Selected articles concerning , published weekly by Suburban Orthodox Toras Chaim’s (Baltimore) Israel Action Committee Edited by Jerry Appelbaum ( [email protected] ) | Founding editor: Sheldon J. Berman Z”L

Issue 8 7 1 Volume 2 2 , Number 0 5 Parshias Beshalach J anuary 30 , 20 2 1

The Case against Returning to the Iran Dea l By and Yossi Klein Halevi theatlantic.com January 21, 2021 In return for merely postponing its nuclear program, agreement did not shut down a single nuclear facility or the agreement rewarded Iran extravagantly. destroy a single centrifuge. The ease and spe ed with which Proponents of the Iran nuclear agreem ent are Iran has resumed producing large amounts of more highly sounding the alarm. In 2018, the United States withdrew enriched uranium — doing so at a time of its own from the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, and since choosing — illustrates the danger of leaving the regime with then, Iran has increased the quality and quantity of its these capabilities. In fact, the JCPOA blocks nothing. uranium enrichment well beyond what the deal allows. If the restrictions on Ir an’s nuclear enrichment were Recently, it has even begun enriching uranium to 20 inadequate, they were also designed to be short - lived, percent, a short distance away from weapons - grade. Iran, some sunsetting as early as 2024. Meanwhile, the deal JCPOA advocates say, is closer today to producing a bomb allowed the regime to develop advanced centrifuges than it was in 2015, when the deal was concluded. Only capable of spinning out more highly enriched uranium in the deal’s renewal, they insist, can prevent the nightmare of far less ti me. Less than a decade from now, Iran will be a nuclear Iran. legally able to produce and stockpile enough fissile material “Five years ago, American - led diplomacy produced a for dozens of bombs. The 97 percent reduction of Iran’s deal that ensured it would take Iran at least a year to enriched uranium stockpile achieved by the JCPOA would produce enough fissile material for one bomb,” Joe Biden be swiftly undone. Breakout time woul d no longer be a wrote in September. “Now — because Trump let Iran off year, or even three months, but a matter of weeks. the hook from its obliga tions under the nuclear deal — This isn’t just the assessment of the deal’s opponents, Tehran’s ‘breakout time’ is down to just a few months.” but also that of its principal architect. “If in year 13, 14, 15 More recently, he warned that if Iran gets the bomb, then [after making the deal], they have advanced centrifuges Saudi Arabia, Turkey, and Egypt will follow. that can en rich uranium fairly rapidly, the breakout time Why, then, aren’t Israelis and Arabs — those with the would have shrunk almost down to zero,” President most to lose fro m Iranian nuclearization — also demanding Barack Obama acknowledged in an April 2015 interview a return to the JCPOA? Why aren’t they panicking over its with NPR. dissolution? The answer is simple: The JCPOA didn’t Realizing that the JCPOA guaranteed Iran’s future diminish the Iranian nuclear threat; it magnified it. ability to enrich uranium on an industrial sca le, Saudi Iran needs to acquire three components in order to Arabia, Egypt, and Turkey accelerated their search for b ecome a military nuclear power: highly enriched uranium, nuclear options as soon as the deal was signed. The a functional warhead, and a missile capable of delivering it. JCPOA’s opponents never feared that Iran would violate The JCPOA addresses only the first of these efforts in any the deal, but rather, they feared that the regime would keep detail, and even then, offers merely partial and temporary it — waiting out the suns et clauses and emerging with the solutions. The deal largely ignores the second effort, and ability to produce enough uranium for a nuclear arsenal. actually advances the third. The deal, then, allows Iran to eventually possess the The JCPOA did limit Iran’s immediate ability to enrich first component for a bomb: a stockpile of highly enriched enough uranium for a bomb. It reduced the regime’s uranium. Next it needs a warhead. Despite Iran’s uranium stockpile by 97 percent, mothballed two - thirds of insi stence that it has never tried to build a bomb, Western its centrifuges, and re - designated two of its major nuclear intelligence officials have long determined that it did, but facilities as civilian research centers. Uranium enrichment believed that the regime suspended its efforts in 2003. The was capped at 3.7 percent, far short of weapons - grade. weapons program was directed by Mohsen Fakhrizadeh, a These concessions were intended to extend the time Iran nuclear scientist and gen eral in the Islamic Revolutionary needed to enrich enough uranium for a single bom b from Guards Corps, who was assassinated in November. In a approximately three months to a year. Should Iran attempt recording obtained by Israel and shared with the United to break out and go nuclear, advocates explained, the States in 2008, Fakhrizadeh explained that the secret international community would have enough time to efforts in fact continued and that Iran intended to initial ly intervene. The JCPOA, they asserted, blocked all of Iran’s produce five nuclear warheads. paths to a bomb. The possibility that Iran might still be trying to build a But the JCP OA allowed Iran to retain its massive bomb did not, however, preoccupy the framers of the nuclear infrastructure, unnecessary for a civilian energy JCPOA. Of the deal’s 159 pages, only half of one page program but essential for a military nuclear program. The addresses Iranian weaponization, and it contains no Focus o n Israel January 30, 2021 Page 2 manda te for international action. Although there are In return for merely postponing that outcome, the provisions for inspecting enrichment - related facilities, deal rewa rds Iran extravagantly. The JCPOA infused the none exist for inspecting potential bomb - making sites or Iranian economy with tens of billions of dollars in punishing Iran should any be discovered. Instead, there is immediate sanctions relief and trade deals and promised to merely an Iranian declaration that it will not try to make a provide hundreds of billions more. Yet rather than invest bomb — a promise that Iran, which has systematically lied in its decaying infrastructure, the regim e used portions of about its nuclear program for decades, has repeatedly this windfall to expand its international terror network, broken in the past. enhance the offensive capabilities of and The recklessness of this omission became even more Hezbollah, and further assist the Syrian regime in glaring three years ago, after Israel exposed Ira n’s secret massacring and uprooting its own people. In addition to nuclear archive. Among its many thousands of pages were extending its dominance of Lebanon, Iran has documents detailing undeclared nuclear sites and consolidated its influence in Syria, Iraq, Yemen, and Gaza. radioactive materials, as well as blueprints for a missile - Rather than buying Iran’s moderation, the JCPOA helped borne bomb. More damning, the archive confirmed that fund its quest for regional hegemony. Iran’s nuclear - weapons progr am did not stop in 2003 but Exporting terror and instability, massacring and was merely split into overt and covert channels, some of expelling Syrian Sunnis, and tryi ng to kill Israelis — all of them embedded in prestigious universities, and both these Iranian activities were blandly subsumed by the aspects of the program were headed by Fakhrizadeh. The JCPOA’s framers under the term malign activity. The deal goal, he states in the documents, was to maintain “special was intended to serve as a precedent for international activ ities … under the title of Scientific Development” that cooperation in addressing these crimes, but in practice, “leave no identifiable traces.” little has happened. Instead, desperate to preserve the These revelations underlined the fatal flaws of the agreement, signatories have ignored the regime’s JCPOA. The very existence of a secret archive was a aggression. The failure to address this “malign activity” flagrant violation of Iran’s obligation to come clean about reflects a near - total unwillingness to confront Iran and its previous weaponization work. And it was exposed not signals that the regime generally has litt le to fear from by international inspectors, but by Israel’s Mossad. international interference. Advocates of the deal are hard - pressed to explain why Iran The sermons and military processions accompanied by would keep, conceal, and repeatedly relocate designs for a chants of “Death to Israel”; Iran’s supreme leader, Ali nuclear weapon unless it wanted t o preserve the option of Khamenei, calling for the elimination of the Israeli someday making one. “cancer”; even a recent bill proposed in the Irania n With its nuclear infrastructure intact, its work on parliament that would commit the government to advanced centrifuges proceeding, and restrictions on “eliminate” Israel by 2041 — all of these outrages and more enrichment ending with the sunset clauses, Iran’s future are taken for granted by the international community. Yet nuclear stockpile of enriched uranium is ensured. And with no other country today so publicly and repeatedly declares its weaponization - related efforts unimpeded, the regime its intentions to annihilate a f ellow UN member state, needs only a system for delivering a bomb. The regime linking its national purpose to that goal. At the same time, already possesses Shahab - 3 missiles, based on the North Iran has committed enormous resources and paid a Korean No - dong, capable of hitting any country in the staggering economic and diplomatic price to develop the Middle East and even natio ns as far away as Romania. The means to fulfill its genocidal vision. The weaknesses of the archive contains detailed plans for fitting a nuclear JCPOA only deepen Israel’s fear that the international warhead on the Shahab - 3. Iran aims to expand its threat to community is taking the inevitability of Iran’s nuclear - Western Europe and the United States by developing weapons capability for granted, too. intercontinental ballistic missiles. Intelligence sources agr ee Israel has vowed to prevent the regime from going that the rockets Iran has already developed for its space nuclear, so the Iranians are investing in massive deterrence. program can easily be converted to ICBMs. Iran’s missile In the Middle Eastern countries under its domination, Iran development violates a UN ban on its missile program — a has deployed tens of thousands of missiles, a growing prohibition the international community has failed to number of them highly accurate and capable of hitting enforce. In 2023, however, th e JCPOA will lift that ban anywhere in Israel. Though some observers now claim that entirely. Iran’s missiles, rather than its n uclear program, most The JCPOA, then, has not substantially blocked any of endanger the region, they have it backwards. The missiles Iran’s efforts. The violations that Iran has committed since are a tactical means to a strategic nuclear end. They are America’s withdrawal from the deal, and more intensively intended to deter Israeli efforts to stop Iran from moving in recent months, will pale compared with the i ndustrial - toward breakout. Even so, Israel can handle the scale enrichment program the JCPOA ultimately permits. conventional missile threat, however costly, but the Combined with its weaponization - related work and its nuclear threat could be existential. missile development, this will position Iran to become a The flaws with the JCPOA are painfully obvious to global nuclear power. both Arab and Israeli leaders. Why, then, did the Page 3 January 30, 2021 Focus on Is ra el international community ever agree to such a deal? For East’s rightful ruler, as well as a global force. More than Europe, in particular, financial interests were involved. For anything else, though, Iran’s nuclear program is about the America, though, the impetus was more complex. The regime’s survival. Its leaders saw how the Iraqi dictator Obama administration seemed to genuinely believe that Saddam Hussein and Libya’s Muammar Qaddafi Iran was capable of change. If it were treated respectfully terminated their nu clear - weapons programs, and were later and reintegrated into the international community, O bama toppled and executed. They see how North Korea’s maintained, Iran would lose interest in a nuclear bomb deliverable bombs have won Kim Jong Un power and long before the deal expired, choosing instead to become immunity. They know which example to emulate. “a successful regional power.” The regime would finally Still, Iran can be stopped. begin addressing the needs of its restive citizens and cease Although every new administration seeks to supporting terror. Fro m the very beginning of his di stinguish itself from its predecessor — and this incoming presidency, Obama pursued reconciliation with Iran, along administration all the more so — President Joe Biden with Palestinian - Israeli peace, as the centerpiece