Israel and the Middle East News Update

Monday, August 19

Headlines: • Netanyahu Embarks on Two-day Visit to Ukraine • Trump Says He Will Release Peace Plan After Israel Elections • Tlaib’s Grandmother Wishes ‘Ruin’ on Trump • Bill Maher Slams Far-Left Dems for Backing BDS Movement • Lapid: If No Clear Election Winner, Likud MKs Will Abandon Netanyahu • Liberman Defends Proposed Vote-Sharing Deal with Blue White • Palestinian Authority on Verge of Explosion

Commentary: • Times of Israel: “The Day Israel Humiliated Its U.S. Friends in Congress” − By Yossi Klein Halevy • NY Times: “Israel’s Alliance with Trump Creates New Tensions Among American Jews” − By Lisa Lerer and Elizabeth Dias

S. Daniel Abraham Center for Middle East Peace 633 Pennsylvania Ave. NW, 5th Floor, Washington, DC 20004 The Hon. Robert Wexler, President ● Yoni Komorov, Editor ● Yehuda Greenfield-Gilat, Associate Editor

News Excerpts August 19, 2019 Ha’aretz Netanyahu Embarks on Two-day Visit to Ukraine Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu embarked Sunday on a two-day trip to Kiev, Ukraine, where he is expected to meet with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and partake in a ceremony at the Babi Yar Holocaust memorial. Some political sources claim that Netanyahu's trip – which comes a month before Israel's September 17 election – is part of the premier's efforts to garner support among Russian-speaking voters, many of whom tend to back Yisrael Beiteinu's Avigdor Lieberman. See also, “Without Trump and Putin, Netanyahu Makes Do With Ukraine Campaign Stop” (by Anshel Pfeffer, Ha’aretz)

Israel Radio News Trump Says He Will Release Peace Plan After Israel Elections U.S. President assesses that release of his peace plan will be delayed until after the elections in Israel, but says it is possible that parts of it will be reported before that time. Trump once again attacked the Democratic Party, saying it that it belittles Israel. It appears that the U.S. president is referring to the initiative that the House Democrats are formulating to act against U.S. Ambassador to Israel David Friedman, and possibly also against Israel ambassador to the U.S. Ron Dermer.

Times of Israel Tlaib’s Grandmother Wishes ‘Ruin’ on Trump The Palestinian grandmother of US congresswoman Rashida Tlaib wished “ruin” on US President Donald Trump on Saturday after he mocked her relationship with her granddaughter on Twitter. “Trump tells me I should be happy Rashida is not coming,” Muftia Tlaib told Reuters. “May God ruin him.” The 90-year-old, who lives in the West Bank village of Beit Ur Al-Fauqa near Ramallah, also reacted to the lawmaker’s canceled visit with disappointment and confusion. Tlaib had been granted permission to visit her grandmother on humanitarian grounds after she and Rep. Ilhan Omar on Thursday were barred from visiting Jerusalem and the West Bank. Tlaib changed her mind about the family trip hours after it was approved on Friday, citing its “humiliating” terms.

Fox News Bill Maher Slams Far-Left Dems for Backing BDS Movement "Real Time" host Bill Maher spent part of Friday's show slamming the anti-Israel Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement, calling it a "bulls--- purity test." Maher kicked off the show's panel segment by asking if it was "fair" to boycott, divest, and sanction Israel in wake of the clash between the Israeli government and pro-BDS U.S. Reps. Rashida Tlaib, D-Mich., and Ilhan Omar, D-Minn., over their planned visit to Israel. The HBO star quoted BDS movement founder Omar Barghouti, who said, "No Palestinian -- rational Palestinian, not a sellout Palestinian -- will ever accept a Jewish state in Palestine." "So that's where that comes from, this movement. Someone who doesn't even want a Jewish state at all," Maher told the panel. "Somehow this side never gets represented in the American media. It's very odd." See also, “TLAIB CALLS FOR BOYCOTT OF BILL MAHER SHOW AFTER HE SLAMS BDS” (JERUSALEM POST) 2

