Friday night we begin the week-long holiday of Sukkot, which happens to be my very favorite holiday. Z’man Simchateinu is the season of our rejoicing.
For seven days we dwell in the sukkah, a (fragile) temporary structure. Example below.
This reminds us that our security comes from Above, and not from what we have constructed for ourselves.
This Sukkot in particular, this is a paramount lesson. We have so little clarity about what is coming down the road – good and bad, so many issues to wrestle with. And so, we are called upon to try our best to bring forth good, and then to trust in Heaven.
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To all those who will be celebrating, I wish a Chag Sameach.
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We are in the midst of a number of unfolding situations. Some clearly seem good, others hold promise but generate unease, and still others merit an “oi vey.” :
I would call Prime Minister Netanyahu’s trip to the US a major success that is likely to reverberate here in Israel and beyond: He has gained political strength in spite of the leftist Israelis who, to their shame, demonstrated against him in New York – more concerned with bringing him down than with whether they would damage their country in the process. In the end, they did not overshadow the positive.
Bibi met with a number of world leaders on the sidelines of the UN, in addition to Biden (who, after months of shunning him, referred to him as a friend and spoke about a visit to the White House). He told the Israeli delegation that had accompanied him that he had met with some 20 leaders from five different continents: included were leaders from Germany, Turkey, South Korea, Ukraine, Paraguay, Congo, Malawi, South Sudan and five Pacific nations.
https://www.jns.org/israel-news/benjamin-netanyahu/23/9/24/321457/
Additionally, he met with UN Secretary-General António Guterres and told him that “the time has come for the U.N. to condemn Iranian subversion and Palestinian terrorism against innocent civilians, and to refrain from its baseless criticism of Israel.” (Emphasis added)
Where the UN, a cesspool of anti-Israel sentiment, is concerned, I would not hold my breath. But good indeed for our prime minister to speak out.
During his meeting with leaders from Congo and Paraguay, they announced their intentions to open, or, in the case of Paraguay, reopen, embassies in Jerusalem. Here you see Congolese president Félix Tshisekedi with Netanyahu.
Five other countries already have their embassies in Jerusalem – the United States, Guatemala, Honduras, Kosovo and Papua New Guinea – and each additional nation that opts to make this move is evidence of greater acceptance of Israel in the international community.
Apparently, Sierra Leone will be next.
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You can see Netanyahu’s entire UN address here:
A major focus was normalization with Saudi Arabia. While it is still not official, it is clearly very close or we would not be hearing the sort of statements that have been forthcoming. Netanyahu said in a CNN interview that the window for this to happen is only a few months.
What was amazing is that Netanyahu’s speech at the UN was carried in Saudi Arabia.
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So? A good thing or not?
It’s not difficult to get caught up in the excitement. Netanyahu called the normalization a “quantum leap” in the region, ending the Arab-Israeli conflict and creating “a corridor of energy pipelines, rail lines, fiber optic cables between Asia and Europe through Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Israel and the United Arab Emirates.”
Such an agreement, he said, would establish an entirely new paradigm in the region: “Peace between Israel and Saudi Arabia will truly create a new Middle East.”
Marvelous to contemplate, especially when we consider what Israel had to contend with in her early years, surrounded by Arab enemies. Netanyahu made this point with maps during his UN speech.
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HOWEVER, we still have no word on what Netanyahu may have agreed to with regard to the Palestinian Arabs. Is it something we can live with in order to achieve this “new Middle East”? There are very definite red lines regarding concessions on land, recognition of a Palestinian state, etc.
During his speech at the UN, the PA’s Mahmoud Abbas said: “Those who think that peace can prevail in the Middle East without the Palestinian people enjoying their full and legitimate national rights are mistaken.”
Yet, this may be no more than his usual bombast, for a report a week ago indicated that the Saudis, eager for the deal for normalization to go through, had convinced Abbas to back away from demands that would kill the possibility of achieving that deal.
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The major reason the Saudis are so eager for this deal is because they seek US support in developing nuclear energy for peaceful purposes.
Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman (MBS) gave an interview in English (a first) a week ago to Bret Baier of Fox News. The prince said that the normalization deal gets closer and closer.
According to Caroline Glick, he also made it clear in this interview “that he won’t accept American appeasement of Iran.”
However we frame it, that is the bottom line here: Saudi interest in normalization with Israel is fueled by the presence of a bellicose Iran at its border not by the desire to have formal diplomatic ties with Israel. Informal ties are already considerable.
https://www.jns.org/middle-east/mohammed-bin-salman/23/9/21/320922/
This is how Glick perceives the situation (emphasis added):
“Saudi Arabia and its fellow Sunni Arab states oppose the U.S.’s nuclear appeasement of Tehran just as fervently as Israel. But over the past decade, the Sunnis opted to let Israel do the heavy lifting…
“In a nutshell, the Obama-Biden policy is to enable Iran to become a nuclear threshold state—and beyond. The idea, as explained at various points by former President Barack Obama and his senior aides, was that Iran acted as a rogue state because of Israel’s alleged nuclear arsenal. The key to stabilizing the Middle East, they contended, was to realign the U.S. away from Israel and its traditional Sunni Arab allies and towards Iran…
“…President Joe Biden and his team of Obama alumni are pursuing Obama’s vision with redoubled energy, and the results have been disastrous. Iran on the brink of a nuclear arsenal.
“All the same, the Biden administration insists its nuclear diplomacy is geared towards regional stability and nuclear non-proliferation.
