RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://nationalinterest.org/feature/abraham-accords-three-years-206809

This week marks the painful remembrance of the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001. Yet, the week also shares the anniversary of the most powerful intellectual and diplomatic rebuke to the Al Qaeda worldview. Osama bin Laden attacked America for its role in the Middle East and desperately tried to whip up hatred between Westerners, Jews, Muslims, and Arabs. His death in 2011 did not end his message, but the Abraham Accords signed on September 15, 2020, have changed the lives of millions. And it has the potential, if America builds on existing achievements, to positively alter the Middle East and the wider world.

First, I am writing these lines as I shuttle between Jerusalem and Arab capitals. The Accords helped establish direct flights between Israel, Bahrain, and the United Arab Emirates, some above Saudi airspace. In the airport lounges of Dubai, I watch ordinary Iranians and Israelis, supposedly sworn enemies, talking about their families and businesses. Trade volumes are increasing annually between Arab nations and Israel from $590 million in 2019 to $3.4 billion last year and will burgeon significantly. With 200 weekly flights between Tel Aviv, Abu Dhabi, and Dubai, more than a million Israelis have visited the United Arab Emirates. Air traffic has increased between Israel and Morocco, Jordan, and Turkey. 

Second, since 1947, Israelis have lived behind an iron curtain with little contact with their Arab and Muslim neighbors. Most Israelis, only encountering Palestinians at checkpoints, viewed Arabs with suspicion. Now, as one Israeli general explained to me, “We Israelis are wearing new glasses and seeing Arabs and Muslims as partners in peace.” In the security of Dubai and Abu Dhabi, Israelis visit mosques and malls, beaches and golf courses, kosher restaurants, and even a synagogue beside churches and mosques. In Jerusalem, Israelis are stabbed and dare not enter Gaza. In the Arabian Gulf,  Israelis and Arabs dance at weddings, invest in businesses, and change school curricula to educate for a better future. As the Accords declare: “We seek tolerance and respect for every person in order to make this world a place where all can enjoy a life of dignity and hope, no matter their race, faith or ethnicity.” Change takes time and leadership. What the Accords have started must continue and, in the long run, will increase the popularity of peace in Arab countries. Persuading 350 million Arabs will be a more complex challenge than 10 million Israelis, but the work has begun and requires American and regional support. 

Third, where the UAE has led, Saudi Arabia will likely follow, and now there is a serious and sustained negotiation led by the United States to make peace between Mecca and Jerusalem, Islam and Judaism, Israel and Saudi Arabia. That such a diplomatic and civilizational breakthrough is even on the negotiation table is a significant advance from the days when Osama bin Laden wrongly claimed to represent Saudi interests.

https://www.frontpagemag.com/john-steinbeck-and-the-fall-and-rise-of-israels-mount-hope/

In 1966, a year before the war that would fundamentally change the country and the region, John Steinbeck arrived.

“I want to see everything in Israel,” he told the press.

Outraged novels of class warfare like ‘Grapes of Wrath’ had once made the author a favorite of the leftist establishment, but Steinbeck had turned to other topics. He considered his life’s work to be ‘East of Eden’, a retelling of Adam and Eve, Cain and Abel in California, which touched on his own dark family history that he had followed all the way back to Israel.

Steinbeck’s support for the Vietnam War had infuriated the literary establishment and even though he had won the Nobel Prize and his acceptance speech became one of the most famous of its kind, he continued to be dismissed as an outdated fossil. And the author, prone to an old school literary machismo, who never much liked parties and crowds, dismissed them.

After facing the establishment’s fury over the Vietnam War, Steinbeck was not worried about the leftist reaction to his visit to Israel. And he looked at Israel through the lens of a writer who had chronicled pioneers and messianists, but also a man who had come to see the world caught in a struggle between good and evil, the forces of democracy against those of Communism.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/bibi-and-mbs-make-a-play-for-mideast-peace-pipeline-g20-biden-d9f8e99d?mod=opinion_lead_pos5

Political normalization between Saudi Arabia and Israel is an idea whose time has come. At least that’s the increasingly optimistic view of Saudi and Israeli officials working to make it happen with the Biden administration’s support. But how realistic is it?

There’s little doubt Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, 38, and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, 73, want to reach a deal. They’ve met at least twice in secret since November 2020, and both have serious reasons for doing so.

Mr. Netanyahu seeks to secure the survival of the Jewish state. Diplomatic relations with Saudi Arabia—the wealthiest, most dynamic Arab nation—would be as significant for Israel as its 1979 peace with Egypt, which ended the threat of an Arab-Israeli war. Such recognition would encourage much of the Islamic world to engage with Israel and establish a new home for Saudi investment. A deal would also deepen already substantial Israeli-Saudi intelligence and military cooperation.

