The German government has <a href="https://www.dw.com/en/german-government-bans-hezbollah-interior-ministry/a-53287126">pulled the plug</a> on Hezbollah, labeling it a terrorist organization – its political “wing” as well as its military “wing” – and banning its activity on German soil; associated organizations will also be outlawed. What took so long? Surely there was no benefit to Germany in the relationship, except perhaps, to irritate Israel.
Or was there?
Some German politicians claimed relations with Hezbollah were necessary to maintain relations with Lebanon, where the party leads the government. A Foreign Ministry official had called it a “<a href="https://www.dw.com/en/germany-will-not-list-iran-allied-hezbollah-as-terrorist-minister/a-47832535">relevant factor</a> in Lebanese society and part of the complex political landscape in the country.” But with the Beirut government <a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-04-30/defaulted-lebanon-approves-rescue-plan-to-lay-ground-for-bailout?utm_source=google&amp;utm_medium=bd&amp;cmpId=google">in default </a>on its debts and facing revolution in the streets, allowing terrorist cells to operate in Germany seems unduly sympathetic.
But Hezbollah is a subsidiary of Iran, and through a different prism, Germany’s decision may be the reordering of its relationship with Tehran under the stresses of U.S.-led sanctions, plus the Russia-Saudi oil price war, the Wuhan virus, and the not-often-mentioned rebellion that has been going on in the Islamic Republic since late 2017. In other words, through the prism of money and a distinct unconcern for the people who suffer under tyrannical rule.
The 2015 “Iran deal” made Germany Iran’s primary European trading partner and primary political defender. In 2016, according to the German government, Germany sold Iran <a href="https://www.reuters.com/article/germany-economy-iran/german-exports-to-iran-soared-by-26-percent-in-2016-dihk-says-idUSL5N1H44PC">2.9 billion euros</a> worth of machinery and equipment, cars, chemicals, pharmaceuticals, and medical products. Iran sold Germany 300 million euros worth of dried fruits, pistachios, rugs, and industrial raw materials. “Machinery and equipment” for fruit. Sounds safe.
In 2017, trade amounted to <a href="https://financialtribune.com/articles/domestic-economy/79434/german-exports-to-iran-growing">3.6 billion euros</a>. But in December of that year, according to the Iranian Chamber of Commerce, <a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2018/01/3700-arrested-protests-iran-mp-180109100528230.html">33 percent of Iranians</a> lived below the poverty line, and the gap between the rich and poor was deepening. That month a widespread rebellion began.
Early protests were registered in <a href="https://www.economist.com/leaders/2018/01/06/iranians-demand-and-deserve-a-less-oppressive-regime">70 towns and cities</a>, with at least <a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2018/01/3700-arrested-protests-iran-mp-180109100528230.html">22 people killed and 3,700 arrested</a> in the first three weeks. Strikes continued around the country, with demonstrators in Ahvaz chanting, “<a href="https://www.radiofarda.com/a/iran_ahwaz_workers_steel_factory/29636678.html">Palestine and Syria are not our problem</a>” and “Not for Gaza, not for Syria, my life only for Iran.” The women of “White Wednesday” continued their protest even after Shaparak Shajarizadeh, the iconic woman who stood on a utility box and waved her headscarf, was sentenced to <a href="https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/middle-east/iran-woman-hijab-protest-arrest-jailed-prison-shapark-shajarizadeh-headscarf-white-wednesdays-a8439816.html">20 years in prison</a>, and Nasrin Sotoudeh, a lawyer who defended women in court, was sentenced to <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/global-opinions/she-defended-iranian-women-who-removed-their-hijabs-now-shes-been-given-38-years-in-prison/2019/03/17/b1720fea-45b1-11e9-aaf8-4512a6fe3439_story.html?utm_term=.f0f8f3f313b0">38 years and 148 lashes</a>.
By the end of 2018, Amnesty International – notoriously uninterested in the Middle East except for Israel – said Iran had arrested <a href="https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2019/01/irans-year-of-shame-more-than-7000-arrested-in-chilling-crackdown-on-dissent-during-2018/">more than 7,000 people</a>.
The Trump administration <a href="https://www.dw.com/en/how-trumps-sanctions-are-crippling-irans-economy/a-49335908">re-imposed sanctions in late 2018</a>, striking the oil, shipping, and financial sectors. A report from the German Chambers of Industry and Commerce in mid-2019, German exports to Iran <a href="https://www.dw.com/en/german-iranian-trade-dwindles-to-a-trickle/a-49373454">declined by 50 percent</a> in the first quarter compared to the same the same period in 2018, although the products were nearly the same: machinery, mechanical devices, pharmaceuticals and electrical products, the volume amounted to 339 million euros for the first three months, while importing 60 million euros worth of Iranian pistachios, carpets, and what the report called “a limited amount” of steel and fuels. (Germany imports <a href="https://www.cleanenergywire.org/factsheets/germanys-dependence-imported-fossil-fuels">more than 50 percent of its energy needs</a>, but from Russia, the UK, and The Netherlands, not Iran.) At that time, <a href="https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-iran-germany-trade/germany-iran-trade-collapses-under-us-sanctions-report-idUSKCN1TT040">more than 60 German companies</a> were still operating in Iran.
In the Spring of 2019, Iran’s Foreign Minister Javad Zarif was concerned enough about his country’s status <a href="https://www.cbsnews.com/news/full-interview-javad-zarif-on-face-the-nation/">to appear on American television</a> to “show the Iranian people that the U.S. is not worthy of being a negotiating partner,” and the Trump administration as “squeezing the Iranian people, not the government.” He added, “When the Iranian people are pressured, they do not respond with submission, they respond with resistance. They want us to represent them.”
However, there was another burst of <a href="https://www.jewishpolicycenter.org/2019/11/18/has-the-iranian-empire-overreached/">widespread upheaval</a> in Iran in November 2019, along with demonstrations in Lebanon and Iraq against the Islamic Republic.
The Russia-Saudi oil price war and the Wuhan Virus showed up in 2020. The former has added to Iran’s cash-crunch and the latter has exposed its inability to care for its people or tell the truth in public. Iran’s response has been largely to <a href="https://www.jpost.com/Middle-East/Iran-News/Iranian-army-acquires-combat-capable-drones-with-930-mile-range-625030">threaten Israel</a> and <a href="https://www.npr.org/2020/04/22/840955446/trump-instructs-u-s-navy-to-fire-on-iranian-boats-if-harassed">harass the U.S. Navy</a> in the Persian Gulf.
Five years after it assumed the role of Iran’s partner, it may be that without the lure of profits and after many more than five years of watching the Iranian – and Lebanese – people suffer at the hands of terrorist leadership, Germany has decided to change course, first by dumping Hezbollah.
If so, it’s about damned time. And what’s next?

Berlin Raid

BRYEN: Germany Ends Its Relationship With Hezbollah Proving Money Matters

Germany

Hezbollah

Israel

Terrorism

Americans have had fairly stable energy prices for the past few years, and fairly low ones, in part due to the tremendous increase in energy production in the United States – both natural gas and oil. In 2018,  the U.S. produced <a href="https://www.eia.gov/energyexplained/us-energy-facts/">95% of its domestic energy requirements</a>, the largest share since 1967. Stability is also owed to a mainly-steady oil supply emanating from OPEC countries and Russia, making up for decreased supplies from Iran and Venezuela. Gas prices, the marker Americans watch almost to the exclusion of everything else, <a href="https://www.eia.gov/todayinenergy/detail.php?id=42435">averaged $2.60/gal in 2019 </a>, 4% lower than in 2018.
But while much of American energy is domestic, oil is a commodity with a single world-wide market. The choices other countries make ultimately affect our industry. In December 2016, Russia concluded an agreement with OPEC to balance output and stabilize price at an agreed-upon level – then at about <a href="https://www.csis.org/analysis/russia-and-saudi-arabia-new-oil-bromance">$60/bbl</a>. As expected, everybody cheated a little bit, but by the end of 2017, stability emerged. Saudi King Salmon paid his first ever state visit to Russia, where Russian President Vladimir Putin talked about major investments in the kingdom. In June of last year, <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/business/2019/jun/30/russia-saudi-arabia-extend-deal-opec-oil-output">the deal was extended</a> for six to nine months. “Demand is softening a little bit, but I think it’s still healthy,” said Saudi energy minister, Khalid al-Falih.
But then came coronavirus.
Saudi Arabia called an emergency meeting of OPEC and Russia, planning to <a href="https://www.vox.com/2020/3/9/21171406/coronavirus-saudi-arabia-russia-oil-war-explained">cut production to keep the price stable</a> as world economies faltered. But Russia, having a very large budgetary reserve, decided to keep pumping and let prices fall. For Americans, conditioned by the Arab oil embargo of 1973-74 and the 1980 Iranian Revolution embargo to think lower prices are good, the outcome of the meeting was something of a shock as we find ourselves in the middle of a Saudi-Russian energy war.
The Russians weren’t trying to help us with gasoline prices. Furious over American opposition to the Nord Stream II pipeline connecting Russian natural gas to European markets, Putin’s hope is to bankrupt the relatively new American oil industry and drive the U.S. from the market. Oh, and by the way, end up with more market share later. Putin is prepared to spend his reserve rubles propping up the Russian economy in the meantime.
Saudi Arabia’s fight is not with the United States, so the kingdom’s objective was not American industry. But the Sunni Saudis and the Iranian-supporting Russians are adversaries – over energy and more – so the Saudi government changed its mind and INCREASED production to FURTHER sink prices, hoping to damage the Russian economy more than Putting was prepared to tolerate.
And, indeed, there was a <a href="https://www.cnbc.com/2020/03/09/russia-saudi-arabia-squabble-over-oil-strategy-but-the-real-battle-is-with-the-us.html">massive price decline</a> last week – <a href="https://www.salon.com/2020/03/14/the-oil-shock-of-2020-appears-to-be-here-and-the-pain-could-be-wide-and-deep_partner/">30% in less than a week and 50% since January</a>. It was, according to some experts, the worst week for the oil industry since 2008. Other analysts estimated that annual <a href="https://oilprice.com/Latest-Energy-News/World-News/US-To-Buy-77-Million-Barrels-Of-Crude-For-Strategic-Petroleum-Reserve.html">oil demand</a> could decline by more than the 2.65 million barrels per day recorded in 1980 after the Iranian revolution.
For the United States, the oil and natural gas industries are on the block. Not state-owned like those of Russia and Saudi Arabia, American energy producers are supposed to make their money on the market. But when the market rises or falls by collusion, where do they turn? CEO of Continental Resources, Harold Hamm, called the Saudi-Russian moves <a href="https://www.foxbusiness.com/markets/oil-market-gets-white-knight-after-worst-week-since-2008">illegal</a>. But it isn’t clear that there is a legal remedy.
So, President Donald Trump <a href="https://link.axios.com/click/19735483.35298/aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cud2hpdGVob3VzZS5nb3YvYnJpZWZpbmdzLXN0YXRlbWVudHMvcmVtYXJrcy1wcmVzaWRlbnQtdHJ1bXAtdmljZS1wcmVzaWRlbnQtcGVuY2UtbWVtYmVycy1jb3JvbmF2aXJ1cy10YXNrLWZvcmNlLXByZXNzLWNvbmZlcmVuY2UtMy8_dXRtX3NvdXJjZT1uZXdzbGV0dGVyJnV0bV9tZWRpdW09ZW1haWwmdXRtX2NhbXBhaWduPW5ld3NsZXR0ZXJfYXhpb3NnZW5lcmF0ZSZzdHJlYW09dG9w/5d8a19e2fbd297461c3ce0b1B488ff973">announced</a> the government would purchase enough crude oil to fill the U.S. Strategic Petroleum Reserve &#8220;right up to the top.&#8221; The tab would be about <a href="https://www.axios.com/trump-oil-purchase-strategic-petroleum-reserve-c6c016ba-2f20-4e55-89f3-4259d6a275a3.html">$2.6 billion</a> at last Friday’s prices for 77 million barrels of crude.
We still have a Strategic Petroleum Reserve?
Although there<a href="https://oilprice.com/Energy/Crude-Oil/The-Strategic-Petroleum-Reserve-Is-Slowly-Dying.html"> were discussions about dismantling it</a> a few years ago, the Reserve remains the largest emergency oil supply in the world. Designed to prevent the disruptions seen in the aftermath of the 1973-74 embargo, it has a capacity of 727 million barrels and presently holds about 635 million. It can be opened by the government to prevent economic dislocation in the face of overseas contingencies.
Within about two weeks, the President’s purchases may start showing up at the Reserve.
It may not work. Prices may rise and then fall again under longer-term economic pressures engendered by COVID-19. And there is still the question of paying for it – as Congress would have to appropriate the funds. &#8220;We continue to see political headwinds,&#8221; analysts with ClearView Energy Partners <a href="https://www.spglobal.com/platts/en/market-insights/latest-news/oil/031520-with-questionable-long-term-market-impact-trumps-spr-plan-faces-uncertain-path-in-congress?utm_source=newsletter&amp;utm_medium=email&amp;utm_campaign=newsletter_axiosgenerate&amp;stream=top">said Saturday</a>, calling it &#8220;problematic&#8221; for the Democratic-led House to approve a plan the President has said will “save” an industry.
The President has other options for funding, but it would be a sorry day if the House of Representatives abetted Russia and Saudi Arabia in price fixing to cause long-term damage to the American oil industry.
Shoshana Bryen is Senior Director of The Jewish Policy Center and Editor of inFOCUS Quarterly

