Slavery's Arab & Muslim Roots

"Slave Market" by Jean-Léon Gérôme

Painting of Muslim Men Sexually Enslaving White Women Triggers Outrage
- Raymond Ibrahim 

Painted in France in 1866 and titled "Slave Market," the painting "shows a black, apparently Muslim slave trader displaying a naked young woman with much lighter skin to a group of men for examination," probably in North Africa.

Objectively speaking, the "Slave Market" painting in question portrays a reality that has played out countless times over the centuries: African and Middle Eastern Muslims have long targeted European women—so much so as to have enslaved millions of them over the centuries (as copiously documented in my recent book, Sword and Scimitar: Fourteen Centuries of War between Islam and the West, from which the following quotes and statistics are derived).

The Muslim demand for, in the words of one historian, "white-complexioned blondes, with straight hair and blue eyes," traces back to the prophet of Islam, Muhammad, who enticed his followers to wage jihad against neighboring Byzantium by citing its blonde ("yellow") women awaiting them as potential concubines.

For over a millennium afterwards, Islamic caliphates, emirates, and sultanates—of the Arab, Berber, Turkic, and Tatar variety—also coaxed their men to jihad on Europe by citing (and later sexually enslaving) its fair women. Accordingly, because the "Umayyads particularly valued blond or red-haired Franc or Galician women as sexual slaves," Dario Fernandez-Morera writes, "al-Andalus [Islamic Spain] became a center for the trade and distribution of slaves."

Indeed, the insatiable demand for fair women was such that, according to M.A. Khan, an Indian author and former Muslim, it is "impossible to disconnect Islam from the Viking slave-trade, because the supply was absolutely meant for meeting [the] Islamic world's unceasing demand for the prized white slaves" and "white sex-slaves." Emmet Scott goes further, arguing that "it was the caliphate's demand for European slaves that called forth the Viking phenomenon in the first place."

As for numbers, according to the conservative estimate of American professor Robert Davis, "between 1530 and 1780 [alone] there were almost certainly a million and quite possibly as many as a million and a quarter white, European Christians enslaved by the Muslims of the Barbary Coast," that is, of North Africa, the telling setting of the painting. By 1541, "Algiers teemed with Christian captives [from Europe], and it became a common saying that a Christian slave was scarce a fair barter for an onion."

With countless sexually enslaved European women—some seized from as far as Denmark and even Iceland—selling for the price of vegetables, little wonder that European observers by the late 1700s noted how "the inhabitants of Algiers have a rather white complexion."

Further underscoring the rapacious and relentless drive of the Muslim slave industry, consider this: The United States of America's first war—which it fought before it could even elect its first president—was against these same Islamic slavers. When Thomas Jefferson and John Adams asked Barbary's ambassador why his countrymen were enslaving American sailors, the "ambassador answered us that it was founded on the laws of their Prophet, that it was written in their Koran, that ... it was their right and duty to make war upon them [non-Muslims] wherever they could be found, and to make slaves of all they could take as prisoners."

The situation was arguably worse for Eastern Europeans; the slave markets of the Ottoman sultanate were for centuries so inundated with Slavic flesh that children sold for pennies, "a very beautiful slave woman was exchanged for a pair of boots, and four Serbian slaves were traded for a horse." In Crimea, some three million Slavs were enslaved by the Ottomans' Muslim allies, the Tatars. "The youngest women are kept for wanton pleasures," observed a seventeenth century Lithuanian.

Even the details of the "Slave Market" painting/poster, which depicts a nude and fair-skinned female slave being pawed at by potential buyers, echoes reality. Based on a twelfth-century document dealing with slave auctions in Cordoba, Muslim merchants "would put ointments on slave girls of a darker complexion to whiten their faces... ointments were placed on the face and body of black slaves to make them 'prettier.'" Then, the Muslim merchant "dresses them all in transparent clothes" and "tells the slave girls to act in a coquettish manner with the old men and with the timid men among the potential buyers to make them crazy with desire."

The historic events, statistics, and quotes narrated above—and more like them—are fully documented in Raymond Ibrahim's Sword and Scimitar: Fourteen Centuries of War between Islam and the West.
[The Middle East Forum] 

The West Did Not Invent the African Slave Trade - Matthew Littlefield

You will often, particularly online, hear people say something like this; the African slave trade was a ‘racist, white, patriarchal colonialist institution’, it was the white man’s hatred of the black man that fueled the slave trade.

Now, putting aside the fact that the word ‘slave’ developed from ‘Slav’, the white eastern Europeans who were taken as slaves so often their names became synonymous with the institution of slavery in Europe, this idea that the African slave trade was a ‘white, patriarchal, colonial institution’ is both ahistorical and ridiculous.