of his should not squander the leverage he has inherited. The Middle East policy. reimposition and intensification of American sanctions has The JCPOA was supposed to provide Iran with the placed enormous pressure on the Ira nian regime. After time and the incentive to moderate; instead, it gave Iran waiting out the old administration in the hope that 2021 the means and the legitimacy to intensify its aggression would bring a new one, the regime is now trying to now, while enabling it to go nuclear later. Much of the intimidate Biden into renewing the JCPOA. It is hardly a American public, meanwhile, exhausted by two Middle coincidence that the regime waited two years before Eastern wars, feared becoming embroiled in another approaching 20 perce nt enrichment — which it could have overseas conflict. Many Am ericans believed Obama when done at any time — but is doing so only now, with the he insisted that “all options are on the table,” and that the onset of the new administration. The regime responds to only alternative to the deal was war. pressure and acts defiantly when it senses hesitation. Biden In fact, the alternative to the president’s approach was must not give in to this nuclear blackmail. tougher diplomacy, aimed at producing a better deal. But The JCPOA allowed Iran to both maintain its nuclear that would have required pressing Iran with even harsher program and revitalize its economy. Biden must make clear sanctions and posing a credible threat of military action, to Tehran that it can have one or the other, but not both. neither of which the admin istration was willing to do. The Tragically, spokespeople for the new administration are “punishing sanctions” for which the administration took proposing to return to the JCPOA and lif t sanctions, and credit, and which brought Iran to the negotiating table, only afterward negotiate a longer, stronger deal. Such a originated in Congress and were approved over the course has no chance of success. Even a partial lifting of administration’s objections. sanctions would forfeit any leverage that could compel the Rather than forcing Iran’s hand , the administration regime to negotiate a deal that genuinely removes the made far - reaching concessions at the very outset of the danger of a nuclear Iran. At best, the regime will agree to secret talks in 2012. American negotiators effectively cosmetic changes — for example, extending the sunset recognized the regime’s “right to enrich,” overriding UN clauses — but not to dismantling its nuclear infrastructure. resolutions denying it that right, and even dropped their A fatally flawed deal would remain essentially intact. previous demand for a temporary freeze of enrichment. The Biden administration must resist pres sure from This essentially reduced the rest of the negotiations to members of Congress and others who are urging an wrangling over the details. unconditional return to the JCPOA. Even the deal’s From the outset, the Obama administration was so fervent supporters need to recognize that its fundamental wary of antagonizing Iran that it consistently overlooked assumptions — that Iran had abandoned its quest for a the regime’s outrag es — including a 2011 plot to assassinate military nuclear option and would mo derate its behavior — the Saudi and Israeli ambassadors in Washington (the have been thoroughly disproved. Israeli ambassador at the time was Michael Oren, a co - At the same time, America must consult its Middle author of this essay) and the routine harassment of U.S. East allies about what they think a better deal would look Navy ships in the Persian Gulf. No reckoning was sou ght like. Such a deal would verifiably and permanently remove for Iran’s complicity in the Syrian civil war, which has left Iran’s ability to develop nuclear wea pons. This means not some 500,000 civilians dead and 11 million homeless. merely mothballing the nuclear infrastructure, but Obama’s refusal to uphold his own red line regarding the eliminating it. It means empowering international use of chemical weapons by the Assad regime in 2013 was inspectors with unlimited and immediate access to any viewed by Israel and by Arab governments — and no doubt suspect enrichment or weaponization site. It means by Iran — as a further sign of his determination to placate maintaining economic and dipl omatic pressure on the Tehran. regime until it truly comes clean about its undeclared And yet, even if America had the will, denying nuclear nuclear activities and ceases to develop missiles capable of weapons to Iran was always fraught with risk. For religious carrying nuclear warheads. A better deal will deny Iran the and nationalist reasons, the regime sees itse lf as the Middle Focus o n Israel January 30, 2021 Page 4 ability to commit the violations it is now committing wit h most repressive regimes, and empowered the Middle impunity. Eastern state most opposed to peace. Achieving these objectives will require close and The JCPOA is also incompatible with President candid cooperation among the United States, Israel, and Biden ’s long - standing commitment to Israel’s security. At a concerned Arab states. Such cooperation was not possible 2015 gathering celebrating Israel’s independence, then – in the negotiations leading up to the JCPOA, which Vice President Biden said: “Israel is absolutely essential — America initially conducted be hind the backs of its Middle absolutely essential — [for the] security of Jews around the Eastern partners. In the final stages, U.S. officials misled world … Imagine what it woul d say about humanity and their Israeli and Arab counterparts about America’s the future of the 21st century if Israel were not sustained, negotiating positions. This displayed not only bad faith, vibrant and free.” but a patronizing presumption of knowing the vital Reviving the JCPOA will endanger that vision, secur ity interests of the countries most threatened by Iran ensuring the emergence of a nuclear Iran or a desperate better than they knew those interests themselves. war to stop it. Biden is a proven friend who has shared The incoming administration has declared its Israel’s hopes and fears. He must prevent that nightmare. determination to restore the trust of America’s allies, along Mr. Oren was Israel’s ambassador to the United States from 2009 with promoting peace and human rights. But t hose to 2013 . Mr. Klein Halevi is author of Letters to My objectives are incompatible with renewing a deal that Palestinian Neighbor. betrayed America’s allies, strengthened one of the world’s What Zarif's words should tell President Biden about Iran deal By Saeed Ghasseminejad thehill.com January 26, 2021 It could make the difference for him in the next factions in the West which are ideologically more aligned election. with Tehran’s worldview. On the anniversary of Qassem Soleimani’s death, Tehran has actually managed to execute parts of this Iranian Foreign Minister Javad Zarif gave an interview in plan. Over the last 15 years, the Islamic Republic has which he highlighted his close relationship to the late heavily invested in petrochemical and oil refinery commander of the Islami c Revolutionary Guard Corps’ complexes whose products are much more challenging to expeditionary and dark - arts branch, the Quds Force. Zarif track than crude oil, diminishing the efficacy of crude oil said he and Soleimani coordinated their regional tasks and sanctions. Iran has also used its political influence in Iraq projects. Zarif also offered insight into the clerical regime’s to make it an essential sanctions - busting haven. Tehran has strategy for handling the Biden administration : He denied also tried to convince China to form a strategic partnership there was going to be any JCPOA 2 and 3, meaning the as a countermeasure against U.S. sanctions. Ad ditionally, regime will not negotiate any follow - on agreements to the the clerical regime has heavily invested in foreign 2015 nuclear deal (known by the acronym JCPOA) that propaganda and influence operations to spread limit Iran’s missile program and regional policies. disinformation and weaken the forces in Europe and the This is a serious problem for Biden, since he justifies United States hostile to Tehran’s foreign and domestic his pledge to rejoin the flawed JCPOA — and, in doing so, policies. lift sanctions — by insisting that he will pursue a tougher Zarif’s comments are in line with Tehran’s long - follow - on deal. Rather than pursuing that futile objective, standing refusal to negotiate over its missiles. It’s an Biden should employ the leverage generated by Tr ump’s excellent guess that the Obama administration initially “maximum pressure” campaign to insist the clerical regime wanted to include ballistic missiles when it negotiated the accept restraints on its missile program and regional JCPOA but relented when Khamenei refused to do so. policies before any sanctions come off. This wou ld mean that a U.S. re - entry to the deal would In his interview, Zarif made clear the regime trade, once again, only a modest, ever - shrinking Iranian understands the coercive power of sanctions. He said, after delay in industrializing its nuclear program for massive the JCPOA, Tehran’s first priority was to develop a sanctions relief. Missiles would be off the table, along with “resistance economy,” which is effectively sanctions - proof. limits on Iran’s Revolutionary Gu ard and Shiite militia Popularized by Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei, this deployments, conventional - arms deliveries, and other concept focuses on encouraging the domestic production destabilizing activities in the region. of goods, thereby diminishin g the country’s reliance on oil Tehran’s strategy has been clear from the beginning: It exports to finance the purchase of foreign goods. It also sought a deal that offered a patient pathway to the bomb emphasizes finding reliable allies to help Iran bypass and massive economic be nefits. And the clerical regime potential sanctions. To that end, Tehran’s economic would use its financial gains to build a more effective, diplomacy entails creating division among western diversified “resistance economy.” The U.S. withdrawal countries , as well as working with , China, and other from the deal disrupted this plan. Washington’s re - entry to states to prevent the imposition of further sanctions on the agreement would simply put it back in motion. Tehran. The regime also cultivates close ties to groups and Only if it fears for its existence will the Islamic Page 5 January 30, 2021 Focus on Is ra el

Republic make any meaningful long - term concessions on could be eve n wider and more dangerous. ballistic missile development and regional subversion To pacify the increasingly disillusioned and desperate activities. The moment the threat is gone, Tehran will go population, the regime needs an economic lifeline. That back to business as usual. offers Washington an opportunity. The riddle to solve is how to keep Tehran in The Biden administration should tell a story about compliance. The most direct solution is for the Iranian good government to... people to down the Islamist dictatorship. However, US flies B - 52 bomber to Middle East for third time imperfect solutions exist. To make Tehran’s return to bad this month behavior more difficult, a deal would need cle ar snapback The new administration should double down on the triggers that reimpose sanctions if Iran violates missile and pressure campaign until Tehran has no choice but to make regional stability provisions. real concessions on nuclear, missile, terrorism, and It will be hard for U.S. diplomats to wring such regional issues. If Washington reenters the JCPOA, it will concession from Tehran. Yet Iran has already experienced lose all of its leverage, and Tehran will have no reason to three years of negative GDP g rowth, high inflation, and curb its missiles and regional policies. massive currency depreciation. Tehran’s accessible We should learn from our mistakes, not repeat them. currency reserve is now around $9 billion. Since 2017, Dr. Ghasseminejad is a senior Iran and financial economics advisor Tehran has faced two waves of widespread protests that at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies specializing in Iran’s shook the country. It obviously fears a third wave that economy and financial markets, sanctions and illicit finance. Israel’s Fractious Religious Zionists Could Decide the Next Election By Haviv Rettig Gur timesofisrael.com January 18, 2021 , kingmaker. on Prime Minister ’s right flank, The election campaign is now in its least interesting where his political future may be decided. phase, and, arguably, its most important. The religious Zionists Sixty - four days out from election day, this is the point There are three parties representing the religious right - when parties disassemble and reassemble as wing camp that falls under the “” catch - hopefuls jockey for position in search of a political vehicle all. , led by Naftali Bennett, is the most successful that might carry them into the parliament. of these in polls. A January 11 poll for radio