EMET Newsletter—November 5, 2021

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Volume 14, Issue 30

"Too often we enjoy the comfort of opinion without the discomfort of thought."

—John F. Kennedy

Israel's Faustian Bargain

By Sarah Stern | November 5, 2021

In September of 1995, I was invited to the home of prominent Israeli news broadcaster Nissim Mishal, anchor of Israel’s mainstream, popular Channel 2 news. We were then discussing the increasingly apparent violations of the Oslo Accords by the Palestinian Authority, then under Chairman Yasser Arafat.

At one point during the discussion, Nissim leaned into the group, with a grave look, almost whispering, “I was just at a highly classified briefing at Israeli Military Headquarters, and there is a much more existential problem looming out of the East. The Iranians are working on a nuclear bomb. And we had better listen to what the Americans want us to do with the Palestinians, because we will need them when it comes to the Iranian nuclear threat.”

Read the full article here.

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About the speaker: Dr. Jonathan Schanzer is senior vice president for research at FDD, where he oversees the work of the organization’s experts and scholars. He is also on the leadership team of FDD’s Center on Economic and Financial Power, a project on the use of financial and economic power as a tool of statecraft.

Jonathan previously worked as a terrorism finance analyst at the U.S. Department of the Treasury, where he played an integral role in the designation of numerous terrorist financiers. He has held previous think tank research positions at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy and the Middle East Forum.

Jonathan has written hundreds of articles on the Middle East, along with more than a dozen monographs and chapters for edited volumes. His new book, Gaza Conflict 2021: Hamas, Israel and Eleven Days of War (FDD Press 2021), challenges and corrects some of the wildly inaccurate news reported during the conflict. It is the first book published on the war.

His three other books have made unique contributions to the field. State of Failure: Yasser Arafat, Mahmoud Abbas, and the Unmaking of the Palestinian State (Palgrave Macmillan 2013) argues the main roadblock to Palestinian statehood is the Palestinian Authority’s political dysfunction and mismanagement. Hamas vs. Fatah: The Struggle for Palestine (Palgrave Macmillan 2008) is still the only book on the market that analyzes the ongoing Palestinian civil war. Al-Qaeda’s Armies: Middle East Affiliate Groups and the Next Generation of Terror (Washington Institute for Near East Policy 2004) was the first to explore the al-Qaeda franchises of the Middle East.

Jonathan testifies often before Congress and publishes widely in the American and international media. He has appeared on American television channels such as Fox News and CNN, and Arabic language television channels such as Al-Arabiya and Al-Jazeera.