Crown Prince Mohammed knows he can’t create a modern high-tech economy without close links to Israeli technology and business. MBS envisions himself as the leader of a strong, economically integrated Mideast that serves as a bridge between Asia and Europe. Diplomatic relations with Israel would aid those goals, allowing the kingdom to lure much-needed Western investment and expertise and cementing MBS as the head of the second tier of world leaders.

For his part, Mr. Biden wants a splashy signing ceremony at the White House that would give him the ability to boast of historic success in the region. The president who once labeled Saudi Arabia a pariah now seems eager to make it a pillar of U.S. strategy in the Gulf.

Yet simply because three powerful men want the deal to happen doesn’t mean it will. There are many moving parts, including what the Israelis will offer the Palestinians. Do concessions exist that would satisfy the crown prince without irreparably dividing Mr. Netanyahu’s governing coalition? Will Congress accede to Saudi Arabia’s security demands? Will Iran stay on the sidelines or send its proxies to ruin efforts at peace?

https://thehill.com/opinion/international/4192784-the-corrupt-palestinian-authority-must-not-be-a-part-of-any-saudi-israel-deal/

American officials are visiting Saudi Arabia to discuss Palestinian demands regarding a potential deal for the kingdom to normalize relations with Israel. The deal could include Riyadh’s reported proposal to resume its financial payments to the Palestinian Authority (PA) if it constrains militants. While Saudi Arabia desires any normalization deal to benefit the Palestinian people, it is financially and morally irresponsible to distribute funds through the corrupt, terrorist-funding PA.

Instead of funneling aid through the PA as part of any normalization agreement, the creation of a new nongovernmental organization would enable the Saudis to support fellow Muslims, develop a responsible organization to tangibly improve Palestinian lives, foster a civil society more amenable to Arab-Israeli normalization outside of the PA’s repression and create a much-needed alternative to the PA’s endemic misgovernance.

Building on the groundbreaking Abraham Accords that one of us helped negotiate during the Trump administration, Saudi normalization with Israel would demonstrate to the world that Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman is a historic figure focused on transforming his society and advancing global peace, as well as provide him an opportunity to chart a better course for Palestinians. Any deal between Saudi Arabia and Israel would mark a massive advancement of the Abraham Accords, creating the political cover for additional Muslim leaders to formalize relations with Israel.

A notable holdout to the goodwill of Saudi-Israel peace could be Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, who was elected to a four-year term in 2005 yet still remains in office. Abbas has repeatedly refused or stalled U.S. and Israeli diplomatic proposals.

Yet providing funds to the Palestinian Authority, an organization that continues to reward Palestinian terrorism, would undercut the peaceful message and implications of normalization. Having recognized that the PA’s payments to the families of terrorists encourages violence, Congress passed the Taylor Force Act in 2018, which cuts U.S. funding to the PA until its stops this “pay for slay” program. Since money is fungible, any foreign aid to the PA would effectively incentivize further terror against Israelis. Riyadh should not provide funds to the PA that would exempt the PA from ending its “pay for slay.”

https://www.frontpagemag.com/oslo-at-30/

The formal initiation of the Oslo process on the White House lawn on September 13, 1993, was supposed to herald an era of peace between Israel and the Palestinians. But that hope was based on Israeli delusions.

The truth was readily evident. On the evening of the White House ceremony, Yasir Arafat broadcast a speech on Jordanian television assuring Palestinians that they should understand Oslo in terms of the Palestine National Council’s 1974 decision. This was a reference to the so-called “plan of phases,” according to which the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) would acquire whatever territory it could by negotiations, then use that land as a base for pursuing Israel’s annihilation.

Why did Oslo’s supporters insist peace was at hand? The Arab siege of Israel had been underway for nearly half a century, since the Jewish State’s founding. Invariably under conditions of chronic besiegement – whether involving minorities marginalized and victimized by the surrounding majority or small states whose neighbors seek their destruction – elements of the population under assault will shun reality. They will fool themselves into believing that sufficient self-reform and concessions will win relief. They do so out of desperate longing for respite and despite evidence in the rhetoric and actions of their attackers that their formulations are fantasies.

The promoters of Oslo were drawn overwhelmingly from the nation’s academic, cultural and media elites and elements of the political elite. Their sense of their own infallibility was captured and endorsed by Mordechai Bar-On in his 1996 text on the Israeli peace movement: “Higher learning, it is believed, exposes individuals to a wider variety of opinions, trains them in new analytical and flexible modes of thought, and enables them to relate to issues in a less emotional and more self-critical way, which leads to greater tolerance and understanding of the ‘other’ and of the complexity of the issues.” Oslo’s opponents, in contrast, those who took seriously Arafat’s words and actions, were uneducated and lacked such sophisticated understanding.

