The Movement for Black Lives vs. American Blacks for Solidarity with Israel

An Interview with Dan Diker of the JCPA

by Jerry Gordon and Rod Reuven Dovid Bryant (September 2020)

 

George Floyd Mural on the Palestinian side of the Israeli Border Barrier

 

Rod Reuven Dovid Bryen and Jerry Gordon bring back Dan Diker, Senior Fellow and Director of the Program to Counter Political Warfare at the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs (JCPA).

On Black Lives Matter and Black Antisemitism

        Diker authored a recent JCPA brief, The Alignment of BDS and Black Lives Matter: Implications for Israel and Diaspora Jewry. Diker also appeared on a recent Jewish Broadcasting Service “In the News” discussion program on Black Lives Matter (BLM) and Antisemitism moderated by Rabbi Marc Golub with Joshua Washington. He is the young American Assistant Director of the Institute for Black Solidarity for Israel that promotes the pro-Zionist legacy of the late revered American civil rights leaders, Dr. Martin Luther King and Rev. Ralph Abernathy. American Jews, as Diker notes, had fought for Black civil rights as abolitionists in the 19th Century and the 1960’s culminating in the historic passage of the 1964 Civil Rights Act under President Johnson. American Jews have actively and publicly opposed racism and police brutality.

        Diker’s JCPA brief exposed the disturbing trends converging between BLM and BDS that he suggests had its origins in the 2014 Iranian regime backed Hamas rocket and terror tunnel war against Israel. The rise of BLM was triggered by the killings of young Black men, Trayvon Martin in Florida in 2012 and Michael Brown in 2014 in Ferguson. Missouri. Recently, the BLM campaign was “turbo-charged” by the murder on May 25, 2020 of George Floyd while in the custody of a Minneapolis Police Officer sparking daily protests and violence that quickly spread across the US.

        The Movement for Black Lives (M4BL), a BLM Network member organization, has openly accused Israel of being a racist Apartheid state. It connected Israel’s “occupation” in Gaza and the Palestinian Authority meme that the Jewish nation was “born in sin” with US state racism, imperialism, and fascism. Minister Louis Farrakhan, a spiritual guide and role model for BLM activists and sympathizers, has labeled Jews “Satan.” M4BL’s radical solution is to “take down” the US government, while defunding and dismantling police departments across the United States. Diker noted the launch of a petition by University of California Students accusing Israel of “complicity’ in the murder of George Floyd due to US law enforcement agencies’ participation in a 2012 program in Israel on counterterrorism intelligence sharing.

        Diker suggests that these accusations are completely unfounded. Moreover, BDS and Palestinian activist rhetoric accusing Israel of imperialism and colonialism is straight out of the Marxist-Leninist playbook. In fact, Israel is a result of Zionist de-colonialization, resettling the Jewish homeland after the fall of the 400-year Ottoman empire. He pointed to a recent article in The Cambridge Journal of Race Ethnicity of Politics, “What Kind of Movement is Black Lives Matter? The View from Twitter.” Diker commented: This superb research on BLM reveals that the movement rejects the “politics of respectability of Martin Luther King and the Civil Rights Movement”. This is dangerous for the Palestinian issue as it rejects inclusion, and instead advocates a political replacement theology.

American Blacks Leading Solidarity with Israel

        Diker endorsed the work of Joshua Washington of the Institute for Black Solidarity for Israel, the son of founder, Pastor Dumisani Washington, a multi-talented Stockton California pastor and National Diversity Outreach Director for Christians United for Israel. Washington is also a next generation acolyte of Dr. King, a proud supporter of Israel and Zionism until his tragic assassination in 1968.

        Joshua Washington is a co-author of the JCPA compendium, Israelophobia, and the West: The Hi-jacking of Civil Discourse on Israel and to rescue it, that we previewed on a prior program with Diker. Washington’s wife, Olga Meshoe Washington, is the daughter of Kenneth Meshoe, a leading member of the African Christian Democratic Party and long term member of the South African parliament who is staunch supporter of Israel. Diker and Washington are working on a Black America-Israel coalition as a counterweight to the radical discourse of the BLM leadership. They hope to restore the solidarity between the Jewish and Black American communities given the split within the Black community over Israel and BLM’s Marxist discourse.