station 103 New parties are forming that have no chance of FM gave it 14 seats, reflecting its showing in most polls in making it past the 3.25 percent vote threshold for entering recent weeks. the Knesset, but have a reasonable hope of being scooped Then comes the National Union party led by Betzalel up by larger partie s interested in thinning the competition Smotrich, which will run on election day as the Religious before the February 4 party registration deadline. Zionism Party. The same poll gave it four seats – edging Former MK Ofer Shelah’s Tnufa party is past the electoral threshold for the first time, but only by one of those, as is former state accountant - general Yaron the skin of its teeth. In most polls, it just fails to clear the Zelekha’s New Economic Party. Two - man faction Derech threshold. Eret z is made up of a duo that started off in Moshe And finally, there’s Jewish Home, whose beleaguered Ya’alon’s Telem, which was then swallowed by Benny leader Rafi Peretz has announced his retirement from Gantz’s Blue and White, and now the pair have thrown in politics, sparking a primary battle to replace him. their lot with Gideon Sa’ar’s . The list goes on Jewish Home is the last vestige of the National and on. Religious Party, which for many decades was the primary Among the larger parties, the rumor mills are grinding vehicle of religious - Zionist politics. At its height, it held furiously with merger speculations. Will ’s Yesh 10% of parliament. In a January 8 poll for the Maariv Atid party find new partners to boost its ballot - box newspaper, it got 0.3% of votes. Few other polls have showing? Will Ron Huldai’s The Israelis emerge as a bothered to ask. frontrunner on the left by consuming the smaller left - wing Three parties, alike in dignity but not, it seems, i n fish in its pa th? voter appeal. And that creates a serious problem for It’s a game most voters are still steadfastly ignoring. Netanyahu. None of this will really matter to any but the most devoted Netanyahu needs Bennett . followers of the political scene until the party slates are It’s a question of simple arithmetic. The parties finalized and formally registered next month. Few of the currently committed to backing Netanyahu for prime mergers currently u nder discussion are likely to minister aren’t enough to get him to a 61 - seat meaningfully change the election results on March 23. parliamentary majo rity. Except, that is, in one small section of the Israeli Consider the polls. A January 8 poll for Channel 12, political map where the game of political mergers and reflecting the general trend among pollsters in recent acquisitions among otherwise small players may end up weeks, gave 31 seats and its Haredi allies (at least for determining the final winner of the March race. It is there, now) and seven seats each. F ocus o n Israe l January 30, 2 021 P a g e 6

That’s just 45 seats, 16 short o f the slimmest parliamentary Netanyahu tries to weaken Bennett majority needed to form a governing coalition. Last week, Betzalel Smotrich announced he was The poll also gave Yamina 13 seats, bringing the leaving the Yamina party and taking his National Union number closer to victory, with 58. Close, but no cigar. faction to an independent run as th e “Religious Zionism Every poll tells much the same st ory. A week before Party.” that poll, on January 1, pollster Panels Politics gave that It’s a move pushed by Netanyahu. same Likud - Haredim - Yamina coalition 58 seats. A January Bennett, as noted, would be pleased to see the end of 8 poll in Maariv gave that coalition 56. And on January 12, Netanyahu’s political career. But Smotrich, who represents a Channel 12 poll gave it 57 seats. a more right - wing branch of the religious - Zionist world, The best showing yet was in Maariv’s Friday poll, the so - called “Haredi - na tionalist,” or by its Hebrew which gave Likud 32 seats, Yamina 12, and Shas and UTJ acronym, “,” subculture, would not. eight apiece — for a total of 60. (The new Religious Smotrich views the option of a center - right coalition Zionism party didn’t pass the electoral threshold in the sans Netanyahu as distasteful, an unnecessary surrender of poll.) right - wing policy goals, which won’t advance in a The point is simple. Barring a surprising volte - face by government dependent o n Yesh Atid, Gantz’s shrunken par ties now running on a commitment not to sit with Blue and White, and so on. Smotrich’s social conservatism Netanyahu, Netanyahu has no coalition without Yamina sits far more comfortably with Shas and UTJ than with — and may not have one with it. Huldai’s The Israelis, which has already launched its Bennett doesn’t need Netanyahu campaign to the LGBT community with a promise to push Naftali Bennett, meanwhile, is often counted among for ga y marriage. the anti - Netanyahu parties because of th e longstanding But Smotrich has repeatedly polled under the electoral animus between the two men. He would welcome the threshold since announcing a separate run, including in a chance to use his ballot - box winnings to show Netanyahu Friday Channel 12 poll. off the national stage, and the feeling is wholly mutual. Not to worry: Netanyahu has a plan. But there is a more tactically sound reason to view In several actions over the past week, Netanyahu has Bennett as a swing vote: G ideon Sa’ar will give him more. shown how far he’s willing to go to weaken Bennett while There is a center - right coalition developing — and so securing for himself as much automatic support as he can far holding steady in polls — that seeks to oust Netanyahu before any negotiations begin. from power. It is Netanyahu, not Smotrich, who reportedly reached Roughly speaking, and with the caveat that the final out last week to the extremist Otzma Yehudit party to see makeup of parties actually running on March 23 isn’t if it was willing to merge with National Union. It’s not for finalized, that coalition looks something like this: Gideon the first time Netanyahu has tried to unify Otzma Yehudit Sa’ar’s New Hope party, Bennett’s Yamina, Yair Lapid’s with other far - right parties to avoid their votes getting lost Yesh Atid, Avigdor Liberman’s Yisrael Beytenu, Benny by a failure to pass the electoral threshold. But this time Gantz’s Blue and White, and Ron Huldai’s The Israelis. he’s gone farther than ever bef ore. In a poll last Monday for 103 FM, that coalition wins According to a Channel 12 report on Sunday, exactly 60 seats. Two Channel 12 polls, on January 8 and Netanyahu offered Otzma Yehudit head Itamar Ben Gvir 12, give it the same number. a promise of an outsized role in the next government if he Yamina could put Netanyahu within a stone’s throw agrees to the move, reportedly telling him that if Smotrich of victory. It could also put Sa’ar there. and Ben Gvir together win four seat s, they’ll receive Netanyahu would have an easier coalition to manag e, ministerial posts as though they were a party of eight. with a larger ruling party and fewer partners. But he’d have Stirring the pot fewer outside forces willing to jump in to fill out his not - Netanyahu has also worked hard to pull tiny, 0.3% - quite - majority coalition. Sa’ar would face the difficult task winning Jewish Home into Smotrich’s orbit, which would of herding several medium - sized and small parties. But be both a symbolic victory and a practical one. It would he’d also be ab le to call on outsiders to stabilize his offer Smotrich the legacy party’s infrastructure, from coalition, from Shas and UTJ (who won’t willingly go to bra nch offices to activist lists to the public campaign the opposition if they can help it, no matter who is in funding it is due from its single MK in the outgoing power) to left - wing or some part of the Knesset. constellation of Arab parties eager to see Netanyahu Netanyahu is desperate to get Smotrich past the pus hed from power. threshold. As his newfound devotion to winning over And that’s where the differences between the two men Arab voters demonstrates, every seat is n ow precious. He may become decisive. Bennett could get more from Sa’ar, understands that he can’t offer anyone a rotation deal whose party won’t be all that much larger than his own, again after unceremoniously breaking his promises to than from a 30 - seat Netanyahu. Bennett will also have Gantz. His chief opponents are no longer on the center or reason to trust Sa’ar to deliver on his promises in a way left but among longtime Likud faithful. He’s running out few in the political system now trust Netanyahu. of tricks and he’ s running out of options. Page 7 January 30, 2021 Focus on Is ra el

And so Jewish Home’s sleepy leadership race, set for Netanyahu’s reasoning is sound. Every seat Smotrich Tuesday, has become a frantic battle between the prime pulls from Bennett is a seat guaranteed to Netanyahu. And minister and his nemesis, the Yamina leader who holds the a weakened Bennett can demand less as his price for key to his election victory. joining a Sa’ar - led c oalition. With Rafi Peretz’s resignation earlier this month from Then, too, with the rightist edge of his Yamina slate the now - defunct Jewish Home, party CEO Nir Orbach gone to Smotrich, Bennett is more likely to draw centrist announced his intention to run for leader. Orbach is very voters attracted to his economic and pandemic - policy close to Bennett. He’s running on a platform of merging critiques of the outgoing government — the sort of the party into Yamina, a classic merg er - party move. centrist voters now “parked” w ith Sa’ar. Any vote That’s when frantic phone calls starting arriving some Netanyahu moves from Sa’ar, who has vowed not to sit two weeks ago at the office of Deputy Mayor with him, to Bennett, who merely prefers not to sit with Hagit Moshe — from none other than Prime Minister him, is a victory too. Benjamin Netanyahu himself. Netanyahu urged Moshe to A bitter race lies ahead. Netanyahu has no clear path run against Orbach. to a coalition without Bennett. Neither does Sa’a r. According to the religious - Zionist news site Srugim, But before they will ask him to make the choice, they Netanyahu promised to appoint her a minister if he wins will work furiously to siphon votes from him until the last the premiership. “It’s not impossible that the two possible second. discussed the education portfolio,” was how Srugim Taken together, the religious - Zionist factions are now described the offer. polling better than they’ve ever polled before, turning Netanyahu’s only condition: Moshe would sign a Bennett int o the election’s likely kingmaker. And everyone, merger agreement with Smotrich instead of Bennett. It’s a from erstwhile ally Netanyahu to ideological fellow traveler bigger gamble for Moshe, but Netanyahu’s promise offers Sa’ar, is working hard to change that. the prospect of larger rewards. Zionism Isn’t Just about Ensuring Jewish Survival. It’s Also about Jewish Flourishing By Douglas Feith nati onalreview.com January 18, 2021 An organic center. to be a Zionist. Israel is not just a refuge and bastion. For There are negative reasons to be a Zionist, and there the Jews as a people, it is the “organic center.” are affirmative reasons. I use that term because George Eliot used it in her The negative ones, which relate to historical anti - novel Daniel Deronda, published in 1876. A Jewish Jewish hatred and abuse, make the humanitarian case for character in the novel named Mord ecai calls on his people Zionism — that the J ews need a state because they need a to found “a new Jewish polity,” which would recreate their refuge. That argument launched the Zionist movement in “organic centre,” revitalizing their civilization. Mordecai the 19th century, and it remains valid to this day. declares, “Let there be another great migration, another The affirmative reasons relate to Jewish civilization. choosing of Israel to be a nationality.” They boil down to the conviction that Jewish culture is a n Mordecai argue s: “Who says that the history and invaluable inheritance that only in the Land of Israel, in a literature of our race are dead? Are they not as living as the state with a Jewish majority, can be developed fully and history and literature of Greece and Rome, which have perpetuated reliably. inspired revolutions? . . . These were an inheritance dug My father was a Holocaust survivor. His family lived from the tomb. Ours is an inheritance that has never in the Austrian part of Poland. The Nazis killed his parents ceased to quiver in millions of human frames.” and seven of his eight siblings. If Israel had existed at the These words often come to my mind. George Eliot, a time, my grandparents and aunts and uncles would have non - Jew whose real name was Mary Ann Evans, penned had a place to escape to. Naturally, as a child, the them 20 years before Theodor Herzl wrote The Jewish humanitarian reasons to be a Zionist predominated with State. Her proto - Zionism does not lie in a tomb. It me. remains alive. I feel, as it were, that it quivers within me. I My father was not much for b ooks, but one that don’t think anyone in the last century and a half has impressed him since he was a boy was Auto - crystalized with greater force or elegance the affirmative Emancipation, a Zionist manifesto written in 1882 by a reasons to be a Zionist. Russian Jew named Leo Pinsker. At my dad’s urging, I To be a Zionist is to revel in the ways Israel has read it when I was young. I remember being struck by integrated Jewish principles and traditions into the daily Pinsker’s observation that no peop le bleeds for foreigners life of a large modern democratic society. Though liberal and so the stateless Jew seeking hospitality is like a beggar and secular, Israel is a Jewish state. What does that mean? and a refugee. “And what beggar is welcome?” Pinsker It means that the Jews are in the majority. Their asks, and “Where is the refugee to whom a refuge may not collective interests prevail , so they enjoy the dignity of self - be refused?” reliance and self - defense. Hebrew is the main language. As an adult, I came to appreciate the positive reasons Jewish history inspires the geographical names. Jewish subjects have a special place in the schools. The Jewish F ocus o n Israe l January 30, 2021 P a g e 8

