, Palestinians in the West Bank would be surrounded by Israeli security forces, as they almost entirely are in Gaza.
The reason this is necessary is that, by turning Gaza into a platform for missile terrorism after the Israeli withdrawal in 2005, the Palestinians have proven beyond a shadow of a doubt that Israeli withdrawal from the West Bank would be suicide — unless it can control all of the West Bank's borders. If you look carefully at the annexation plans that have been floated, they would leave Israel in permanent possession of virtually all of the West Bank's frontiers with Jordan. Any crossings — the West Bank's outlet to the world – would be under Israeli control.
There is another scenario, however. There is a possible future — though it may seem impossible to us today — in which Arabs stop hating Jews and lose interest in destroying Israel. In that future, Israel would have no more to fear from a free border between the West Bank and Jordan, or between Gaza and Egypt, then Sweden has to fear from its border with Finland. In that future, Palestinian Arabs live free and prosperous in and out of Israel. In that future, Iran has become democratic, or the threat from the mullahs has been diminished to the point where they can no longer support terror groups on Israel's borders. In that future, Hamas and Hezbollah are isolated and wither.
In that future, Israel has full diplomatic relations with all of its neighbors, and no need to annex territory or control anybody's borders or even continue its "occupation" of Palestinian areas. President Trump took a major step toward that future today. It is triumph for peace in the Middle East, and it will pay dividends for decades to come.
OSLO, December 10, 2020 — Fresh off a surprise ballot-box victory in November that stunned pundits and pollsters back home, and by turns baffled and enraged his Democratic opponents, a newly re-elected President Trump accepted the Nobel Peace Prize Thursday in the Norwegian capital.
The Norwegian Committee awarded the prize to the 45th president for his role in brokering the historic normalization of relations between Israel and the United Arab Emirates in August — and, "more generally, for not launching idiotic invasions, not drawing the United States into bloody quagmires and not ponderously lecturing other countries about liberal democracy." (The language of the award citation was unusually blunt; then again, these are unusual times.)
For his part, Trump used his Nobel Lecture to remind the gathered dignitaries that his "America First" posture — emphasizing national sovereignty and the well-being of the American working class — had paradoxically proved more conducive to stability and world peace than had the high-minded "democratization" and "liberal-world-order" vision that had long animated America's post-Cold War strategy.
Without mentioning Presidents Barack Obama and George W. Bush, Trump archly hinted that "some American leaders of the past" had made catastrophic mistakes that, among other things, "alienated reliable American allies, gave succor to our enemies and plunged much of the Middle East and North Africa into civil war and disorder."
The "Arab Spring, mindlessly supported by many in the American elite," Trump said, had "empowered radical nonstate actors like the Muslim Brotherhood and Islamic State" and resulted in the "utter decimation" of the region's indigenous Christian communities.
He added that the "American opinion class had cheered the regional ferment from the safety of their luxe apartments in Dupont Circle and Midtown Manhattan, while millions of actual Middle Easterners had paid the price in the form of failed states, civil wars and the world's largest refugee crisis since World War II."
When President Donald Trump moved the U.S. Embassy from Tel Aviv to Israel's capital, Jerusalem, the old-guard Washington foreign policy community said the sky would fall. When President Trump approved the Israeli annexation of the Golan Heights to formalize Israel's northern border, those same policy wonks ducked because they were sure the sky was falling. And, when President Trump hosted Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at the White House to announce a "Vision for Peace" that would include the application of Israeli sovereignty to parts of the West Bank, the wonks were cowered in the basement, terrified of being hit by that falling sky.
The ambassadors of the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, and Oman, who were in attendance, appeared to have no such fears. And not only will the sky not fall over the establishment of diplomatic ties between Israel and the United Arab Emirates, the region will now be more secure and more prosperous for everyone.
The wonks, perhaps, didn't notice that while they were trying to hold back reality in hopes that the Palestinian Authority just needed more time, more money, and more Israeli concessions to become a contributing partner, and while they assumed a "two state solution" would have Iran-supported Hamas disappear, Israel and the Gulf Arab states were already moving forward. Together.
The driving factors for both parties include Iran, American elections, and Arab irritation with the two-headed Palestinian Authority-Hamas governments.