Did Colonialists engage in it? Yes. Did racists engage in it? Yes. Did white Europeans start the African slave trade? No. 

Long before white Europeans engaged in the African slave trade, Muslims, and prior to that Arab slave traders were heavily involved in running Slaves to and from Africa. 

The African slave trade, in all its various forms, existed long before England even existed as a nation, let alone set their sights on the evil trade. How long were these proto-Arabs involved in this trade before this passage? We cannot know, but here we have a clear indication that it has a long history in their culture.

Indeed, sadly this African slave trade still exists today, long after Colonial rule has been removed from the continent. With open slave markets in Libya and other parts of Africa. And we can safely predict, that sadly, it will probably go on for some time yet.

For most of early European history, various European people’s made slaves of each other. Greeks made slaves of other Greeks and non-Greeks, Romans of Thracians, Germans of Slavs, Romans of Celts and Gauls, etc, etc. But regarding our specific topic here, yes, Europeans, got involved in the evils of the African slave trade, and yes it corrupted us for a time. But we also put an end to it in the West.
[The Caldron Pool] 

[For a deeper dive into the history of Barbary piracy, click HERE] 

Brilliant White House Move Sidesteps Quagmire

White House Makes a MidEast Peace Move - Caroline Glick

Tuesday Israel’s Channel 13 reported that President Donald Trump’s Deputy National Security Advisor Victoria Coates held a meeting at the White House last week with the ambassadors of Oman, Bahrain, the United Arab Emirates and Morocco. She reportedly asked the emissaries to check whether their governments are willing to consider signing non-aggression pacts with Israel.

The story, which the White House did not deny indicates the Trump administration has embraced an Israeli initiative, raised publicly last month by Foreign Minister Yisrael Katz. The idea is that through the non-aggression pacts, which are less than peace treaties, Israel and its Arab neighbors will be able to sidestep the issue of formal relations, replete with embassy opening ceremonies, and simply engage in open relations, for the benefit of all sides.

This has been the central goal of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s diplomatic strategy. For decades, foreign policy practitioners and activitists in the U.S., Europe and the Israeli left have insisted that peace between Israel and the larger Arab world is impossible so long as Israel has not concluded a peace treaty with the PLO. This view gives the PLO the power to dictate if, when and under what conditions Arab nations will be “allowed” to have normal relations with the Jewish state.
[CarolineGlick.com]

 

Military Dog Takes Out Arch Terrorist

A Battle Won in the War on Terror - Walter Russell Mead 

• Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi's death isn't the end of ISIS. Angry, alienated and profoundly confused people will continue to find the message of ISIS and similar groups seductive.
• Baghdadi and his lieutenants promised their followers paradise. They crafted a god in their own image - a god of genocide, violence, rape, enslavement - and claimed that this god was powerful enough to give victory in battle. It turned out they were wrong. Baghdadi's fate makes the task of recruiting fresh jihadists a little harder.
  
• The fanaticism of Baghdadi and his ilk is a minority view. Most of the forces that ground the caliphate into dust came from the Muslim world; if ISIS tries to rise again, Muslims will again be on the frontlines trying to defeat it.
• Not long ago, people in the West generally believed that we had the wisdom and the power to curb religious extremism by curing its causes. By promoting the political and economic development of the Muslim world, we thought we would reduce the appeal of radical religious ideas.
• But those hopes were delusional. The West can help at the margins, but the cultural, social, religious and economic reform the Middle East needs will have to be enacted by the people who live there - in their own time and in their own way.
• America won't "fix" the Middle East by killing bad guys like Baghdadi. But leaving them to flourish unmolested would be worse.
  
  The writer is Professor of Foreign Affairs and the Humanities at Bard College.

(Wall Street Journal)

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Is Trump's Policy on Kurds That Different Than His Predecessors?

Some Uncomfortable Truths about U.S. Policy in Syria
- Aaron David Miller, Eugene Rumer and Richard Sokolsky 

[W]hen the outrage over the initial Syria decision settles, as it must, clear-eyed decisions must be made about the U.S. role in Syria and the Middle East more broadly. And that means facing facts. Here are [facts] that ought to inform any reasonable debate going forward.

• For nearly a decade, U.S. policy in Syria has been a never-ending mission impossible without realistic goals or the means to achieve them. The decision to abandon the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), a mainly Kurdish-led militia, of which at least 40% are Syrian Arabs and other minorities, was predictable. It should have been clear that after the physical dismantling of the ISIS Caliphate, the U.S. relationship with the SDF would become increasingly fraught.
  