religious calendar influences the rhythm of life. Ev ery erroneous — and it violates the American democratic Friday afternoon, even in nonreligious neighborhoods, one principles that it claims to uphold. can hear the hush of Sabbath descend. Britain, Sweden, This matter was addressed nicely by Louis Brandeis. and other democracies have crosses on their flags, while “Let no American imagine that Zionism is Israel has a Star of David. And the interests of Jewry as inconsistent with patriotism,” Brandies said in a speech in such are a primary conce rn of the national government. 1915, soon before he joined the Supreme Court. “Multiple None of this is so in any other country in the world. loyalties are objectionable only if they are inconsistent. A On the way in which democracy and ethnicity relate to man is a better citizen of the United States for being also a each other, a brief comment: loyal citizen of his state, and of his city; for being loyal to America’s Founders did not create our republic for the his family, and to his profession or trade. . . . Every Irish purpose of protecting a particula r people’s existence and American who contributed towards advancing home rule culture. In general, though Christmas is a national holiday, was a better man and a better American for the sacri fice he the American political tradition is averse to official made. Every American Jew who aids in advancing the privileges for particular ethnicities or faiths. Jewish settlement in Palestine, though he feels that neither So, it’s understandable that an American may question he nor his descendants will ever live there, will likewise be how Israel c an be both democratic and Jewish. a better man and a better American for doing so.” The short answer is that the way Americans practice I say “Amen” to Justice Brandeis. Americans, Jewish democracy is not the only way. It helps to consider that or not, can easily square their support for Zionism with most liberal, democratic countries were founded on an their sacred duties, in and out of the government, as ethnic basis. Most give special consideration to the American citizens. majori ty population’s cultural interests. Many favor a My final comment is that there’s something particular language. Some have a state church. A number, miraculous about the Jews’ attachment to the Land of including Ireland and Japan, have laws of return that favor Is rael. Benjamin Disraeli captured the magic in his 1847 expatriates of the majority people. As democracies go, novel Tancred. “The vineyards of Israel have ceased to Israel, being ethnically based, is ordinary. It is the United exist, but the eternal law enjoins the children of Israel still States that is exceptional. to celebrate the vintage,” he wrote, referring to the Jewish The compatibility of Zionism and democracy relates Feast of Tabernacles. “A race that persist in celebrating to the issue of dual loyalty, which poses the question of their vintage, although they have no fruits to gather, will whether those American Jews who are Zionists should be regain their vineyards. What sublime inexorability in the viewed as having divided loyalties. T he question has been law! But what indomitable spirit in the people!” of personal interest to me, of course, because of my So that’s why I’m a Zionist. government work. Some of my more rabid critics have Editor’s note: A dapted from remarks at a panel accused me of divided loyalties. discussion, “Why Am I a Zionist?,” at the Charles E. First of all, the frame of mind that produces such Smith Jewish Day School . Rockville, Md., on 1 / 11 / 2021. accusations is the same that argued for opposi ng John Mr. Feith, a senior fellow at Hudson Institute, served as Kennedy’s presidential campaign on the grounds that, as a undersecretary of defense for poli cy from July 2001 to August 2005 Roman Catholic, Kennedy would subordinate his oath of V isi t suburbanorthodox.org for th e c urr en t is s u e . office to his loyalty to the pope. It’s simplistic and By Crying Apartheid, Israeli Human - Rights Activists Insult Their Arab Compatriots By Yoseph Haddad israelhayom.com January 17, 2021 Not to mention those South Africans who lived soldiers in the and managed through the real thing. hundreds of Jewish employees, live under an apartheid Last week, I woke up one morning in my Nazareth regime? home and was astonished to discover I was living under a How can anyone say our society is living under an racist apartheid regime whose only purpose is "the apartheid regime when among us you will find doctors, promotion and perpetuation of the superiority of one judges, and even lawmakers? How can you say Samer Haj - group of people – the Jews." I rubbed my eyes, read the Yehia lives in an apartheid regime when he is the head of story in greater depth, and calmed down as soon as I the biggest bank in Israel? B'Tselem has already broken the realized the reports were based on yet another report by record for hypocrisy, but to compare Israel to an apartheid the left - wing NGO B'Tselem. regime for its racial laws is not on ly a distorted lie but an The problem is that this report has spread like wildfire insult to all those South Africans who actually lived around the world, and the propaganda is working. through apartheid. It is contempt for and cynical B'T selem, which presents itself as a human - rights exploitation of the concept. organization, is in fact known as an organization with a I am not here to claim that everything in Israel is clear political stance that is in contrast to Israel's position. perfect. Some things need to be fixed, and ho w. But show As it turns out, people have no boundaries. How dare they me a country where everything is perfect. I look around at say that I, an Arab Israeli w ho served along with Jewish our neighbors in the region and thank god I was born in Page 9 January 30, 2021 F ocus o n Israel the State of Israel, the only democracy in the Middle East. are basically telling us they see us as second - class citizens. True, the Arab minority in Israel faces challenges, just as B'Tselem, don't push your agendas at our expense. other nat ional minorities do in other countries. Yet while To my delight, Israel will likely be the first country to minorities of all kinds across the Middle East – Shia exit the corona crisis, and in a few months, people from Muslims, Sunni Muslims, Yazidi, Kurds, and of course the around the world may be able to come here and see what Christians, are persecuted, the State of Israel is the only aparthe id looks like in Israel for themselves. Then they will country that grants minorities equa l rights and the ability be able to hear Hebrew and Arabic spoken in the Nazareth to influence their future. marketplace, they will see , churches, and When B'Tselem director Hagai El - Ad, who is Jewish, synagogues alongside one another in Jaffa, and see the decides that I, my Arab family, and my Arab friends are all coexistence of the Israeli mosaic acros s the country. And living under an apartheid regime, he and his organizations maybe, just maybe, their visit here will make them want to live under an apartheid regime. Yemen’s Houthi Rebels Are a Threat to America’s Allies and Interests By Jonathan Spyer jonathanspyer.com January 18, 2021 Mike Pompeo’s eleven - o’c lock sanctions for an conflict. The Houthis control the capital and a large part Iranian proxy. of the populated center of the country. The government of US designation of Houthis in Yemen forms part of Prime Minister Abd Rabbo Mansur Hadi controls much of efforts to cement hardline strategy toward Iran the sparsely populated east, and the strategically important In a statement issued Sunday, US Secretary of State south and western coastal areas. The pro - government side Mike Pompeo announced that his office was set to inform has itself fractured. The separatist, UAE - supported Congress of it s intention to designate the Ansar Allah Southern Transitional Council controls the port of Aden movement in Yemen (better known as the Houthis) as a and a section of the southern coast. foreign terrorist organization and a Specially Designated To make matters yet more complicated, two rival Global Terrorist entity. The Houthis have been engaged Salafi jihadi networks – Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula in an intermittent insurgency against the govern ment of (AQAP) and the Islamic State group are active on the Yemen since 1994. The insurgency escalated sharply in ground. 2014, when the movement seized the capital, Sanaa, and So divided Yemen represents one of the friction the surrounding areas. It has since held Sana’a, and today points for the regional clash between rival alliances. On remains in control of a large swathe of the territory of the one hand, an uneasy coalition of pro - Saudi and pro - Yemen. The Houthis’ capture of Sana’a triggered a Saudi - Emirati elements (tacitly backed by Egypt and Israel). On led intervention in 2015. th e other, a pro - Iran Shia militia. This intervention is usually depicted in western media The Houthis differ from other pro - Iran forces in the as a resounding failure, and proof of Saudi Crown Prince region in a number of ways. Unlike Lebanese Hizballah, Mohammed Bin - Salman’s impulsiveness and inexperience. the Iraqi Badr Organization and other such militia groups, But while the war in Yemen has without doubt produced the Ansar Allah is not the direct creation of the Isl amic great suffering for the civilian population, the Saudi and Revolutionary Guards Corps. It is built, rather, around Emirati - led intervention did succeed in forestalling the north Yemeni tribal structures. The Houthis themselves potential strategic disaster which would have accompanied are a north Yemeni branch of the Banu Hamdan tribe. a Houthi conquest of the entirety of Yemen. They follow the Zaidiya branch of Shia , whereas the The Yemen i interior consists largely of sand and rock. Iranians and their clients in Iraq and Lebanon are Twelver But the country abuts a strategic choke point of global Shia. importance. This is the Bab el - Mandeb Strait, which These differences have been used by some observers connects the Gulf of Aden to the Red Sea. Bab el - Mandeb to suggest that the Houthis belong to a different category is a vital route for oil and natural gas shi pments passing when compared to other Iran - supported militias, and that from the Persian Gulf to the Red Sea and on to the Suez it is therefore simplistic to define events in Yemen along Canal. Around 9% of total global petroleum products pass the lines of a proxy conflict. through the strait. Had the Houthis captured the area in But while local conditions should not be ignored, the 2015, it would have given their patrons – Iran – the ability weight of evidence for extensive Iranian support to the to choke off the Strait at will, and thus hold the world Houthis is overwhelming. This week, an article in Arab economy to ransom. The Saudis and their allies failed to News offered new and intriguing detail regarding th e reconquer the entirety of Yemen from the pro - Iranian process whereby Teheran ensures the flow of weaponry to forces. But they did protect Bab el - Mandeb. Similarly, the their Yemeni allies. intervention prevented the main por t of Yemen, al - Arab News interviewed four Yemeni fishermen who Hudayda, from falling under the complete control of the revealed that they had been brought to the Iranian port of Houthis. Bandar Abbas, via a humanitarian flight to Oman. They The result is that Yemen, like a number of other Arab had then been t rained by Iranian personnel in the use of countries, is now subject to de facto division and ongoing GPS, camouflage and in control and maintenance of Focus o n Israel January 30, 2021 Page 10 vessels. The men had been deployed in the Somali coastal Iran in place over the last two years. The designation to city of Berbera, from where they would engage in the designate the Houthis appears to be part of a series of transport of Iranian consignments