The Islamic Republic of Iran is under enormous financial pressure, thanks to President Trump's "Maximum Pressure Campaign." There has been substantially less money for Tehran to pay off its allies and Shiite militias in Syria, Lebanon, and Gaza. Last week's horrific explosion in Beirut simply compounded the difficulties for Iran's Hezbollah proxy. And at home, angry Iranian citizens have been demanding more freedom and better services — including a better response to COVID-19. Demonstrators have chanted, "Not for Gaza, not for Lebanon — only for Iran."
Under internal and external pressure, the government in Tehran may collapse or it may strike out at its neighbors, and it certainly will try to hang on until after the U.S. election in November. The mullahs hope that their preferred choice, a Democrat administration, will look for ways to bring Tehran back to negotiations and be willing to pay a high bribe to do it. That is, of course, how it worked in 2015 with the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action.
Jason Greenblatt to i24NEWS on Israel-UAE Historic Peace Deal
Emirate Jewish Community and Special Advisor to Bahrain King on Israel-UAE Peace Deal
We learned today that Israel is going to establish "full normalization of relations" with the United Arab Emirates (UAE). Also, Israel will forgo its plans to annex parts of Judea and Samaria, in the West Bank.
These are two separate yet linked headlines. created by President Donald Trump. Israel and the UAE are bride and groom. Trump is the matchmaker. His achievement, and Israel's, should not be dismissed.
Israel gained good relations with an Arab country. And by gaining it, it sends a message that cannot be lost on other countries: normalization is here, and those refusing to join in will be left behind. More specifically Israel, proves the point that time is on its side. It proves the point, made by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu many years ago, that resolving the Palestinian issue is not the key to Middle East peace, or to normalizing relations with the Arab world.
Strategically speaking, it is a crucial message. Especially for those still stuck on the notion that the road to Baghdad goes through Ramallah, or some other version of this old, updated notion. Netanyahu proved his critics wrong. He does not move forward with resolving the Palestinian conflict and yet, he advances Israel's relations with the Arab world.
For many months, annexation in Judea and Samaria was the big prize Israel was expecting. Annexation is controversial, and many have opposed it but it was the main diplomatic course the government was getting ready to follow.
The Trump administration got cold feet. Whether that is good or bad is up for debate, and Israelis will engage in that debate. But at some point Israel realized that annexation with Trump's blessing was not happening. He and his staff should be praised for sensing that ditching annexation had a price tag; that the U.S. and Israel could use the threat of annexation to get something else in return.
From Tel Aviv's Rabin square we invite the #Emirati people to visit #Israel and celebrate peace between our two nations. 🇦🇪🇮🇱🕊
Jewish and pro-Israel groups praised on Thursday the news of the normalization deal reached between Israel and the United Arab Emirates.
The Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations stated, "The Abraham Accord, as it is being called, is the most significant diplomatic development in the Middle East since the 1994 peace agreement between Israel and the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan. In taking this historic step, the UAE is paving the way for additional Arab and Muslim states to normalize their ties with Israel, which can help transform the region and enhance the prospects for a true and lasting peace between Israel and the Palestinians. This agreement is a bulwark against the forces of extremism and radicalism in the region. "
The American Israel Public Affairs Committee said, "The establishment of full diplomatic relations between Israel and the UAE represents a historic breakthrough for peace and reconciliation in the Middle East. We greatly appreciate the efforts of President Trump and his administration in facilitating this major diplomatic achievement."
"We applaud Israel and the UAE for their constructive and productive diplomacy in reaching this momentous agreement," it added. "The UAE joins Egypt and Jordan in paving the path to peace through recognition and engagement rather than seeking to isolate and boycott the Jewish state."
"With this announcement, Israel and the UAE are joining the United States in launching a Strategic Agenda for the Middle East to expand diplomatic, trade, and security cooperation," AIPAC went on to say. "We urge other Arab states and the Palestinians to follow their lead. The Palestinian leadership, in particular, should end its boycott of Israel and America and return to the negotiating table."
World Jewish Congress President Ronald Lauder said, "The World Jewish Congress enthusiastically welcomes the normalization of relations between Israel and the United Arab Emirates, a tremendous step forward for these states, the region, and the peace process. This is an historic moment, facilitated in great part by the Trump administration, that demonstrates that diplomacy and dialogue can lead to progress and cooperation."
Israel has had peace agreements with Egypt and Jordan for decades, but both countries have been resolutely against normalisation. The breakthrough with the #UAE is that it openly speaks of normalisation: trade, tourism, scientific and economic cooperation. That's an Arab first.
Prominent Democrats took to social media to lash out at President Donald Trump after Washington helped broker a historic peace deal normalizing relations between Israel and the United Arab Emirates.