President Trump

BRYEN: Trump Fills The Reserve

Donald Trump

Oil and Gas

Russia

Saudi Arabia

It takes time for attitudes to change, and changing attitudes in the Middle East is a tough proposition. Moving the Europeans may prove harder.
An Israeli general once told this story (I was there):
<blockquote>The Israeli general commanded a unit that crossed the Suez Canal in 1973 after repulsing Egypt’s surprise Yom Kippur War attack. In his headquarters, he received a message that purported to be from an Egyptian general, telling him to come — alone — in a jeep to a certain spot in the desert and “hear something.” The general told the group, “I was sure I was going to die, but I did it.” The Egyptian proved to be the chief of the Egyptian general staff and he, too, was alone.
The Egyptian said, “The war is over.”
The Israeli general said, “Yes. I know.”
The Egyptian general sighed, “Not this war. In 1948, Egypt was within 11 miles of Tel Aviv and you pushed us back. In 1956, you drove through Sinai — but it wasn’t fair because you had the French and the British. In 1967, you did it again — by yourselves. Now you have crossed the Suez Canal and are 99 kilometers from Cairo. I’m here to tell you that you won’t get any closer. The war is over.”
He got back in his jeep and left.
The Israeli returned to his headquarters and told the story to the general staff in Tel Aviv. “No one believed me,&#8221; the Israeli said.</blockquote>
But it was true. The Egyptian government had determined that fighting, losing, and regrouping was not a plan. In 1979, Anwar Sadat went to Jerusalem, and in so doing met Israel’s primary condition for peace — recognition of Israel as a legitimate and permanent state in the region, entitled to “secure and recognized boundaries, free from threats or acts of force” (the language of U.N. Security Council Resolution 242). Today, Egypt and Israel cooperate on energy, security (including for the Gaza Strip), and trade.
In the broader Arab world, it is taking longer. Unable to countenance Jewish sovereignty in the region, the Arabs went to war in 1948 to erase it. They failed. They tried again in 1967. They failed again. After that war, an Arab League Summit convened in Sudan and issued what became known as the Khartoum Resolution: &#8220;No peace with Israel, no recognition of Israel, no negotiations with Israel.&#8221;
Then there were the conflicts of 1973 and 1982, intifadas, and rocket wars with Gaza.
President Trump called them on it in announcing his <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/bryen-donald-trumps-vision-for-the-middle-east">“Vision” for the Middle East</a>. “It is time for the Muslim world to fix the mistake it made in 1948, when it chose to attack instead of to recognize the new state of Israel. The Palestinians are the primary pawn in this adventurism, and it is time for this sad chapter in history to end.” Three Arab ambassadors were in the room.
The <a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2020/02/arab-league-holds-emergency-meeting-trump-plan-200201105251740.html">Arab League hastily convened a summit</a>, responding to the flat rejection of the plan by Palestinian Authority strongman Mahmoud Abbas, who had declined to read or even discuss it. This was not a “three noes” meeting. While the bloc as a whole rejected the Vision, the head of the Arab League said that there was time only for an initial study of the plan, adding that the Palestinian response would be key in shaping a &#8220;collective Arab position.” It should be noted that a day after announcing it would scrap security cooperation with the U.S. and Israel, the Palestinian Authority announced that, in fact, it <a href="https://www.jpost.com/Middle-East/Palestinians-wont-halt-security-ties-with-Israel-US-Ramallah-officials-616503">would not do so.</a>
<a href="https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2020/02/oic-hold-emergency-meeting-trump-middle-east-plan-200203064919675.html">Al Jazeera</a> wrote, “The announcement of Trump&#8217;s plan drew mixed responses from Arab states.” While joining in the vote, Egypt and <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/hammer-at-jewish-journal-saudi-arabia-is-now-more-pro-israel-than-the-democratic-party">Saudi Arabia said separately that they “appreciated”</a> Mr. Trump’s efforts and called for renewed negotiations. Sudan’s leader announced a “principled stance on the Palestinian issue and the right of its people to establish its independent state &#8230; in accordance with the Arab consensus and Arab League decisions,” even as in a bit of irony — having hosted the Khartoum Declaration meeting — it established a mechanism for <a href="https://www.jpost.com/Middle-East/Israel-Sudan-set-up-normalization-teams-616526">opening diplomatic relations with Israel.</a>
OK, yes, the <a href="https://www.memri.org/reports/qatar-qatar-backed-international-union-muslim-scholars-blast-trumps-peace-plan-it-belongs">International Union of Muslim Scholars</a> (IUMS) consigned the Vision to the “dust heap of history,” but the IUMS is a creation of Qatar and Qatar is a puppet of Iran.
And speaking of Iran, European Union (EU) foreign policy chief Josip Borrell met with Iranian leaders and shortly afterward tried to <a href="https://www.timesofisrael.com/eu-reportedly-blocked-from-resolution-condemning-trump-plan-annexation/">ram a condemnation</a> of the Vision though the EU. But EU statements have to be unanimous and, of its 27 countries, six refused — including Italy, Austria, Hungary, and the Czech Republic. Borrell then issued the statement in his own name.
The interim commissioner-general of UNRWA said, “The plan … is extremely unsettling for the Palestine refugees living under occupation, under blockade and through conflict after conflict and crisis after crisis, hoping for justice and human rights. The international community must send a clear message to Palestine refugees and to the world at large that the international community stands firmly behind them.”
Rightly, Israel chose to <a href="https://www.algemeiner.com/2020/02/04/israel-harshly-criticizes-eu-over-rejection-of-trump-middle-east-peace-plan/">respond more harshly</a> to the EU and <a href="https://www.algemeiner.com/2020/02/03/israel-slams-unrwa-head-for-attacking-trump-peace-plan/">UNRWA</a> than it did the Arab League.
It has been hard for Arab states to move on from decades of adamant rejection of Israel to talk and trade, and generally accept the nation-state of the Jewish people. That is the reality, not an excuse. But for the EU and UNRWA, to encourage Palestinians in outmoded, fanatical, and dangerous thinking is inexplicable.
Except it isn’t.
&nbsp;
Shoshana Bryen is Senior Director of <a href="https://www.jewishpolicycenter.org/">The Jewish Policy Center</a> in Washington, and Editor of inFOCUS Quarterly.

President Trump Meets With Israeli PM Netanyahu At The White House

BRYEN: The Arabs And Europeans React To Trump’s Middle East ‘Vision’

Egypt

Europe

European Union

Foreign Policy

Iran

Jerusalem

Middle East

Palestinians

President Donald Trump’s Middle East &#8220;Deal of the Century&#8221; peace plan — The Vision — is 180 pages long and meticulously detailed. <a href="https://www.whitehouse.gov/peacetoprosperity/">Read it</a> if you like. But the president and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu covered the high points Tuesday before an enthusiastic, pro-Israel audience at the White House.
Regardless of how future negotiations go, the president’s management of The Vision and meetings with the prime minister and, separately, with Netanyahu’s chief political rival (Benny Gantz), were masterful in two ways. First, it allowed the Israelis to demonstrate that there are areas in which their two major political parties can agree, and that both can agree with Mr. Trump. Second, it allowed the president to erase the mistaken assumption that the United States has to be neutral between Israelis and Palestinians in order to make progress.
The United States can only be an “honest broker” if it eschews neutrality, which accepts all the positions of both parties as equally compelling. The Vision, and the East Room ceremony, address American interests, the first of which is that Israel is a friend and ally by its very nature. Human rights, rule of law, free elections, freedom of religion and the press, security interests, and a high-tech, open economy are built in. While the president was extraordinarily sympathetic to the Palestinian people — particularly young people whom he lamented are “growing up with no hope” — there are some things the Palestinian Authority (PA) does that are unacceptable not only to Israel, but also to the United States.
Giving up those unacceptable things before the U.S. will support Palestinians&#8217; desire for an independent state is what some people call “preconditions.” Yes. Precisely. Neutral parties don’t do that — honest brokers do. The PA has to be an acceptable interlocutor and at the moment, it is not. But, said the president, “It is never too late. It is time to rise up and meet the challenges of the future. If they do it, it will work.”
What, exactly, does the president require?
In exchange for recognition of Palestine as the nation-state of the Palestinian people with a capital in Jerusalem (which will remain undivided and under Israeli sovereignty), “where the U.S. will proudly open an embassy,” plus massive international investment, he asked them to “meet the challenges of peaceful coexistence.”
<ul>
<li>Adopt basic laws ensuring basic human rights and protecting against financial and political corruption;</li>
<li>Stop malign activities of Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad;</li>
<li>End incitement against Israel; and</li>
<li>Permanently halt financial compensation to terrorists</li>
</ul>
Let’s face it, these constitute a very low bar for civilized behavior. If the Palestinians can’t or won’t do those things, how much “peace” will any “process” provide? (One Twitter used asked, “Anyone think the Kurds would reject a deal that gave them a path to a state and $50 billion if they just behaved like human beings?”)
In addition, the president changed the timeline.
Life/conflict for Palestinians and Israelis did not start with Israel’s acquisition of Judea and Samaria in the course of defending itself from a combined multi-national Arab attack in 1967. “It is time for the Muslim world to fix the mistake it made in 1948, when it chose to attack instead of to recognize the new state of Israel. The Palestinians are the primary pawn in this adventurism, and it is time for this sad chapter in history to end.” By recognizing that the Palestinians were left hanging by their Arab brothers between 1948 and 1967, he made the solution to the Palestinian plight the Arab states&#8217; responsibility, as well. Three Arab ambassadors were in the room.
Trump noted that Qassem Soleimani’s organization, the Quds Force, was, translated in English, the Jerusalem Liberation Organization. “To have Jerusalem be free [Soleimani said] we have to be at war with Israel. But, in truth, Jerusalem is liberated. Jerusalem is a safe, open, and democratic city.”
The president was fulsome in his praise of Israel, pleased that Israel had agreed — for the first time — to produce a map of what two states would look like. It would be useful to ask the Palestinians to produce a map with THEIR proposed settlement — but not until they come to the table.
And he was clear in his determination to ensure Israel’s security. “There will be no incremental risks to the state of Israel.” “Peace,” he added, “requires compromise, but we will never ask Israel to compromise its security.”
That is a far cry from prior administrations that demanded Israel take “risks for peace.” Those risks resulted in the so-called “intifada” after Israel signed the Oslo Accords and allowed the PA to have an armed security force; the entrenchment of Hezbollah in southern Lebanon after Israel departed there in 2000; and the rise of Hamas after Israel departed the Gaza Strip in 2005. Trump will not ask Israel to take more of those risks.
The Israelis know how rare it is to have an American president who sees the world the way they do. The Palestinians can take advantage of a president who wants to improve their future.
“America,” said the president, “cannot care more about peace than the stakeholders,” but he also was careful to mention that “this part of the world is forever connected to the human soul and the human spirit.”
Amen.
&nbsp;
Shoshana Bryen is Senior Director of <a href="https://www.jewishpolicycenter.org/">The Jewish Policy Center</a> in Washington, and Editor of inFOCUS Quarterly.