On Progressive American Jews Beinart and Rogen Rejecting Israel as a Jewish Nation

        On the matter of progressive-turned radical Israel critic Peter Beinart and his recent trashing of Israel’s existence as the nation state of the Jewish people in a July 2020 article in Jewish Currents, and comedian Josh Rogen’s rejection of the Jewish state both signify a dangerous development. Their major influence over young American Jewish millennials results in the mainstreamed idea that millennials increasingly reject the Jewish state’s existence merely because, “Israel has been unable to solve the 100-year Palestinian Israeli conflict.”

        Regretfully, Beinart willfully overlooks or is ignorant of Islamic doctrine that rejects a non-Muslim sovereign polity in the Middle East. Diker notes the Palestinian rejection of 10 consecutive offers since 1936 for Palestinian Arab sovereignty; 6 offers alone under the failed Oslo Accords since 2000. Diker accuses the so-called Pro Israel, Pro Israel J Street of undermining Israel and Diaspora Jewry by fostering and encouraging hatred of Israel while lobbying members of the US House of Representatives to condemn or harshly criticize policy moves of Israeli governments.

        Josh Rogen, whose parents met on a Socialist Kibbutz in Israel before returning to Vancouver where their son was brought up, is reflective of the growing disconnection between American Jews and Israel. Diker traces the origins of that tension and growing alienation of American Jews in part to the 1982 Lebanon war that was perceived as more “offensive” than “defensive” in the United States.

On What is Behind the Israeli Protests against PM Netanyahu

         Regarding the daily violent protests in Israel, Diker believes they are not connected exclusively to the coronavirus Pandemic. Rather they are an effort led by former PM Ehud Barak and others on the left who want to force the resignation of PM Netanyahu. They do not accept the result of the last election of Netanyahu as the democratically elected Prime Minister of the National Emergency Coalition government. He emphasized the comparison between the once predominant Labor led coalition in 1992 with 44 mandates. Today Labor is polling under the minimum four mandate threshold. It has two members in the current coalition that creates a tsunami like turmoil in frustrated segments of the Israeli public who have witnessed the Oslo peace “promise” disintegrate into 20 years of PLO and Hamas supported terror and political warfare. The Israel left has never drawn the necessary lessons of their political failures. Now, the Israeli Left is taking them out on the Israel’s rightful PM Netanyahu in his fourth consecutive government since 2009.

On the Impact of UAE-Israeli Normalization on demise of PA leverage “Peace through Palestine”

        Diker considers the stunning announcement of a normalization agreement between the UAE and Israel as upending the Palestinian “leverage” on peace negotiations. He says “the agreement proves that Arab states in the Middle East pursue their own state interests. In fact, I will share a secret: for the last decade or so, we at the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs have become aware of an increasing frustration of the Arab states with the Palestinian leadership. The Arab Sunni establishment, which constitutes most of the Arab League, sees the Palestinian leadership as corrupt, rejectionist, and inflexible, which is holding back the entire region, while Iran seeks to cannibalize the Middle East with the assistance of nuclear weapons”. Notwithstanding the criticism of some in Israel and abroad that the UAE normalization agreement came at the price of conceding sovereignty, Diker considers the holdback as “temporary” on extension of sovereignty to parts of Area C in Judea and Samaria and the Jordan Valley. “Israel maintains its rights to sovereignty opposite Palestinian claims of sovereignty.”

        What follows is the Israel News Talk Radio – Beyond the Matrix interview with Dan Diker.

Rod Bryant: We have a great show lined up for everybody, don’t you agree?

Jerry Gordon: Yes, we do. We are bringing back a regular, Dan Diker of the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs, he is the director of their Program to Counter Political Warfare. We are going to discuss how Black Lives Movement has morphed into anti-Semitism, a sharp contrast with the pro-Zionism of the civil rights icon, Dr. Martin Luther King. We will also delve into revelations about why young Jews, intellectuals, and comedians, are disavowing Zionism and support for Israel.