of Iran across the B ab moves intended to make it difficult for the incoming el - Mandeb Strait to the Houthis in Yemen. They revealed Administration to move back to a path of appeasement of an ongoing, complex and extensive arms supply operation. Iran. Iran uses the territory in Yemen controlled by the It is questionable if the se moves will succeed. Iranian Houthis for the launching of missiles on Saudi Arabia. support for the Houthis will not be seriously impacted by The Houthis also provide a conv enient, ostensibly the move. Teheran is obviously indifferent to such independent address, at which Teheran can ‘park’ acts for designations. A number of aid agencies expressed concern which it prefers not to claim responsibility. For example, that the designation may make it harder for the transfer of the Houthis claimed responsibility for the very significant, food and humanitarian aid into Houthi controlled areas. extensive and sophisticated attack on Saudi oil facilitie s at But what the move perhaps reveals most clearly is concern Abqaiq and Khurais in September, 2019. The attack on the part of Pompeo and his team that much of the involved the use of drones and cruise missiles, and was far momentum built up of pressure on Iran and its proxies is beyond capabilities that the Houthis could have mustered now set to go to waste. Thi s concern is shared in a independently. number of regional capitals, including Jerusalem. It The 11th hour designation by the US is clearly remains to be seen whether these concerns will be realized intended to help for malize and cement the current in the period ahead. But either way, the designations of Administration’s policy of maximum pressure on Iran, to the Houthis as a terrorist organization, while clearly the greatest extent possible. Pompeo and his team at the repre senting an accurate description of reality, is unlikely State Department have been the driving force behind the to impact on the developing situation in a very significant maximum pressure which has largely succeeded in holding way. Israel - Palestinian Peace Starts with Combating Anti - Semitism By Jonathan Michanie nationalinterest.org January 20, 2021 A foundation o f lies will not hold up the structure of however, will lear n about the near 250,000 Jews that peace. existed in before the establishment of the State Within the last four months, Morocco and Bahrain of Israel. As a result, children there will grow up knowing have managed to accomplish something that the that Jews are indigenous to the Levant and not an Palestinian Authority has failed to do for decades: adopt extension of the century - long European colonialist sys tem. the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s Nearly a month after the Kingdom of Bahrain decided (IHRA ) definition of anti - Semitism, which recognizes to join the historic Abraham Accords, Sheikh Khalid bin Jewish self - determination as a core component of Jewish Khalifa Al Khalifa, head of the King Hamad Global identity. Unless lessons are learned from Israel’s recent Centre for Peaceful Coexistence, signed a memorandum of peace agreements with Arab countries, Palestinians are understanding on combating anti - Zioni sm — a core unlikely to see their status quo change any time soon. principle outlined in the IHRA definition of anti - Semitism. For decades, pundits speculated that the key to solving Capitalizing on the importance of Jewish education, Israel the Israeli - Palestinian conflict would be unveiled once welcomed a delegation of prominent Emirati and Bahraini Israel managed to normalize ties with Arab countries activists who toured the country and learned about the across the Middle East and North Africa. They were Jewish connectio n to the land of Israel. The delegation was correct. What most did n ot expect, however, is that Israel’s even taken to Jerusalem’s Yad Vashem Holocaust Museum ongoing peace deals with Arab countries would provide where they heard stories about the Holocaust in Arabic. blueprints for what a long - lasting, meaningful, and This means that while prominent activists throughout the reconciliatory peace agreement with the Palestinian United Arab Emirates and Bahrain share their experiences leadership would look like. Looking back at nearly forty - in learning about the Holocaust with their audiences and two years of cold peace with Egypt — filled with academic, its impact on modern Israeli society, Palestinians in the cultural, and athletic boycotts — why should have we West Bank continue to be led by a man who wrote his expected peace with the UAE, Bahrain, and Morocco to dissertation on the premise that the movement for Jewish be any different? Days after King Mohammed VI’s self - determination c onspired with the Hitler’s Third announcement that Reich — a Ph.D. in Holocaust denial. Morocco would normalize relations with the Jewish The new wave of peace in the Middle East promises state, Rabat announced its decision to include both Jewish to be one between peoples and not just government. This history and culture lessons in its primary school is the only sort of peace that should be deemed acceptable curriculum. This stands in stark contrast to the education for activists desiring to see a resolution to the Israeli - offered by the Palestinian Authority (PA), the West Bank Palestinian conflict. As such, there are three main lessons entity that rules over the majority of Palestinians. Under that should be learned from Israel’s recent peace the PA, eleven - year - old children are subjected to the anti - agreements with Arab countries in the Gulf and North Semitic indoctrination program. Children in Morocco, Africa and applied to the Israeli - Palestinian conflict. Th ese Page 11 January 30, 2021 F ocus o n Israel must happen before the State of Israel makes any further Palestinians believe in a peace process based on concessions to the Palestinian Authority. negotiations. First, Mahmoud Abbas’ government must immediately A long - lasting peace agreement can only be sustained and unconditionally accept the IHRA definition of anti - if both peoples are allowed to humanize one another and Semitism. Such an acceptance would demonstrate t he believe in the potential of economic, security, and cultural Palestinian leadership’s commitment to recognizing relatio ns with one another. The decades - long Palestinian Zionism as a basic tenant of Judaism and, as a result, Authority pay - for - slay policy runs counter to this spirit. accept to coexist with a sovereign, Jewish state. Moreover, Lastly, the Palestinian Authority’s system of anti - such a move is likely to positively impact the Israeli Semitic indoctrination in its schooling system must be electorate’s hope that the Pales tinian leadership is able and eradicated. From a young age, Palestinian children are willing to move forward with a meaningful and taught to view Zionism as an inherent threat to their comprehensive peace process — a 2020 poll indicated that nationalist aspirations and that Jews are a European people 80 + percent of Israelis believe peace with the Palestinians who have colonized their ancestral homeland. A is unlikely to happen within the next five years. foundation of lies will not hold up the structure of peace. Second, the PA’s next step must include the Palestinian children must be exposed to studies that dismantling of the pay - for - slay policy. Established by detail Jewish connection to the land and to the region. Yasser Arafat in the late 1960s, the policy encourages the They must be taught about the horrific legacy of anti - murder of Israeli civilians by promising perpetual salaries Semitism and its modern shapes and forms. to terrorists and their families. In fact, in 201 7 the Unless these three steps are endorsed by the Palestinian Authority’s total expenditure for this program stakeholders of the Israeli - Palestinian conflict, a resolution totaled nearly $355 million. The Palestinian leadership’s is unlikely to happen in the near future, and — even if one commitment to this horrendous policy is deemed of such is found — it is unlikely to last long. importance that, even amidst a pandemic, the PA decided These three steps will grant Palestinians and Israelis to prioritize payments to convicted terrorists and their the promise of a prosperous and peaceful future. The same families over the distribution of salaries to social welfare future that we are beginning to see for the people of recipients. This policy has only helped to further demonize Morocco, Bahrain, and the UAE. Israelis in the eyes of Palestinians — it is no surprise that a Mr. Michanie is a Middle East Analyst and Ph.D. student at September 2020 poll indicated that onl y 24 percent of Northeastern University. The Rising Tide of Islamist Violence in France, and the Anti - Semitism at Its Core By Marc Weitzmann nybooks.com February 11, 2021 “You are two of the things I hate most: French and daughter had been upset by it — in fact she was absent Jewish.” from school that day. It was this father’s comments on On October 16, 2020, Samuel Paty, a forty - seven - year - social media that had captured Anzorov’s attention. old history and civics teacher at a public middle school in A course on and citizenship is Conflans - Sainte - Honorine, a northwestern suburb of P aris, compulsory in French public schools, and Paty had taught was attacked and beheaded. His assailant, Abdoullakh it to his eighth - grade students since coming to Conflans - Anzorov, was eighteen and lived sixty miles away in Sainte - Honorine in 2017. Each year he included a Normandy. The son of Muslim Chechen refugees, discussion about the sa tirical newspaper Anzorov was born in Russia and came to France with his and briefly displayed a cover it had published in 2012 parents when he was six. He had never met Pa ty and didn’t showing an especially mocking caricature of the Prophet know what he looked like, so he paid two students he . The cover was an escalation of a conflict that found outside the school to identify him. Surveillance went back to 2005, when, in response to the murder of th e cameras show the students pointing at Paty as he walked filmmaker Theo van Gogh by an Islamist in Amsterdam, a out the front gate around 5:00 PM. Anzorov followed him Danish newspaper, the Jyllands - Posten, published a and stabbed him repeat edly in the middle of the street with provocative series of cartoons of the Prophet. These drew a twelve - inch knife he had bought the day before. Then he protests, threats of violence, and Saudi Arabia’s decision to decapitated him. pull its ambassador from Den mark. Charlie Hebdo Anzorov posted a picture of Paty’s severed head on reprinted them in solidarity, as did more than a dozen with the caption “From Abdullah, the servant of other newspapers in Europe and around the world. Allah, to Macron, leader of the infi dels, I executed one of A journal with a strong — and, it must be said, very your hellhounds who dared to belittle Muhammad.” A few French — anticlerical tradition, Charlie Hebdo has also minutes later he was stopped by police and killed as he mercilessly caricatured Jes us, , and the pope. But any fired at them with an air gun he had concealed in his depiction of Muhammad is considered by many backpack. Muslims, and after a lawsuit was initiated against Charlie Paty had been aware of threats against him. The father Hebdo by the World Islamic League, a Saudi organization, of one of his students had spoken out against a lesson Paty threats to “avenge the Prophet” grew. In November 20 11 had taught on October 5, on free speech, claiming that his the newspaper’s offices were firebombed (they were empty Focus o n Isr ael Janua ry 30, 2021 P age 12 at the time). The following year, Charlie Hebdo published since the late 1980s and has been well known for his fiery a cover showing the Prophet naked with his exposed rear anti - Semitic speeches. In the 2000s he founded a group end facing the viewer, with the caption “Muhammad a Star called the Sheikh Yassin Collective, named for a founder Is Born!” of Hamas who was killed in an Israeli airstrike in 2004, and The editors beg an receiving anonymous death threats, managed a radical Islamist publish ing house and bookstore and in January 2015, two armed men, French - Algerian in . brothers named Chérif and Saïd Kouachi, forced their way Several pictures taken in the early 2000s show Sefrioui into the newspaper’s offices and killed twelve people. Two with the French comedian Dieudonné M’Bala M’Bala. Last days later, an associate of the brothers, Amedy Co ulibaly, year, Dieudonné was banned from , YouTube, killed four Jewish hostages at a Hyper Cacher kosher and TikTok for anti - Semitic posts, including mockery of supermarket on the outskirts of Paris. Holo caust victims; he has been convicted in France of hate In his civics class, Paty discussed the Charlie Hebdo speech. In the early 2000s Dieudonné was instrumental in cover as an example of the extreme protections granted spreading a certain anti - Semitic, pro - Islamist populism, free speech in France. On October 4 he drew tw o columns especially among young followers