White House senior adviser Jared Kushner on Monday will reportedly head a US delegation to Israel and then Morocco in order to devise ways to implement normalization between the latter two countries. The news comes exactly a week after President Donald Trump announced that Rabat had agreed to forge official diplomatic relations with Jerusalem.
Morocco is the fourth Arab nation in as many months to do so under the banner of the Abraham Accords, following in footsteps of the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain and Sudan.
In a parallel process, Bhutan on Saturday also agreed to formalize ties with the Jewish state.
The Kushner-led American team — which will also include Middle East envoy Avi Berkowitz and the CEO of the US International Development Finance Corporation, will first travel to Jerusalem and subsequently will be joined by Israeli officials, including National Security Adviser Meir Ben-Shabbat, on a direct flight from Tel Aviv to the Moroccan capital.
While in Israel, Kushner is slated to meet with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to discuss the prospects of sealing more deals with Arab or Muslim states — with Oman and Indonesia reportedly being the frontrunners — before President Trump leaves office on January 20.
Sudan has revoked the citizenship of former Hamas leader Khaled Mashal and some 3,000 other foreign nationals, Arab media sources reported on Wednesday.
The move comes after Washington on Monday formally removed Khartoum from a blacklist of countries supporting terrorism, less than two months after the African country agreed to normalize relations with Israel. The Sudanese transitional authorities, in place since mid-2019 after a revolution that ousted longtime dictator Omar al-Bashir from power, welcomed the decision, which will end nearly three decades of isolation.
The United States blacklisted Sudan in 1993 due to Bashir’s harboring of Al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden. Five years later the terror organization orchestrated the dual bombings of US Embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, which killed 224 people, including 12 Americans. The designation had prevented Khartoum from receiving financial assistance and investment, while cutting the country off from the global banking system.
Mashal, 64, retired as Hamas chairman in 2017 and has lived in exile in numerous Arab states including Jordan and Syria for fear of Israeli assassination.
The US Senate passed a bipartisan bill on Wednesday elevating the position of special envoy to monitor and combat antisemitism to the rank of ambassador.
“Antisemitism continues to rise at an alarming rate across the globe,” Sen. Jacky Rosen, D-Nev., who led sponsorship of the bipartisan bill, said in a statement Wednesday after the vote, which passed unanimously. “To equip the State Department to better address rising anti-Semitism, it is critical that we elevate the role of the Special Envoy to Monitor and Combat Anti-Semitism to Ambassador-at-Large,” Rosen added.
A broad array of Jewish groups backed the measure. With the status of ambassador, the envoy will have easier access to the secretary of state, increased funding and the office’s recommendations are likelier to be seen overseas as having the backing of the administration of the day.
Jonathan Greenblatt, Anti-Defamation League CEO and national director said that “congress has taken an important step today to ensure that our government can better fight rising antisemitism around the world.”
The position of antisemitism monitor was created by Congress in 2004.
The trial of 14 accomplices in the 2015 Islamist terror attacks in Paris came to an end on Wednesday, with a series of prison sentences ranging from four to 30 years handed down by the court in the French capital. Eleven defendants appeared in court for the verdict, and three were tried in absentia. The main defendant in court, Ali Riza Polat, was found guilty of complicity in terrorist crime and also given a 30-year jail term.
The trial spanned the three days of terror that enveloped Paris between Jan. 7-9 2015. Twelve people were massacred at the satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo by the brothers Saïd and Chérif Kouachi, while a policewoman was murdered the following day by their comrade, Amedy Coulibaly. The next day, a heavily-armed Coulibaly seized the Hyper Cacher kosher supermarket in eastern Paris where he murdered four Jewish hostages. All three terrorists were killed in separate shoot-outs with French police.
In remarks to the court that accompanied sentencing, the presiding judge emphasized that radical Islamist beliefs were at the root of the attacks. “The fact of choosing victims precisely because they were journalists, or a member of the security forces, or of Jewish faith, clearly demonstrates in itself their desire to sow terror in Western countries,” the judge said.
Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla lit the Hanukkah candles at a virtual ceremony organized by the Israeli Embassy in Washington on Wednesday evening, just days after his pharmaceutical corporation received the final go-ahead to distribute its coronavirus vaccine across the US. Each night of this year’s Festival of Lights, the Israeli Embassy in Washington has invited prominent Jewish figures from around the world to participate in a virtual candle-lighting.
Israel’s Ambassador to the United States Ron Dermer introduced Dr. Bourla, pointing out the poignancy of fact that Bourla is the descendant of Holocaust survivors: “Seventy-five years after the Nazis murdered millions, Dr. Bourla is today leading the race to save millions.”
This Hanukkah is cause for much celebration as the light to the end of the COVID-19 pandemic draws nearer.
Happy 7th night of #Hanukkah!
Thanks to @Pfizer & CEO Dr. @AlbertBourla, the end of the #COVID19 pandemic is in sight as#vaccines roll out globally.We owe Dr. Bourla & Pfizer a debt of gratitude, and are honored to have him light tonight’s candles. pic.twitter.com/Ncb0HO61wA
— Embassy of Israel (@IsraelinUSA) December 16, 2020
No Hands: Israel’s Mobileye Releases VIDEO of Self-Driving Ride Through Munich
- Saudis Remove Antisemitism and Anti-Zionism From Textbooks — Monitoring Group (Times of Israel)
- Beirut Synagogue Renovated After Port Blast, but No Jews Likely to Pray There (Times of Israel)
- With COVID Hitting Hard, Brazil’s Jews Look Toward Israel (Dan Lavie, Israel Hayom)
- A Nanochip Bible Embedded in a Bracelet, Ring or Pendant (Abigail Klein Leichman, Israel21C)