The deal received high marks from national security experts—former White House Iran staffer and Foundation for Defense of Democracies adviser Rich Goldberg said it was "likely the greatest foreign policy achievement of any president in a generation." And national security adviser Robert O'Brien even suggested the deal should make Trump a front-runner for the Nobel Peace Prize.
But Democrats lamented the passage of the deal, which opens the door for formal channels of communication, bilateral security agreements, and future collaboration between the two countries.
For Obama alum and Iran deal mastermind Ben Rhodes, the deal was "dressed up as an election eve achievement from two leaders who want Trump to win."
"We won't be fooled by another Trump/Netanyahu deal," Squad member Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D., Mich.) said. "This Trump/Netanyahu deal will not alleviate Palestinian suffering—it will further normalize it."
Biden surrogate and Obama national security alum Ned Price accepted that the deal was a success, but qualified his praise. "This is a rare victory for Israel's long-term interests under Trump, who's done little but imperil them," he wrote.
Price, Rhodes, and other top Obama security staffers and Biden campaign advisers have often cried foul at President Trump's close relationship with Israel, particularly so in 2017, when the White House moved the U.S. embassy in Israel to Jerusalem.
Biden advisor @RNicholasBurns should apologize - he was wrong when he made this ridiculous statement.
Anti-Trump foreign policy pundits set aside partisanship and politics to praise the president's new peace deal between Israel and the United Arab Emirates (UAE), which was announced in the White House on Thursday morning.
Tom Friedman of the New York Times called the agreement a "geopolitical earthquake," noting that it opened the door to future peace agreements and further isolated the Iranian regime, which had been waging terrorist wars across the region:
For once, I am going to agree with President Trump in his use of his favorite adjective: "huge."
The agreement brokered by the Trump administration for the United Arab Emirates to establish full normalization of relations with Israel, in return for the Jewish state forgoing, for now, any annexation of the West Bank, was exactly what Trump said it was in his tweet: a "HUGE breakthrough." … It was Trump's peace plan drawn up by Jared Kushner, and their willingness to stick with it, that actually created the raw material for this breakthrough. … The U.A.E. and Israel and the U.S. on Thursday showed — at least for one brief shining moment — that the past does not always have to bury the future, that the haters and dividers don't always have to win.
David Ignatius of the Washington Post — who once published information that led to former National Security Advisor Michael Flynn being fired and prosecuted — was similarly effusive, noting that Trump's peace plan had notched a big win:
Hooray for the Peace deal between Israel and UAE! Wait...what? Trump negotiated it? I meant Boooo! I hate peace, peace is bad! Us dems have always been against peace deals right? Yeah that's the ticket.
There are a lot of people who deserve credit for the peace deal that was announced Thursday in Washington between Israel and the United Arab Emirates.
First and foremost are the leaders themselves – President Donald Trump, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Sheikh Mohammed Bin Zayed. Then, there are the staffers and advisers who did the heavy lifting – Jared Kushner, US Ambassador to Israel David Friedman, Special Envoy Avi Berkowitz, Israeli Ambassador to Washington Ron Dermer, head of the Mossad Yossi Cohen and UAE Ambassador to the US Yousef Al Otaiba.
But there is one person who also deserves credit but was not mentioned in any of the speeches in Washington, Jerusalem or Abu Dhabi. His name – Barack Obama.
It was President Obama who helped bring Israel and the Gulf states together and it was Obama who helped set into motion the deal that was announced on Thursday. More specifically, it was his failed policy in the Middle East and his embrace of the regime in Iran – culminating in the 2015 nuclear deal – that helped push Israel and the moderate Gulf states together.
The reason is because when the Gulf states understood where the US was headed – toward Iran, and not away – they looked around to see who could be their ally (for intelligence, military and technological purposes) and saw only one country – Israel.
It was Israel which for the last 10 years has been waging a daily battle against Iran. It is Israel that fights Iran in Syria, in Gaza and in Lebanon and it is Israel that works covertly to stop Iran's nuclear program. It is not the US, the UK or Russia. It is Israel.
Palestinians from across the political spectrum on Thursday strongly condemned the normalization agreement between Israel and the United Arab Emirates, dubbing it a betrayal of Arabs and Palestinians.
Many Palestinians and Arabs took to social media to express outrage over the agreement, with some calling it a "new nakba," or catastrophe. They also used a variety of pejoratives against the Gulf state and its leaders, including the "United Zionist Emirate" and "dogs" and "traitors." Others referred to the announcement as a "black Thursday for Arabs and Palestinians."