BRYEN: Donald Trump’s Vision For The Middle East

Benjamin Netanyahu

Trump Administration

We have to wait until President Donald Trump’s Middle East peace plan is unveiled to discuss it; those already discussing are likely to be wrong. But it is worth reviewing where Israelis, Palestinians, Arab states, and Americans have been — and why this time may be different.
The central flaw in the “Palestinian-Israeli peace process” has never been addressed. There has not been — and there is not now — a shared goal toward which Israelis and Palestinians can be induced to work. Instead, each side has three specific and irreconcilable objectives.
The Palestinians — both Hamas and Fatah — seek:
<ul>
<li>An independent state without recognizing a legitimate and permanent state of Israel in any territory. Both factions are willing to accept a temporary agreement with Israel on the way to the fulfillment of the <a href="https://iris.org.il/plochart.htm">PLO Charter</a> to which both are committed. (Reading the Charter will tell you what else they are committed to, and it isn’t a “two state solution.”)</li>
<li>Sovereign control of East Jerusalem as the capital of the Palestinian state.</li>
<li>The right of entry for all remaining 1948–1949 Arab refugees from Britain’s Mandatory Palestine, as well s their descendants, to any place within pre-1967 Israel in which they or their antecedents claim to have lived.</li>
</ul>
Israel seeks three different things:
<ul>
<li>Recognition of the legitimacy and permanence of Israel within finalized “secure and recognized boundaries free from threats or acts of force”: U.N. Resolution 242’s security promise to Israel.</li>
<li>The capital of Israel in Jerusalem and Israeli protection for Jewish patrimony in the eastern part of Jerusalem.</li>
<li>“End of conflict; end of claims.” After an agreement, the Palestinians will not be able to press additional claims against Israel for territory or other “rights.”</li>
</ul>
Beyond the issue of objectives, all previous “Palestinian-Israeli peace processes” were doomed because they operated as if the protagonists were on an island in the middle of the sea rather than in the middle of the Middle East. Until recently, the Palestinians counted on lip service, at a minimum — guns and money in better cases — from the so-called “Arab world” and a variety of African and Middle Eastern states. This broad, if shallow, support covered up the fact that the Palestinians were the weakest link in regional politics. It was impossible for Palestinian Authority (PA) strongman Mahmoud Abbas — let alone Hamas — to recognize the legitimacy of Jewish nationhood and accept a split, rump state squeezed between Jordan and Israel if the Arab states with the money and the guns didn’t go along.
The more the U.S. pressed for Palestinian concessions that would rile the bankers, the more the Palestinians retreated. Intransigence and violence were their defense against being told to defy their Arab state patrons.
The core issue was never jobs or civil society or drinking water — or even a state — for the Palestinians; it was never about Palestinians at all. It was about the failure of the Arab states to accept the reality of 1948 and their losses in 1949, and recognize the legitimacy and permanence of the state of Israel in the region. “Secure and recognized boundaries free from threats or acts of force,” says U.N. Resolution 242, and that is the obligation of Arab States to Israel.
And finally, they’re getting there. Anwar Sadat’s bold move has never been the vision of conservative Arab leaders; Sadat, after all, died. But today, Israel’s relations with the Sunni Arab world are closing in on something real. Yes, it is based on threat perception on both sides. Yes, it is tentative. Yes, it has a lot to do with the price of oil. No, it isn’t closeness borne of shared values and governing systems. OK, let’s not get carried away. But this is the Arab-Israeli process. It doesn’t need Palestinians, but maybe they can benefit. If not, not.
Palestinians patrons today are Iran, an increasingly bellicose and Islamist Turkey, and weak European states with little to contribute.
And finally, the Americans.
The PA appears to have mistaken America as an “honest broker” for America as a “neutral party.” Between Palestinians and Israelis, the United States is not, and should not, ever be &#8220;neutral.&#8221; With Israel we share goals, values, and history; with the Palestinians we do not. &#8220;Honest broker&#8221; is something else. The U.S. has an obligation to state clearly the requirements of peace and ensure that both players understand the consequences of breaking the rules.
Pursuit of arrangements between Israel and the Palestinians is not for the faint-hearted. The parties deserve honest brokerage — American &#8220;neutrality&#8221; would be a betrayal of an ally.
Now, let’s see what the Trump administration has in mind.
&nbsp;
Shoshana Bryen is Senior Director of <a href="https://www.jewishpolicycenter.org/">The Jewish Policy Center</a> in Washington, and Editor of inFOCUS Quarterly.

US President Donald Gives A Speech At Israel Museum

BRYEN: Running Up To The Peace Process

Hamas

United Nations

In the aftermath of the death of Qassem Soleimani last week, the torching of the <a href="https://www.al-monitor.com/pulse/originals/2019/12/iraq-protests-iran-consulate-karbala-najaf.html">Iranian consulates in Najaf and Karbala</a>, Iraq, and the Saturday death of Abbas Ali Al-Sa&#8217;edi, the pro-Iranian Hashd Al Sha’abi commander in Karbala, there are clear indications that the Iranian and Iraqi people are losing their fear of the mullahs of Iran. There is a lot of YouTube video of Iranians in the streets of Tehran and elsewhere, and a particularly neat one of Iranian students <a href="https://twitter.com/Imamofpeace/status/1216401446674919424">refusing to walk </a>on an American and an Israeli flag.
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet" data-width="500" data-dnt="true">
Here’s the most beautiful thing you will see today! Students at Beheshti University in Tehran refuse to walk on the US &amp; Israeli flags painted on the ground. They chant, “Basij [the IRGC paramilitary] forces, you are responsible for killing the people.” | <a href="https://t.co/dskKJeDa18">pic.twitter.com/dskKJeDa18</a>
&mdash; Mike (@Doranimated) <a href="https://twitter.com/Doranimated/status/1216328831239360512?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">January 12, 2020</a></blockquote>
<script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
This is a prelude to understanding President Donald Trump’s <a href="https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1216114167108849665">tweet to the Iranian people</a> on Saturday and the sure knowledge that he’s outpaced newspapers, radio, and TV alike in understanding what regular people understand regardless of what language they speak. Then there is the absence of coverage of the event by what has been called the “mainstream media” — although the mainstream appears not to be following them. Google results mid-morning Sunday — in order of appearance, with sources — show you who cared:
<ul>
<li>Trump Persian Tweet to Iranian People: I “Stand with You.” (Heavy.Com)</li>
<li>Trump tweet in Farsi “the most liked Persian tweet’ in history of Twitter (Washington Examiner)</li>
<li>Trump’s support for Iranian protestors breaks a Twitter record, something the MSM ‘will not report’ (TheBlaze)</li>
<li>Trump Persian Tweet to Iranian People: I &#8220;Stand With You…” (Schooltips.com)</li>
<li>Trump tweet in Farsi &#8220;the most liked Persian tweet&#8221; in… (enmnews)</li>
<li>Donald Trump Tweets in Persian to Pump Up Iranian Protests (CNN)</li>
<li>President Trump’s Tweet in Farsi is Most Liked Persian Tweet… (Gateway Pundit)</li>
<li>Trump Tweets Support for Iranian Protesters — in Persian (Legal Insurrection)</li>
<li>Trump Tweets Support for the ‘Brave and Suffering’ of Iran (PJ Media)</li>
</ul>
See a pattern?
With the exception of the snarky CNN headline, most are smaller outlets and all are openly supportive of the president’s decision to tell the Iranian people that we are not their enemy and we support their struggle against their government.
The Iranian people appear to appreciate that.
So where is The New York Times? Where is The Washington Post? The Los Angeles Times?
The Post had a few presidential tweet stories. In May, there was one about how the president’s tweets “put the Middle East <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/2019/05/20/trump-places-middle-east-knife-edge/">on a knife edge</a>.” There were a few  in June and July — specifically, about one tweet the Iranian government called &#8220;<a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/irans-top-diplomat-says-white-house-statement-on-tehran-attack-is-repugnant/2017/06/08/a7604a62-4c1b-11e7-a186-60c031eab644_story.html">repugnant</a>.&#8221; The New York Times did some “analysis” of Mr. Trump’s tweets: &#8220;<a href="https://r.search.yahoo.com/_ylt=AwrCmnriRBteySUAKhUPxQt.;_ylu=X3oDMTEycXY1bDdiBGNvbG8DYmYxBHBvcwMxBHZ0aWQDQjg0OTJfMQRzZWMDc3I-/RV=2/RE=1578874210/RO=10/RU=https%3a%2f%2fwww.nytimes.com%2f2019%2f11%2f02%2fus%2ftrump-twitter-takeaways.html/RK=2/RS=Ex5huSGSJj_rBkAbLi_kwJBlmas-">Trumps Twitter Presidency</a>&#8221; and an opinion piece that claimed the tweets proved the president to be <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/14/opinion/trump-twitter-racism.html">a &#8220;raging racist.&#8221;</a>. Those were the nice ones.
You get the point.
And sure, by the time you read this, someone in the MSM will have figured out that the tweet was important — not only for what it said, and not only for the apparent joy it brought to the Iranians who read it, liked it, and retweeted it, but because Donald Trump has figured out a way to talk to people without their government or media intervening.
Oh, wait. That’s what he’s been doing with the American people from the beginning of his presidency — letting people hear directly from the man they elected. Americans have often taken that for granted: After all, most of us have unfettered Internet and we can log onto WhiteHouse.gov if we want to know what the president said last night in Arkansas. But this is why the president has 70 million Twitter followers.
And here, perhaps, is the source of MSM unhappiness with Donald Trump. It isn’t only what he does as president; sometimes they even approve of that. It is resentment that he skips them — and denigrates them — just as much as they skip over his agenda and denigrate him. It has long been the position of newspapers, radio, and television that the American people need a filter for what happens — and that they are the filter. They are the way to understand the world. Walter Cronkite was that for millions of people in the 1960s. Tom Friedman, with fewer than a million followers (even adding the 44 million of his employer, The New York Times), isn’t that.
And no one is likely to be that again. Not in the United States. And not even in a country where the government manages and manipulates the media and the official pronouncements. Not even in Iran.
There’s a new day out there. President Trump gets it.
&nbsp;
Shoshana Bryen is Senior Director of <a href="https://www.jewishpolicycenter.org/">The Jewish Policy Center</a> in Washington, and Editor of inFOCUS Quarterly.

