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Antony Blinken tells AIPAC Israel-Saudi ties are a priority while 2-state solution ‘can feel remote’
WASHINGTON (JTA) — The Biden administration is fully invested in Israel-Saudi normalization, Secretary of State Antony Blinken told the pro-Israel lobbying group AIPAC on Monday. He also said he does not see a breakthrough in Israeli-Palestinian peace happening anytime soon.
“The United States has a real national security interest in promoting normalization between Israel and Saudi Arabia,” Blinken said Monday to applause at a policy summit of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee.
He said it was critical not to escalate the Israel-Palestinian conflict but also made it clear that the Biden administration would not push for a revival of peace talks in the near term. “It’s no secret that today the prospects for a two-state solution can feel remote,” he said. “But we are committed to working with partners and with the parties to at least maintain a horizon of hope.”
The emphasis on regional normalization over pushing Israel into reengagement with the Palestinians will be welcomed in Jerusalem, where Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is leading the most right-wing government in Israeli history, and has intensified Israeli claims to disputed territory.
Netanyahu additionally has said his foreign policy priority is a deal with Saudi Arabia. The Biden administration last year helped broker the launch of Israeli overflights of Saudi air space.
Blinken formally announced that the Biden administration would name a senior official to manage the Abraham Accords, the 2020 normalization agreements between Israel and four Arab nations that was a signature foreign policy achievement of the Trump administration, and one of the few Trump policies embraced by Biden.
“We will soon create a new position to further our diplomacy and engagement with governments and private sector, non-governmental organizations, all working toward a more peaceful and a more connected region,” he said. “We’ve already achieved historic progress to deepen and broaden the Abraham Accords, building on the work of the Trump administration.”
Biden has already decided chosen former ambassador to Israel Dan Shapiro for the role, Axios reported last month. Shapiro is already leading an Abraham Accords expansion initiative at the influential Atlantic Council think tank.
Among the agenda items for the 500 AIPAC activists when they visit most of the offices in Congress on Tuesday is lobbying for the passage of bills that would advance the Abraham Accords, through diplomacy and cooperative projects.
Blinken emphasized continuing Biden administration unhappiness with some Israeli practices that have intensified under the. new Israeli government, including the demolition of Palestinian homes and settlement expansion.
He also emphatically condemned the Palestinian Authority’s policies of subsidizing the families of terrorists who were imprisoned or killed in the course of their actions.
“We have to continue to reject unequivocally actions taken by any party that undermine the process toward a two state solution processes use a solution that includes acts of terrorism, payments to terrorists in prison, violence against civilians,” he said. Israeli and pro-Israel officials have long complained that pressure on Israel not to escalate is not matched with similar pressure on the Palestinians.
Blinken also alluded to Biden administration concerns about plans by Netanyahu’s government — suspended for the time being — to radically overhaul the courts system.
“We’ll continue to work with the Israeli government to advance our shared values will continue to express our support for core democratic principles, including the separation of powers, checks and balances and the equal administration of justice for all citizens of Israel,” he said.
Opponents of the proposed changes, who have been staging massive weekly protests in Israel and smaller demonstrations around the world, say the overhaul would sap the courts of their independence and remove a bulwark that protects democracy and vulnerable populations, including women, Arabs, the LGBTQ community and non-Orthodox Jews. The courts overhaul is one reason Biden has yet to invite Netanyahu to the White House.
AIPAC’s agenda also includes bills that would further isolate Iran, which Israel regards as its most dangerous enemy. At the outside of his term, Biden sought to revive the deal with Iran that exchanged its agreement to roll back its nuclear development in exchange for sanctions relief; Trump had pulled out of the deal.
More recently, U.S. officials have said Iranian actions, including advanced nuclear activity and its backing for Russia in its invasion of Ukraine, have put a freeze on those plans. Blinken said diplomacy remains the preferred way to keep Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon, but he said pressure was the preferred method for now. Deterrence, he said to applause, “includes strengthening Israel’s military capabilities.”
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Police denied Jewish community’s request for more security before Sydney massacre, commission finds
(JTA) — Days before a massacre on a Hanukkah event at Bondi Beach, Sydney, the region’s Jewish security organization asked the police to send officers to Hanukkah events in the city.
The organization, the Community Security Group, had already worked with Chabad of Bondi to create a security plan for the event that included fencing off an area that normally had no barriers.
Now, in the message to police, the group emphasized that Jews in Sydney were facing unusual danger. The threat level, it wrote, was “HIGH. A terrorist attack against the NSW Jewish Community is likely and there is a high level of antisemitic vilification.”
The police responded by saying that they could not devote additional officers to the events but would send patrols by. Three days later, 15 people, including rabbis and a child, were killed when two men opened fire on the event, known as Chanukah by the Sea.
The sequence of events appears in the first report issued by Australia’s Royal Commission on Antisemitism and Social Cohesion, formed in the wake of the massacre amid pressure on the government to do more to keep Australian Jews safe.
The report, issued Thursday, contains 14 recommendations, some of which were obscured from public view for security reasons. They include elevating and strengthening counter-terrorism policing and improving policing of Jewish events.
The top recommendation: “The procedures adopted by NSW Police in respect of Operation Jewish High Holy Days should apply to other high risk Jewish festivals and events, particularly those that have a public facing element.”