Rod Bryant: The reason why the subject matter even comes up in a conversation is the connection between Black Lives Movement and BDS, which is vehemently anti-Israel, and has connections with Louis Farrakhan and other virulently anti-Israel organizations.

Dan, we wanted to bring you back, as there many things happening within the news cycle that are very alarming. And I believe as Jerry and I were talking before the show we were seeing the Black Lives Matter protests beginning to morph into something that is extremely dangerous: anti-Semitism, Marxism, and communism. You published a controversial JCPA paper on the alignment of Black Lives Matter with BDS. How disturbing are those anti-Israel links between the leaders of BLM and Palestinian BDS activists?

Dan Diker: Thanks for having me on the show. Shalom to you and Jerry, it is always a pleasure to be with you. I think the brief that you were referring to is called The Alignment of Black Lives Matter and BDS: Implications for Israel and the Jewish Diaspora which is not controversial at all. It was basically an exposé of trends that are disturbing but began some years ago. We have been following those trends. It is specifically the convergence between Black Lives Matter and the Movement for Black Lives, (M4BL) which is a radical sub-group of the Black Lives Matter network, and the Palestinian political warfare movement, known as BDS. We saw that convergence “turbo charged” during the 2014 Hamas rocket war in Gaza, opposite to Israel, which was supported by the Iranian regime, that included the terror tunnels that were dug across the Gaza frontier into Israel.

Just before the Gaza war in 2014, five minutes from where I am sitting for this interview, three Jewish students were picked up by a Palestinian car with Hamas operatives attired as religious Jews. They murdered them within a few minutes in the back of their car. That brought about the 2014 Gaza war. It also triggered, within several weeks, Palestinian solidarity with Black Lives Matter, with the controversial killings of Trayvon Martin in Florida in 2012 and Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri in 2014, the latter under very controversial circumstances between him and a local police officer. That solidarity began to morph into something much more serious afterwards. A one-to-one relationship was created between what the BLM activists in America call “institutional state-sponsored racism” against Black Americans and the Palestinian issue in the West Bank and Gaza. We have seen that most recently after George Floyd’s murder, with the further integration between BLM and the Palestinian political warfare energized by the PLO, the Fatah, and the Palestinian Authority in Ramallah and in Gaza. What we are seeing is the declaration of the Palestinian movement saying, “Israel was born in sin.” It is no longer a territorial issue. What we see in the post-George Floyd murder environment is that the Palestinians are trying to export to Israel total solidarity in the sense that, as Temple University Professor Marc Lamont Hill said , a radical solution is needed tearing down America as it exists today. Tearing down the established order, de-funding police departments, tearing down local governments. As the head of BLM in New York recently said, “We want to have black sovereignty and we will get it any way we can, if it means tearing down the United States as it exists today.” That type of language has now been co-opted and used by the Palestinian leadership and their NGOs in the United States. They refer to pre- ‘67 Israel as “’48”. They do not make any differentiation when it comes to Israel, which means pre-and post-‘67 lines in the West Bank, Judea and Samaria and Gaza. For them, all of that is Palestine, which must be liberated, in their view, and then rebuilt as the 23rd Muslim majority Arab state in the Middle East.

Jerry Gordon: Dan, some of the disturbing language that these Palestinian advocates and BLM fellow travelers use is somehow Israel was complicit in the May 25th, 2020 death of George Floyd, while in the custody of a Minneapolis police officer. That came in the context of defunding police. Can you explain that for the benefit of our listeners?