Palestinian officials said they did not have prior knowledge of the agreement.
"Israel has annexed the United Arab Emirates instead of annexing the West Bank," a senior Palestinian official told The Jerusalem Post. "This is a very dangerous development that requires a response not only from the Palestinians but the whole Arab world."
The agreement was in violation of the 2002 Arab Peace Initiative, which states that the Arab countries would establish normal relations with Israel only "in the context of a comprehensive peace and a full Israeli withdrawal from all the territories occupied since 1967," the officials said.
The Palestinian Authority announced on Wednesday night that it has decided to recall its ambassador to the United Arab Emirates in protest of the normalization agreement with Israel.
Palestinians taking part in Friday prayers at the Al-Aqsa Mosque on the Temple Mount in Jerusalem trampled and then set fire to a poster of the United Arab emirates leader to protest the normalization deal announced Thursday between Israel and the UAE.
The worshipers took turns stamping on the poster of UAE de-facto ruler Mohammed bin Zayed Al Nahyan, in a sign of disrespect, while waving a Palestinian flag over it. They then tried to set the poster on fire.
The incident continued until Israeli policemen stepped in and took the poster away, while Palestinians chanted "Allahu Akbar."
Palestinians also held protests against the deal in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.
In Nablus, in the northern West Bank, they burned posters of bin Zayed, US President Donald Trump and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
The Israel-UAE agreement is extremely important. This is the third peace agreement between Israel and an Arab country. The other two were signed with Egypt (1979) and Jordan (1994). It will increase the prospects for peace, stability and prosperity in the Middle East. For several years Israel and several Gulf states have been closely collaborating mainly on security issues and under the table. Now, these relations are being opened and upgraded. People across much of the Sunni Muslim Arab world don't perceive Israel anymore as an enemy, but rather as an ally. It will increase the legitimacy of Israel's existence as a Jewish state in the Middle East.
A combination of both threats and opportunities have pushed for the agreement. The threat both countries are facing is Iran's quest for hegemony and domination in the Middle East via violence, terrorism, military interventions, and nuclear weapons, from Iraq, Syria and Lebanon to Yemen. The Arab Gulf states are especially prone to the Iranians threats. The Israel-UAE alliance is expected to more effectively deal with Iran.
It also sends a message to Biden and the Democrats, who during the Obama years concluded a nuclear deal with Iran, viewed by Israel and the entire Sunni Arab world as weak and ineffective. Biden said he would restore the Obama approach and the Israel-UAE agreement is telling him to better consider the interests of American allies in the region.
Opportunists exist at the fields of technology and economics. Israel is a start-up nation and leading the world in innovation and advanced technologies and artificial intelligence in the fields of medicine, agriculture, solar energy and water desalinization, areas important for the Gulf states. The UAE is also seeking breakthroughs in these and other areas. The UAE has resources while Israel has the human power to promote innovation, sustainability and entrepreneurship.
The COVID-19 global pandemic has infected more than 21 million people and killed more than 75,000. But did coronavirus help heal the Middle East?
"The Gulf and Israel have been working together to combat COVID-19, and if they continue to do so, they could be the region that finds the cure to benefit people around the world," wrote Rabbi Marc Schneier only days before the announcement Thursday that Israel and the United Arab Emirates had agreed to full normalization of relations.
According to Schneier - an American rabbi and president of The Foundation for Ethnic Understanding through which he has spent much time in the Gulf states, including in closed-door and strategic meetings with top officials - the last few months have brought with them "natural partnerships between Israel and its Gulf neighbors" as they each try to stop the spread of the novel coronavirus and reduce its tragic impact on their economies and citizens.
Schneier said that he has an expression: no tension, no deal - meaning that to make any deal in life there needs to be tension beforehand. Already, before the virus, the Gulf states and Israel were both struggling with the ongoing existential threat created by the Iranian terror regime.
But in the last eight months, two new tensions came to the surface. The first is the tension over the controversy of annexation, which was brought about at the end of January through the historic "Deal of the Century" plan presented by US President Donald Trump.
A month later, the COVID-19 plague started infecting the world.
President Tayyip Erdogan said on Friday that Turkey was considering closing its embassy in Abu Dhabi and suspending diplomatic ties with the United Arab Emirates over its accord to normalize ties with Israel.