The Australian Jewish Association welcomed the report’s release but said it was marred by failing to address the form of antisemitic extremism said to have motivated the Bondi Beach shooters.
“The report’s credibility is undermined by its failure to address the issue of radical Islamist extremism. No serious analysis of the lead-up to the Bondi massacre can ignore this,” it said in a statement. “It’s concerning that the report identifies no urgent legislative changes required. There were serious failings by multiple agencies. If the legislation is adequate, then these failings are inexplicable.”
In particular, the group said, the commission should explore the fact that gun-control laws bar private security from being armed in Sydney, adding, “Whether different security settings could have changed the outcome is a matter that warrants urgent examination.”
This article originally appeared on JTA.org.
The post Police denied Jewish community’s request for more security before Sydney massacre, commission finds appeared first on The Forward.
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Jewish man arrested for allegedly firing pellet gun at left-wing activists in Rome
(JTA) — Italian Jewish leaders are condemning the alleged acts of Jewish man who was arrested this week after police said he fired a pellet gun at participants in a parade marking Italy’s Liberation Day from Nazism and fascism.
Eitan Bondì, 21, was charged with attempted homicide in connection to the shooting of Rossana Gabrieli and Nicola Fasciano, two members of the National Association for Italian Partisans, a group founded by members of the Italian resistance, during the Rome parade.
Neither victim was seriously injured by the attack, according to Italian media.
Bondi’s arrest marks the second instance of confrontations involving Jews during Liberation Day festivities this year. In Milan, pro-Palestinian activists, including members of ANPI, blocked participants honoring the Jewish Brigade, a Jewish military unit that fought the Nazis in Italy during World War II.
Bondi said he was affiliated with the Jewish Brigade. Davide Romano, the director of the Jewish Brigade Museum in Milan, wrote in a post on X that the organization did not know Bondì, and that he felt “horror and condemn in the most resolute manner, and without any justification, anyone who dares to use the name of the Jewish Brigade to carry out acts of violence.”
“The Jewish Brigade fought for freedom and human dignity. Instrumentalizing its name to justify or cover up violent behavior is an outrage to its memory and to all those who sacrificed themselves under that flag,” Romano wrote, adding that the organization reserved the right to “pursue legal action against all those who use the name of the Jewish Brigade to associate it with this shameful act.”
Victor Fadlun, the president of the Jewish Community of Rome, condemned Bondì’s alleged acts in a statement, saying that his detention “fills us with dismay and outrage” and voicing his organization’s “full solidarity and closeness” to the victims.
“The Jewish Community of Rome condemns and dissociates itself unreservedly from any form of anti-democratic violence,” Fadlun said, according to the Italian news agency Ansa. “In such a tense moment … we appeal to political and civil society to avoid any exploitation (of the case) that could fuel hatred and generate new violence.”
This article originally appeared on JTA.org.
The post Jewish man arrested for allegedly firing pellet gun at left-wing activists in Rome appeared first on The Forward.
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British police pledge 25M pounds for Jewish security in wake of London stabbing
(JTA) — British police have allocated 25 million pounds, or about $33 million, in new funding to keep Jewish communities safe, officials announced on Thursday.
The announcement came a day after a stabbing in the Orthodox neighborhood of Golders Green left two men injured and a community reeling. The stabbing has been ruled a terrorist attack.
“There’s no getting away from the fact that this was not a one-off,” Prime Minister Keir Starmer, who visited the neighborhood on Thursday, said during a press conference. “This has been a series of attacks on our Jewish community, particularly in recent weeks, and there is a very deep sense of anxiety, of concern about security, about safety, about identity frankly.”
A new group called Harakat Ashab al-Yamin al-Islamiya, or the Islamic Movement of the People of the Right Hand, that has claimed attacks on Jewish targets across Europe said it was responsible for the stabbing. British officials said they were investigating that claim.
They disclosed that the 45-year-old man arrested in the stabbing, who was first subdued by Jewish security forces, was a British national who had come to the country “lawfully” from Somalia as a child.
Home Secretary Shabana Mahmood, who joined Starmer in Golders Green, told the BBC that she was treating the spree of antisemitic incidents as “absolutely an emergency,” though she declined to adopt language used by Starmer’s terrorism advisor that there was a “national security emergency” because of its implications on civil liberties.
Still, she said, she believed that frequent pro-Palestinian protests in London contained “far too many instances” of hate crimes and she spoke of her opposition to antisemitism in terms of her own religious identity.
“When I take the stand that I am taking against antisemitism, I am doing so as a practicing Muslim. It is absolutely in line with my faith,” Mahmood said. She added about British Jews: “This land is their land. It is my land too. We share this land and we must all work together to keep each other safe.”
The incident, which followed arsons at synagogues and of ambulances owned by a Jewish emergency service as well as a deadly attack on a Manchester synagogue last year, has prompted an escalation of fear among British Jews. Chief Rabbi Ephraim Mirvis warned that visibly Jewish people — those wearing symbols of their Jewish identity — were “not always safe” in England.
This article originally appeared on JTA.org.
The post British police pledge 25M pounds for Jewish security in wake of London stabbing appeared first on The Forward.