Times of Israel Lapid: If No Clear Election Winner, Likud MKs Will Abandon PM With a month to go until Israel’s repeat elections, opinion polls suggest the electorate could produce a repeat result, with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu again unable to form a majority right- wing/ultra-Orthodox coalition, any center-left-Arab grouping still further short of a majority, and Yisrael Beytenu leader Avigdor Liberman again holding the balance of power. Yair Lapid, number two on the opposition Blue and White party list, foresees a different scenario, however, in which a repeat of the post-April coalition-building deadlock ultimately produces a different outcome — the Likud party dumping its leader and forming a unity government with Blue and White, without Netanyahu. In an interview with The Times of Israel, he claimed Likud will not tolerate a recurrence and are ready to abandon their leader if he cannot deliver a clear-cut victory.

Times of Israel Liberman Defends Proposed Vote-Sharing Deal with Blue White Former defense minister Avigdor Liberman said Sunday that his right-wing party would share votes with Likud’s chief rival for the premiership, the Blue and White party led by Benny Gantz. Liberman told the Kan public broadcaster that his willingness to share votes with center-left Blue and White was “a technical step only,” and not an ideological statement. Even so, such an agreement has the potential to decide a close race. Likud and Blue and White are neck-and-neck in most polls over the past month, and whichever party emerges the larger could win the first chance to form the next coalition. If the September vote gives both parties the same number of seats — as the April race did, with 35 apiece — the added seat a vote-sharing agreement could deliver from Liberman’s Yisrael Beytenu party could conceivably put Blue and White ahead, possibly deciding the election. See also, “The Technical Step That Could Decide the Election” (by Gil Hoffman, Jerusalem Post) See also, “Meet Israel’s New Kingmaker” (Foreign Policy)

Yedioth Ahronoth PA on Verge of Explosion The diplomatic stalemate, the sense of international isolation and the intensifying economic crisis in the PA do not only worry the political echelon in Ramallah, but also the leaders of its security organizations. A classified Palestinian intelligence report written for the leaders of the Palestinian security organizations warns of a deterioration of the security situation in the West Bank and of a new wave of violence that will undermine stability if the political and economic crisis continues. The report noted that there was a generation of young people in the PA aged 16 to 25 who are filled with rage and afraid for their future. The report relied on many conversations with young people in the West Bank, as well as on monitoring their social media communications. The report’s authors discern increasing radicalization in Abu Mazen’s Fatah organization, because of the impasse in the peace plan and the battle against the US administration. This is evinced by more calls from Fatah officials to return to the armed struggle against Israel. See also, “Palestinian intelligence warns of possible violent uprising in West Bank” (Ynet News) See also, “Tlaib and Omar Barred From Israel – But a Conflagration is Coming” (by Neri Zilber, Daily Beast)