of his in the working - on the board — for Charlie and against Charlie — and asked class banlieues. his students whether the newspaper crossed a line in Another onetime associate of Sefrioui’s is Frédéric printing such insulting images. The discussion would Chatillon, a former fundraiser for the far - right National continue the next day, when the students would see the Front party and a close friend of Marine Le Pen, the caricature itself very briefly , and Paty invited any Muslim current leader of the party (which has been renamed the students who didn’t want to look to cover their eyes or National Rally). leave the room if they preferred. One student, a thirteen - Brahim Chnina, for his part, was al ready known to year - old Muslim girl identified as Y. Chnina, had French intelligence primarily because of his half - sister, complained in class on the first day of the discussion, Khadija, who joined ISIS in Syria in 2014. Sefrioui and asking why Muslim students were being singled out. The Chnina, in short, offer a glimpse of the strange next day she didn’t come to school, sending a note saying environment that has helped nurture ethnic and religious she was sick. tensions in France ov er the last two decades. There is no question that the cover is offensive. For a complex mix of reasons — including the collapse According to students who were interviewed, much of the of the Middle East peace process, Islamist propaganda that class laughed when they saw i t. But that night the girl’s attributes the Iraq war to a Jewish lobby in Washington, father, Brahim Chnina, uploaded a video in which he and Dieudonné’s popularity — anti - Semitism has been the called Paty un voyou (a thug) and accused him of forcing leading m otivation of these tensions for the past twenty all the Muslims out of the room to show a blasphemous years. It was typical that, when Sefrioui and Chnina drawing. On Facebook, WhatsApp, Twitter, and Snapchat, showed up unannounced at Paty’s school to see the the messa ge started to spread. Chnina published more principal, Sefrioui complained, “If we were Jews, you videos decrying what he called Paty’s Islamophobia, would have seen us immediately,” the magazine Le Po int exhorting his “brothers and sisters to write to the reported. “It is because of the Jews,” Chérif Kouachi, one CCIF” — the Committee Against Islamophobia in of the Charlie Hebdo gunmen, said after the attacks. At France — in order to get rid of “that sick man.” He gave the Hyper Cacher, according to survivors, Coulibaly said to Paty’s na me and the address of the school. his hostages, “You are two of the things I hate most: Over the next eleven days, Paty tried to defuse what French and Jewish.” he thought of as a misunderstanding, explaining that he The Kouachi brothers were reportedly first radicalized had offered Muslim students the option of leaving class by Farid Benyettou, a young man with an Algerian out of respect, not intending any offense. He met with background who was preaching in a near sc hool administrators and other parents, and offered to Belleville, in northeastern Paris. Benyettou’s group, known meet with Chnina, who refused. Instead, Chnina filed a as the Buttes - Chaumont network, sent a dozen youn g men criminal complaint against Paty, claiming he had to Iraq to be trained by jihadists. Coulibaly, a petty criminal distributed “pornographic images.” and drug dealer, met Chérif Kouachi in prison. Chérif Meanwhile, Chnina kept up his campaign. One of the himself was trained for the Charlie Hebdo attacks by al - videos he po sted shows his daughter expressing outrage Qaeda in Yemen. about her teacher. “Even non - Muslims were shocked,” she 2. The tensions around the Charlie Hebdo trial, as it says. “Why does he attack our religion?” This question is was so mewhat inaccurately called — on trial were fourteen directed toward the man interviewing her, Abdelhakim accessories to the attacks at both the newspaper and the Sefrioui, who went to see the school principal with Chnina Hyper Cacher — cannot be separated from the Paty on October 8, presenting himself as Chnina’s religious murder. The trial began on September 2, 2020, and to adviser. With Sefrioui involved, the misunderstanding Paty mark the occasion, the editors of Charlie Hebdo r eprinted was trying to clear up shifted gears. Sefrioui, sixty - one, is the original offending cartoons that the Jyllands - Posten an Islamist militant from Morocco who has been in France published in 2005. But in sharp contrast to the wave of Page 13 January 30, 2021 Fo cus on Israel solidarity that followed the 2015 attack — “,” According to a new book by Jean - Pierre Obin, a read the banners — reactions in the press and on social former schools inspector, as many as half the teachers in media ranged from co nfusion to hostility. Many wondered, predominantly immigrant neighborhoods across France What was Charlie Hebdo doing? say that Muslim students of theirs have objected to lessons Then, on September 11 (the timing was clearly on su bjects such as history and biology. A study by the deliberate), al - Qaeda issued a five - page statement attacking Fondation Jean Jaurès, a think tank, found that almost half Charlie Hebdo and France and calling on Muslims to take of these teachers admit that they sometimes self - censor on action. Eleven days later Marika Bret, the paper’s human religious issues to avoid conflict. Part of the problem, resources manager, had to be escorted from her apartment Obin writes, is that Muslim p arents — who may come from by police because of what they judged was an imminent places where religion rules everyday life — don’t always threat to her life. On September 25, three weeks before understand the concept of laïcité and teachers aren’t Paty was killed, a twenty - five - year - old man named Zaheer trained to teach it. For many school administrators, ne pas H assan Mahmoud, an immigrant from Pakistan who had faire de vagues (don’t make waves) is the whispered planned to set fire to the Charlie Hebdo offices, instead agreement: avoid problems at all costs. In retrospect, severely injured two journalists for a nearby TV Obin’s book makes Paty’s engagement with his students, production company with a meat cleaver. That same his willingness to debate, look courageous. evening Anzorov, incensed by the reports of Mahmo ud’s French president felt the shock of attempted strike, began his search for a potential target. Paty’s murder himself. On October 2, just two weeks The news of Paty’s murder plunged France into a state before, h e had given a long - awaited speech on Islamic of shock. The terror attacks of 2015 had certainly “separatism” — what he characterizes as a kind of traumatized the country — in addition to the violence in “counter - society” influenced by political - religious groups January, they included coordinated attacks that killed more opposed to France’s secular values — and his government’s than a hundred people on a single ni ght in November, policy toward and Islam in Fra nce. when terrorists bombed the Saint - Denis stadium during a Speaking for more than an hour, Macron promised a soccer match, while more opened fire on sidewalk cafés “radical change” in public housing policies to end the and restaurants in Paris and a third group staged a mass racial and ethnic ghettoization that has plagued France’s assault on the Bataclan theater in central Paris, killing banlieues and cités. In the 1960s and 1970s, a large portion mostly young people. A massacre followed on July 14, of the migrants who moved t here originally came from 2016, in , which left eighty - six dead. Then there were France’s former colonies in North Africa, or the a number of less noticed but no less grim killings, like that Maghreb — in Algeria, Tunisia, and Morocco. Macron of a Catholic priest in Normandy who had his throat cut explicitly acknowledged France’s colonial past and the during mass later that summer. traumas it still hasn’t resolved. It was a terror wave of unprecedented scale in Europe, At the same time, citing the Islamist attac ks of recent leaving 238 dead and hundreds injured. Although no years, Macron announced stricter oversight of mosques global scheme was discernible, Coulibaly had pledged and Islamic religious associations, and a requirement for allegiance to the Islamic State before the Hyper Cacher to be trained and certified in France. (If a law killings, while al - Qaeda claimed credit for the a ssault on Macron proposed in December is passed, mosques such as Charlie Hebdo. Thus the attacks appeared to be a step the one in Paris’s Be lleville neighborhood that the Kouachi toward an alliance between the two rival organizations. In brothers attended, where Farid Benyettou was invited to 2004 an al - Qaeda operative had published an e - book called teach radical Salafi Islam, would be shut down.) The Management of Savagery, which offered a plan for The speech was received with strong criticism in creating a caliphate t hrough global terror. The terrible France and abroad — especially in Turkey, from which half streak of violence in 2015 – 2016 seemed to indicate that of the imams currently practicing in France come — and France had been selected as the best place in Europe to Macron was responding to the condemnation when the test it. murder of Paty occurred. He had attempted to strike a Yet the death of Samuel Paty hit many French almost balance, recognizing France’s failures toward its migrant as hard. There were demonstrations throughout th e population while addressing the country’s probl em with country, including many rallies organized by teachers. To terrorist violence, but the killing pushed him in only one harm a public school teacher in France was to attack a direction. national symbol of the 150 - year - old republic and its more On October 21 Macron presided over an homage to recent tradition of laïcité — the particularly French version Paty outside the Sorbonne, as his government launched a of secularism that guar antees the right of all religions to series of police investigations and crackdowns on groups exist, yet denies the right of religion to control public life. identified as rad ical Islamist organizations. Marwan There are laws against hate speech and against insulting Muhammad, the leader of the CCIF, which was named in people for their religion, but the concept of blasphemy is Brahim Chnina’s videos, decried the Islamophobia he said not recognized, as it would mean that a religion was was possessing the government. In Le Monde, Clémentine sanctioning speech. Autain of the French Communist Party denounced the Focus o n Isr ael Janua ry 30, 2021 P age 14 poli tical manipulation of the attack and the way French natio n was, at least in theory, to be: the bearer of universal society was becoming “pre - fascist.” values generously provided by France to its minorities, Such antiestablishment feelings were not limited to the who in turn would gladly become French. left. On the night of Paty’s murder, in a live chat held by a The ideals of emancipation and assimilation found an group called Les DéQodeurs — a sort of French affili ate of early challenge in Haiti, when Toussaint Louvertu re QAnon — both the killing and the Charlie Hebdo trial were demanded that they be applied to the colonies. But the called “a sideshow.” “It’s a false flag, a Macron coup,” one contradictions erupted and deepened later, when Algeria participant said. “The deep state is against all religions!” became a template for France’s new colonial policy. 