Twitter iPhone

BRYEN: Trump Tweets For Liberty In Iran

Islam

Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps

Media

Media Bias

Muslims

Qassem Soleimani

Iranian Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) Qods Force Commander Qassem Soleimani <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/hammer-the-just-and-proper-strike-of-mastermind-iranian-jihadist-qassem-soleimani">is no more</a>. He died with the blood of tens of thousands of people on his hands — Americans, Syrians, Kurds, Israelis, Lebanese, Iraqis, Pakistanis, Afghans, Africans in Nigeria, Chad, Mali, and more. He was an enemy combatant of the United States and leader of a U.S.-designated Foreign Terrorist Organization.
It is tempting just to say, “yippie” and move on. But the extraordinary number of people — including Americans, including The New York Times, including House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA) and Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) — disapproving of President Donald Trump’s decision to have our military skillfully dispatch Soleimani to wherever he’s gone requires more comment.
The Times began its story with, “Mr. Trump’s decision to kill General Soleimani was one that Presidents George W. Bush and Barack Obama had rejected, fearing it would lead to war.” The Times makes the fundamental mistake: Nothing the United States does will “lead to war.” The war is already 40 years old — we just haven’t been fighting it much.
Iran declared real and operational war on the United States (and Israel) at the onset of the Islamic Republic in 1979. From the U.S. embassy takeover in 1979 to the Beirut Marine Barracks bombing in 1983 to the attacks against American troops in Iraq to the <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/national-security/man-in-iran-backed-plot-to-kill-saudi-ambassador-gets-25-years/2013/05/30/0435e7a2-c952-11e2-8da7-d274bc611a47_story.html">bomb plots</a> against the Saudi ambassador in Washington and the Israeli embassy in 2011 to the capture of <a href="https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-01-18/iran-captured-u-s-sailors-at-gunpoint-defense-department-finds">American naval personnel</a> in 2016 (and major violations of the Americans’ Geneva Convention rights) to the continuing Iranian harassment of U.S. shipping in the Persian Gulf and Bab-el-Mandeb Straits, Iran has killed Americans and threatened to kill more.
Soleimani was head of the Iranian militias that <a href="https://www.militarytimes.com/news/your-military/2019/04/04/iran-killed-more-us-troops-in-iraq-than-previously-known-pentagon-says/">killed 608 American soldiers</a> in Iraq and maimed thousands of others through the use of IEDs. He armed, trained, and commanded the Iraqi Kataib militia Hezbollah that was <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/02/world/middleeast/iraq-embassy-attack.html">responsible for the killing</a> of an American contractor in Iraq and the injuring of several American soldiers — and for attacking the U.S. embassy in Baghdad, which directly precipitated the current situation.
And that’s only about the United States. Soleimani’s IRGC-controlled militias sent tens of thousands of troops, mostly Pakistani and Afghan, to Syria to commit large-scale ethnic cleansing of Syrian Sunnis and precipitating the Syrian refugee crisis in Europe. Soleimani’s IRGC-controlled militias ostensibly fought against ISIS in western Iraq, but committed a variety of crimes against Iraqi Sunni civilians there, as well. The arming of Hezbollah in Lebanon with precision missiles, now aimed at Israel, is a Soleimani-led IRGC operation. The establishment of Iranian missile factories in Lebanon, Syria, and Iraq is a Soleimani-led IRGC operation.
At home, Pelosi and Schumer think <a href="https://www.timesofisrael.com/democrats-call-us-killing-of-soleimani-reckless-say-congress-wasnt-notified/">Congress should have been notified</a> — asserting a privilege that does not exist. For the record, President Barack Obama put American citizen Anwar al-Awlaki on a CIA “<a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/04/06/AR2010040604121.html">kill list</a>” in 2010 without discussion in Congress, let alone prior congressional approval. Al-Awlaki was dispatched by an American drone in Yemen in 2011.
Others, including Democratic presidential hopefuls <a href="https://www.timesofisrael.com/democrats-call-us-killing-of-soleimani-reckless-say-congress-wasnt-notified/">Joe Biden, Elizabeth Warren, and Andrew Yang</a>, are condemning the elimination of Soleimani out of fear of the retaliation that Iran might try to exact. Those people aren’t actually wrong. But if they believe the United States should ignore Iranian provocation or abandon the Middle East to protect ourselves here at home — it’s too late for that.
Just last month, Ali Hourani, an American citizen, was <a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/politics/national-security/prosecutors-ask-life-term-new-york-man-who-wanted-die-n1091421">sentenced to 40 years in federal prison</a> for “helping Hezbollah and Iran prepare to strike strategic and vulnerable targets around New York City, such as federal facilities housing day care centers, critical infrastructure, counterterrorism command posts, and international airports, as well as members of the NYPD, the Mossad, and the Israel Defense Forces,&#8221; according to the federal sentencing memo.
Anything <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/hammer-defund-lebanon-and-do-it-yesterday">Hezbollah knows</a>, Iran knows.
That, however, is less a reason to condemn the elimination of Soleimani than to understand the breadth and depth of the war Iran has long been waging. The present escalation of that war is a sign that the Iranian empire has overreached, is collapsing, and needs a “victory” against the mullahs&#8217; &#8220;Great Satan&#8221; (U.S.) or the &#8220;Little Satan&#8221; (Israel) to justify its continued existence.
The Trump administration has cut off Iran’s money supply and other countries have stopped trading with Iran, making bribery in the form of cash, weapons, arms factories, and training less and less possible. The regime, reduced to stealing Iraqi oil to sell on the black market, faces rebellion in its <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/bryen-irans-imperial-overreach">provinces Lebanon and Iraq</a> — as well as at home. Opposition to Islamist clericalism <a href="https://besacenter.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/10/1315-Political-Islam-Is-Declining-in-the-Middle-East-Frisch-final.pdf">appears to be on the rise</a> in the region.
Enemies are most dangerous when they see their demise on the horizon — the Battle of the Bulge was Hitler’s way of ensuring the greatest number of allied casualties before the end of the Nazi empire. That appears to be where Iran is now, that is why the dispatch of Soleimani was essential, and that is why Americans and our allies must present a united front against Iran.
&nbsp;
Shoshana Bryen is Senior Director of <a href="https://www.jewishpolicycenter.org/">The Jewish Policy Center</a> in Washington, and Editor of inFOCUS Quarterly.

Iran Middle East map

BRYEN: The Dispatch Of Soleimani And The Escalation Of The War

Iraq

Mike Pompeo

Radical Islam

Radical Islamic Terror

United States

This will not be Tehran 1979. Nor Benghazi 2012.
There were, apparently two groups of invaders at the <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/trump-iran-behind-attack-on-u-s-embassy-in-baghdad-will-pay">U.S. embassy in Baghdad</a> — hordes of rioting protesters in the streets and well-covered, professional-looking, careful militia members entering the out building. Security forces (and some contractors) used tear gas and stun guns against the demonstrators as the United States protected its embassy compound — <a href="https://www.tribuneledgernews.com/opinion/embassies-and-consulates-are-not-foreign-territory/article_781a9a04-d64a-11e8-9977-334e978bea56.html">sovereign American territory</a> by international convention.
A bit of U.S.-Iranian history is instructive here. When the Iranians overran the U.S. embassy in Tehran in 1979, President Jimmy Carter dubbed the Ayatollah Khomeini “<a href="https://www.jpost.com/Opinion/Op-Ed-Contributors/Father-of-the-Iranian-revolution">a holy man</a>” with whom, presumably, one could do business. President Barak Obama was certain, in 2015, that “the only alternative to the JCPOA is <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/obamas-defense-of-the-iran-deal-comes-with-a-tough-love-message/2015/07/15/a7614b4a-2b04-11e5-bd33-395c05608059_story.html">war with Iran</a>,” presumably meaning that the so-called “Iran nuclear deal” was the way to avoid war and restore Iran to the family of nations.
The result of Carter’s assistance to the ayatollah, and Obama’s lapse in memory — the Iranians had, actually, been in a declared state of war with the United States (and Israel) since 1979 — was to allow the juggernaut of Shiite expansionist theology to ruin Iran, invade Iraq, incubate ISIS, occupy Syria, bring its proxy to power and ruin Lebanon, run the Houthi war in Yemen, undermine Bahrain, attack Saudi Arabia, and spread its tentacles across Africa. And this transpired all while Iran violated the U.N. ban on Iranian arms imports and exports, the U.N. ban on the development of Iranian ballistic missiles, and the P5+1-ratified-by-the-U.N. ban on the development of nuclear weapons technology.
President Donald Trump harbors no such fantasies. He has already shown that <a href="https://www.jewishpolicycenter.org/2018/03/05/punishing-syrian-chemical-weapons-use/">retaliation</a> for acts of war is in his playbook. But he has also shown that it isn’t necessary to retaliate every time for every single thing — including Iran’s attack on <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/09/19/world/middleeast/saudi-iran-attack-oil.html">Saudi oil facilities.</a>
As Iran’s tentacles have <a href="https://www.jewishpolicycenter.org/2019/09/03/the-shiite-crescent-and-regional-disaster/">spread farther</a>, it has begun to show signs of “<a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/bryen-irans-imperial-overreach">imperial overreach</a>.” The re-imposition of American sanctions means Iran has fewer and fewer resources to stoke the flames of revolution extraterritorially. Rebellion against the clerical regime actually began in December 2017 — not 2019, when The New York Times began to report on it. Uprisings in Lebanon and Iraq began earlier this year — both decidedly anti-Iran and anti-clerical. And, as Iran watches Russia swallow Syria’s <a href="https://carnegieendowment.org/sada/78261">reconstruction money</a> for its own purposes, the mullahs appear to have decided it is now time for Iran to reassert itself.
Iranian forces are <a href="https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/iran-says-it-shot-rioters-after-rights-group-claims-200-n1094651">out in the streets</a> of multiple Iranian cities and the U.S. confirms that the death toll among demonstrators is <a href="https://www.voanews.com/middle-east/voa-news-iran/us-confirms-report-citing-iran-officials-saying-1500-killed-protests">more than 1,500</a>, including hundreds of women. The ayatollahs have cut off the internet, to the extent they can, to prevent Western understanding of the devastation. Iranian-backed Shiite militias have been out in force in Iraq — not only in Baghdad, but in Shiite cities across the south of the county. The <a href="https://www.amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2019/11/lebanon-military-forces-must-end-arbitrary-arrests-and-torture-of-protesters/">Lebanese Armed Forces (LAF)</a> plus Hezbollah militias are <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/hammer-defund-lebanon-and-do-it-yesterday">trying to get Lebanon</a> under control with some brutal tactics.
It hasn’t been working very well.
A wounded adversary is the most dangerous. The 1944 Battle of the Bulge reflected Hitler’s understanding that the Allies would not be held off forever, so he wanted to make it harder and bloodier to reach V-E Day. Emperor Hirohito’s determination that every Japanese civilian would fight to the death on the mainland — knowing defeat was inevitable — was the impetus for President Truman’s use of the atomic bomb (in part) to short-circuit the casualty count, assessed by analysts to be in the millions.
This is NOT a suggestion that the U.S. storm Iran — or heaven forbid, use an atomic or other weapon against Iranian cities. Not, not, not!
It is, however, a reminder of what we face. Iran has been begging for the sort of American retaliation that it could (A) use to try to bring its population together in opposition to the “Great Satan,” or (B) use to launch Hezbollah to attack Israel, presenting the U.S. with the conundrum that legitimate American retaliation might harm an ally. The death of an American contractor and wounding of several American soldiers last week in Iraq — in a barrage of more than 30 rockets — followed weeks of <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/us-launches-strikes-in-iraq-and-syria-targeting-iran-backed-militia-pentagon-says/2019/12/29/28c12e22-2a64-11ea-be79-83e793dbcaef_story.html">Pentagon warnings</a> that Iranian-backed groups in Iraq were likely to attack U.S. forces there.
American retaliation was <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/national-security/us-launches-strikes-in-iraq-and-syria-targeting-iran-backed-militia-pentagon-says/2019/12/29/28c12e22-2a64-11ea-be79-83e793dbcaef_story.html">precise, hitting three sites</a>: Weapons storage facilities and locations the militia used to plan attacks against coalition forces.
What happens next is unclear. At this writing, reinforcements for the U.S. embassy have been called in. But there is a clear understanding in Washington that this is not an uprising of Iraqis against the United States. These are Iranian acts of war. Where American retaliation goes will, no doubt, take that into account.
&nbsp;
Shoshana Bryen is Senior Director of <a href="https://www.jewishpolicycenter.org">The Jewish Policy Center</a> in Washington, and Editor of inFOCUS Quarterly.