To advance Oslo, its proponents mounted an assault on the nation’s history and its people’s attachment to the Zionist project. The so-called New Historians rewrote the history to render Israel more culpable. Not only did they produce fiction in place of history but they set the overarching fact of the conflict on its head: The reality was, and is, that the end of the conflict will come on the Arabs’ timetable, not Israel’s. The Arab world is the dominant actor. The New Historians reversed this, depicting Arab decision-making as two-dimensional, a straightforward response to Israeli decisions. Therefore, if the siege persisted, it was Israel’s fault. Meanwhile, Israeli educators, from grade school to the universities, worked to distance their students from their nation’s history and, again, from attachment to the Zionist project; to ease the path to popular acceptance of dangerous concessions.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/19964/biden-saudi-bribe-palestinians

Palestinian officials… have assured the US that they will not oppose Saudi-Israeli efforts at normalization, in the hope of receiving security, financial and political incentives from the Biden administration.

The Palestinian list of demands for not opposing a Saudi-Israeli deal includes, among other things: Resuming Saudi financial support to the Palestinian Authority, which slowed from 2016 and stopped completely three years ago, to the tune of around $200 million per year, and transferring parts of the West Bank currently under full Israeli control to the governance of the Palestinian Authority. The talk is about land in the West Bank’s Area C, which, according to the Oslo Accords, is exclusively controlled by Israel.

It appears, then, that Saudi Arabia and the Biden Administration are offering a bribe to the Palestinians in return for their silence over a Saudi-Israeli deal. The Biden administration seems desperate to achieve some kind of deal ahead of the 2024 US presidential election, presumably in the hope that it would boost President Joe Biden’s chances of being re-elected.

The Palestinian list of demands for refraining from condemning a Saudi-Israeli peace accord can be seen as tantamount to blackmail. The Palestinian leadership is telling the Saudis and Americans that if they want to avoid Palestinian condemnation, they must pay the price — with money and territory.

The Saudis are being asked to pay $200 million per year and the Americans, it appears, are expected to pressure — or blackmail — Israel into ceding control of more territory in the West Bank to Mahmoud Abbas’s Palestinian Authority, in exchange for promises. [T]he Americans, it appears, are expected to pressure — or blackmail — Israel into ceding control of more territory in the West Bank to Mahmoud Abbas’s Palestinian Authority, in exchange for promises.

The Palestinian leaders will happily accept any additional land in the West Bank, but, as experience has shown, they will do nothing to prevent these areas from becoming terror hubs.

Given the ongoing state of financial and administrative corruption in the PA, there is every reason to doubt that the Saudi funds would be used to boost the Palestinian economy or improve the living conditions of the Palestinians.

“The corruption began from the first moment that the Palestinian Authority began to gather the Palestinian people’s money and aid and pour it into the [ruling] Fatah [faction] budget, even though this money was given to the Palestinian people, not the Palestinian Authority or its officials who have divided it amongst themselves…. The many scandals of such officials and those close to Abbas have been exposed and seen as symbols of financial and political corruption, nepotism, bribery, smuggling and theft.” — Middle East Monitor, “Corruption in the Palestinian Authority,” December 2013.

Several militias and armed gangs are currently operating in the northern parts of the West Bank, while the PA is doing nothing to rein in the terrorists or prevent them from attacking Israeli civilians and soldiers.

The PA, which has spectacularly failed to enforce law and order in areas under its control, is demanding that Israel now allow it to gain control over even more territory in the West Bank?

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/19972/jericho-unesco-heritage-site

The deeply corrupt, highly politicized United Nations Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) will vote later this week on declaring Jericho, an ancient Jewish city, a “World Heritage Site in Palestine.”

The Palestinian Authority submitted a nomination of Jericho, which it wants to rename Tell es-Sultan.

UNESCO’s purpose is to promote “international cooperation in education, sciences, culture, communication and information” which it is supposed to do through “knowledge sharing and the free flow of ideas.” Nowhere does it say that UNESCO has the least right to meddle in ongoing conflicts and create make-believe “facts” on the ground.

This illegitimate imposition is not the first time that UNESCO is putting on display its anti-Israel bias, penchant for faking history and an impressive tradition of lying.

In 2010, UNESCO renamed the Jewish site of Rachel’s Tomb the “Bilal Bin Rabah Mosque,” stating that it was part of “occupied Palestine.”” … At the time, only the US voted against these straight-faced falsifications of Jewish history.