Erdogan was speaking to reporters in Istanbul after the Turkish Foreign Ministry said history will never forgive the "hypocritical behavior" of the UAE in agreeing such a deal.
The Foreign Ministry said the Palestinian people and administration were right to react strongly against the agreement, which recasts the order of Middle East politics from the Palestinian issue to the fight against Iran.
"History and the conscience of the region's peoples will not forget and never forgive this hypocritical behavior of the UAE, betraying the Palestinian cause for the sake of its narrow interests," the ministry said in a statement.
"It is extremely worrying that the UAE should, with a unilateral action, try and do away with the (2002) Arab Peace Plan developed by the Arab League. It is not in the slightest credible that this three-way declaration should be presented as supporting the Palestinian cause."
Wake up and smell the roses @ErakatSaeb. The Arab world and Gulf states don't care what you think. They have grown fed up with your decades of petulance & intransigence. Now either move over or learn from #UAE and make real efforts at peace with #Israel. https://t.co/T7WNdyyPJR
Hamas press release condemns the normalization of ties between the #UAE and the and #Israel. The movement says the normalization of ties is a cowardly and treacherous step with the Zionist enemy. pic.twitter.com/7wa4z5fY5a
The Persian Gulf state of Bahrain on Thursday welcomed the historic peace deal reached between the United Arab Emirates and Israel, saying it raised chances of regional peace, state news agency BNA reported.
Bahrain praised the United States for its efforts towards securing the deal, which will see Jerusalem and Abu Dhabi forge full diplomatic ties.
The peace deal made the UAE the first Persian Gulf sheikdom to forge official diplomatic relations with Israel and the third Arab country overall to normalize relations with the Jewish state, following of Egypt and Jordan.
Manama's endorsement of the deal – and a remark by White House senior adviser Jared Kushner to reporters that "there is a chance" that another Arab state would sign a peace deal with Israel in the coming weeks – have prompted Arab media to report that the country in question is Bahrain.
The Palestinians, who lambasted the UAE's decision to strike peace with Israel as a "betrayal of the Palestinian cause," are said to be monitoring these developments with profound concern, as they fear the accords heralds more comprehensive rapprochement between Israel and the Gulf states.
Meanwhile, Egyptian President Abdel Fatah el-Sissi welcomed the peace treaty, saying, "I followed with interest and appreciation the joint statement between the United States, United Arab Emirates and Israel to halt the Israeli annexation of Palestinian lands and taking steps to bring peace in the Middle East.
"I value the efforts of those in charge of the deal to achieve prosperity and stability for our region."
Why is the U.N. not celebrating these unprecedented breakthroughs toward Arab-Israeli peace?
Despite the U.N.'s endless resolutions & urgent sessions on the conflict, it's almost like achieving peace is not their true goal. https://t.co/eW5Fmxjzbw
In the wake of Israel's historic peace treaty with the United Arab Emirates, Chabad Rabbi Levi Duchman, who serves as the rabbi in the Jewish community in Dubai, told Israel Hayom on Thursday: "We are extremely excited. This is a historic day for all people in the Middle East and for humanity at large."
"We built a Jewish community – we have Torah study, kashrut (observance of Jewish dietary laws), a community and strong support from the government. I'm not surprised that our leaders are so special. I believed this would happen," said Duchman. "The United Arab Emirates is a leader in all that is good for humanity. I believe that as a result of the peace agreement more Jews will join our community. We are prepared; the infrastructure is ready."
The Jewish community in the UAE consists of 2,000 people. Dubai's Jewish congregation operates out of an unmarked villa in an upscale neighborhood.
Though its members keep its precise location secret, the synagogue's existence and the tacit approval it has received from this Islamic sheikhdom represent a slow rebirth of a burgeoning Jewish community in the Persian Gulf, uprooted over the decades after the creation of Israel.
The UAE's rulers have sought to boost the community by hosting interfaith events and pledging to build a massive multi-faith complex that includes a synagogue, part of their efforts to burnish the country's image to the West.
Chief UAE Rabbi Yehuda Sarna told Al Arabiya English on Thursday that the peace agreement is forward-looking and the product of Abu Dhabi Crown Prince Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan's vision.
"I believe that what we are observing is the unfolding of His Highness' vision of tolerance, synergy, and the fusion of past and future," said Sarna, adding that the country's Year of Tolerance last year, which welcomed Pope Francis to capital city Abu Dhabi, was one example.
Iran and Turkey lashed out at their regional rival the United Arab Emirates on Friday over its decision to normalize diplomatic relations with Israel in a US-brokered deal, accusing it of betraying the Palestinian cause.