• The SDF did not sacrifice its fighters out of love for America; rather, it hoped to harness U.S. power to help protect Kurdish territory and guarantee autonomy in a future Syria. Washington and the Kurds formed a marriage of convenience to defeat ISIS, but over the longer term there would have been a reckoning over divergent goals. It is an open question whether the next administration, Congress and the American public would be prepared to foot the bill of getting drawn into what would have been a nation-building exercise.
  
• Putin did what the Obama and Trump administrations would not - intervene in the Syrian civil war. Putin won the Syrian civil war, and he deserves its spoils. And what spoils they are - a war-torn society, a ruined economy, bombed-out cities, and millions of refugees. If Putin wants to take on the burden of rebuilding Syria, fixing what his air force destroyed, and brokering peace among Syria's many factions, then we should let him.
  
• But the idea that Putin's Syria gambit will allow him to take over the Middle East is just silly. Few, if any, core U.S. interests - halting nuclear proliferation, preserving Israel's security, preventing terrorist attacks against the homeland, and maintaining the flow of oil from the Persian Gulf - are likely to suffer.
  
• Rather than chase unrealistic ambitions, the U.S. should remain focused on what its core interest in Syria has been since 2011: countering the threat from ISIS. The conditions that created ISIS are not going to go away. But Washington should assume that at some point Assad and his allies will act in their own self-interest - and they all want to prevent a resurgence of ISIS.
  
• More importantly, attacks by ISIS, while horrific for the people of Syria, should not be conflated with a heightened threat to the American homeland. It has been 18 years since the U.S. suffered a terrorist attack that was planned and executed by foreign jihadists. Attacks on the U.S. homeland may well continue to be committed by radicalized U.S. citizens, but that problem won't be solved by maintaining American troops in Syria.
  

Aaron David Miller served as a State Department Middle East negotiator in Republican and Democratic administrations.  Eugene Rumer is director of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace's Russia and Eurasia Program.  Richard Sokolsky was a member of the Secretary of State's Policy Planning Office in 2005-2015.

(Politico)
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Will The US Hit Iran?

Iran's Return Handshake - Editorial
  
Iran has tested U.S. resolve with military escalation across the Middle East. Iranian involvement in attacks on Saudi oil production over the weekend marks a new phase.
     
President Trump is eager for direct talks with Iranian President Rouhani, and Secretary of State Pompeo floated a handshake meeting between the two at the coming UN General Assembly.
 
The weekend attack is Iran's return handshake.
(Wall Street Journal)


U.S.: Iran Fired Cruise Missiles in Attack - Martha Raddatz

Iran launched an attack from its territory on its neighbor, Saudi Arabia, using a dozen cruise missiles and over 20 drones to strike a key Saudi oil facility, a senior Trump administration official told ABC News. President Donald Trump warned the U.S. was "locked and loaded" to respond to the attack. A senior U.S. official told ABC News: "It was Iran. The Houthis are claiming credit for something they did not do." 
(ABC News)


Drone Strikes Knock Out Half of Saudi Oil Capacity
- John Defterios and Victoria Cavaliere
 
Drone strikes on key Saudi Arabian oil facilities in Abqaiq and Khurais have disrupted about half of the kingdom's oil capacity, or 5% of the daily global oil supply. While Yemen's Houthi rebels took responsibility for the attacks, U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said: "Iran has now launched an unprecedented attack on the world's energy supply. There is no evidence the attacks came from Yemen." [The distance from Yemen to Abqaiq is 1,158 km. (720 miles).]
     
The U.S. "stands ready" to tap the country's Strategic Petroleum Reserve to steady oil markets if necessary, an Energy Department spokesperson said.
(CNN)
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UPDATES: 


Tehran Raises the Stakes - Amos Harel

The Iranian attack on Saudi oil installations is the most dramatic development in the Persian Gulf since the U.S. withdrew from the nuclear agreement in May 2018. 