Dan Diker: Jerry, what we saw in the aftermath of the Floyd murder was a petition that was circulated by University of California students that charged Israel with complicity in Floyd’s death because of training in Israeli counter-terrorism military and police tactics. They ascribed everything in terms of the advisory relationship between Israeli counter-terrorism experts and law enforcement experts from a 2012 program that involved police officials from Minneapolis and many other cities across the United States who came to Israel for a seminar about intelligence gathering and preventative measures on counter-terrorism. It had nothing to do with policing, nothing to do with field work, nothing to do with the type of chokeholds that Derek Chauvin and others in US police departments had been using. Those chokeholds pre-dated any connection with Israel by many years. This was a clearly propagandistic, completely unfounded connection. Those arguments by the Movement for Black Lives are made attempting to tie in the Jewish State, that they call an imperialist, colonialist, fascist government. This type of language comes right out of the playbook of Marxist-Leninist doctrine applied to the United States. Now it is being applied to Israel.

Jerry Gordon: Dan, you were on a recent Jewish Broadcasting Service “in the News” TV program with moderator Rabbi Mark Golub and a remarkably interesting young man, Joshua Washington of the Institute for Black Solidarity with Israel. Explain to our audience how you are working with Mr. Washington and what his views are.

Dan Diker: Joshua Washington is the assistant director of an organization called IBSI, The Institute for Black Solidarity with Israel. He is the son of the very well-known and highly respected Pastor Dumisani Washington, who has a very prominent congregation in Stockton, California and is the National Outreach Coordinator for Christians United for Israel (CUFI). Joshua Washington is a special young man. He is a columnist at Times of Israel where his blogs appear. He is a next generation follower of Dr. Martin Luther King as is his father Reverend Dumisani Washington. They follow in the footsteps of Dr. King, the Reverend Ralph Abernathy, and his other followers and disciples. Dr. King was a firm Zionist who believed that the Jewish state was an outpost of democracy in the middle of a sea of tyranny in the Middle East. He was tragically assassinated in Memphis in 1968, after he had been in Israel just a short time before. Joshua and I have linked up. He is a co-author of a compendium that I edited and published at the JCPA just before the coronavirus outbreak in February 2020. I would urge your readers to read it for free on-line at jcpa.org. It is called Israelophobia and the West. We reviewed it on your program a few months ago and it is also available on Amazon. Another is a recent article in The Cambridge Journal of Race Ethnicity of Politics, “What Kind of Movement is Black Lives Matter? The View from Twitter.” This superb research on BLM reveals that the movement rejects the “politics of respectability” of Martin Luther King and the Civil Rights Movement. This is dangerous for the Palestinian issue as it rejects inclusion, and instead advocates a political replacement theology.

Israelophobia and the West, explains the phenomena we are witnessing in the United States, alleged political criticism of Israel masking virulent anti-Semitism. They are using Israel as a political entity to engage in some of the worst anti-Semitic discourse that we have not seen since the Nazi era. Joshua Washington and I linked up, together with his wife, Olga Meshoe-Washington, a Black South African, whose father Kenneth Meshoe is one of the most esteemed members of the South African Parliament and extremely friendly and supportive of the Jewish state. The three of us are endeavoring to rebuild what we call the Black American-Israel Coalition, in the tradition of Dr. King and his followers and disciples as a counterbalance to the radicalizing discourse among the BLM leadership. Neither Josh nor I, are slamming the anti-racist agenda of many of the thousands of good American women and men who are protesting the Floyd murder and the real problems of racism in the United States and police brutality that has afflicted Black Americans and other American ethnic groups. Jews, as you know, have been some of the biggest supporters of the anti-racist agenda. They were leaders in the abolitionist movement and fought for the rights of blacks to vote. Jews were right next to their Black American brothers and sisters shedding their own blood in Mississippi and in New Orleans and in other cities to bring the 1964 Civil Rights Act to fruition under President Johnson. Joshua and I want to restore that type of solidarity, brotherhood and sisterhood between Blacks and Jews. But also, between Blacks in the United States and the State of Israel. This is a big challenge today because of what Joshua says is a very deep split in the African American community regarding Israel. This is due to this neo-Marxist propaganda that has accused Israel of being an “imperialist colonizer of indigenous Palestinian lands.” In truth, however, Israel is the fruit of Middle East decolonization at the beginning of the last century when the Ottoman Empire broke up. This Stalinist propaganda claiming “settler colonialism” has been recast by Palestinian leadership, which has also used Nazi themes in their expressed public agenda of getting rid of the Jewish state, not building a Palestinian state next to the Jewish state. Josh and I took on his project to clarify that there are those in the BLM leadership, such as Patrisse Cullors, who says that Israel is an apartheid state. The Movement for Black Lives has called Israel a genocidal state. Their meeting point is the very publicly anti-Semitic Louis Farrakhan who has become a spiritual, strategic, and intellectual advisor to the Black Lives Matter movement. He very openly says, “the Jews are Satan, that Jews are not even Jews.” This has become mainstream discourse across the United States. That is why this is so dangerous. It is mob discourse that uses Nazi, Stalinist themes, and puts Israel and even individual Jews on the target list.