Iran's Foreign Ministry called the deal a "dagger that was unjustly struck by the UAE in the backs of the Palestinian people and all Muslims." Turkey said the peoples of the region "will never forget and will never forgive this hypocritical behavior" by the UAE.
The UAE, which has never fought Israel and has quietly been improving ties for years, said the agreement put a hold on Israel's plans to unilaterally annex parts of the occupied West Bank, which the Palestinians view as the heartland of their future state.
But the Turkish Foreign Ministry said the UAE had no authority to negotiate with Israel on behalf of the Palestinians or "to make concessions on matters vital to Palestine."
The agreement would make the UAE the first Gulf Arab state – and the third Arab country, after Egypt and Jordan – to have full diplomatic ties with Israel. The Palestinians say the deal amounts to "treason" and have called on Arab and Muslim countries to oppose it.
Israel's agreement to establish diplomatic ties with the United Arab Emirates marks a watershed moment in its relations with Arab countries, but the Palestinians say it puts a just resolution of the Middle East conflict even farther out of reach.
The UAE presented its decision to upgrade longstanding ties to Israel as a way of encouraging peace efforts by taking Israel's planned annexation of parts of the occupied West Bank off the table, something Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu swiftly rebuffed by insisting the pause was "temporary."
From the Palestinian perspective, the UAE not only failed to stop annexation, which would dash any remaining hopes of establishing a viable, independent state.
It also undermined an Arab consensus that recognition of Israel only come in return for concessions in peace talks — a rare source of leverage for the Palestinians.
"I never expected this poison dagger to come from an Arab country," Saeb Erekat, a senior Palestinian official and veteran negotiator said Friday. "You are rewarding aggression. … You have destroyed, with this move, any possibility of peace between Palestinians and Israelis."
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said on Friday that his country could suspend diplomatic relations with the United Arab Emirates after a landmark deal between Israel and the Gulf state.
"I gave an order to the foreign minister. I said we could suspend diplomatic relations with the Abu Dhabi administration or withdraw our ambassador," Erdogan told reporters.
In the deal announced on Thursday by the US, Israel pledged to suspend its planned annexation of parts of the West Bank in exchange for a normalization of ties with the UAE.
The Palestinian Authority on Thursday announced the "immediate" recall of its ambassador to the UAE in protest at the deal.
Erdogan is a strong advocate of the Palestinian cause who has frequently criticized Israeli policies in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. However, Turkey still maintains diplomatic ties with Israel.
Earlier this year he criticized Washington's Middle East peace plan for the Israeli-Palestinian conflict as "treason".
#Turkey, which has diplomatic ties with #Israel, says it is considering suspending ties with the #UAE and withdrawing its ambassador over the Gulf state's accord to normalize ties with Israel, says President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.https://t.co/mUKUAU8SwVpic.twitter.com/tcknfoR217
It's not a Trump-Netanyahu deal. It's a UAE-Israel deal. You will not be fooled because you're already a fool. You don't even know what you're talking about.
Did Darwish demonstrate in 1991 when Iraqi missiles fell in Tel aviv? In 1967 when Arab states attacked Israel w/o the territories? In 1973 when Arabs attacked Israel in Yom Kippur? No, he cheered and hoped Israel would be destroyed
Once upon a time, prior to the advent of Twitter, any relationship between an Arab country and Israel would be cause for celebration, yet given the current climate in the Middle East, some are unsure of the normalizing of relations between Israel and the United Arab Emirates (UAE).
While the historic deal between Israel and the UAE was lauded by many as a historic accomplishment, there were some who were concerned that it would harm their personal beliefs about how reality ought to be. Meade Benjamin, who is a cofounder of Code Pink, says that the agreement between Israel and the UAE is a step in the wrong direction for the Middle East, and that "we'll never have peace in the Middle East if they keep signing Peace agreements with Israel." Code Pink is a progressive organization that seeks to support other peaceful movements in the region like the Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps, Hamas, Hezbollah, and just random groups of men who enjoy getting together on Saturdays for those special weekend beatdowns on women and small children.
Also concerned about the prospects for another book deal and speaking tour is former Obama administration official Ben Rhodes, who noted, "I can't be wrong, history is the problem". Former Obama Secretary of State John Kerry, who once said that Israel would find itself further isolated and a Pariah state, was last heard crying into a pillow through his bedroom door and refusing to come out.
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