Outraged Iraqi protesters storm US embassy in Baghdad

BRYEN: The Unyielding Iranian Menace

Islamic State (ISIS)

Lebanon

New York Times

Nuclear Weapons

The United Nations General Assembly (GA) doesn’t take itself seriously. Unlike U.N. Security Council resolutions, GA pronouncements have no enforcement mechanism and often serve only to permit countries to vent — mostly at Israel. But this travesty helps determine the allocation of general U.N. funds — American tax dollars among them, albeit fewer under the Trump administration. So, it is worth parsing the activity of the GA last week.
Thirty-five resolutions were proposed in the GA by the U.N. Special Political and Decolonization Committee. The Committee, which includes Syria, Iraq, Iran, Russia, Bolivia, and Venezuela, has no North American, Western European, or Scandinavian members. Twenty-seven resolutions used general language and named no specific country; eight targeted Israel.
If you thought this would be a good time for the U.N. to recognize the <a href="https://www.jewishpolicycenter.org/2019/11/18/has-the-iranian-empire-overreached/">desperate efforts</a> of the people of Lebanon, Iraq, and Iran to throw off repressive and kleptocratic governments — and specifically, to rid themselves of the destructive machinations of the mullahs of Iran — the GA didn’t agree with you.
If you were waiting for the U.N. to condemn horrific violations against the people of Syria by its own government and aided by Russia and Iran, or to stand up for the Rohingya who have been forced out of Myanmar, or to consider the plight of the Muslim Uighurs of China herded into camps, you’re still waiting.
Slave labor in Qatar; Venezuelans reduced to eating garbage; North Koreans with no discernible human rights; Palestinian-Arab children taught that the highest form of life is death — their own and that of as many Jews as possible; civil war in Libya; increasing repression of the press and of dissent in Russia — all ignored. Turkey, Pakistan, Zimbabwe, and Saudi Arabia — ignored.
OK, actually Syria was mentioned — in the context of Israel’s “illegal occupation” of the “Syrian Golan Heights.” Ninety-five countries voted for Israel to stop “repressive measures against the population of the occupied Syrian Golan” and return the territory to Syria. <a href="https://www.un.org/press/en/2019/ga12220.doc.htm">Nine countries voted against</a> and 65 abstained. How many Arab Druze residents of the Golan do you suppose would have voted to be returned to Bashar al-Assad’s rule?
UNRWA, the <a href="https://www.jewishpolicycenter.org/2018/01/08/free-palestinians-end-unrwa-funding/">intergenerational jailor</a> of Palestinians in various countries, was mentioned in four resolutions, one of which extended its mandate until 2023. That passed 167–5 with 7 abstentions. There was no mention of the <a href="https://www.straitstimes.com/world/middle-east/report-alleges-ethical-abuses-at-un-agency-for-palestinians">serious allegations</a> of financial corruption and sexual assault against its inmates.
One resolution related to a “Special Committee” investigation on Israeli human rights practices, one was on houses for Jews where the U.N. doesn’t want them (156–6 with 15 abstentions), and one was on “Israeli practices affecting the human rights of the Palestinian people” (154–8 with 15 abstentions).
There are some “good guys” here. The United States, which changed its vote from “abstain” to “no” on the settlement resolution, and Israel. Then, Australia, Brazil, Canada, Colombia, Guatemala, Honduras, Hungary, Kiribati, Marshall Islands, Federated States of Micronesia, Nauru, Palau, Papua New Guinea, and the United Kingdom voted “no” on one or more resolutions. The <a href="https://www.un.org/press/en/2019/ga12220.doc.htm">representative of Brazil</a> expressed support for less biased texts, noting that human resources should not be used to promote biased views.
Bravo, all.
But what about all those abstentions? Israel has very good relations with Cameroon, Togo, Rwanda and Vanuatu, for example — all of which abstained on at least one resolution and voted for the others. Much of Western Europe abstains and pretends — like the GA itself — that it doesn’t matter. It matters because of the money — but more important, it matters for countries to be honest and honorable, and it matters in the end because GA resolutions can be defeated. The particularly nasty resolution about “Israeli practices affecting the human right of the Palestinian people” passed by a vote of 82–11 with 78 abstentions. If the abstainers had voted “no,” the vote would have been 89–82 AGAINST a U.N. travesty.
The U.N. is a pit. The Trump administration has chosen to deal with it by withdrawing from and withholding money from specific U.N. entities that are particularly awful — <a href="https://www.npr.org/2018/06/19/621435225/u-s-announces-its-withdrawal-from-u-n-s-human-rights-council">the Human Rights Council</a>, UNRWA and the <a href="https://www.jewishpolicycenter.org/2017/11/16/the-paris-agreement-and-federalism/">UN Climate Pact</a>, for starters — and stating the American case forcefully within the building.
It is probably the right call.
Israel has been asked an infinite number of times why it doesn’t just throw in the towel and leave, but Ambassador Danny Danon told inFOCUS Magazine in an interview:
<blockquote>There is a gap between the public U.N. and the private U.N. Publicly, they will condemn Israel, but privately they admire Israel … in every bilateral meeting I have with a head of state, I say, “We want to see the great bilateral relations or trade relations that you have with Israel reflected when it comes to a vote in the U.N.”</blockquote>
To the extent Danon is successful, there is a path for America and Israel to persevere and convince abstainers to vote their consciences — and reality.
&nbsp;
Shoshana Bryen is Senior Director of The Jewish Policy Center and Editor of inFOCUS Magazine.

U.N. logo

BRYEN: The U.N. General Assembly Is A Joke. But Let’s Take It Seriously.

Anti-Semitism

Since December 2017, a sort of “rolling rebellion” has been occurring across Iran. It is bigger, deeper and stronger than the Green Revolution of 2009 and taking place in great measure outside Tehran, <a href="https://www.jewishpolicycenter.org/2017/01/04/non-persian-iran/">where the population is more diverse</a>. There have been strikes of truckers, bazaar shopkeepers, teachers, farmers, and students. See #WhiteWednesday on Twitter to watch brave Iranian women go into the streets and take off their head coverings. Sometimes they dance. Sometimes their husbands, fathers, and brothers go with them. Sometimes they are arrested and sometimes they go to jail. Unfortunately, it took the <a href="https://www.latimes.com/world-nation/story/2019-10-04/death-of-irans-blue-girl-casts-spotlight-on-iranian-women-and-a-growing-movement-for-equality">suicide of a young woman</a> facing seven years in prison for attending a soccer match to get the attention of the Western press.
In May of this year, <a href="https://www.jewishpolicycenter.org/2019/05/03/the-iranian-mullahs-are-nervous/">widespread upheaval</a> convulsed the country and thousands were arrested. This weekend, news of increasing protest in Iran comes from the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI) — an organization with a mixed record of acceptance by the U.S. government, but with indisputable reach inside the country. According to NCRI’s Washington office, at least 65 cities have seen violent demonstrations, with people killed and injured by authorities. <a href="https://www.youtube.com/user/Mojahedineng/videos">Videos, presumably from cell phones</a>, show that pictures of the Ayatollah Khameini have been set on fire and demonstrators are chanting “Death to the Dictator” and “Death to Rouhani.” You can follow <a href="https://twitter.com/AlirezaNader">@AlirezaNader</a> for more.
As Iran spreads its tentacles abroad and builds its illegal nuclear capability, it is clear that the regime cannot fund domestic priorities and international revolution on the same budget — especially as that budget contracts.
Imperial overreach was the ruin of the Roman Empire, the Byzantines, Egyptians, Ottomans, Nazis, and Soviets. Could it be catching up with Iran? Wait, you say, Iran isn’t an empire. Not in the traditional sense. But it was always the belief of the hegemonic mullahs that instability across large regions, managed with a relatively small group of well-trained Iranian professionals and a lot of proxy fighters, would create a world in which Shiite supremacism held sway.
And it was working.
The Shiite Crescent — from Iran through Iraq, Syria, and Lebanon to the Mediterranean — was a “lid” over Iran’s Sunni enemies Saudi Arabia and Jordan, plus Israel. It was also a wedge between Sunni Turkey and the Sunni countries below — Saudi Arabia, Jordan, and the Gulf states. Most of the proxy soldiers were Iraqi militias, Lebanese Hezbollah, and Pakistanis and Afghans brought to Syria under the command of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. The result was millions of Sunni Syrian refugees in the Middle East and Europe.
Sunni Hamas and Shiite Palestinian Islamic Jihad were both recipients of Iranian funds, weapons, and training to harass Israel.
There is also an underside Crescent, which is less well understood. It encircles the Gulf states and Saudi Arabia in the Gulf of Aden with a base in Yemen and a Houthi proxy at the bottom of the Red Sea, threatening the Bab el Mandeb Straits and the exit of Israel, Jordan, Egypt, and Saudi Arabia to the Gulf and the Indian Ocean. And the American base in Djibouti.
And Africa. Iran incubated Sunni jihadists in the poor, corrupt, and vulnerable states of the second tier — Sudan, Chad, Niger, and Mali. The result was waves of migrants headed north. The North African countries — Egypt, Libya, Tunisia, Morocco and Algeria — were all in the NATO Mediterranean Dialogue group that helped control safety and security in the sea until the Obama administration toppled the Libyan government in 2011. Libya, no longer a member of the Dialogue, has become a hole in the dam through which hundreds of thousands of African migrants reached Europe.
But has the empire reached too far?
American-led sanctions have been an enormous financial blow to the mullahs, but sanctions are misunderstood. Not a mechanism for toppling a government, they are a means of forcing a government to make choices — between, revolution and agriculture, between weapons and water and sewer systems, between Palestinian jihadists and schools, and so forth. That is what Iran faced in 2011 and that is what led to the Iran/P5+1 negotiations. The fact that President Obama collapsed and paid off the mullahs allowed them to avoid those very choices and set back the operation by years and millions of deaths in the Middle East and Africa.
The restoration of sanctions means Iran has less to pay off its proxies — as well as less for its own people. European businesses, and even China, are leaving Iran and taking their money. Iran tried to compensate by stealing Iraqi oil.
And that’s where empire begins to break down.
There are explicitly anti-Iranian <a href="https://www.dailywire.com/news/bryen-missing-the-point-of-the-latest-middle-east-protests">riots in Lebanon and Iraq</a>. Hezbollah fighters have announced they will <a href="https://www.csmonitor.com/World/Middle-East/2019/1112/Inside-Hezbollah-How-Lebanon-protests-are-breaking-fear-barrier">refuse to return to Syria</a> for Iran. Iraqis have <a href="https://www.jewishpolicycenter.org/2019/10/29/missing-the-point-of-the-latest-middle-east-protests/">attacked Iranian bases and depots</a>. Follow <a href="https://twitter.com/HeshmatAlavi">@HeshmatAlavi</a> for the latest Iraqi moves and Iranian counter-moves. But most of the mainstream press isn’t there.
But the biggest changes may be coming in Iran itself.
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Shoshana Bryen is senior director of <a href="https://www.jewishpolicycenter.org/">The Jewish Policy Center</a>. Portions of this article appeared in the Jewish Policy Center magazine, inFOCUS Quarterly.