The Iranian attack testifies to the improved capabilities of Iran's cruise missiles. While Israel is out of this system's current range, these capabilities are indicative of what might end up in the hands of Hizbullah. This signals the need for a speedy upgrade of Israeli defense and interception systems, with an emphasis on protecting strategic sites.
(Ha'aretz)


The International Community Needs to Get Tougher on Iran - Editorial

By any measure this is a geopolitical enormity, a deliberate attempt to disrupt the world's oil supplies, followed up by threats from the Revolutionary Guard to fire on U.S. warships in the Gulf. Nothing justifies Iran's random arrest of foreign nationals and threats to undermine the global economy. The time has come for a unified response to the menace emanating from Tehran.
(Telegraph-UK)


A Credibility Test - Michael Knights 

• If significant portions of the intelligence community conclude that the world's most important energy site has been hit by unprecedentedly advanced weapons launched directly from Iran or by the regime's proxies, the finding would challenge not only Riyadh and Washington, but the entire global energy community, including China.
• Iran has deliberately gone much further than its previous provocations, and if it avoids consequences once again, it may decide it has a free pass to go even further, whether against Saudi Arabia, Israel, or other U.S. partners. And other known global provocateurs will be watching how Washington responds, including Russia, China, and North Korea. For the sake of reestablishing deterrence, the attack must not go unanswered.

(Washington Institute for Near East Policy)
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MORE UPDATES:

Iran Sees No Drawback to Bellicose Strategy - David D. Kirkpatrick

Iranian scholars said Tehran has concluded that its recent aggressions have effectively strengthened its leverage with the West. Ali Ansari, a professor of Iranian history at the University of St. Andrews in Scotland, said that for Iranian hard-liners, "their policy of 'maximum resistance' is working."
   
Sanam Vakil, a scholar of Iran and the Persian Gulf at Chatham House policy institute in London, said the Iranians appear to have concluded from recent American actions that confrontation cannot lose, because even a potential American military action would almost certainly be a limited strike designed to avoid a prolonged ground war.
   
Domestically and in the region, surviving such a strike could strengthen the current Iranian government by rallying public opinion. "They are challenging American supremacy and forcing the international community to come to terms with a new relationship with the Islamic Republic," she said.
(New York Times)


Weighing U.S. Military Options in Iran - George Friedman

What will the U.S. do in response to Iran's drone and cruise missile attacks on Saudi Arabia's largest oil refinery? The attacks did not directly affect the U.S., save for the spike in oil prices, which actually helps the American oil industry.
   
There is a temptation to let the attacks slip into history. But the U.S. has formed an anti-Iran alliance in which Saudi Arabia is a key player. Doing nothing would call the U.S.-sponsored coalition into question. Failing to respond to an Iranian attack could help Iran increase its power throughout the region.
   
The Iranians know the dilemma they have posed for the U.S. They have bet that the risks are too high for the U.S. to respond.
(Geopolitical Futures)
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EVEN MORE UPDATES: 

Range of Options Presented to Trump - Eric Schmitt and Edward Wong

Senior U.S. national security officials met to refine a list of potential targets to strike in Iran, should President Trump order a military retaliation. 
    
Saudi Arabia is said to fear that any military response could lead to further attacks against its vulnerable oil facilities.
(New York Times)


Many Options Short of War with Iran - Jeff Mason and Stephen Kalin

President Trump said there were many options short of war with Iran after its attack on U.S. ally Saudi Arabia's oil sites. "There are many options. There's the ultimate option and there are options that are a lot less than that," Trump said. "I'm saying the ultimate option meaning go in - war."  
(Reuters)


Operating in the "Gray Zone" to Counter Iran - Michael Eisenstadt

The combined drone/cruise missile strike against key Saudi oil facilities on Sep. 14 marks the most audacious in a series of Iranian asymmetric "gray zone" operations since May, all intended to counter Washington's "maximum pressure" policy. If Washington does not impose a military cost on Tehran for such actions, the regime will continue to escalate, with negative repercussions for the U.S. economy, American credibility, and regional stability.
    
Pursuing a gray zone strategy of its own represents Washington's best chance of avoiding significant escalation while buying time for its pressure campaign to work. Plausible deniability works both ways. The U.S. should respond in-kind to Iranian actions, using nonlethal ripostes to impose material costs.
    
Just as the Abqaiq strike demonstrated the vulnerability of Saudi oil facilities, Iran's own oil industry is vulnerable to sabotage, cyberattacks, and precision strikes. 90% of its oil exports go through a single terminal, Kharg Island. The U.S. should ensure that Tehran gets worse than it gives in these exchanges.
    
An effective U.S. gray zone strategy could help blunt Iran's counter-pressure campaign, constrain its ability to engage in destabilizing regional activities, and dissuade it from eventually attempting a slow-motion nuclear breakout. 

