Featuring Sarit Zehavi
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Nothing happens in a vacuum. Unfortunately, many leaders of terrorist organizations were emboldened by America’s muddled and haphazard withdrawal from Afghanistan and the rapid takeover of the Taliban. According to a Times of Israel article from Wednesday, August 18, 2021, Hezbollah leader, Sheik Nasrallah, called the American behavior in Afghanistan, “the moral downfall of America.” He continued, “In order not to have Americans fighting for other nations, Biden was able to accept a historic failure. When it comes to Lebanon and those around it, what will be the case there?”
He ominously warned, “Those watching most closely and drawing conclusions from this are the Israelis.”
What does this imply for the situation around Israel’s northern border? Joining us on Wednesday was Lieutenant Colonel Sarit Zehavi (Res.) Founder and CEO of the Alma Research and Education Center along Israel’s northern border with Lebanon. During this webinar, Lt. Col. Zehavi also addressed groundbreaking research she and her team at ALMA have done uncovering a vast network of tunnels from Southern Lebanon into Northern Israel.
About the speaker: Lieutenant Colonel (Res.) Sarit Zehavi is the CEO and founder of Alma – a nonprofit and an independent research and education center specialized in Israel’s security challenges on its northern border. Sarit has briefed hundreds of groups and forums, ranging from US Congress members to journalists and visiting VIP groups in Israel and overseas. Sarit scripts numerous position papers and updates focusing on Lebanon, Syria and Israel’s national security challenges. She served for 15 years in the Israeli Defense Forces, specializing in military intelligence. Sarit holds an M.A. in Middle East Studies from Ben-Gurion University. Sarit Zehavi and her husband Yaron are raising their five children in Western Galilee.
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Dear friend of EMET,
As the Jewish year of 5781 draws to a close, the United States and Israel face an international political environment not known since the heydays of the Cold War: an assertive Russia, an aggressive China, a predatory Iran, a questionable Turkey and a fragmented Middle East. The recent debacle of American withdrawal in Afghanistan caused a new lack of confidence in America amidst a climate of predatory global competition. Added to the domestic uncertainties about the economic recovery from COVID, the commitments of the United States to the American-led international order are questioned by friends and foes.
The work of EMET on Capitol Hill is becoming more crucial now than ever before. EMET, a Washington-based think tank and policy institute, maintains a clear bipartisan stance, promoting American national interest, Israel’s national security and the global stability of the liberal world order. The work of EMET ensures that American policymakers will not make uncalculated mistakes and acquiesce to Iran, threatening the security of the State of Israel and our moderate Arab allies.
Iranian aggression does not stop in the Persian Gulf, Iraq, Syria, Yemen and Lebanon but also supports terror in Gaza and even builds networks on this side of the Atlantic in South America. Our work is not easy, given the strength of many in the foreign policy establishment isolationwithist tendencies, preferring to reach an understanding with the Taliban or with Iran. The fall of Afghanistan to the Taliban once again poses the real threat to a return to the era of global terrorism risking American and Israeli lives.
At the same time, there are signs of the fracturing of the traditional bipartisan support of Israel in domestic American politics and an increasingly anti-Israel and antisemitic academic environment. The rising ride of anti-Israel sentiments now holding a solid footing in our academic, media and political establishments seek to turn American public opinion against Israel. This requires more resources devoted to monitoring and supporting American Jewish students on campuses.
The social, economic and technological transformation of the last decade left many young Americans looking to our political leaders for salvation and comfort, leaving them vulnerable to toxic and subversive ideological currents. This new reality threatens the degeneration of our analytical practices and policy, making procedures into a few catchy “buzzwords,” often sentimental and non-rational forces that seek therapeutic effects rather than action. Already our foes, near and far, are taking advantage of this situation through funding sophisticated anti-American propaganda campaigns.
Here at EMET, we hold our ground and provide policymakers and their staff with accurate, nuanced information drawn from the various expertise of foreign policy practitioners, Israeli officials, Arab and Iranian dissidents that base their analysis on their experiences and empirical facts based on democratic values that balance both our human rights values and security interests. We meet with congressional staffers from both sides of the aisle almost daily and take pride in the close relationships we forged with many offices which allowed us to:
* Contribute to the drafting of the Israel Normalization Act of 2021. The bill is one of the most comprehensive foreign policy plans concerning peace between Israel and Arab countries demanding the State Department build on the Abraham Accords, monitor punitive actions taken by Arab governments against Arab citizens interested in forging relationships with Israelis and dedicate resources to fight antisemitism in the Arab world.
* Educate Congress on the questionable appointments of individuals known to have strong anti-Israel or pro-Iranian biases in the new administration. Such appointments risk pushing American foreign policy in a direction inimical to our national security interests.
* Educate Congress on the many problems of UNRWA operations, including the antisemitism in their textbooks, the lack of accountability ensuring teachers in UNRWA schools are not part of a terrorist network and the enabling of Hamas to dig tunnels underneath school buildings and hospitals to use the inevitable civilian death toll as a means to engender sympathy.
* Educate Congress about the problems in the Izz-al Din Crusades and Hamas-led summer camps, where children as young as primary school learn military exercises, such as firing AK 47s, creating landmines and jumping through hoops of fire, indoctrinating them to choose the path of martyrdom.
* Educate Congress and the public about the continuous growth of Iran’s nuclear stockpile of highly enriched uranium - which the IAEA said in September is enough for three nuclear bombs - its building of an underground facility in Natanz and Israel’s need for bunker busting bombs.
* Urge Congress not return to the flawed JCPOA nor to lift sanctions from Iran given its long track record of duplicity and deceit.
* Urge Congress to protect the rights of Jewish students on college campuses and to confront the rising tide of antisemitism in the country
EMET conducts such assiduous work while educating the public through regularly publishing articles and broadcasting weekly webinars featuring our “treasure trove” of various experts on the Middle and American and Israeli foreign policy. We hold the interests of the United States and Israel as the guiding principles to everything we do.
All of this takes a tremendous amount of effort and time from our dedicated staff and none of our work would be possible without your support and help. As a non-profit, EMET depends on the generous community of supporters who share the noblest values on which our liberal democratic traditions were built. We are asking you to join us and support the great work we do to safeguard democracy from an increasingly hostile world. We must ensure that we hand our children a future safe from the competition of great powers that do not share our belief in human dignity and the resurgence of deeply alarming undemocratic and totalitarian tendencies both home and abroad.
Let’s pray that 5782 is a peaceful year for everyone.
Thank you very much. Invest in EMET. Invest in the Truth.
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Sincerely,
Sarah Stern
Founder and President
Hussein Aboubakr Mansour
Director of EMET’s Program for Emerging Democratic Voices from the Middle East
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