Iranian flag on conference table

BRYEN: Has The Iranian Empire Overreached?

One of the few points of unbounded bipartisan agreement in Washington has for decades been that U.S.-Israel security cooperation is right, good, mutually beneficial, and worth every nickel spent on it. It is well–grounded in facts and has acknowledged benefits to both sides.
However, at the J Street Conference last week, left-of-center political candidates and hostile-to-Israel speakers questioned the utility of American aid to Israel except, perhaps, as “leverage” to force Israel to meet their left-of-center and hostile-to-Israel demands. Candidates were willing to “explore” the issue. But it was left to J Street president, Jeremy Ben-Ami, to get to the heart of the conversation – Ben Ami isn’t interested in “leverage,” but in de-legitimizing the aid. “American aid is not intended to be a blank check. As Israel receives that $3.8 billion in aid, what is it being used for?”
Actually, it’s not, a secret. The United States is Israel’s ally of first choice. And Israel remains the one country the United States can rely upon to defend itself by itself and in coordination with American interests. And most of the money is then spent by Israel in the U.S.
The origins of U.S.-Israel security cooperation are in the Cold War understanding that the United States could not engage all the adversaries of all its allies and friends around the world. It was embraced warily at first — the Americans were unconvinced they would receive anything of value and the Israelis were concerned about continued freedom of action. But it worked. Israel went from being considered a net security consumer to a net security producer, meaning the United States did not have to expend resources to defend Israel. And Israel participated in making the Middle East and eastern Mediterranean regions more secure due to its presence.
The following list of Israeli assets was developed in 1979 as a “quick reference guide” to security cooperation:
<ul>
<li>A secure location in a crucial part of the world</li>
<li>A well-developed military infrastructure</li>
<li>The ability to maintain, service, and repair U.S.-origin equipment</li>
<li>An excellent deep-water port in Haifa</li>
<li>Modern air facilities</li>
<li>A position close to sea lanes and ability to project power over long distances</li>
<li>A domestic air force larger than many in Western Europe and possessing more up-to-date hardware</li>
<li>Multilingual capabilities, including facility in English, Arabic, French, Farsi, and the languages of the (former) Soviet Union</li>
<li>Combat familiarity with Soviet/Russian-style tactics and equipment</li>
<li>The ability to assist U.S. naval fleets, including common equipment</li>
<li>The ability to support American operations and to provide emergency air cover</li>
<li>A democratic political system with a strong orientation to support the United States and the NATO system</li>
</ul>
Added in 1996: Israel’s military research and development capabilities complement those of the U.S. Its intelligence services cooperate closely with ours — to our benefit. And large numbers of American troops train in Israel.
Added in 2006: The establishment of police-to-police counterterrorism training in Israel.
Nothing has ever been removed.
Not a single American serviceperson needs to be stationed in Israel. Aside from training missions, there have been American soldiers stationed in Israel since 2009, only working with the American/Israeli co-designed X-band radar system — a deployment that helps the U.S. and Israel monitor threats from the east.
Israel’s missile defense capabilities — developed and produced in conjunction with American industry — not only protect Israel from Hamas and Hezbollah missiles, but protect the United States from emerging threats from North Korea and Iran. Various branches of the U.S. military have purchased a variety of Israeli-developed systems and participated in joint development of anti-tunnel defenses, the Arrow Missile Program, the F-35 Joint Strike Fighter Plane, THEL Laser Program, the Advanced Urban Combat Training Facility, as well as Iron Dome.
Israel has been a partner in U.S. and multi-lateral military exercises for years; interestingly, Israel and the United Arab Emirates flew together in one. Combined exercises have taken place on NATO territory, in the U.S., in Israel (where the Luftwaffe flew above Israeli territory, making a few people blink), and the Pacific Ocean. Not a single country has opted out due to Israel having opted in.
The two countries are drawn together by common values and common threats. The bipartisan support of our ally Israel has been a testament to those values, as well as to the practical recognition that the threats require cooperation in intelligence, technology, and security policy.
The volatility of the Middle East is unlikely to be constrained. The United States, desirous of removing its soldiers from the region even as it understands the risk attendant to a resurgent Russia and increasingly desperate Iran, is as much in need of capable allies now as it ever was.  It would be a shame if rampant J Street politicization of the relationship were allowed to do damage.
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Shoshana Bryen is senior director of <a href="https://www.jewishpolicycenter.org/">The Jewish Policy Center</a>. Portions of this article appeared in the Jewish Policy Center magazine, inFOCUS Quarterly.

U.S. and Israel flags

BRYEN: U.S.-Israel Security Cooperation Is A Win-Win

Israel Defense Forces (IDF)

J Street

Military

National Security

United Arab Emirates (UAE)

In Lebanon and in Iraq, millennials have taken to the streets to protest their respective governments. It stands to reason — in both countries, services are minimal, jobs are non-existent, and the best way to make a living is to leave. Garbage piles up in the streets of Beirut and forest fires have decimated the country. In Iraq, corruption is endemic. But in both countries, there is more afoot.
The demonstrators, representing a variety of religious and ethnic groups in countries that have been wracked by sectarian fighting, are in agreement that the presence of Iran and its proxies in their homelands has deformed politics and economics alike.
Young people want Iran out.
Association with the Islamic Republic means that assets are taken and used by the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, not by the civilian government, and it means religious and ethnic tensions are stoked to ensure that a unified public cannot impede Iran’s regional ambitions. Iran wants Iraq for the oil and also for the passageway through Sunni territory to Syria, Lebanon, and the Mediterranean Sea. It helped create the instability of ISIS in Iraq by “offering” to help contain the threat via Shiite militias commanded by Iranian officers. Those Shiite militias remain in the largely Sunni western part of Iraq and in the Kurdish areas.
The story in Lebanon goes back farther — to the early days of the Islamic Republic. Iran created Hezbollah and had its hand in the 1982 Marine barracks bombing that killed 244 Americans. It fostered and enlarged Hezbollah and planted an arsenal of rockets and missiles in southern Lebanon (in violation of U.N. Resolution 1701) and missile factories closer to Beirut. Lebanese civilians live between the Iranian/Hezbollah arsenal and potential Israeli retaliation if that arsenal is used.
Permanent revolution, permanent warfare, permanent upheaval — stoked by an outside force — makes it impossible to create the workable, modern, growing economy millennials demand; particularly in Lebanon, where there is a well-educated generation that crosses sectarian divides.
Hezbollah, leading the Lebanese government, has long insisted that it “serves the people.” Most European countries still won’t label the totality of Hezbollah a terror organization because, they said, it provided services to the poor. Today, Hezbollah not only is not delivering, it stands <a href="https://foreignpolicy.com/2019/10/22/iran-losing-middle-east-iraq-lebanon-protests-bad-governance/">against the protesters</a> to shore up its own power and the people know it. Protests are in Hezbollah territory in the south: Nabatiyeh, Bint Jbeil, and Tyre. Hezbollah leader <a href="https://news.yahoo.com/lebanons-hezbollah-under-rare-street-pressure-114903448.html">Hassan Nasrallah has been directly criticized</a>. The Lebanese government announced it will <a href="https://news.yahoo.com/lebanese-president-aoun-invites-protesters-111023175.html">meet with protesters</a> and has suggested a government reshuffle is possible, but lately, black-shirted <a href="https://www.haaretz.com/middle-east-news/lebanese-protesters-call-for-elections-clash-with-hezbollah-supporters-1.8026588">Nasrallah supporters</a> have been trying to break up demonstrations.
Protesters are flying the rarely seen flag of Lebanon rather than sectarian or party flags. One protester told another not to tell journalists his ethnic/religious identity, lest it be interpreted as the cause of the protest.
In Iraq, protesters have gathered in Basra — the Shiite south of Iraq — as well as in Baghdad. The <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/middle_east/iraqi-protests-broaden-violent-crackdown-spirals/2019/10/06/ded1113a-e6eb-11e9-b0a6-3d03721b85ef_story.html">Internet was suspended </a>early in the uprising, leaving much of the reporting in the hands of Twitter and calls abroad. Entifadh Qanbar, a U.S. citizen of Iraqi origin, and president of the Future Foundation, keeps track of the growing number of demonstrations in the capital at <a href="https://twitter.com/eqanbar">@eqanbar</a>. He notes the prevalence of millennials in the overnight demonstrations and, as an aside, that Iraqis (43%) more than people in the UAE (42%), Morocco (41%), or Saudi Arabia (23%), favor establishing relations with Israel.
<a href="https://www.garda.com/crisis24/news-alerts/280756/iraq-at-least-three-dead-in-nasiriyah-amid-ongoing-nationwide-protests-october-25-update-24">Private security firm Gardaworld</a> has been running a crisis update from its people in Iraq. Its report on October 25th included:
<blockquote>At least three people were killed and 40 others wounded in Nasiriyah (Dhi Qar province), when the Asas’ig Ahl al-Haq militia reportedly opened fire into a crowd of protesters attempting to break into the Shiite militia grou’’s local offices. Police sources stated that 18 additional protesters were wounded attempting to break into the militia grou’s local offices in Amarah (Maysan province). Protesters in Nasiriyah also set fire to local Dhi Qar province government buildings. Similar protests have been reported in Samaswah (Multhanna province) and in Najaf, Wasit, and Basra provinces.</blockquote>
All in the Shiite south. This fits with an earlier report that Iraqis had attacked an <a href="https://twitter.com/eqanbar/status/1183599956017463297?s=12">Iranian arms depot</a> at Al Madaein southwest of Baghdad. To Qanbar, it signals a great <a href="https://twitter.com/eqanbar/status/1180944198981341184?s=12">split in the Shiite world</a> — 20 million Iraqis are Shiite.
In Baghdad, Reuters reports that <a href="https://www.reuters.com/article/us-iraq-protests-iran-snipers-exclusive/exclusive-iran-backed-militias-deployed-snipers-in-iraq-protests-sources-idUSKBN1WW0B1">Iran-backed snipers</a> are stationed on rooftops, killing protesters. While the Iraqi government acknowledges that some 100 protesters have been killed, Qanbar believes the number to be <a href="https://twitter.com/eqanbar/status/1181568030435921921?s=12">closer to 500.</a> Whatever the number, the Iraqi government announced it would <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/22/world/middleeast/iraq-protests-generals-court.html?module=inline">prosecute more than a dozen military and police commanders</a>.
“This must stop,” said <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/middle_east/iraqi-protests-broaden-violent-crackdown-spirals/2019/10/06/ded1113a-e6eb-11e9-b0a6-3d03721b85ef_story.html">Jeanine Hennis-Plasschaert</a>, the top U.N. official in Iraq, calling for those behind the violence to be held responsible. If she means the demonstrators — or even the Iraqi government — then she is working the back end of the problem.
Iran is responsible and the people know it.
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Shoshana Bryen is senior director of <a href="https://www.jewishpolicycenter.org/">The Jewish Policy Center</a> in Washington, D.C.

