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→ 3 March 2021
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Joe Biden is already carving out a different Middle East policy from Trump — and even Obama | Stuff

US President, Joe Biden

The Biden administration hasn’t wasted time in making a significant shift in US policy toward the Middle East.

Over the past week, the US has launched reprisal strikes against Iranian targets in Syria and released damning intelligence overtly linking the crown prince of Saudi Arabia to the assassination of journalist Jamal Khashoggi.

Biden’s decision to launch strikes against Iran-backed militias in Syria showcases what has been described by the US political scientist Joseph Nye as “smart power”. This is when hard power is employed alongside soft power in a carefully calculated way to affect a diplomatic outcome.

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→ 2 March 2021
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A Promised Land: Obama’s Memoirs Malign Israel | CAMERA

“Facts,” the English philosopher and writer Aldous Huxley once observed, “don’t cease to exist because they are ignored.” Yet, in his recently released memoir, A Promised Land, Barack Obama both ignores and omits key facts about the Middle East. In particular, the former president gets relevant Israeli history wrong.

Perhaps most disturbing, however, is Obama’s tendency to minimize Palestinian terrorism. For example, he refers to Hamas as merely a “Palestinian resistance group.” Yet, Obama doesn’t tell readers what exactly Hamas is “resisting.”

Obama’s inability—or perhaps unwillingness—to see Hamas for who they are is part and parcel of a broader trend evidenced in his memoirs. The United States’s 44th president repeatedly strikes a false equivalency between Israel and the terrorists who seek the Jewish state’s destruction.

Obama’s tendency towards striking false equivalency between Israeli security measures and Palestinian terrorist efforts is buttressed by an understanding of relevant history that is rooted in inaccuracies and false assumptions.

And contrary to what the 44th president implies, Jews didn’t take the land. Rather, most of the “settlements” were purchased—and often from the Arabs themselves. As the historian Benny Morris noted in his 2008 book 1948: “A giant question mark hangs over the ethos of the Palestinian Arab elite: Husseinis, as well as Nashashibis, Khalidis, Dajanis, and Tamimis … sold land to the Zionist institutions and/or served as Zionist agents or spies.” These families, many of whom would lead opposition to the existence of Israel and the right of Jewish self-determination, secretly sold land to the very movement that they denounced.

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→ 1 March 2021
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Resurrecting Iran’s Nuclear Deal: A path to peace or sure-fire disaster?

NZFOI held a gathering of members to review the 2015 Iran Nuclear Deal (aka JOCPA) and to discuss the high-level issues arising from the Biden administration’s moves to resurrect the deal.

For those who missed the gathering, you may download the slide deck here.

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→ 18 February 2021
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All the Jews Joe Biden has tapped for top roles in his administration | JTA

President Joe Biden

President Joe Biden filled the months before Inauguration Day lining up a slate of Cabinet secretaries, assistants and advisors, many of them Jewish.

Biden’s choices reflect a diverse cross-section of American Jewry and possess expertise gleaned from decades of experience in government, science and medicine and law.

Here’s a rundown of the Jewish names you should know as the Biden administration begins.

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→ 7 February 2021
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U.S. Embassy in Jerusalem Wins Bipartisan Senate Support in Near-Unanimous Vote | Newsweek

NZFOI: The vote was 97-3. Who were the three? Bernie Sanders (I-Vt), Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) and Tom Carper (D-Del).

The U.S. embassy in Jerusalem won near-unanimous support in the Senate on Thursday night when all but three lawmakers voted to retain the diplomatic post in the city, following its move from Tel Aviv under the Trump administration.

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→ 14 December 2020
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Morocco joins other Arab nations agreeing to normalize Israel ties | Reuters

Abdeilah Benkirane, Prime Minister of Morocco

WASHINGTON (Reuters) -Israel and Morocco agreed on Thursday to normalize relations in a deal brokered with U.S. help, making Morocco the fourth Arab country to set aside hostilities with Israel in the past four months.

It joins the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain and Sudan in beginning to forge deals with Israel, driven in part by U.S.-led efforts to present a united front against Iran and roll back Tehran’s regional influence.

In a departure from longstanding U.S. policy, President Donald Trump agreed as part of the deal to recognize Morocco’s sovereignty over the Western Sahara, a desert region where a decades-old territorial dispute has pitted Morocco against the Algeria-backed Polisario Front, a breakaway movement that seeks to establish an independent state.