In 2016, UNESCO declared Jerusalem’s Temple Mount – site of the two biblical Jewish temples – “a Muslim holy site of worship” and mentioned it only by its Islamic names, the “Al-Aqsa Mosque/Al-Haram Al-Sharif.” It also renamed the Western Wall — a retaining wall which is all that remains of the Jewish Second Temple that was destroyed by the Roman Legions in 70 CE — “Al-Buraq Plaza”.

“[T]hey decided that the Tomb of the Patriarchs in Hebron is a Palestinian site, meaning that it is not Jewish, and that the site is in danger. Not a Jewish site?! Who is buried there? Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Sarah, Rebecca and Leah – our patriarchs and matriarchs! And the site is in danger? It is only in those places where Israel is, such as Hebron, that freedom of religion for all is ensured.” — Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, The Guardian, July 7, 2017.

Corruption, politicization, and the falsification history do not appear, however, to bother the Biden administration in the least. In July 2023, the United States rejoined UNESCO, even though the organization has been called “a byword for inefficiency, nepotism and corruption” and was cited “among the most corrupt and politically biased UN agencies.”

“Biden’s excuse for rejoining UNESCO is to counter rising Chinese influence. The State Department argues, for example, that ‘we can’t afford to be absent any longer from one of the key fora in which standards around education for science and technology are set.’ This claim is entirely specious. There is little to no need for America to rejoin UNESCO to prevent harmful Chinese influence. UNESCO ‘standards’ for any sort of education are irrelevant, if not harmful to real education, as we’ve learned over many painful decades…. Biden is making precisely the same mistake as Obama, and, if Biden proceeds further, Congress should firmly block any UNESCO funding, as it has consistently done.” — John R. Bolton, former National Security Advisor and former US Ambassador to the UN, New York Post, June 20, 2023.

UNESCO does nothing to counter China, Russia, North Korea or Iran, but does do a lot to demoralize those countries hoping that the US will still be the leader of the Free World. UNESCO’s corruption, with America’s backing, is simply driving these countries still further into the waiting arms of China.

If US membership in UNESCO is to have any purpose at all, the least the Biden administration can do with its taxpayer dollars is all it can to prevent Jericho from becoming a “Heritage site in Palestine.”

For a start, there is no “State of Palestine.” In fact, until 1964, there was not even a “Palestinian people”.

“The Palestinian people does not exist. The creation of a Palestinian state is only a means for continuing our struggle against the state of Israel for our Arab unity. In reality, today there is no difference between Jordanians, Palestinians, Syrians and Lebanese. Only for political and tactical reasons do we speak today about the existence of a Palestinian people, since Arab national interests demand that we posit the existence of a distinct Palestinian people to oppose Zionism.” — Zoheir Mohsen, Palestinian leader, interview in Trouw, March 31, 1977.

“For tactical reasons, Jordan, which is a sovereign state with defined borders, cannot raise claims to Haifa and Jaffa, while as a Palestinian, I can undoubtedly demand Haifa, Jaffa, Beer-Sheva and Jerusalem. However, the moment we reclaim our right to all of Palestine, we will not wait even a minute to unite Palestine and Jordan.” — Zoheir Mohsen, Trouw, March 31, 1977.

It is important to remember: Until the seventh century there were not even any Muslims in the world, let alone Palestinians.

In 2021, UNESCO published a handbook: “Journalism, ‘Fake News’ and Disinformation: A Handbook for Journalism Education and Training.” Perhaps the good folks at UNESCO might read it before they vote?

Failing that, the US Congress should “should firmly block any UNESCO funding, as it has consistently done” — as Bolton suggested.

https://www.gatestoneinstitute.org/19970/unesco-bias-israel

In one of the latest examples [of anti-Israel bias], UNESCO recently announced it will designate the city of Jericho as a “Palestinian” heritage site.

This is a clear attack on Christians and Jews, who also view the city as an important part of their cultural and religious history. The Biden administration should object to this designation and protest UNESCO’s clear bias strongly.

[A]s former U.S. Ambassador to the UN and former National Security Advisor John Bolton advised in his strong article, “Biden’s foolish rush to rejoin UNESCO has nothing to do with China”: “Congress should firmly block any UNESCO funding, as it has consistently done.”

Rather than building a culture of peace, UNESCO is perpetuating a culture of anger and division.

By exiting UNESCO again, the U.S. would send a clear message that it will not tolerate the organization’s anti-Israel bias and that it will stand up to other racist and anti-Semitic actions at the UN.