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Times of Israel – August 16, 2019 The Day Israel Humiliated its US Friends in Congress By Yossi Klein Halevy • Last week, over 40 freshmen Democratic members of Congress visited Israel. It was the largest-ever group of freshman Democrats to come to Israel, and they came under the auspices of the pro-Israel lobby in Washington, AIPAC. By organizing the largest Democratic Party mission to Israel at a time of growing Jewish concern over anti-Israel voices within the party, the Democratic leadership was making a statement: Don’t let the fringes mislead you; we remain passionately committed to the Israeli-American relationship. • But with the Israeli government’s decision to deny entry into Israel to two anti-Israel Democratic members of Congress, Ilhan Omar and Rashida Tlaib (the latter ban partially walked back, to allow the Palestinian American congresswoman to visit her grandmother), one wonders how many of those members of Congress who came here last week would have come if the trip had been scheduled for next week. • I met with the group on its first night in Israel. Participants were exhausted but alert — politicians, after all, are used to being sleep deprived. For most, it was their first time in Israel, and they spoke of their excitement in being here, a place somehow central to their identity as Americans. One young member of Congress told me that two of his friends from college had “made aliyah” — he used the Hebrew expression — and he hoped to reconnect with them. There were African Americans and Jewish Americans and one Native American. Many were young. When they went around the room introducing themselves, there was warm applause over the group’s diversity. They were proud to be representing that America — an America where support for Israel is an expression not only of shared interests but of shared values. • House Majority leader Steny Hoyer, who led the delegation, opened the evening by sharing his love for Israel and for the Israeli people — their courage and resilience and creativity in the face of relentless threat. He spoke with the passion one expects on a Jewish Federation mission to Israel — not from a leader of a party many Israelis and Jews believe is increasingly inimical to the Jewish state. I felt privileged to eavesdrop on that intimate conversation of a Democratic Party leader with members of his faction. • I spoke to the group about how the world looks from Jerusalem — about the consequences on the Israeli psyche of the endless wars and siege, about the Israeli feeling of pathological claustrophobia when we see terror entities embedded on our borders. And I asked the members of Congress to understand that many Israelis like me are torn between two nightmares: maintaining the occupation of the Palestinians and withdrawing from the West Bank, risking a Hamas or Iranian takeover of our most sensitive border. • It was the kind of candid conversation one can only have among friends. I sensed among them a deep empathy for Israelis caught in an impossible dilemma. What can we do to help Americans understand Israel’s predicament? several asked. • There were also pointed questions — about Prime Minister Netanyahu’s alliance with far-right leaders like Hungary’s Viktor Orban, about our ties with Saudi Arabia. I agreed with their concerns about Orban, but disagreed about the Saudis. Does anyone really believe that the 4

Jewish state can afford to spurn overtures from the custodian of Islam’s holy places? The world looks very different from Jerusalem than it does from Washington, I said. We’ve had our disagreements before — and everyone understood the reference to the Iran deal — and we will continue to disagree. But as friends. • I came away from that evening deeply reassured. The fears of the “Corbynization” of the Democratic Party — that what happened to the British Labour Party under Jeremy Corbyn could happen in America — seemed to me highly exaggerated. True, the anti-Israel voices within the Democratic Party are growing; but those voices remain marginal. • Yet now the government of Israel has empowered those voices. • By encouraging the perception that the Israeli government is controlled by President Trump, Netanyahu has boosted the identification of the Jewish state with the most divisive American president in modern memory — emboldening those trying to Corbynize the Democratic Party. And by ignoring the personal pleas of a furious Steny Hoyer, Netanyahu weakened those who are working to preserve Democratic Party support for Israel. • Finally, Netanyahu’s repeated reversals — from initially agreeing to admit the two Congresswomen, to banning both, to partly admitting Tlaib — have weakened Israeli credibility. • No prime minister has done greater damage to bi-partisan support for Israel, a precondition for a thriving American-Israeli relationship. In barring a minor politician from entering Israel, Netanyahu did not weaken our enemies; he humiliated our friends. Next time, how many freshman Democrats will risk the political fallout of coming to Israel? Yossi Klein Halevi is a senior fellow at the Shalom Hartman Institute, where he is co-director, together Imam Abdullah Antepli of Duke University, of the Muslim Leadership Initiative (MLI), and a member of the Institute's iEngage Project. His latest book, Letters to My Palestinian Neighbor, is a Times bestseller. His previous book, Like Dreamers, was named the 2013 National Jewish Book Council Book of the Year.