Conversely, failure to pursue such a strategy could embolden Tehran on all of these fronts. More fundamentally, if the U.S. does not operate successfully in the gray zone against a third-tier power like Iran, this will raise questions about its ability to counter much more capable actors like Russia and China in the years to come.
The writer is director of the Military and Security Studies Program at The Washington Institute.
(Washington Institute for Near East Policy)


The West Cannot Ignore Iran's Attacks - Editorial

Iran is the greatest threat to the West. It has worked for decades to undermine moderate Arab regimes in the Middle East, to develop and acquire nuclear weapons, and to arm and support some of the worst terrorist organizations known to man: Hizbullah, Hamas, and the Houthis.
    
Israel has single-handedly been fighting Iran along its different borders for years. Israel's conflict with Hamas and Hizbullah is, in reality, against Iran. Both groups are Tehran's proxies. The world cannot let Iran continue to get away with its attacks. The time has long come for Tehran to pay a price for its violence, support of terrorism and nuclear violations.
    
If Iran can get away with attacking the U.S., attacking Saudi Arabia, and violating restrictions on its nuclear program, what will stop it from building a nuclear weapon one day and then using it against Israel or another Western country - especially when some of their leaders have made no secret of their intentions to do just so? If Iran's attacks go unanswered they will only intensify. 
(Jerusalem Post)
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Arabs Split with "Palestine"

Why Arabs Hate Palestinians - Khaled Abu Toameh

The Palestinians supported Saddam Hussein's 1990 invasion of Kuwait - a Gulf state that, together with its neighbors, used to give the Palestinians tens of millions of dollars in aid each year. In recent months, Arab criticism of the Palestinians has further escalated, with some writers and journalists expressing outrage over the Palestinians' opposition to peace plans.
     
At the core of this increasing disillusionment in the Arab world with the Palestinians is the Arabs' belief that despite all they did to help their Palestinian brothers for the past seven decades, the Palestinians have proven to be constantly ungrateful. Denunciations are coming not only from Egyptians and Saudis, but also from a growing number of Arabs in other Arab and Muslim countries, particularly in the Gulf.
    
You simply cannot burn pictures of the Saudi crown prince one day and rush to Riyadh to seek money the next. You cannot shout slogans against the Egyptian president one day and go to Cairo to seek political backing the next. What the Arabs see is Palestinian stagnation, mainly thanks to the Palestinian Authority and Hamas leaders, who are too busy poisoning their peoples' minds and ripping each other to shreds to have time for anything positive. 
(Gatestone Institute)
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Getting Israel

What American Jews Just Don't Get about Israel - Daniel Gordis

The U.S. and Israel are very different projects. America was created to be a haven to "huddled masses yearning to breathe free," as Emma Lazarus' poem at the foot of the Statue of Liberty declares, while Israel's Declaration of Independence begins, "The land of Israel was the birthplace of the Jewish people." America was meant to embrace all of humanity, while Israel was intended to save the Jewish people.
    
"End the occupation," [some misguided] American Jews chant. But Israelis are also exhausted by the occupation - they just have no idea how to end it without the West Bank becoming a breeding ground for terrorists, as happened with Gaza once Israel pulled out in 2005. That's a risk Israelis are not willing to take. To Israeli ears, "End the occupation" sounds like "Abolish taxes" - a great idea but entirely unrealistic. American Jews look at Israel's relationship with the Palestinians as a civil-rights issue. Israelis see it as a survival issue.
    
A country's foremost obligation is the protection of its citizens, and any government Israelis elect will understand that. Israel's policy towards the Palestinians is unlikely to change until the Palestinians declare that they have ended their drive to destroy Israel. That will not happen anytime soon, however. 
The writer is senior vice president and Koret distinguished fellow at Shalem College in Jerusalem. 
(New York Post)
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Dear Donald: "Leave With A Big Bang"

When You Leave the Middle East, Do It with a Big Bang - Efraim Inbar

President Donald Trump plans to withdraw the US military contingent stationed in northeast Syria. This may be implemented slowly, but the US troops eventually will be brought home.

Those foreign policy decisions seem to constitute a part of a larger trend to reduce US involvement in the Middle East, a trend that began during the tenure of president Barack Obama. 

The withdrawal of American forces may have strategic merits. 

The only way to prevent further decline in American capabilities, particularly in the Middle East, is to bolster deterrence. A withdrawal from the Middle East must be accompanied by steps that reduce the general impression of a weak US going home in defeat.

The place to make a stand is regarding Iran. Obama cut a deal with Iran that only encouraged its quest for hegemony and drive for nuclear weapons, while buying time in the hope that Iran will not harass the United States. In contrast, Trump understands that the Islamic Republic of Iran is an enemy of the US and that it is determined to acquire a nuclear weapon. But his hopes for forcing Iran to change its policies under diplomatic and economic pressure, while pursuing a policy of US disengagement from the Middle East, are unlikely to be realized.

