Trump, the Nobel Prize and the Ivory Tower

Academics, like political pundits, often feel invisibly compelled to become classic killjoys. Such is the case with regard to the recent Middle East peace deals, orchestrated by the Trump administration, between Israel, the UAE, and Bahrain. What should be a cause for universal celebration has predictably been downplayed, not only in the international press but among those ensconced in scholarly ivory towers. Jonathan Cristol, Research Fellow at Adelphi University, cynically observed, “…these deals do not usher in some sort of new era of peace and harmony.” Middle East professor at Lehigh University, Henry Barkey, declared, “The Trump administration should be in these countries’ debt because they gave it an excuse to gloat about the diplomatic achievement.” He went on to assert that a Biden administration would have been careful to consider all the “ramifications” of the deals before promoting and entering into them. By “ramifications” he is echoing the criticism of Notre Dame professor of religion and peace studies, Atalia Omer: “The main problem behind this ‘peace deal’ is it ignores the Palestinian struggles and demands.”

Leave it to academics to confuse serious progress toward a more peaceful region, and by extension a more harmonious world, with the rejectionist rantings of the corrupt Palestinian Authority, intent on establishing what would effectively amount to a terrorist state on the order of Gaza, situated on the very outskirts of Tel Aviv and Jerusalem. It takes no scholarly pedigree or Ph.D. to recognize that what has for decades been referred to as a “peace process” with the Palestinians is in fact nothing short of a “war process.” It is hardly practical to imagine that the tiny state of Israel, no larger in area than New Jersey, could realistically be subdivided into two sovereign nations, that of the Palestinian Arabs inexorably committed to the destruction of their Israeli neighbors. It is precisely in the ivory tower that the world of theory expresses itself in sharp disconnect with the practical realities of this war-torn region. However the academics might fantasize to the contrary, the Middle East is not Switzerland, where men in lederhosen come yodeling over the hillsides. 

Having lived in Northern Galilee and worked for a television news gathering operation in southern Lebanon, I have, unfortunately, seen the face of terrorism “up-close and personal.” When my friend and colleague, a Christian man from Ohio, was murdered in his own living room by radicalized Lebanese Shiites, just a few kilometers from Israel’s northernmost villages, it became obvious to this observer that genuine hope for this troubled region must be found, not by catering to the demands of the Palestinians and their professorial acolytes in other countries, but by building bridges with the moderate Arab states in the region, who recognize, as Israel does, the need to form a bulwark against Islamic radicalism and forge a future built on shared values of peace and security. For the agreement with both the UAE and Bahrain, President Trump has surely earned not one but indeed two Nobel peace prizes. For this he deserves the gratitude of the region and the world.  

Bahrain, Biden and Bombast

For Jews around the world, and of course in the land of Israel, it is the season of the High Holy Days: Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur. There is an ancient tradition that “on Rosh Hashanah, all the world passes before God like sheep.” But beyond the expectation of the divine verdict, it is also a season of renewal and a time of hope. Nothing more epitomizes the longing for a better day than the “impossible dream” of peace between Israel and the Arab world. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu addressed his people on Israel T.V., declaring: “It took us twenty-six years from the second peace agreement with an Arab state (Jordan) to the third peace agreement (with the UAE). And it took us not twenty-six years but twenty-nine days between a peace agreement with the third Arab state and the fourth Arab state (Bahrain). And there will be more…”

Some would call these developments nothing short of miraculous. Yet it is clear that their catalyst was none other than the great dealmaker, President Donald Trump, and his skillful Jewish son-in-law, Jared Kushner. For Joe Biden, by contrast, such peace deals are not miracles; they are “accidents.” He remarked: “I think Trump is going to accidentally do something positive here, in terms of this issue of … other Arab states.” It goes without saying, however, that for the people of Israel, who have lived in a state of cold war if not hot war with their Arab neighbors since the birth of their nation in 1948, these developments are infinitely more providential than accidental. 

The latest peace agreement, with Bahrain, was announced on the nineteenth anniversary of 9/11. Leading Israel's newscast that Sabbath Eve was a melody by the celebrated songstress of the Jewish state, the late Naomi Shemer. Its hauntingly beautiful refrain went out over the airwaves and the internet: “After the Holidays all will be renewed; Our daily life will return and be refreshed; The air, the dust, the rain, the fire; You too, you too will be renewed.” 

In today's cynical culture and vulgar political climate, it's easy to become jaded, to miss the “miracle on the Mediterranean” that today’s Israel represents. For Joe Biden and the Democrat Party operatives who feed him his lines, it’s much easier to frame not only American culture but the world at large in terms of identity politics, to harp on the essentially Marxist narrative of the “oppressors” and the “oppressed.” Biden’s party views the Palestinians as the oppressed ones, though the terrorist cadre among them have perpetrated untold acts of murderous aggression against innocent Israeli civilians. 

Their Jewish neighbors, by contrast, are without question members of the most persecuted ethnic group in all of human history. They have suffered exile, dispersion, and near annihilation at the hands of genocidal Nazis. Now that a new diplomatic horizon is presenting itself for this truly persecuted people, it suits America’s minions of the radical left to frame it as happenstance. But in the Jewish state, suffering like so many countries from the China Virus, the coming Days of Awe are indeed days of hope. And for the UAE and Bahrain, Israel at last “is real.”