President-elect Joe Biden, due to succeed Trump on Jan. 20, will face a decision whether to accept the U.S. deal on the Western Sahara, which no other Western nation has done. A Biden spokesman declined to comment.
While Biden is expected to move U.S. foreign policy away from Trump’s “America First” posture, the Democrat has indicated he will continue the pursuit of what Trump calls “the Abraham Accords” between Israel and Arab and Muslim nations.

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→ 14 October 2020
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The War of Return — A review | Quillet

[NZFOI has recently acquired this book for the members’ library.]

In a story that may be apocryphal, the late Christopher Hitchens claimed that he had once seen legendary Israeli diplomat Abba Eban comment that the most striking aspect of the Israeli-Arab conflict is how easily it can be solved: It is simply a matter of dividing the land of Israel into a Jewish state and an Arab state. The only thing standing in the way of this solution is the intense religious or nationalist attachment of both sides to the idea of an undivided nation between the River Jordan and the Mediterranean Sea. Indeed, this assumption that partition alone can bring peace has been the foundation of all of the international community’s peace efforts since the 1967 Six Day War. The only difficulty, it is believed, is persuading the two sides to agree to it.

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→ 9 October 2020
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Brooklyn’s Orthodox Jews burn masks in violent protests as New York cracks down on rising coronavirus cases |Washington Post

Brooklyn Jews protest against COVID-19 restrictions

Jacob Kornbluh was just three blocks from his home in Brooklyn, documenting a protest against coronavirus restrictions on Wednesday evening, when the demonstration suddenly turned toward him.

The 39-year-old journalist found himself pinned to the wall of a store, he said, as dozens of fellow Orthodox Jews began yelling and calling him a “moyser” — Yiddish for “snitch” — in a confrontation captured on video. Then a few maskless men spit onto his face.

“These were members of my own community with hatred in their eyes, flipping the finger toward me, calling me a Nazi, saying I deserve to die,” Kornbluh, a politics reporter for Jewish Insider, told The Washington Post. “All these months I keep a distance, wear a mask not to get sick, advocate for measures that save lives, they disrespect my space and do something horrifying.”

The attack underscores the escalating tensions playing out this week in many of Brooklyn’s Orthodox Jewish neighborhoods. As a surge in coronavirus cases has prompted government authorities to issue new lockdown orders, including restrictions on houses of worship, some in this mostly insular community have turned their skepticism of public health measures into open defiance.

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→ 9 October 2020
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Jewish poet Louise Gluck wins Nobel Prize in Literature | JTA

Louise Gluck

Louise Gluck, the American granddaughter of Hungarian Jews, was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature on Thursday.

Gluck, 77, was awarded “for her unmistakable poetic voice that with austere beauty makes individual existence universal,” the Nobel committee wrote in its announcement.

Her collections of poetry — which explore broad and painful topics, such as family life, trauma and aging — include the books “The Wild Iris,” “Meadowlands,” “The Triumph of Achilles” and “Ararat.” For “The Wild Iris” she was awarded the 1993 Pulitzer Prize in poetry.

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→ 1 October 2020
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Palestinians Can’t Stand In the Way of Israel’s Regional Integration | FP

Mahmoud Abbas

More and more Gulf Arab state officials recognize that the Palestinian people, the Arab states, and the United States (not to mention Israel) would all be better off if new, more constructive Palestinian leaders came to power. At the same time, there is less and less adherence to the conventional view that Israel must make peace with the Palestinians before it can make peace with the Arab states.

By noting that greater strategic cooperation between Israel and the Arab states against Iran would “set the stage for diplomatic breakthroughs,” the Trump peace plan anticipated the UAE-Israel and Bahrain-Israel accords. It implied that such deals could usefully increase pressure on the Palestinians to reform their politics, which is the key to a breakthrough on the issue of Israeli-Palestinian peace.

The message to the Palestinians from yesterday’s White House signing ceremony is that they need a political upheaval—new leaders, new institutions, new ideas—or they are going to become utterly irrelevant in the eyes of the world, including the broader Arab world. As they lose attention, they will lose diplomatic support and economic aid. If they cannot make war and they will not make peace, their hopes to shape their own future will diminish to nothing.

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