3. The colonial past Macron alluded to in his speech During most of France’s imperial era, the colonies raised complex que stions about French values and identity were seen as “part of the Republic,” an d assimilation was that are at the heart of the country’s situation today. seen, as a member of the colonial administration wrote in Historians divide the country’s colonial period into two 1894, “as the most intimate union between the colonial distinctive parts. The first, the “royal empire,” begins in territory and mainland France.” Yet in 1860 Louis - the seventeenth century with Louis XIV, the Sun King, in Napoleon developed the dream of making France “a the Americas, the West Indies, and West Africa. This Muslim power” that would extend from Paris to the period included the slave trade and missionary trips to Middle East. Algerians would be governed under the Africa to convert “savages” to Catholicism, and ended principal of associationisme — the opposite of assimilation; roughly with the fall of Napoleon, in 1814. The second it would allow them to live “in association with” the phase of French colonial ism, which began in 1830 with the colonial society. They would not have to follow the Code conquest of Algeria, was born in post - revolutionary France civil; thu s they would not have full political rights but and was marked by the Enlightenment. It died with could practice traditions that would otherwise be deemed France’s defeat in Indochina and Algeria in the mid - illegal, such as . If such exceptions benefited the twentieth century. upper classes, for most Algerians the “special status” To understand France’s relationships with its colonies meant total disenfranchisement. Duri ng the following during that second phase, one must remember that during decades, that status turned Algeria into a quasi - apartheid the ancien régime, the concept of citizenship did not exist regime. in the country, or anywhere else in Europe. The king In 1882 public education became mandatory in France reigned by divine right over subjects who were divided and in the colonies, and Algerian children were sent to into separate group s with varying privileges and rules. In school to learn about equality and the revolution. In a the eighteenth century, during the Enlightenment, political couple o f generations, a cohort of Algerian intellectuals led philosophers such as Rousseau and Diderot began to their country toward its war of independence. From its envision a world in which subjects would become free and beginning in 1954 to Algeria’s victory in 1962, Algerians equal citizens who would unite around “the gener al will” fought against French injustice with the French vocabulary of “the Nation” — another new word of the era. of universalism, and France fo ught back with During the revolution, in search of a model for this antidemocratic practices in the name of the republic. new world ruled by the people, the young National On both sides there was a systematic use of torture, Assembly first turned to the Roman republic, and then to mass killings, and terrorism against the civilian population. the Bible and the Jews. Rousseau famously saw in Moses The winning side in Algeria — the National Liberation the first leader to dare shaping “a swarm of wretched Front (FLN) — immediat ely eliminated the opposition, fugitives into a national body.” A tiny minority at the time, banned elections, made the country a satellite of the USSR, the Jews of France were deprived of rights and submitted and in less than two decades turned into one of the most to constant controls, but they were permitted to follow corrupt regimes in North Africa. their own legi slative and religious rules. In 1791 the Between 1962 and 1981, the percentage of immigrants government legally “emancipated” the country’s Jews — in the French populatio n rose from 5 to 8 percent. They granting them civic equality and political rights, but, came from Morocco, Tunisia, and other former colonies, importantly, as individuals, not as a separate cluster of but mostly they came from Algeria. Some were “Harkis,” people. The revolutionaries would use them as a t est Muslims who had fought for the French, while others had group, so to speak, “for the much larger debate over how fought against France and came out of economic necessity, to achieve the conversion of tens of millions of French looking for work on construction sites or as garbagemen, subjects, peasants and princes, peddlers and priests, into sleeping in shelters or in shantytowns on the outskirts of citizens,” as David Nirenberg wrote in Anti - Judaism Paris. They sent money home and usually intended to go (2013). back someday. But most did not go back. These men, as The consequences of the law of emancipation cannot the Algerian writer Kamel Daou d has said, were the last be overestimated. Its influence was felt throughout Europe “ghosts” of the imperial era. in the rise of secular Jewish life, and gave way to the In the US, to be a migrant, at least the way many “assimilation” of the Jews in France. The concept of people think of it, has meant to leave the “old country” assimilation became the cornerstone of what the new behind and start fresh in an unknown place. In France, Page 15 January 30, 2021 Fo cus on Israel migrants from former North African col onies have been To say that the French government was perplexed by far more likely to arrive with a bitterness about the shared the mov ement would be an understatement. In 1981 history of both places, as they settled in a country haunted François Mitterrand had been elected the first left - wing by its former glory and the contradictions of its own ideals. president of the Fifth Republic. His victorious “United As a young journalist in Paris in the early 1980s, I Left” had its roots in the dreams of a generation of mostly wor ked at an alternative weekly paper called Sans Frontière white working - class people, dating back t o the 1930s and that specialized in migrant issues. Our staff was made up the Popular Front, whose children had risen into the mostly of Marxist militants, political refugees from North middle class during the period of postwar economic Africa, and a couple of Jews like me who intuited that the growth. Their standard of living was owed, in part, to the migrant question was ab out to become one of the migrant workforce that had made France’s prosperity country’s central issues. possible. Yet many of the migrants’ children wanted to be In 1983 the newspaper played an important part in French like “any other,” confounding their parents as gathering support for a demonstration for equality, much as the government — for one thing, Laacher nicknamed the Marche des Beurs. (“Beur” is slang for explained, “as immigrants, they wanted their children to be Arab, and referred especially to the sons of migra nt as discreet as possible.” families, who often encountered police violence, racism, The humiliation of staying permanentl y in the country and social discrimination, despite being French by right. A that had once been an oppressive colonial power in your child born to foreign parents who has continuously lived native country was another issue — especially, perhaps, in France for five or more years becomes French among Algerians, who in many cases had actually fought automatically when he or she tu rns eighteen.) The march, against France, and had sometimes been tortured by the partly inspired by the US civil rights movement, started in French military. An d North African countries tended to the south of France in the fall and grew as it made its way encourage a sense of alienation. “Moroccans will never be north. This was the high point of what became known as integrated [into French society],” Morocco’s King Hassan the Beur movement; it culminated that December with a II said in 1993. “Even if they expressed such a wish, they 1 00,000 - person demonstration in Paris. could not succeed, and would make bad French. I would Participants in the ‘Marche des Beurs’ demonstration discourage the French to try to change this.” for equality meeting with Pierre Bérégovoy, the minister of With Algeria, the policy toward France was more social affairs, Paris, 1983. Father Delorme, who helped deliberate. The party in power since independence, the organize the march, is at far right. FLN, set up an association in the 1960s called l’Amicale What is stri king to recall now is how few of the people des Algériens en France that, under the co ver of providing my colleagues and I met, interviewed, and demonstrated social support to Algerian migrant workers, was actually an with at the time defined themselves first and foremost as instrument of police surveillance and nationalist Muslim. Except for a few of the older women, veils were propaganda. virtually absent, and niqabs — the full - body covering that For the French government, ignoring such reveals only the eyes — were unheard of. (Today, by arrangements was part of a deal with Algeria and Morocco comparison, according to the Institut Montaigne, about 30 to replace colonial ism with an “Arab policy,” which percent of Muslim women in France have worn some sort included gas and oil contracts. In the prosperous 1960s of veil.) Young people wanted to talk about the struggle and 1970s in France, it seemed that everyone found a for equal rights, jobs, and access to a decent life. A role reason to ignore the migrants’ situation or exploit their model for them was Rachid Taha, an Algerian singer in his labor. But by the 1980s the demands of the younger mid - twenties who had, after his parents immigrated, spent gener ation began to disturb the status quo. most of his life in France, and whose musical style was a The timing could hardly have been worse. By the mix of Algerian raï and chaabi on the one han d and rock middle of the decade the unemployment rate was over 10 on the other. percent. The country was failing to integrate and elevate “The big issue was equality, not religion,” Smaïn the white working class; how would it do so with the Laacher, a sociologist at the University of Strasbourg, told children of its migrants? Officially, the French government me. Laacher is part of that generation (his parents are made statements in favor of assimilation. But the reality in Algerian) and studies it professionally. The only religious the 1980s and 1990s was different. The often shabby figu re of note in the Beur movement, he said, was Father migrant neighborhoods were left on their own, and Delorme, a Catholic priest and social worker who helped segregation was not seriously addressed. organize the 1983 march. “Although mostly French Some integration efforts have, how ever, proven citizens, or dual citizens, the Beurs were discriminated effective, at least to a point, and France today is a against because of their name, or their a ddress or multicultural country. The Institut Montaigne study cited appearance, when they went looking for a job.” Hence above found that 65 to 70 percent of French Muslims their slogan: “We are French like all the others and we surveyed describe themselves as secular, or state that want the same problems as any others,” in tune with the religion and the Republi c are equally important to them. At assimilationist ideal. the same time, according to a recent Fondation Jean Jaurès Focus o n Isr ael Janua ry 30, 2021 P age 16

report, 42 percent also say that they have been 2006 of Ilan Halimi, also twenty - three, by a gang, which discriminated against at least once in their lives because of ultimately involved the complicity of dozens of people. their religion. Neither of these murders was committed by Islamists. Yet the most striking aspect of the se studies may well What they express ed, however, was a blind rage that an be in the vocabulary. Somewhere along the way, the Islamist ideology would later be able to shape. By the end French offspring of migrants demanding full citizenship of 2014, after fifteen years of rising tension that had came to be called — and, more importantly, called included the 2012 killings of Jewish children and French themselves — the “Muslims of France.” soldiers in by Mohamed Merah, the num ber of Shortly after Paty’s murder, I spoke with Oce ane, a anti - Semitic incidents had reached eight hundred a year, or forty - year - old lawyer of Algerian background whose father more than two per day. came to France in the 1980s to work in construction. “I And where does this leave the country now? If feel anxious since the killing,” she told me. “I keep tensions, attacks, and the marked thinking of what we went through during the Algerian civil the Charlie Hebdo trial, did its end bring any closure? In war in the 1990s.” Oce ane was referring to the bloodbath Decem ber all fourteen defendants were found guilty, but into which Algeria plunged in 1991, claiming 200,000 lives, charges of terrorism were dropped for six of them. mostly women and children. Most of the mass killings I recently exchanged e - mails with Abdennour Bidar, a were committed by the Armed Islamic Group (GIA), the Muslim philosopher of the Sufi tradition and a highly military branch of a political party called the Islamic regarded expert on the history of Islam. In 201 5, after the Salvation Front (FIS), which was determined to fight any attack against Charlie Hebdo, Bidar published an “open Western “decadent” influences and establish an “Islamic letter to the Muslim world” in which he urged Muslims to state” either by vote or by force. Oceane was a teenager in acknowledge their responsibility in the birth of “the France then, but she recalled her mother trying to get her monster” ISIS, and to not take refuge in “self - defense” niece out of Algeria be cause their family was being without also taking “ the responsibility of self - criticism.” I threatened by Islamists. “I remember the phone calls we asked Bidar what he thought of the situation in France received to announce who had been killed and that there now, in the aftermath of the trial and of the Paty killing, was nothing we could do. In Algeria, too, the first targets which almost overshadowed it. were the journalists and the professors.” “Paty’s murder shocked me enormously,” he said. “I Members of th e FIS settled in France as early as 1990 have been a teacher for twenty years. That a teacher could and started to proselytize and set up the Salafi networks be killed for doing his job, to teach freedom of thought, is that would strongly influence Islam in the country in less horrifying. It touches me personally.” Beyond that, he said, than a decade. The French scholar of Islam Gilles Kepel the trial did not change anything. writes that during the 1990s “Algerian jih ad awakened a lot After the killing, at the request