“MBS didn’t require a long speech to explain why the administration’s policy can’t work. He did it in one sentence. Bret Baier asked him how Saudi Arabia would respond to a nuclear-armed Iran. He responded simply, ‘If they get [a nuclear weapon], we will have to get one, for security reasons, for balancing power in the Middle East.’”
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Well yes, this was obvious. It is why there are questions about facilitating Saudi Arabia’s development of nuclear development for ostensibly peaceful purposes. MBS would be a fool not to think this way and he is nobody’s fool.
But what has happened now, says Glick, is that he is said it out loud:
“By bluntly stating the obvious, MBS showed that the Biden administration’s Iran policy is leading to a fully nuclearized Middle East. Now that the truth is out, Biden and his advisers have a choice. They can stay on their current course and be held responsible for their actions, or they can reverse course and adopt a strategy that will prevent Iran from becoming a nuclear-armed state and keep the Middle East nuclear free, pro-American and stable.”
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Biden needs the deal for Saudi-Israeli normalization to strengthen his position going forward to elections: Trump may have initiated the Abraham Accords, he would be able to declare, but he, Biden, was able to bring in Saudi Arabia.
I have scant hope that Biden – such as he is even the one making the decisions – will decide to change course on Iran in order to prevent a nuclearized Middle East. I would dearly love to be wrong.
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Glick doesn’t deal with this, but there is also the question of whether Israel will accept normalization. Netanyahu is eager for this deal, which would bring closure to the Arab-Israeli conflict, but the issues remain complex.
She does allude to Netanyahu’s statement in his meeting with Biden regarding the way to stop Iran’s movement towards becoming a nuclear power:
“A credible military threat, crippling sanctions and supporting the brave men and women of Iran who despise that regime and who are our real partners for a better future.”
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Announcement has been made, after a long period of negotiations, that Israel has been admitted officially as the 41st nation in the U.S. Visa Waiver Program: as of Nov. 30, Israelis will be able to visit the United States for fewer than 90 days without a visa. This prospect is something that delights many Israelis. Israel will be the first country in the Middle East to be part of this program with the US. You can read details of how it will work here:
https://www.jpost.com/israel-news/article-760655
It is being hailed as a mark of increased cooperation between Israel and the US. Secretary of State Blinken referred to it as “a critical step forward in our strategic partnership with Israel.”
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Of course, the reverse is now true as well: American citizens can now enter Israel without a visa. Blinken also said: “This important achievement will enhance freedom of movement for US citizens, including those living in the Palestinian Territories or traveling to and from them.”
For me, and many others, this rings huge bells.
Do we really want Palestinian Arabs with US citizenship who are living in Gaza to have freedom of movement into Israel?
There was a trial period for this program before the US officially consented. American officials were not happy with the stringency exhibited by Israeli security towards US citizens coming to and from Gaza, and pressured Israel for equity of treatment.
At our airports and other points of entry, Israeli security practices profiling. This means those recognized as having a greater potential to be a security risk are treated with greater stringency. The US, in politically correct fashion, did not accept that. We must treat everyone equally.
To make matters worse, the EU and others also want to strike similar deals with Israel now.
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Jonathan Pollard has spoken out on this, and his points are both alarming and exceedingly well taken (emphasis added):
“…the hyphenated Americans this agreement is meant to cover are some of the most vicious anti-Semites one could imagine.
“Indeed, if you ask any American Jewish college student, they’ll tell you that…Palestinian American students are the most rabidly anti-Israel elements on their campus.
“Not surprisingly, these hate-filled Arab ‘students’ represent a significant percentage of the Palestinian Americans that the Biden administration wants covered by the US Visa Waiver agreement. So, what are the potential consequences of letting an unchecked number of them into our country?
“…it’s likely that American pressure will cause our border control agents to be extremely reluctant to bar a significant number of Palestinian Americans who would ordinarily have been refused entry out of fear of angering the US. Indeed, according to published reports, we will only be permitted to stop around 3% of Palestinian Americans for security reasons before we will be forced to admit the remaining visitors regardless as to our concerns about them.
“Just to underscore how determined the Americans are about this particular issue, they went to the extraordinary step of demanding permission to station observers at Israeli ports of entry to ensure that we weren’t ‘discriminating’ against their Palestinian citizens. The fact that the US demanded this gross violation of our sovereignty was less shocking than our immediate surrender to such imperial behavior by Washington. It was as if our so-called ‘leaders’ forgot that no foreign government, even one that claims to be an ally, has the right to dictate how we guard our borders against people we consider to be potential security threats…
“Yet another security problem associated with the Visa Waiver Program involves the danger of allowing so many Palestinian Americans into Judea and Samaria that they will have an inhibiting effect on our soldiers during security operations. This has already occurred and will only get worse as time goes by.
“Basically, every Palestinian American who feels that they’ve been discriminated against by our troops can now escalate their complaints to the level of a diplomatic incident. Friends of mine who serve in [Judea & Samaria] have already been told by Palestinian Americans that if they stop them for a security check, they will lodge a discrimination charge against the soldiers with the US Embassy in Jerusalem.”
http://www.israelnationalnews.com/news/377466
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This is where I close this posting, mindful of all there is yet to write about, both the good and the not so good, when I return to my computer early next week.
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© Arlene Kushner. This material is produced by independent journalist Arlene Kushner. Permission is granted for it to be reproduced only with proper attribution.