Most people know the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) through its eponymous and popular designation of UNESCO World Heritage Sites. By UNESCO’s own definition, “World Heritage sites belong to all the peoples of the world, irrespective of the territory on which they are located.” But an impending late-September vote by UNESCO again calls into question whether the organization holds to its stated beliefs or fits into the broader pattern of anti-Israel bias that permeates the United Nations.

The clear bias of the UN against the State of Israel was on full display in 2022. The UN General Assembly passed 28 resolutions criticizing countries. Of these resolutions, 15 criticized Israel, while only 13 were critical of all the other countries around the world combined. In a world beset by conflict, with a war in Ukraine, genocide against the Uyghurs in China, violence in Myanmar, the Taliban horrors in Afghanistan, instability in the Sahel, military infighting in the Sudan, and gang violence in Haiti, among the many global hotspots, Israel being the primary focus of UN criticism is totally inappropriate.

https://www.nysun.com/article/america-is-among-the-targets-as-israel-issues-warnings-on-iran?utm_source=MG&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Evening%20Sun%20%202023-09-11

If Prime Minister Netanayahu and President Biden meet next week — even at this late date, the word “if” must be used — expect some pleasantries but also a lot of behind the scenes disagreements, including on a growing rift over Washington’s Iran policies. 

“The prime minister made clear to all world leaders that if we detect uranium enrichment above 60 percent then Israel will have no choice but to act,” Israel’s national security council chief, Tzachi Hanegbi, said Monday. “I don’t think we gamble on our fate if this seems to be the Iranian policy.”

A day earlier, the Mossad chief, David Barnea, made a lot of headlines by telling a conference at Reichman University at Herzliya that Israel is contemplating new methods to slow down the Islamic Republic’s aggression in the region and beyond.

“The time has come to exact a price from Iran in a different way,” Mr. Barnea said, warning that attacks against Israelis and Jews at home or around the world would be more costly to its perpetrators than was seen with past Israeli methods. “These prices will be exacted with great precision in the depths of Iran, in the heart of Tehran,” he said. 

Iran is reportedly building a new airbase in southern Lebanon from which to conduct drone attacks on Israel. “The land is Lebanese, the control is Iranian, and the target is Israel,” the defense minister, Yoav Gallant, told Reichman University Monday, warning of “lethal force” against the base. 

While Israel in the past has often uttered warnings against Iran, the current ones may be directed at more than just Tehran. Mr. Barnea “did not threaten the Iranians. He is a serious enough person to understand that that has no meaning,” a former senior Mossad official, Haim Tomer, told Radio 103FM Monday. “He made a threat to the Americans.” 

Mr. Tomer, who was Mossad’s chief of intelligence and operations, added that Mr. Barnea is “expressing harsh criticism of the current U.S. administration,” and “is telling the Americans that he has freedom of action.” The foreign intelligence agency chief’s comments were cleared by Mr. Netanyahu, and were made on his behalf, Mr. Tomer added.

Washington and Jerusalem increasingly disagree over what to do about the Iranian nuclear program and the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps’ military beef-up and growing aggression. Instead of addressing those issues, Mr. Biden is pressuring Israel over its lack of concessions to the Palestianians.

Washington well knows that Mr. Netanyahu’s right-wing government, as it is currently formed, cannot agree on concessions to Ramallah. Such concessions are even less likely in light of the much publicized recent antisemitic comments made by the Palestinian Authority’s president, Mahmoud Abbas. He denied that Jews are Semites and blamed them for Hitler’s genocide. 

https://www.jpost.com/opinion/article-758080

Thirty years on, we can say with confidence that Oslo and everything that it stood for is dead. Rather than trying to revive it, we would do well to offer it a fitting eulogy.

Next week marks the 30th anniversary of the signing of the Oslo Accords, one of the most colossal strategic errors in modern Israel’s history.

Three decades after prime minister Yitzhak Rabin and PLO terrorist-in-chief Yasser Arafat shook hands as a beaming US president Bill Clinton looked on, the smiles have long ago been erased thanks to the disaster wrought by the agreement.

And since the legacy of that catastrophic capitulation by the Jewish state is still very much with us, it is worth gazing back, however briefly, at the folly of that regrettable attempt to appease terror with territory.

Tossing logic to the wind, and blithely ignoring the warnings of senior IDF officials as well as the opposition, Rabin and foreign minister Shimon Peres inexplicably decided to rescue Arafat from political oblivion.

Despite his ignominious career ordering the hijacking of airlines and cruise ships, plotting school massacres, and reveling in the murder of innocents, Arafat was suddenly granted legitimacy as a “partner” by Israel’s government thanks to Oslo.