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New York Times – August 17, 2019 Israel’s Alliance With Trump Creates New Tensions Among American Jews By Lisa Lerer and Elizabeth Dias • A in St. Louis Park, Minn., was more than six thousand miles from Jerusalem when he heard the Israeli government decided to bar two Muslim members of Congress from making an official visit to the Jewish state. • But within minutes, his phone was flooded with calls from congregants, local Jewish agencies and lay leaders who plunged into what had become a familiar routine: Figuring out how to respond to yet another political battle over their congresswoman, Representative Ilhan Omar, and Israel. • “There was very much an attitude of, ‘oh, here we go again,’” said Rabbi Avi S. Olitzky. “The pendulum keeps swinging left and right, left and right. It’s dizzying and exhausting and distracting. Emotions are raw.” • For months, American Jews in Ms. Omar’s district and beyond have found themselves enmeshed in a deeply uncomfortable debate over the growing distance between traditional liberal American Jewish values and the political realities of an Israeli government that’s embraced hard-line policies and a deep alliance with President Donald Trump. On Thursday, in one of Mr. Trump’s most audacious moves yet, he successfully urged Israel to deny entrance to Ms. Omar and Representative Rashida Tlaib, who planned to tour the West Bank. • At Shabbat dinner tables, in synagogue sanctuaries, and even at summer camps, the new political firestorm in Washington and Jerusalem — and Mr. Trump’s fierce determination to turn anti-Semitism and support for Israel into partisan issues — has forced a series of emotional conversations over the place of Jews in American political life. It’s a conversation that comes at a particularly fraught moment, less than a year after deadly attacks on synagogues in Poway, Calif., and Pittsburgh, and as support for Israel divides the Democratic Party as never before. • To some Jews, the president’s attacks on the congresswomen are a fierce renunciation of anti- Semitism and a defense of Israel. But many others see their identity being used as a pawn for the political ambitions of Mr. Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, a dynamic they fear could undermine the historically strong alliance between the and Israel and increase the security risks for their community at home. • “If Israel equals Trump, then there is a concern that opposition to Trump will transition, God forbid, into opposition to Israel,” Rabbi Shmuel Herzfeld, who leads Ohev Sholom, an Orthodox congregation in Washington, D.C., said a few hours before shabbat on Friday. “It is very dangerous.” • In a striking sign of united concern, major American Jewish organizations largely opposed the Israeli government’s decision to block the congresswomen on Thursday, even as some condemned the women for what they described as anti-Israel or anti-Semitic positions. Even

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the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, the bulwark Israel lobbying organization, took the unusual step of breaking with the Netanyahu government. • Sheila Katz, who leads the National Council of Jewish Women, called Israel’s ban “undemocratic and shortsighted.” • “I don’t think any of us want to be in this position and we don’t think it is actually helpful for Israel either,” said Ms. Katz. “We’d ask the president to not influence and pressure the prime minister of Israel to be carrying out what feels like bullying because of issues he has with congresswomen here in the U.S.” • In Houston, congregants at United Orthodox Synagogues discussed the situation at breakfast after Friday morning services. Some people wondered why President Trump would get involved, some suggested Israel’s decisions were connected to the September election there, and some thought it was an opportunity for Mr. Trump to energize his own electoral base, said Rabbi Barry Gelman. • He said he did not think the entire debacle was good for relations between the United States and Israel. • “I’d like to think that both the president and the Republican Party and the Democratic Party are all allies of the American Jewish community,” he said. • In Omaha, a purple dot in a red state, Rabbi Steven Abraham spent time on Friday considering how to address the latest controversy at services this weekend. • “Right now, in the Jewish community, this is becoming a left-right issue, support for Israel, the settlements, all those conversations are becoming a huge divide,” said Rabbi Abraham, who leads Beth El synagogue, a Conservative congregation. “There is a real wedge being created in the Jewish community.” • Some worry that the implicit effort to exploit Democratic Party divisions over Israel for political gain will only worsen as the presidential campaign season unfolds, pointing to Jewish populations in key swing states like Florida, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Michigan, as a reason for both sides to keep Jews in the political spotlight. • “We fear that in places like Florida over the campaign the weaponization of Jews and of Israel could become totally out of control,” said David Harris, head of the American Jewish Committee, a nonpartisan pro-Israel advocacy organization. “You have a very substantial Jewish voting population, that’s to some degree older, and perhaps more vulnerable to these kinds of anti-Israel, anti-Zionism fears.” • For other Jewish voters and activists, this political moment has roused both ancient fears and modern security concerns. Hate crimes against Jews have risen for three years, according to the F.B.I., accounting for a majority of all religion-based hate crimes at 58.1 percent of incidents. Muslims were the second most frequent target, at 18.6 percent. • Armed guards and metal detectors in synagogues and schools have become more prevalent at Jewish institutions in the United States.