of President Macron, of sympathies among the French migrant youth.” Among the French Council of the Muslim Faith, an advisory body, these youth was Farid Benyettou, the future religious met to create a “charter of values” that would disassociate mentor of the Kouachi brothers. them from Islamist views and reiterate the commitment of Benyettou, whom I interviewed in 2016, confirmed the Muslims of France to the principles of the Republic. that his interest in Salafi thinking grew out of I slamist Then, on December 28, the re ctor of the Great Mosque of propaganda from Algeria. One of his brothers - in - law, a Paris, Chems - Eddine Hafiz, published an open letter to member of the GIA who had left Algeria for France in announce his withdrawal from the discussions. According 1993, was arrested and charged with plotting a terror to Le Journal du Dimanche, he made his decision after attack against the World Cup in Paris. Another former several groups, including the Muslim Brotherhood, member of the GIA, Djamel Beghal , influenced Amedy objected to t he proposed charter, which supported equality Coulibaly, the future perpetrator of the Hyper Cacher between the sexes and denounced homophobia, misogyny, massacre, after they met in prison in the early 2000s. and anti - Semitism. It was between 2001 and 2015 that Islamist violence in “They wanted to undermine the project,” Hafiz told France germinated. Benyettou noted that a crucial factor me over the phone. “French Muslims want to live in was the rise of the Internet and satellite TV, which brought peace. But these groups attempt by any means to separate foreign propaganda into family living rooms. “The youth them from the rest of the country.” He noted that he was really started to come into the mosques en masse in the from Algeria, and had experienced the violence of the civil wake of the Second Intifada,” he said. “And of course the war. “In France, my responsibility is to defend the war in Iraq after that.” Muslims and denounce malicious groups who seek to This may help ex plain the rise of anti - Semitic violence move a peaceful religion in the direction of war.” Since he in France during that period. Random acts of brutality published the open letter, Hafiz told me, he has been included the killing in 2003 of twenty - three - year - old under constant police protection. Sébastien Selam by his childhood friend Adel Amastaibou Bidar and Hafiz are liberal - minded men from an older (Amastaibou plunged a knife in Selam’s eye before y elling generation, and it is among young men that the potential in the streets, “I killed a Jew!”), or the torture and killing in to radicalize is most apparent. I asked Bidar whether he Page 17 January 30, 2021 Fo cus on Israel believed that France, in light of its history, could be the reports of jokes made about his death online, and soil from which a new, liberal Islam could arise. He said he statements across the country in defense of terrorism. believed it could, “but it will take time.” Meanwhile, since Mr. Weitzmann is the author of twelve books, including, most the killing of Samuel Paty the re have been hundreds of recently, Hate: The Rising Tide of Anti - Semitism in France . What the world can learn about immunity from Israel’s vaccine rollout By Abigail Klein Leichman israel21c.org January 27, 2021 Israel's extraordinary vaccination program has statistically, the disease is less severe in the vaccinated provided a wealth of information about the Pfizer - [even one dose] than in the non - vaccinated.” BioNTech vaccine and it's impact. Indeed, Maccabi reported that although 20 members More than 1.3 million Israelis have already received got infected with Covid - 19 after the second dose — out of both doses of the Covid - 19 vaccine from Pfizer - 128,600 in total – they experienced only mild symptoms BioNTech. The extraordinarily fast and organized and recovered at home. vaccination campaign in Israel is unmatch ed per capita Also encouraging was a Sheba study that found anywhere in the world. employees who received both doses had more antibodies By design, this fast rollout is providing Pfizer – and against the novel coronavirus than di d recovered Covid - 19 the rest of us – with the first critical real - world data on patients. brand - new mRNA vaccines. What we don’t know This type of vaccine instructs cells to make a “spike” “For now, nobody knows how long the vaccine protein that triggers t he immune system to produce protects,” says Keller. “We may need updated vaccines antibodies against the matching spike protein on the every year or two.” surface of the SARS - CoV - 2 coronavirus, which causes Dr. Gili Regev - Yochay, director of Sheba’s Infectious Covid - 19. Disease Epidemiology Unit, and her staff will follow up “Pfizer knows the data they will get from Israel is for more than a year with vaccinated volunteers to good and accurate. They see our rate of vaccination is very continue studying the interaction between the virus and efficient so they can report post - marketing data to the the vaccine. FDA quickly,” says microbiology expert Dr. Natan Keller, Regev - Yochay said it is unlikely that vaccinated people vice - chairman of Sheba Medical Center’s Institutional can still spread the SARS - CoV - 2 virus to others, but t hat’s Review Board Committee and past president of the Israeli not yet proven. Society of Infectious Diseases. Nor is there scientific data supporting some countries’ FDA emergency use approval for the Pfizer vaccine decision to delay administration of the second dose due to was based on a study of 24,000 vaccine recipients and high morbidity a nd vaccine shortages. 24,000 placebo recipients, says Keller. “Waiting longer might be better, the same, or it could Israel now has data from more than 2.7 million who be worse,” says Ella Sklan, PhD, of Tel Aviv University got at least one dose and the number increases by about medical school’s department of clinical immunology and 100 ,000 per day. microbiology. ISRAEL21c gathered information from local experts “Since 21 days between doses in the Pfizer trials and and national health - maintenance organizations (HMOs) on 28 days in the Moderna trials were the only conditions what Israel has learned about the vaccine and its efficient tested and proved efficient, any deviation from these distribution. We will continue to keep you updated as new schedules is an experiment,” Sklan tells ISRAEL21c. data emerges, and as the Moderna mRNA vaccine comes “That’s why most health agencies do not recommend into use in Israel. delaying the second dose. However, for other vaccines, Vaccine Effectiveness though with different mechanisms of action, you can give What we know the second dose half a year later and they work fine.” Pfizer - BioNTech’s studies showed the mRNA Side Effects vaccines to be about 95 percent effective within a “Israel’s public health system has special software certain a mount of time after the second dose. developed ye ars ago for very efficient vaccination logistics “We know Pfizer’s data was quite accurate,” says and follow - up on side effects,” says Keller. Keller. “Effectiveness is in the high 90s after the second “In general, vaccine side effects are extremely rare. dose — Pfizer says eight days, but I recommend 14 days With the Covid vaccine, mostly people have been for full immunity.” reporting minor side effects from the first dose when they Studies from the Clalit and Maccab i HMOs support come for the second dose,” he says. Keller’s recommendation. Even so, Maccabi saw a 60% These effects are mainly soreness or pain at the drop in Covid - 19 hospitalizations among members aged 60 injection site in the arm, which passes after a day or so. and over as little as two days after the second dose. “This comprehensive data is from medical staff or “Based on our data, we know most people infected people above age 60, so we know most of the real side after the first dose were inf ected within the first two weeks effect s and it seems quite safe including minor side of vaccination,” says Keller. “We also know that effects,” concludes Keller. Focus o n Isr ael Janua ry 30, 2021 P age 18

Vaccine Vs. Mutations officer for Clalit Health Services, and an adviser to the “Right now, the virus has infected almost 100 million World Health Organization, recently tweeted, “If we can people in the world and that creates a lot of chances for reach 60% [ vaccinat ions] coverage by March, viral mutations to emerge,” says Sklan. transmission will likely be heavily disrupted and However, s he adds, “We see only one to two transmission dy namics considerably changed for the mutations in the SARS - CoV - 2 virus genome per month — better.” which is not a lot compared to other viruses. Most Vaccination Logistics mutations don’t cause any recognizable change in the virus SYN - RG - Ai Integrative Solutions used its expertise in and some actually harm the virus. It’s rare that a mutation crisis management to help Israeli government agencies gives a virus an advantage.” accomplish a swift and efficient rollout of the Covid She and Keller agree with experts who assume that the vaccines. existing vaccines will be effective against most new Avi Cohen, cof ounder of SYN - RG - Ai. Photo by variants. Avshalom Levi for SYN - RG - Ai “The mRNA vaccines [from Pfizer and Moderna] “Israel’s vaccine campaign was so successful because contain the sequence coding the spike protein — a large the Israeli government used the day - to - day apparatus of protein made up of 1,273 amino acids in a 3 - dimensional our HMO system that touches every citizen,” says Col. structure,” Sklan explains. (Ret.) Avi Cohen, cofounder of SYN - RG - Ai. “The antibody response generated by the vaccine is “Great logistics won’t help if people don’t come,” he against multiple areas on the spike protein. Thus, if there tells ISRAEL21c. “In Israel there are few who do not want are mutations, for example in 10 amino acids, we assume it to take the vaccine, compared to 40% in some European will hav e some impact on the effectiveness but will not countries.” completely block the ability of the antibodies to neutralize Full research and clinical data from Pfizer and the virus. In addition, aside from antibodies, we have other Moderna were provided to primary - care physicians in the immune components that can attack the virus as well.” HMOs. These physicians were the first to get vaccinated as Herd Immunity an example to their patients. Achieving herd immunity — indirect protection that Logistics were adjusted for each place. For example, in occurs when a sufficient percentage of a population has towns with inadequate transportation options, minibuses immunity — depends on the number of infections in a were available to t ake people to the nearest city to get community and other factors, says Sklan. vaccinated. “But it will be difficult to stop infections if a large SYN - RG - Ai is advising several foreign governments proportion of the population, such as children, are not and hopes to bring the Israeli model to other major cities, vaccinated,” she adds. states and nations. Pfizer’s vaccine is approved for ages 16 and over; Cohen advises every country to put vaccination Israel has started vaccinating 16 - to 18 - year - olds. The logistics into the hands of trusted organizations that work pharma company is now doing trials on 12 - to 16 - year - closely with citizens day to day, such as community olds. The Israe li government may be the first country to volunteer groups. consider vaccinating children under 16 who are at high risk “If you operate through the strongest and most of if they get infected. For now, Sklan says, no vaccine trusted such group in each area, it works,” Cohen says. developer is testing in children under 12. Looking Ahead “The only thing we can do, until the vaccine is Even as more data comes in on the effectiveness of appro ved for younger age groups, is get as many people as Covid - 19 vaccines, Sheba’s Keller says preventive possible vaccinated in the age group that can get it, measures of masks, social distancing and handwashing because that will lower the number of infections in the remain essential. general population, the number of severe Covid - 19 “Because there are always some people who will not patients and the probability of the emergen ce of new get vaccinated — or who cannot g et vaccinated for variants.” medical reasons including that they are under 16 or in Israel’s Health Ministry is now advising pregnant chemotherapy, or immune deficient — it is very important women to vaccinated, citing several severe Covid - 19 cases not to stop taking precautions for many months,” he says. in pregnant women and “no evidence of harm resulting “We have a responsibility to protect them too.” from vaccination during the entire pregnancy.” Clalit’s Balicer ad ded that precautions also are Dr. Ran Balicer, epidemio logist and chief innovation necessary because no Covid - 19 vaccine is 100 percent effective. “There is no complete protection,” he said ”

C urrent issue also avail able at su b urbanorthodo x.org . I f you see so meth ing , s end something” – edito r