Middle East map

BRYEN: Missing The Point Of The Latest Middle East Protests

President Trump made good on a campaign promise with the U.S. Special Operations raid on Barisha, Syria that sent Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi into a dead-end tunnel, where he blew himself and three of his children to bits. In May 2019, Mr. Trump had announced “<a href="https://www.wsj.com/articles/trump-says-islamic-state-caliphate-completely-eliminated-11553273709">the end of the caliphate</a>” in the territorial sense, but the Americans have now eliminated its theological master and terrorist dictator. Bravo to the brave, intrepid, and patriotic men and women who proved once again, as President George W. Bush said, that “you can run, but you can’t hide.”
Let’s clear the quick and stupid stuff first: No, this is not the end of ISIS ideology or terrorism spawned by it; no, it doesn’t fix the problem of Syria; no, it doesn’t make things right with the Kurds; no it doesn’t slow Iran’s desire for a hegemonic land bridge to the Mediterranean. And, yes, The Washington Post is an <a href="https://twitter.com/yashar/status/1188473675894284289">idiot</a>.
Now, the implications. Most important for the future of the region and elsewhere, the ISIS concept of a land-based “caliphate” has probably expired. A <a href="https://libertyunyielding.com/author/rightbrain/">retired naval commander</a> notes:
<blockquote>It’s not 2013 anymore, when the progress of ISIS as a territory-gobbling guerrilla-terrorist force became evident. Their progress was defined by the Euphrates River, which they were following from the general area of Raqqa, from one side, and a general area between Ramadi and Haditha on the other, to link up between the Syria-Iraq border and Deir-ez-Zor. The fact that they were trying to consolidate and control that area was an arresting indication of their intentions, and then in 2014 they stormed into Mosul in the north.</blockquote>
The ISIS plan was different from that of al-Qaeda, which hid in caves in Afghanistan, as remote from its targets as it could be — and thus believed itself safe from retaliation. ISIS planted itself and its flag in the middle of Syria and Iraq: The benefit being oil fields with their revenue, land for training and operations, the ability to levy taxes on the population, and show how a “real” Islamic civilization would work. Not too many people were impressed.
Its one thing to coerce and threaten people to live in the “caliphate” under the rules you set for them, and entirely another to have people embrace those rules. Far more people were coerced than embraced the cause — and thousands who embraced the cause are presently sitting behind barbed wire, further reducing the appeal of a physical entity with governing powers.
Kurds and Arabs, who didn’t agree on much, agreed on that. Turkey’s Recip Tayyip Erdogan, a Muslim Brotherhood supporter and Islamist himself, found it in his interest to cooperate with the United States on the raid. Iraq, in the midst of an uprising of millennials unhappy with Iranian interference in their country, provided intelligence to the U.S. Russia, long a foe of Sunni jihad — and fearing its return to southern Russia in Chechnya, stood down for the Americans and had its Syrian satrap do the same.
The president, rightly, thanked them all.
There is an emerging thread of political thought in the Middle East that “political Islam” <a href="https://besacenter.org/perspectives-papers/political-islam-decline/">is on the decline</a>. Professor Hillel Frisch points to the absence of reaction to the death of Mohammad Morsi in Egypt, and the absence, over the past few months, of religious demands by protesters in both Algeria and Sudan. To this can be added the incendiary protests in <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/10/22/world/middleeast/iraq-protests-generals-court.html?module=inline">Iraq</a> and <a href="https://news.yahoo.com/lebanons-hezbollah-under-rare-street-pressure-114903448.html">Lebanon</a> — that, if anything, show an extreme distaste for religious leadership.
The physical demise of ISIS, followed by the ignominious death of al-Baghdadi, can only enhance a positive trend.
We don’t know exactly how the Americans got in, did their job and got out. And we don’t need to know. What we do know, according to the president, is that al-Baghdadi went <a href="https://nypost.com/2019/10/27/trump-says-isis-leader-al-baghdadi-died-whimpering-and-crying-and-screaming-all-the-way/">“whimpering and crying and screaming”</a> into that tunnel — as cowards do. As people willing to kill, rape, pillage, and force others into the vilest forms of servitude do when it is their turn to pay.
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Shoshana Bryen is senior director of <a href="https://www.jewishpolicycenter.org/">The Jewish Policy Center</a> in Washington, D.C.

Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi

BRYEN: ‘Whimpering And Crying And Screaming’

Syria

Kurdish forces, facing a well-armed and aggressive Turkey, appear to have turned to <a href="https://www.cnn.com/2019/10/14/middleeast/syria-turkey-kurds-civilians-isis-intl-hnk/index.html">the Syrian government</a> — meaning its sponsors in Iran and Russia — for rescue. It makes sense in historical terms, although it is likely to be bloody in current ones. Historical, in this case, means before the U.S. military presence in the northern part of the country.
The Syrian government is a minority Alawite (heterodox Shiite) one that had maintained control by allying with other minority groups in the country — such as Kurds and Christians — and with the Shiite rulers of Iran in order to keep a boot on the neck of the majority Sunni population. The war criminal Bashar al-Assad was simply following in his war criminal father’s footsteps —  in 1982, Hafez al-Assad <a href="https://www.theguardian.com/theguardian/from-the-archive-blog/2011/aug/01/hama-syria-massacre-1982-archive">massacred tens of thousands of Sunnis</a> in the town of Hama, ensuring general quiet until 2011. Young Bashar, being a less efficient criminal, has killed more than half a million people (the U.N. stopped counting in 2016) and creating what the <a href="https://www.unrefugees.org/refugee-facts/statistics/">U.N. estimated in 2018</a> to be more than 13 million displaced people — more than six million <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Internally_displaced_person">internally</a> plus more than three million in Turkey and one million more in Lebanon.
Most of them are Sunni. Deliberately.
Turkey’s president, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, declared two goals in the current operation: To remove what he considers a threat from a terrorist organization, the PKK (set this aside for a moment), and to open the way to resettle more than one million Syrian refugees back in Syria. The refugees have become a political and economic liability for Turkey’s government.
Shiite Iran, one of Syria’s sponsors, was furious, <a href="https://www.newsweek.com/iran-holds-military-drills-near-turkey-tells-it-stop-syria-attack-russia-accuses-us-1464124">warning Turkey</a> not to enter Syrian territory. Foreign Minister Javad Zarif was <a href="https://www.timesofisrael.com/iran-opposes-military-action-in-syria-zarif-tells-turkey/">explicit</a>, denouncing military action and “urging respect for Syria’s territorial integrity and national sovereignty.” His statement stressed “the need for the fight against terrorism and for the establishment of stability and security in Syria.”
Iran is less concerned about Kurds — PKK or otherwise — than with the disposition of the mostly-Sunni refugees. Iran’s entry into Syria in command of tens of thousands of Shiite troops — not primarily Iranians, but Pakistanis, Afghans, and others commanded by the Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps — was a wedge designed to <a href="https://www.jewishpolicycenter.org/2019/03/22/dividing-up-the-syrian-corpse/">ethnically cleanse the Sunni center</a> of the country. Alawites generally live along the Mediterranean coast and Kurds in the north and northeast. Decimating the center would allow Iran to move overland from Iran through Iraq and then into Syria and Lebanon, firming up the long-sought <a href="https://www.jewishpolicycenter.org/2019/09/03/the-shiite-crescent-and-regional-disaster/">Shiite Crescent</a> — Israel’s nightmare. American troops <a href="https://www.scmp.com/news/world/middle-east/article/2169776/tanf-tiny-us-special-forces-base-big-role-donald-trumps-syria">remain in southern Syria and in Jordan</a> to prevent consolidation of such a route.
Russia, Syria’s other sponsor, is mainly concerned with maintenance of its bases, air and naval, on the coast. Deeply committed to the Assad regime — and complicit in its crimes — Russia will be satisfied with whatever brings more of Syria under the control of Damascus. Russia’s position since 2011 is that Syria is a country in civil war and only forces invited by the government should be permitted there.
For now, two of America’s adversaries — Iran and Russia — are willing to push Turkey back on behalf of the Kurds, not to befriend the Kurds but to discomfit Turkey. This is the long-term nature of the conflict. Russia and Turkey are historic adversaries; Turkey and Iran are historic adversaries. Russia has coveted warm water ports, including Mediterranean bases; Iran has coveted the Crescent. Four hundred years of <a href="https://istanbulclues.com/ottoman-empire-maps-and-facts/">Ottoman Turkish occupation</a> of the region that at one point included the entire Levant, the Balkans to Hungary, North Africa, the Crimean Khanate, and a border with Iran in the Caucasus down to Basra, should suggest that Turkey has been a thorn in the backside of a lot of people for a long time. The Armenian genocide and the massive transfer of the Greek population in the early part of the 20th century were last gasps of the Ottoman Empire.
But in the 21st century, apparently, Erdogan has delusions. The Russians and Iranians have dealt with them before — the West hasn’t since the Siege of Vienna. The United States never has.
The Kurds are friends of the United States, and the U.S. has worked with them in Iraq and in Syria — more successfully in the former than in the latter. Their present situation is much to be lamented, but it is clear that the United States is unwilling — and ill-prepared — to destroy the government of modern Syria and redistribute the territory. That being so, it will not find an appropriate spot in the fight among three revanchist, expansionist regional powers.
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Shoshana Bryen is senior director of <a href="https://www.jewishpolicycenter.org/">The Jewish Policy Center</a> in Washington, D.C.