The only way to leave the Middle East with as little as possible damage to US standing and security is to leave with a big bang. Washington must instill fear in the hearts of its enemies.

Despite the significant reduction in American military capabilities, the US still has enough punch to punish regional opponents and to generate fear. The US still possesses a strong enough air force to conduct a short campaign to destroy the critical Iranian nuclear installations.

Such military action would also delay nuclear proliferation, an important goal for the US, encourage US regional allies and discourage its opponents.

Indeed, action against a nuclear-aspiring Islamist Iran would reverberate beyond the Middle East and send a clear signal to anti-American forces all over the world.

Enhanced deterrence would prevent further Iranian provocations and would buy the US time to put its house in order and get serious about being a superpower.

Efraim Inbar is president of the Jerusalem Institute for Strategy and Security and a fellow at the Middle East Forum.

[The Middle East Forum & Jerusalem Post]

Shifting MidEast Sands

Emerging Gulf-Israel Alignment & the Palestinian Paradigm 
- R. David Harden 

• Trends are accelerating an emerging regional alignment between the Gulf States and Israel. First, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates (UAE), and Israel collectively regard Iran as an existential threat to their states. The differences with Israel over the future of Palestine are less consequential than the perception of the Iranian threat and the need for a tacit collective counter-strategy.
• Second, the UAE, Saudi Arabia, and Israel are much more confident regional actors than they were in the mid-1990s. The UAE projects immense economic strength and Saudi Arabia has similar aspirations. Aside from its regional military strength, Israel has become a technology power that is attractive to global finance, investment, and talent.
• Lastly, the political and economic elites in the Gulf and Israel desire these deepening economic and technological ties and are creating conditions on the ground where their citizens are increasingly open to these opportunities.
• Israel's inability to resolve its conflict with the Palestinians and its drag of regular wars in Gaza undermines its ability to assert the nation's full potential. But this potential historic Gulf-Israel alignment fundamentally changes the geo-political paradigm for the Palestinians. The region is moving beyond a "post-1948" period where the Israeli-Palestinian conflict dominated nation-state relationships in the Middle East.
• The next generation of Palestinian leadership will have to adopt a new strategy - one which will be quite uncomfortable for the old PLO guard. Freed from the dogma of the last 70 years, the Palestinians could envision a very different role for themselves in the Middle East.
  
  The writer, managing director of the Georgetown Strategy Group, was former Assistant Administrator at USAID's Bureau for Democracy, Conflict, and Humanitarian Assistance, and led the USAID Mission to the West Bank and Gaza in 2014-2016.

(The Hill)
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Screwing Iran: Proposal For Arab-Israeli Economic Cooperation

Israel Floats Proposal for Regional Cooperation, Effectively Ending the Arab Israeli Conflict 

Israel [is] promoting their “Tracks for Regional Peace” initiative that is intended to create a trade route connecting Europe with the Persian Gulf and Israel...

“Tracks for Regional Peace” is based on the planned extension of railway tracks in northern Israel, which would link Haifa’s seaport to Jordan’s rail network, which in turn will be linked with that of Saudi Arabia and other Sunni Arab states.

The network is envisioned as creating a regional transportation system to enhance trade relations and promote peaceful coexistence.

[T]he initiative will also include a stop in Jenin, connecting the Palestinians to the broader plan.  

The initiative is said to also offer shorter, cheaper, and safer trade routes in light of regional instability threatening passageways through the Strait of Hormuz in the Persian Gulf and the Bab al-Mandab Strait at the southern end of the Red Sea.

[The Times of Israel] 

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Iran Reflections

An oil tanker is shown on fire in the Gulf of Oman on June 13, 2019. (AP Photo/ISNA)

Appeasing Iran Isn't an Option - Prof. Eyal Zisser

Surprisingly, Iran's recent belligerence in the Persian Gulf is being accepted by the international community with apathy. Voices in the West are expressing understanding and even empathy toward Iran, which is perceived as a victim fending off an aggressor - the U.S. In Europe and even certain circles in the U.S., it is largely accepted that the nuclear deal successfully secured peace and quiet.
    

A similar argument was made 80 years ago, whereby U.S. President Franklin Roosevelt forced the leaders of Japan to attack Pearl Harbor by imposing painful sanctions on the country. But Iran of today, similar to Japan in 1941, isn't a peace-seeking country but a belligerent regional power that doesn't hide its expansionist ambitions.
    