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• Jewish Republicans are standing by a president that they see as a strong supporter of Israel, pointing to steps taken by his administration including breaking with decades of U.S. policy to relocate the United States Embassy last year from Tel Aviv to the holy city of Jerusalem. • “I don’t think our president did anything wrong at all. He has a first amendment right to say what he thinks,” said Fred Zeidman, a Houston-based Republican donor who sits on the board of the Republican Jewish Coalition, “My God, when I look at what he’s done for Israel, I’m not going take issue with anything he’s said or done.” • But Democrats fear that Mr. Trump’s alliance with Mr. Netanyahu will further politicize support for Israel, driving liberals away from backing the Jewish state and driving more observant Jews away from backing the Democratic Party. • While Jews still vote overwhelmingly with the Democratic Party, polling reflects a partisan divide that tracks along levels of religious observance. • Seventy-nine percent of Jews voted for Democrats in the 2018 midterms, according to exit polls. But eight percent of ultra-Orthodox and 33 percent of modern Orthodox Jews consider themselves Democrats, compared to 64 percent of reform Jews and 58 percent of self- identified secular Jews, according to the annual American Jewish Committee Survey of American Jewish Opinion released in June. • The political dynamics haven’t made it any easier for Jewish leaders forced to confront political concerns along with their security challenges. • At the politically-divided Conservative congregation in Los Angeles led by Rabbi David Wolpe, a humanitarian drive for families at the border led to a debate over immigration policy. • “I’m trying to depoliticize the conversation in my own congregation,” he said. “To say not everything is about Trump and not everything is about ‘the squad.’ There is so much more to life.” • In Pinecrest, Florida, just south of Miami, an area known for its strong support of Israel, Rabbi Rachel G. Greengrass who leads Temple Beth Am, a Reform congregation, called Mr. Trump’s move “shocking,” and separate from the conversations about the congresswomen’s views of Israel, which some in the Jewish community have seen as anti-Semitic or tone-deaf. • She said there is a growing division between American and Israeli Jews, and division that often arises within families as well, as young people in her area are more likely to speak critically about Israel. • “Many congregations tend to avoid talking about things like this because there is so much conflict,” said Rabbi Greengrass. • In Oakland, Calif., Rabbi Gershon Albert said he supported Israel “unequivocally,” and yet when he first saw Mr. Netanyahu’s decision, he worried. Anti-Semitic posters have appeared near the doors of his Orthodox congregation, Beth Jacob, in recent months. A man was recently arrested after threatening a repeat of the shooting that took place this year at a synagogue in Poway, near San Diego.

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• “I personally see the erosion of support for Jews and Israel as the only Jewish state on both the far right and the far left,” said Rabbi Albert. “Anti-Semitism seems to be a blind spot on both sides, I’m concerned this could expand that blind spot.” • And in Minnesota, Ms. Omar’s district, Rabbi Olitzky is still thinking about a call he joined with local Jewish leaders, the congresswoman and her staffers a week ago. Local Jewish leaders suggested places to visit in Israel and offered to arrange meetings during her trip. • “Ms. Omar represents a district that has a great number of friends of Israel so some of us were actually hopefully that she’d go to Israel and maybe the ball would be begin to move a bit,” he said. “Instead, we’re back to just emboldening the extremes on both sides. It’s bad for the Jewish community in the U.S. and it’s bad for the world.”

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