By Sarah Stern | July 15, 2022

President Biden’s first trip, as President, to Israel and the region came at a time of mounting unease. Many of his words came as a salve to a raw, bleeding wound. It is our hope that these words are not merely rhetorical, but are backed up with real, meaningful substance.

Yet, words from a US President go a very long way.

The major open wound has a name:  and that name is Iran. For those in Israel, whose very lives are on the line, this is not a mere academic question. With a brutal, fanatical regime in Tehran that doesn’t hesitate to arrest and torture its own dissident population--that routinely vows to wipe Israel off the map--and is progressing rapidly in its means to do so, these are not merely theoretical concerns.

Read more here

The Legislative Fellow is the primary contact for congressional offices and is responsible for all communications between EMET and congressional offices. (S)he must maintain professionalism in a variety of settings and effectively communicate with individuals from different backgrounds and political affiliations.

This role handles all scheduling and is expected to maintain the organization’s Google Calendar and Zoom accounts. The Legislative Fellow is responsible for obtaining and scheduling weekly meetings with congressional offices and handling all questions offices may have.

The current work environment is a combination of virtual and in-person and the Legislative Fellow must be able to occasionally attend in-person meetings on Capitol Hill on short notice. The Legislative Fellow is also expected to attend conferences and other in-person events when requested.

Responsibilities:

• Attend all congressional meetings to brief members of congress and their staff on various issues
• Stay informed on all current events related to Israel and the Middle East
• Write and publish articles on the Middle East and US policy thereof
• Produce a variety of written content on short notice such as one-page briefs, backgrounders and any other content congressional offices may request
• Lead the Q&A session during weekly webinars and assist in filtering audience questions

A competitive candidate will have the following qualities:

• Strong passion for the State of Israel and the belief that supporting a strong Israel makes for good US foreign policy
• Good public speaking, particularly the ability to answer questions and explain complicated topics cogently
• Excellent writing ability
• Ability to stay organized and multitask

If interested, send a resume to Sarah Stern at [email protected].

Normalization with Saudi Arabia and Its Effects on Education Featuring: Marcus Sheff, CEO of IMPACT-se
Date: Wednesday 7/20
Time: 12:00 EDT 

We, at EMET, have long argued that the best litmus test for whether or not a nation is ready for peace is to examine how they educate the next generation. Education can be used as a tool for liberalization, for tolerance, for openness to “the other”, and for planting the seeds of democracy and human rights. Or, it can be used to indoctrinate children towards hatred of “the other” and towards extremism and violence.
 
IMPACT-se has just released its 2022 annual update on Saudi textbooks, depicting an overall trend of improvement following major reforms since 2020. Whereas only a decade ago, focus was put on encouraging students to prepare for jihad and martyrdom, the majority of references to violent jihad justifying and praising violence and murder on behalf of the Prophet Muhammad have now been removed from the textbooks. And while some problematic content such as negative depictions of Jews, Zionism and Christians remain or have even been made worse, others, particularly instances of the kind of antisemitism based on modern European tropes, have largely been removed.
 
IPACT-se has also released an extensive review of the Palestinian curriculum used in our UNRWA schools. This report analyzed textbooks and new “study cards” produced by the Palestinian Authority (PA) for the 2021–22 school year, which are used in the curricula of the West Bank, Gaza, East Jerusalem, and UNRWA schools, and includes selected examples from several hundred pages of educational content. Contrary to the assurances made by the PA to its international partners that improvements would be made rapidly to improve the 2020–21 curriculum, IMPACT-se found that there were no revisions to the PA curriculum for the current 2021–22 school year. In addition to the lack of PA-assured textbook revisions, research on the supplemental online learning materials, called study cards, found that the PA Ministry of Education published the same, and worse, content in violation of international standards of peace, tolerance, and non-violence in education
 
Marcus Sheff was a political reporter at The Nation, an editor at The Jerusalem Post, and a foreign correspondent before heading The Word Shop, a strategic communications firm, for a decade. He worked for Dow Jones International and Advanstar Inc. and was CEO at Intermedia, an international business development firm, before becoming Executive Director at The Israel Project. He has for two decades been involved in in global healthcare, briefed world leaders, spoken at the United Nations and parliaments, and appears regularly on media. He studied political science and international relations at Leeds University where he was an elected leader of the student union, and international relations at Tel Aviv University.