History teaches us that an aggressor can't be placated with concessions. It wasn't Trump who forced Iran to take the path of violence and terror, and he isn't the reason it is trying to conquer the Middle East. Iran's essence - anchored in the ayatollahs' fundamentalist and apocalyptic worldview - was established well before Trump entered office.
    

Iran doesn't need to be appeased; it has to be curbed and subdued. 

The writer is a lecturer in the Middle East History Department at Tel Aviv University. 

(Israel Hayom)

Time to Intensify Pressure on Iran - Jacob Nagel & Tzvi Kahn

As Iran's economic plight grows increasingly dire, the regime may have concluded that it cannot risk waiting another year and a half to outlast President Trump. Consequently, the regime adopted a new strategy of nuclear and military brinksmanship aimed at testing U.S. resolve, strengthening Iranian deterrence, and blackmailing the U.S. and Europe to gain sanctions relief.
    

America must not be intimidated. Instead, it should intensify its maximum pressure campaign and increase sanctions on Iran even further. In so doing, Washington can present Ayatollah Khamenei with a choice: Either renegotiate the nuclear deal, on our terms, or risk the collapse of Iran's economy and possibly your regime.
    

America should urge the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), the UN body tasked with monitoring Iran's nuclear program, to strengthen its inspections of suspicious sites where Iran previously engaged in illicit nuclear activity, and to publish its findings. The Iran nuclear archive obtained by Israel identifies additional nuclear facilities, equipment, and activities previously unknown to the IAEA. The archive suggests that covert nuclear activity, especially in the weaponization arena, may continue today.

Brig.-Gen. Jacob Nagel, a visiting fellow at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, headed Israel's National Security Council. Tzvi Kahn is a senior Iran analyst at FDD. 

(The Hill)

Yemenites Return to Yemenite Village Synagogue in Jerusalem

Israelis Return to the Heart of Kfar Hashiloach in Jerusalem

Some 200 Israelis of Yemenite origins arrived to pray at the Old Yemenite Synagogue, situated in the heart of Kfar Hashiloach (Silwan) and just below the Old City in Jerusalem.

The community came to Jerusalem from Yemen in 1881, and at its height, ran five synagogues and numbered some 160 families.  Encountering Arab violence and attacks for several years, the community was forced to abandon the area in 1938, and the synagogues were desecrated by Muslim attackers.

Israel reunited its capital in 1967, and the Jews began to return to the area some 20 years ago, reacquiring one property after another. 

Eighty-one years after the synagogue was ransacked, decedents of the old Yemenite community returned to pray in the refurbished synagogue.
[Jewish Press]
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UPDATE: 

New York Times ignores Silwan's Jewish Origins

One would think a story about the US ambassador to Israel celebrating the opening of a new archeology exhibit might include a bit of history. Perhaps it would mention that Silwan’s first inhabitants were Yemeni Jews who in 1881 spent six months traveling to Jerusalem. They arrived broke and were greeted with suspicion by the local Jewish community living in Jerusalem. Settling on the eastern slopes of the Kidron Valley, this group of Yemeni Jews built a thriving community and established a synagogue, the same synagogue that the “right-wing Jewish settler group” is rebuilding and living in.

Perhaps an article that mentions the five thousand Palestinian inhabitants might mention how Silwan became a Palestinian village when it started as a Yemeni Jewish village. [D]uring the 1936–39 Arab Revolt, the village of Silwan was ethnically cleansed of all Jews, and Arab families moved into the homes of Yemeni Jews. One might wonder if the descendants of those Yemeni Jews still have the key to their homes.
[Providence Magazine]
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Does Trump's MidEast Peace Push Make Any Sense?

Jared Kushner, Trump's MidEast Architect.

Trump's Middle East Initiative - Jonathan Tobin

[I]t is almost certain the president will be denied the satisfaction of brokering a deal that eluded his predecessors. Under the current circumstances, Palestinian leadership and the political culture that sustains them simply won’t allow it. But that is not the only way to look at the Trump/Kushner plan.

[B]y sticking to a plan that puts economics first and refusing to prioritize pandering to Palestinian intransigence, as all his successors have done, Trump is creating a template for peace that makes sense. Even more to the point, it is being welcomed by most of the Arab world.

That means that even after they torpedo progress toward peace next month, as they have done every other time an effort has been made to end the conflict, it will be the Palestinians who will be more isolated than ever, not the United States. To the contrary, by convening an economic summit in which Israelis and representatives from Arab states will openly work toward creating greater cooperation, Trump will have enhanced America’s standing in the region.

[B]y shifting the discussion away from Palestinians’ inability to break free from their century-old war on Zionism toward achievable economic objectives, Trump will have still accomplished something important. It will also be more than Barack Obama did during the eight long years of bashing Israel and appeasing the Palestinians.