Jerry Gordon: Let us segue to some other disturbing developments that involve American Jews. Peter Beinart’s recent provocative essay, and the behavior of a Canadian Jewish comedian and actor Seth Rogen, who is being lionized in his latest film called An American Pickle. What can you tell us about that dialogue, how dangerous it is, and how reflective it may be of certain attitudes amongst American Jewish millennials?

Dan Diker What we are seeing is an alignment which I wrote about in the paper at jcpa.org about Beinart’s recent 6,800 word treatise, “Yavne: A Jewish Case for Equality in Israel-Palestine,” published by Jewish Currents magazine. Jewish Currents is a magazine started by the Communist Party in 1946 and today is very much on the farthest left fringe of the domestic and international discussion. Beinart wrote in his essay that he no longer believes in a Jewish state. He has moved from being a ‘liberal progressive’ critic of Israel, to an opponent of the existence of Israel as the nation state of the Jewish people.

What is troubling about Beinart’s piece is that he is a highly intelligent learned young man and should be a great asset to the Jewish community. However, he is making a wholesale assault, without any context, on Israel as the nation state of the Jewish people in this piece. He argues that a Jewish state is no longer necessary. That Israel continues to be unable to solve this 100-year conflict with the Palestinian Arabs. To be honest with you, it is a far deeper conflict between Islam and the existence of a non-Muslim majority Jewish state in what Islam considers the Muslim Middle East. That is the reality of what is going on.

I urge people to read this piece because it is very disturbing for its complete lack of nuance, of context, or even basic facts that determine life on the ground in Israel. He gives the Palestinians a complete pass as if they are not even an agent in this entire conflict. The fact is that since 1936, the Arab-Palestinian leadership has refused 10 consecutive offers for their own sovereignty. That does not play in his analysis, nor does the fact that that between Yasser Arafat and Mahmoud Abbas, the two of them, have denied, opposed, and turned down the last six consecutive offers since the Oslo peace process began in 1993.

Beinart holds Israel completely and unilaterally accountable for this impasse with the Palestinians. That is why he says that under these circumstances the State of Israel should not exist. He has become an anti-Zionist. Faux Zionists like Jeremy Ben-Ami of J Street, that alleges it is “pro-Israel and pro-Peace” only if you can create a Palestinian State in his image, sitting in Washington DC, or in Beinart’s image, sitting in New York. They have no skin in the game. They basically are trying to undermine Israel in Ben-Ami’s and J Street’s case, by moving members of Congress to vote against Israel. This is what creates the Seth Rogen phenomenon, where Seth Rogen, who is an assimilated and perhaps disillusioned, young 30-something Jew, who says there is no reason for a Jewish State, has many millions of fans. He completely influences the public discourse.

Rod Bryant: I have a couple of ideas or thoughts about Seth Rogen. There was a bit of empathy toward him because he is not a very well-educated person when it comes to his Judaism and about Israel. Part of me says, “Seth has not really been connected to his Judaism or he’s not very well-learned or understands the whole conflict and the whole life of Judaism and thinks it’s all irrelevant and that’s why he made the comment.” What say you?

Dan Diker: Seth Rogen is a very funny guy. He is a great comedian; I watch his stuff.

Rod Bryant: Same here.