Turkish tanks in Syria

BRYEN: History Before And After America

Kurds

Turkey

Rashida Tlaib was in tears over the conditions in which her grandmother lives in the West Bank, and furious that her mother, an American citizen, was forced to go through a “check point” from Israel once in order to visit her. “As a young girl, visiting Palestine to see my grandparents, I watched as my mother had to go through dehumanizing checkpoints — even though she was a United States citizen and proud American.” She was so sad. Teary. Emotional. Distraught.
In light of that …
Is it insensitive to point out that international Arab wars in 1948, 1956, 1967, 1973, 1982, terror wars (so-called intifadas) in 1989 and 2001, and rocket wars in 2006, 2009, and 2014 have all been started by Arab states or Palestinian leaders against the state of Israel with the intention of destroying it?
It is, perhaps, rude to point out that in the 1949 war of annihilation he declared on Israel, the King of Jordan scooped up the territory that had been allocated for a Palestinian-Arab state. It’s probably uncharitable to mention that he annexed the Palestinian-allotted territory in a move recognized only by Great Britain and Pakistan, but no one was moved to do anything about it. And pitiless to mention that Tlaib&#8217;s grandmother was thus illegally occupied from 1949 – 1967. By Jordan. And thick-skinned, perhaps, to point out that Israel only entered the Palestinian picture when the Jordanian king — in a mind-bogglingly stupid moment — entered 1967’s Six Day War on the fourth day and managed to lose all of his illegally held possessions.
And given what Ms. Tlaib considers to be her grandmother’s suffering, it seems hardhearted to point out that there were no checkpoints during the Jordanian occupation because no Israeli person — no Jewish person — ever passed from Israel into Jordanian-held Jerusalem at all between 1949 and 1967. No Jewish person could pray at the holiest of Jewish sites and <a href="http://www.sixdaywar.org/content/jordanianocuupationjerusalem.asp">58 synagogues</a> on the eastern side of the city were dynamited and destroyed. And no Jordanian or Palestinian person was permitted by Jordan to pass from Jordan into Israel during that period for work, medical care, or school.
It really is harsh to point out that after Israel acquired the West Bank territory and, in the course, defending itself from the king’s weak-mindedness, Palestinian workers were permitted to travel to and work in Israel — and still are. Some <a href="https://www.jpost.com/Arab-Israeli-Conflict/Israel-planning-to-increase-work-permits-for-Palestinians-533556">100,000 – 110,000 Palestinians</a> currently work in Israel and another 30,000 work in West Bank communities. Is it callous to note that those checkpoints were the result of Palestinian terrorism that ended any hope of free or casual passage?
No. It is not.
It thus seems fair to note that while not one Jordanian was killed by a terrorist Palestinian to liberate “Palestine” from the Jordanian government in the 19 years of occupation, <a href="https://mfa.gov.il/MFA/ForeignPolicy/Terrorism/Palestinian/Pages/Victims of Palestinian Violence and Terrorism sinc.aspx">2,143 Israelis</a> have been killed and nearly 10,000 wounded by Palestinians in deliberate attacks. It seems fair also to emphasize the word “deliberate.” Dead Jews were the goal. Fair, too, to remind her that 19 of the dead and 172 of the wounded were victims of a <a href="http://www.cnn.com/2002/WORLD/meast/03/27/mideast/">massacre during a Passover Seder</a>; Nava Applebaum and her father David were murdered sitting in a café <a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2003/09/11/world/a-healer-of-terror-victims-becomes-one.html">the night before her wedding</a>; <a href="https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/koby-mandell">Kobi Mandell and Yosef Ishran</a>, two 13-year-old boys, had their heads smashed against rocks; 3-month-old Hadas, 4-year-old Elad, 11-year-old Yoav, and parents Ruth and Udi Fogel were <a href="https://www.chabad.org/library/article_cdo/aid/1463738/jewish/My-Neighbors-Were-Murdered.htm">murdered in their beds</a>. Eighteen people, including Americans Malki Roth and Shoshana Yehudit Greenbaum, were killed in a Sbarro pizza parlor (their killers received an <a href="https://www.jpost.com/Arab-Israeli-Conflict/18-years-after-Sbarro-suicide-attack-PA-has-paid-910823-to-the-culprits-598106">estimated $910,823 in “salary”</a> from the Palestinian Authority).
There are 2,132 others to be named and remembered.
Israelis live not only with checkpoints, but with intrusive security in airports, schools, shopping centers, concert halls, and other places because all have been attacked by people — Palestinians, not Costa Ricans or Laotians or Nepalese — intent on killing them.
And yet, Israel is here, strong, vibrant, growing, democratic, and tolerant of everyone except those openly dedicated to its destruction.
If that further upsets Ms. Tlaib, so be it.
Shoshana Bryen is senior director of <a href="https://www.jewishpolicycenter.org/">The Jewish Policy Center</a> in Washington, D.C.

Rashida Tlaib

BRYEN: At The Risk Of Further Upsetting Ms. Tlaib

The Trump administration’s presentation of an economic plan — rather than a political plan — for the Palestinians was generally mocked or dismissed. As it percolates, however, it appears the administration, as is its habit, was reading trends. The formulation takes an axe to the notion that all plans, politics, money, and political benefits have to be filtered through the “Sole Legitimate Representative of the Palestinian People” — i.e., the PLO or its successor, the Palestinian Authority (PA).
This plan, unlike then-Secretary of State John Kerry’s idea to funnel <a href="https://www.jewishpolicycenter.org/2013/05/29/israel-should-be-poor-palestinians-should-be-rich/">$6 billion in &#8220;investment&#8221;</a> through PA strongman Mahmoud Abbas, acknowledges that the PA is a <a href="https://www.jewishpolicycenter.org/2017/01/17/peace-conference-outright-admission-failure/">terrible steward</a> of its people and their lives. Inviting individual Palestinian businessmen — even if they didn’t show up — and Arab state representatives and businessmen, instead of the PA, may have evinced proper judgment.
In a <a href="https://www.washingtoninstitute.org/fikraforum/view/new-palestinian-poll-reveals-wait-and-see-view-of-trump-peace-plan">recent poll</a> by the Palestine Center for Public Opinion, published by The Washington Institute for Near East Policy, only about one-third of respondents supported the a priori rejection of President Trump’s plan by PA officials. And 86% of respondents in Gaza, along with more than 60% of respondents in Jerusalem and the West Bank, favored Arab government participation in the process. The president himself did not poll well, indicating that those polled differentiated between the individual and the process.
It was the Arab League in 1974 that anointed the PLO as the so-called “sole legitimate representative.” By giving the PLO indivisible authority, it made Palestinians an indivisible unit. “Groupspeak,” as always, is a huge disservice to individual people.
Making the problem inter-generational and indivisible made it unresolvable without the so-called “right of return” for what the PA claims are now nearly six million Palestinians — original refugees and their descendants. In 2013, the Palestinian ambassador to Lebanon said that even the establishment of an independent West Bank-Gaza Palestinian state would not be enough:
<blockquote>Abdullah Abdullah said Palestinian refugees would <a href="http://www.dailystar.com.lb/News/Politics/2011/Sep-15/148791-interview-refugees-will-not-be-citizens-of-new-state.ashx#axzz1vorhFGdW">not necessarily become citizens</a> of a new Palestinian state. “They are Palestinians, that’s their identity. But … they are not automatically citizens. Even Palestinian refugees who are living in [refugee camps] inside the [then-Palestinian] state are still refugees. They will not be considered citizens.” He added that the new state would “absolutely not” issue Palestinian passports to refugees, lest they be understood to be citizens of Palestine. “When we have a state accepted as a member of the United Nations, this is not the end of the conflict. This is not a solution to the conflict. This is only a new framework that will change the rules of the game.”</blockquote>
If Israel doesn’t agree to dismantle itself on their behalf? “We’ll wait,” says Abbas. What’s another generation?
But his people may be moving on. A recent series of articles suggests that younger Palestinians understand their individual rights and individual futures have been mortgaged by a leadership that has mired them in poverty and statelessness in pursuit of the impossible.
<a href="https://www.nytimes.com/2019/07/08/world/middleeast/palestinian-west-bank-protests-economy.html">The New York Times</a> had a feature on how the West Bank has become quieter and its people less likely to spend time in demonstrations and more likely to seek employment. While it would be easy to throw blame on “the occupation,” many of those interviewed were unhappy with PA leadership and corruption, as well as influenced by — as the population ages — the responsibilities of parenthood. Parents, naturally, require real jobs. And those “real jobs” are often with Israelis or with Israeli companies.
Middle East Monitor wrote about extensive contacts and working relations between the <a href="https://www.middleeastmonitor.com/20190729-a-meeting-between-israels-army-chief-and-a-palestinian-millionaire-reflects-the-pas-loss-of-control/">Israeli civil authority and Palestinian businessmen</a>, including millionaire Bashar Al-Masri, the prime developer of the Palestinian town of Rawabi.
In 2016, Israeli businessman <a href="https://www.timesofisrael.com/abbas-said-to-block-settler-supermarket-mogul-from-peace-meeting/">Rami Levy</a> established the first Israeli-Palestinian supermarket near Ramallah. The managers, staff, and customers are a combination of Israelis and Palestinians. It is a huge success with the locals. Levy also held a meeting to develop the industrial area of Jericho and improve joint trade links, and he is building a Palestinian-Israeli mall in the north of Jerusalem.
Levy frightens the PA because his partners are Palestinians; Abbas refused to meet a joint Palestinian-Israeli business delegation <a href="https://www.timesofisrael.com/abbas-said-to-block-settler-supermarket-mogul-from-peace-meeting/">if Levy were included</a>. The odd part was that he met with a joint delegation at all, as the official PA <a href="https://www.timesofisrael.com/palestine-tv-airs-image-equating-shopping-at-new-jerusalem-mall-with-treason/">television channel broadcasted</a> an image that equated shopping at the new mall with treason. “Do not be the occupation’s partner in the Judaization of the city … Economic normalization is treason.”
But this is the “old guard.”
In the meantime, <a href="https://www.jpost.com/Arab-Israeli-Conflict/Israel-planning-to-increase-work-permits-for-Palestinians-533556">more than 100,000 Palestinians</a> work in Israel every day and another <a href="https://www.vox.com/world/2017/12/21/16800812/israeli-settlements-trump-palestinians-jerusalem-west-bank">35,000-plus</a> work in Israeli industries in the West Bank. Even Hamas has sought more permits for <a href="https://www.timesofisrael.com/israel-said-to-quietly-increase-gaza-work-permits-as-part-of-unofficial-truce/">Gaza Palestinians to work in Israel</a>. They are not Zionists, but they may be realists.
The Trump economic plan undermines the PA monolith and reaches out to individuals who won’t wait another generation to live their lives.
Shoshana Bryen is senior director of <a href="https://www.jewishpolicycenter.org">The Jewish Policy Center</a> in Washington, D.C.

Palestinian overlooking Old City Jerusalem

BRYEN: Trump’s Middle East Plan Undermines The Palestinian Authority’s Stranglehold On Palestinians’ Future

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