As futile as their quest seems, Kushner’s plan is also a breath of fresh air after decades of American efforts to accommodate the Palestinians’ unwillingness to admit that they’ve lost their long war against Zionism.
 
[T]he economic incentives on the table may, especially if they are backed by the Arab states that are sick of Abbas’s slippery refusal to negotiate, have a long-term impact on the conflict. That doesn’t mean that Saudi Arabia or any other of those other nations that will go to Bahrain will endorse Trump’s plan. But it does mean they are on board with changing the way peace is discussed in a way that will further isolate Fatah and Hamas after they refuse to negotiate.

The Sunni Arab states look to both the United States and Israel as allies in their struggle against Iran’s quest for regional hegemony. The notion that they will blame Trump for trying to make a peace that Palestinians will only again reject is absurd. When the dust settles from the rollout of the American plan, the Arab states will be firmly in America’s corner no matter what the Palestinians do.
(The Federalist)
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The Bahrain Economic Confab Is a Big Step Forward - Raphael Ahren

It's true that the U.S.-Bahraini economic "workshop" on June 25-26, billed as the first step in rolling out the U.S. peace plan, is unlikely to lead to a breakthrough in the long-stalled Israeli-Palestinian peace process. But the mere fact that the peace proposal's rollout will take place in an Arab capital is nothing less than a sensation. 

Moreover, it is worth highlighting that this first major parley on the planned U.S. path to Israeli-Palestinian peace is to be focused solely on the interests of one side. The meeting is devoted to the Palestinians' economic well-being. 

Kushner and Greenblatt promised to publish a blueprint for what they think is a fair and feasible solution to the problem. It's quite likely that they themselves have never believed that ending a century-old conflict in an instant is possible. 
Regardless of how the Palestinians will react to the peace plan (they will reject it), Bahrain's willingness to host the "Peace to Prosperity" summit strongly indicates that the Arab world is more inclined to normalize ties with Israel than some may think.
(Times of Israel)
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Transforming The Saudis Can Reshape MidEast

Saudi Arabia Undergoing Fundamental Transformation 
- Dennis Ross

Saudi Arabia is in the midst of a fundamental transformation of its society. True, the monarchy retains all political power, but nationalism and modernization are replacing Wahhabism, a rigid, intolerant interpretation of Islam that fueled al-Qaeda and the Islamic State. Crown Prince Mohammad bin Salman is conducting a revolution from above that is discrediting radical Islamist ideology, including the removal of several thousand clerics and dozens of judges deemed to be sympathetic to al-Qaeda.
   
The social changes emerging in Saudi Arabia are visible to any visitor. Go into any restaurant and see men and women mixing; visit businesses or governmental offices and women are prominent; cinemas are opening; music, forbidden in the strict Wahhabi code, is now played in concerts drawing thousands. None of this was thinkable in the past.
   
Having just returned from Saudi Arabia, I am struck by the enthusiasm for the crown prince, especially among young people who now can talk openly about their ability to shape their destinies and the destiny of the country. Like it or not, the policies of the Saudis will have a huge effect on what takes shape in the Middle East. America can't write them off. 
The writer, counselor at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, served in senior national security positions during the Reagan, Bush, Clinton, and Obama administrations. 
(Bloomberg)
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UPDATE:

On the Way to Open Normalization - Yoni Ben Menachem

Despite resolutions of the Arab Summit and the Arab League that ban open normalization with Israel, as well as Palestinian opposition, the United Arab Emirates has agreed to host Israel at the Expo 2020 exhibition in October. At the exhibition, Israel will present its achievements in the fields of water, medicine, technology, and information, highlighting the spirit of Israeli innovation.
    
Over the past two months, the covert normalization process between Israel and the Gulf states has begun to emerge in tandem with the process of crafting President Trump's "Deal of the Century." Open normalization is supposed to be an integral part of that deal.
    
Arab rulers respect power. They see how Israel has been attacking the Iranian military entrenchment in Syria with full U.S. backing and even a certain coordination with Russia. They also see Mahmoud Abbas' rejectionist policy toward any compromise with Israel, while Hamas and Islamic Jihad have been turning Gaza into an Iranian stronghold.
    
Open normalization with Israel is an important process that can help the Palestinians understand that Israel is a fact of life and that even the Arab states have come to terms with Israel's presence in the Middle East.
The writer, a veteran Arab affairs and diplomatic commentator for Israel Radio and Television, is a senior Middle East analyst for the Jerusalem Center.
(Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs)
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