Dan Diker: From his point of view, he probably made half-humorous comments, which he then tweeted that his mom made him apologize to Isaac Herzog, the head of The Jewish Agency. From his point of view, he is probably saying, “I don’t understand what all the hoopla is about. I am a Canadian Jew, I am proud to be a Canadian Jew, I identify as a Canadian Jew, I am not an observant Jew. What the hell do we need Israel for? I’m free in Canada and many American Jews are saying, ‘I’m free in the United States.'” This reflects the deeper tensions between American Jews, other than the Orthodox community, and Israel. Because the identification with Israel does not mesh with their own history, their present, and future as Jews. Thus, Israel is becoming less attractive as a national identity that has sovereignty as the nation-state of the Jewish People.

I remember in the 1980s, as a member of the Conservative movement, hearing criticism of the Israeli rabbinate from the non-Orthodox rabbinate in the United States. You began to feel those tensions rising following the 1982 First Lebanon war in which Israel was accused improperly of being the offensive player as opposed to being a defensive one opposing the PLO takeover of Southern Lebanon and the Iranian infiltration into Lebanon that year. From Seth Rogen’s point of view, he is probably saying, “I really don’t understand what’s wrong with it.” What I am saying, Rod and Jerry, is the problem is much deeper.

Rod Bryant: It is.

Dan Diker: The problem is one of deep assimilation and identification of Jews practicing what they call “tikkun olam,” the idea of repairing the world, which is a Jewish idea. However, it has been “de-Judaized” and universalized. That is the doctrine of social justice among Jews co-leading in the BLM/BDS space and working against the existence of Israel as the nation-state of the Jewish people. It is a profoundly serious development and American Jewish organizations and their leadership will have to deal with this. Thus far, those organizations, which are largely on the center-left in the liberal space, that engage and embrace as many Jews as possible, have not stood up to this evolving and disturbing phenomenon.

Jerry Gordon: Dan, let us turn to Israel. There have been massive protests in Tel Aviv and in Jerusalem, and there is a question about whether there might be, in the future elections, if the Knesset does not come up with a budget bill. Who and what is behind these protests in Israel?

Dan Diker: Let us be clear about what is happening here. The protests are not a function of the ongoing coronavirus and the spike in the infection rate. It is not about the economic difficulties that many Israelis are going through. This is a political movement by former military people and politicians, including Ehud Barak, who want to get rid of Netanyahu at any price. They do not accept the democratic results of the last election. In my view, they could not beat Netanyahu at the polls. Netanyahu is on trial, indicted, and accused in three different cases, that are proceeding, and the justice system is working well. These very vociferous, overly aggressive, even violent demonstrations are an attempt to pressure Netanyahu to resign, less than three months after he was elected with a majority to lead this National Emergency Coalition government.

That does tie into another problem and that is there is a lot of tension between the two major coalition partners, the Blue and White faction, and the Likud faction particularly over the budget as you pointed out. Netanyahu wants to pass a one-year budget which essentially would just refer to the next six months, while the Blue and White wants to stick to the coalition agreement and pass a two-year budget which would bring Israel to the end of 2021. Netanyahu does not want to do that because the dynamic of the coronavirus and the deep economic dislocation and unemployment it has caused. He contends that the complex situation requires a different type of emergency budget for the next six months and they should pass another budget in 2021. They did agree in the coalition agreement to have a biennial, or a two-year budget. However, Netanyahu is insisting on passing the one-year budget. If they cannot agree on a budget there is an automatic legal mechanism that will disband the Knesset and force Israel into new elections.

Jerry Gordon: You mentioned Ehud Barak as a leader in these protests who headed the last Labor government in 2000. What happened to the Labor party?

Dan Diker: Let us be clear there is no Labor Party to speak of. There were a lot of people who voted Labor in 1992 when it garnered 44 seats and formed the coalition government. Now there are two remaining members of the Labor Party in this coalition. The Labor Party is currently pulling at well under the minimum threshold, meaning the Labor Party has wiped out between 1992 and now. The reason is Labor never learned the lessons of the Oslo disaster which is in my view is the worst self-inflicted political wound that any democracy has brought on itself in the last 60 or 70 years. That is what happened to the Israeli Left. The Israeli Left is not a political force in Israel today. They want to be a force on the street to express deep frustrations with Netanyahu who is in his fourth consecutive Coalition and his fifth government. The Left establishment in Israel is saying, where did we go wrong? How could Netanyahu together with the right and nationalist parties be ruling our country for so many years?

