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In this mailing:
* Pete Hoekstra: Gatestone's Man of the Year - 2021
* Lawrence A. Franklin: China's Hostile South Pacific Takeover
* Michael Finch: The Complicated History of Jews in America


** Gatestone's Man of the Year - 2021 ([link removed])
His Highness Mohammed bin Zayed, Crown Prince of Abu Dhabi
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by Pete Hoekstra • January 3, 2022 at 1:00 pm
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* The Abraham Accords would not have been possible without Mohammed bin Zayed's pioneering efforts and willingness to embrace the trailblazing proposals.
* His major confidant is his brother, H.H. Sheikh Tahnoun bin Zayed Al Nahyan, National Security Adviser. He stands out both for the breadth of his role and his ability to remain under the radar, as a pragmatic, probing and analytical man. He is described as "The Man of Difficult Missions."
* The leadership of Mohamed bin Zayed has been demonstrated in a broad range of areas. He is helping to transform the UAE into a beacon of hope and change in the Middle East. We wish him, his brilliant close advisors, and the UAE future success in their many visionary and pace-setting initiatives.

The Abraham Accords would not have been possible without Mohammed bin Zayed's pioneering efforts and willingness to embrace the trailblazing proposals. (Photo by Leon Neal/Getty Images)

One of the most intractable issues over the last 40 years has been the instability and hostilities in the Middle East. The conflicts between Israel and its neighbors, the persistent threat of terrorism, Al Qaeda, and ISIS have kept the region as a major international trouble-spot.

Mideast leaders and U.S. presidents from Clinton to Trump had invested enormous amounts of time and energy in trying to find a breakthrough peace formula - with no result.

All that changed on August 13, 2020, when President Donald J. Trump's designee for identifying a path forward, Jared Kushner, approached the United Arab Emirates (UAE) with a historic plan for a breakthrough. It was immediately pioneered by His Highness Sheikh Mohamed bin Zayed Al Nahyan, Crown Prince of Abu Dhabi and Deputy Supreme Commander of the UAE Armed Forces. A historic peace agreement was unveiled.

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** China's Hostile South Pacific Takeover ([link removed])
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by Lawrence A. Franklin • January 3, 2022 at 5:00 am
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* The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) is accelerating its campaign to isolate Taiwan from the existing international order by offering bribes in some of these poor islands to leadership figures to break with Taipei. Presently, only 15 nations have formal diplomatic relations with Taiwan, and four of them are in the South Pacific: the Marshall Islands, Nauru, Palau, and Tuvalu.
* Some of these states once had diplomatic links with Taiwan but were seemingly wooed away by Beijing's offer of financial loans, investment, and corrupt practices. These at times included direct interference in these islands' domestic political affairs, threatening the efficacy of their governmental institutions.
* The intensity of Chinese Communist Party's drive to inherit the US mantle of Pacific superiority -- acquired by the US at great sacrifice in World War II -- clearly shows that Beijing's ambitions extend beyond reuniting Taiwan with the Chinese "Motherland."
* China's aggressive and persistent diplomatic offensive to win over the entire constellation of the South Pacific's once pro-Western mini-states in the South Pacific suggests once more a determined desire to emerge as the dominant global superpower in the Pacific region -- supplanting the United States and its free and independent allies -- along with annexing the rest of the world.
* When will the West -- public officials and private corporations -- stop financing China's hostile takeover?

The Chinese Communist Party is accelerating its campaign to isolate Taiwan from the existing international order by offering bribes in some poor Pacific Island states to leadership figures to break with Taipei. (Image source: iStock)

This October, the People's Republic of China (PRC) convened, via video link, the first foreign ministerial conference with nearly 20 Pacific Island states. On December 3, the Chinese quickly followed up this initiative by establishing "The China-Pacific Island Countries Reserve of Emergency Supplies."

China's diplomatic offensive in the South Pacific suggests yet another effort to replace the US as the world's primary superpower and install its authoritarian values instead.

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** The Complicated History of Jews in America ([link removed])
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by Michael Finch • January 3, 2022 at 4:00 am
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* Writer Diane Cole, who reviewed James Traub's new book about Judah Benjamin for the Wall Street Journal... argues that possessing slaves does not "jibe" with her understanding of Jewish tradition. Cole, however, fails to mention that possessing slaves also does not "jibe" with anyone's understanding of Christian tradition.
* You can certainly condemn someone for owning slaves, but to single out Jews while disregarding the centuries of non-Jews who owned slaves is unfortunately antisemitic.
* In the ancient world, virtually everyone owned slaves: Romans, Greeks, Persians, and yes, Jews. Slavery was as common to the ancient world as people waking up and going to work is today. George Washington and Thomas Jefferson had slaves; they were nonetheless, in other respects, great men. We may not like it, we may find it morally repugnant, but it is fact, and it was a part of those societies and has continued for thousands of years, into the modern era.
* The Torah planted the seeds in Jewish tradition that would ultimately engender the call for all people to be free.

Judah Benjamin circa 1860. (Photo by MPI/Getty Images)

The Jewish historical narrative in America has, for the most part, been written and shaped by the great wave of Jewish immigrants that arrived in our nation around the turn of the 20^th Century. That this wave has had a huge impact on American life and culture is undeniable. But it is not the entire history of Jews in America—far from it. Jews arrived on the heels of the earliest American settlers, primarily making their homes in Charleston, South Carolina, which was a religiously tolerant city, welcoming various Protestant sects, Catholics, and Jews alike. Today that seems common enough, but it certainly wasn't in the 1600's, especially in the Massachusetts Bay Colony where even many Protestants were not welcome, much less Catholics and Jews.

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