President Donald Trump has had many noteworthy accomplishments in his presidency but perhaps the most extraordinary was in the area of resolving the Middle East conflict, something that had been literally stagnant, despite the efforts of many, since the Oslo Accords of 1993.
This was done by abandoning the policies of the so-called Middle East experts who—following the definition of insanity falsely attributed to Einstein, but true nevertheless—repeated the same failed approaches again and again and again, always managing to make things, if anything, worse.
Trump began by pulling out of the Iran Deal (the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action or JPCOA), a still mostly mysterious agreement of then-President Barack Obama’s putatively intended to prevent the mullahs from getting nuclear weapons, at least for a short time.
Actually it ended up enriching them with billions, millions in cash, to be used in the ayatollahs’ time-honored role as the greatest state sponsors of terrorism, wreaking havoc for years via their murderous cut-outs, Hezbollah, the Houthis and so forth, and extending the endless Syrian civil war. Much of the European refugee crisis undoubtedly stems from this.
Trump labeled the JPCOA the worst deal ever, and he had a point, since it didn’t even allow for inspections at Iranian military sites, the very place nuclear experiments would be conducted. One wonders what it really was intended for.
Trump’s withdrawal from this deal created a realignment of forces. It reassured the Muslim Sunni countries that America had their backs against imperialist Iran and led to rapprochements and mutual recognition between Israel and the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Sudan and, supposedly to come, the big player Saudi Arabia and a host of others.
In other words, Trump, working with Jared Kushner, then-special envoy Jason Greenblatt, Ambassador David Friedman, and others, convinced the Arab world—that Sunni part anyway, already frustrated by Palestinian intransigence—that endless opposition to Israel was pointless for all parties and being good neighbors would benefit all in a host of ways from technology to tourism.
They signed on the dotted line.
Trump was nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize by several people for this. He certainly deserved it, but of course, he didn’t win because he was, well, Trump. The global elites would never allow it, even if he resolved every conflict on the planet for the next few centuries.
But that’s of small moment. Prizes are, in the end, mostly irrelevant. What matters is that this most contentious region of the globe, since literally time immemorial, was finally in the process of calming down.
Biden’s Policy
Enter a potential President Joe Biden.He claims to want to rejoin the JPCOA. If he does on anything even faintly resembling its original terms—and he well could, because he always supported it—the peace will unravel, if not in the proverbial “New York minute,” at a somewhat more languid “Arabian Nights” pace, but the results will be the same.
It’s quite obvious why Saudi Arabia and several others were waiting for the election before they hopped on. They watch American politics as closely as we do. It’s a small world, after all.
It doesn’t help that Kamala She-Who-Waits-in-the-Wings Harris has made known that she wants immediately to resume U.S. payments to the Palestinian Authority (PA), taxpayer dollars that were being withheld until the PA abandoned its policy of using them to reward the families of terrorists.
Yes, Biden has made a very brief semi-positive comment about the initial agreements with UAE and Bahrain, but it felt more like campaign lip service. He owes us much more, with specifics.
Jewish Vote
But one thing gives me cause for optimism. And, I am astonished to say, it is, of all things, the Jewish vote.The joke went, when I was a kid in New York, that we Jews “dress like Englishmen but vote like Puerto Ricans.”
The Hispanics, it has been noted of Election 2020, are beginning to change, as are the blacks. I had always thought that this change for most Jews was less likely. Voting Democratic was a habit harder to break than smoking.
I was pleased, however, to discover the following in an email from Matt Brooks, executive director of the Republican Jewish Committee:
“President Donald Trump won 30.5% of the Jewish vote this year, up 6 points from his 24% share of the Jewish vote in 2016. It’s the highest percentage for any Republican presidential candidate since 1988.
In Florida, where the RJC invested over $5 million targeting Jewish voters, and in which we had the most sophisticated outreach ever undertaken in the Jewish community, the New York Times/AP poll shows that the Jewish vote outperformed the national numbers, with 41% of the Jewish vote going to President Trump, an historic record.”
That record, given the population of the state and number of Jews, computes to something approximating Trump’s margin of victory in Florida. It’s not just Latinos who are waking up.
So. Leverage.
Fans of world peace hope Biden takes note. If Trump somehow ekes this one out, we know he will.
Friends Read Free