Jerry Gordon: How impactful are the so-called Abraham Accords on normalization of relations between Israel, the UAE, and the Palestinians? And is Israel’s extension of sovereignty to Jewish communities in Judea and Samaria on hold “temporarily”?

Dan Diker: The recent agreement between Israel and the UAE to establish the normalization of relations is a stunning development in the life of the modern Middle East. It is a watershed moment in that a Sunni Arab monarchy has, for the first time, removed the Palestinian issue as a roadblock to establishing peaceful normalized relations with the Jewish State. The agreement proves that Arab states in the Middle East pursue their own state interests. In fact, I will share a secret: for the last decade or so, we at the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs have become aware of an increasing frustration of the Arab states with the Palestinian leadership. The Arab Sunni establishment, which constitutes most of the Arab League, sees the Palestinian leadership as corrupt, rejectionist, and inflexible, which is holding back the entire region, while Iran seeks to cannibalize the Middle East with the assistance of nuclear weapons. Since the Palestinian Hamas electoral victory in 2006, the Arab countries have viewed the Palestinian leadership as one of the problems in the Middle East and Israel increasingly as the region’s solution in terms of creating regional stability and security.

Regarding Israel’s agreement to sideline its application of sovereignty in some parts of Area C in Judea and Samaria: this is not a concession as has been claimed by some in Israel and abroad. Israel maintains its rights to sovereignty opposite Palestinian claims of sovereignty. Israel simply agreed to delay operationalizing its sovereign rights in Judea and Samaria. Prime Minister Netanyahu, in an historic decision, has succeeded to normalize relations with the UAE and other Arab states who will follow suit. This move completely undermines Palestinian negotiating leverage which to date has resulted in Palestinian rejection of six consecutive offers for Palestinian independence. This undermines the PLO narrative that peace in the Middle East will only come through formation of a Palestinian state.

Rod Bryant: That is good commentary on the situation. I am just thrown back with the idea that this is a complex situation, especially for people on the outside to understand. We are coming to the end of the program could you please take time to tell people where to go so they can get more information about some of the endeavors that you are involved in?

Dan Diker: I would be very honored if people would follow me at @DanDiker84 on Twitter or contact me at [email protected] or come to the website jcpa.org. There you will find research briefs that we are talking about which are cogent, to the point, and they are not long. They are constantly being refreshed, whether it is BDS, political warfare, anti-Semitism, Iran, the Palestinians. We have some of the best experts anywhere on these issues and we publish in English.

Rod Bryant: Dan, thank you so much for being an amazing guest. We appreciate both you and the leading-edge work the JCPA are doing to keep us and our listeners well informed. Shalom.

Listen to the Israel News Talk Radio—Beyond the Matrix interview with Dan Diker.

Watch the Israel News Talk Radio—Beyond the Matrix NetivOnline video interview with Dan Diker.

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____________________________

Jerome B Gordon is a Senior Vice President of the New English Review, author of The West Speaks, NER Press 2012, and co-author of Genocide in Sudan: Caliphate Threatens Africa and the World, JAD Publishing, 2017. Mr. Gordon is a former US Army intelligence officer who served during the Viet Nam era. He is producer and co-host of Israel News Talk Radio—Beyond the Matrix. He was the co-host and co-producer of weekly The Lisa Benson Show for National Security that aired out of KKNT960 in Phoenix Arizona from 2013 to 2016 and co-host and co-producer of the Middle East Round Table periodic series on 1330amWEBY, Northwest Florida Talk Radio, Pensacola, Florida from 2007 to 2017.

 

Rod Reuven Dovid Bryant is creator and host of Israel News Talk Radio—Beyond the Matrix.

Follow NER on Twitter @NERIconoclast