People wait at the departure hall at Ben Gurion International Airport near Tel Aviv, Israel, Nov. 28, 2021.

There are “no timelines announced” on when Israel will be added to the U.S. Visa Waiver Program, Department of Homeland Security Under Secretary for Policy Rob Silvers told Jewish Insider’s Gabby Deutchon Friday, adding that including Israel in the program is a “high priority” for the department. Silvers’s comments follow those made by Israeli Interior Minister Ayelet Shaked, who said in November that she expects Israel to be added to the program by 2023. Shaked discussed the issue with Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas and Silvers in Washington last month.

Strong support: “We strongly support Israel’s efforts to join the Visa Waiver Program. We can’t think of a more exciting result than welcoming Israel into the program,” said Silvers. “To do that, it will have to meet all the requirements for program participation.” Senior officials from DHS and Israel’s Interior Ministry have been in negotiations about how Israel can comply with the legal requirements to join the program, which would allow Israelis to travel to the U.S. without a visa.

Reciprocity rules: One key issue is reciprocity, which requires Israel to allow all American citizens — including those of Palestinian descent — to enter Israel. “We will continue to work with Israel towards fulfilling the reciprocity requirements for Americans seeking to enter or transit to Israel,” said Silvers, who added that the provision requires “equal treatment of all Americans.”

Too many rejections: The percentage of rejected Israeli visa applicants also remains too high, presenting another challenge. “We’ve been working actually very closely and productively with both our embassy and in Jerusalem, and also with our Israeli government counterparts to understand what might be driving their visa refusal numbers, and if there are ways that together, we can drive those numbers down in an appropriate way,” Silvers explained.

Nonprofit security: Silvers has been a vocal supporter of the Nonprofit Security Grant Program, which gives nonprofits funds to use for security needs. DHS did not request a specific funding amount for the program in this year’s budget, and Silvers declined to say whether he believes the current amount should be increased. “I think when I left the department, it was like $25 million or something like that. So it’s really grown, and we’re constantly evaluating whether we should advise further growth,” said Silvers, who also held roles at DHS during the Obama administration.

Read the full interview here.

Buchenwald concentration camp survivor Elie Wiesel shakes hands with U.S. President Barack Obama after his speech during their visit of former Buchenwald concentration camp on June 5, 2009, near Weimar, Germany.

The auditorium at the Obama Presidential Center in Chicago will be named after Nobel Peace Prize laureate and Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel, as part of an effort to honor “civil rights and social justice leaders whose significant contributions to society advanced justice and equality in America,” Jewish Insider’s Melissa Weiss reports.

The ‘world’s conscience’: The space was named by Obama Foundation board member Penny Pritzker and her husband, Dr. Bryan Traubert. “Elie Wiesel endured the unimaginable evils of the Holocaust and emerged as the world’s conscience in the struggle for human rights,” Pritzker said in a statement. “His unrelenting activism and prolific writing after bearing witness to such horrors is a call to each of us to never become indifferent. A more just and peaceful world is always possible.”

Obama tribute: In 2009, Obama and Wiesel, accompanied by then-German Chancellor Angela Merkel, visited the Buchenwald concentration camp, where Wiesel was imprisoned during the final months of the war. “Elie was not just the world’s most prominent Holocaust survivor, he was a living memorial,” a statement from the then-president read upon Wiesel’s death in July 2016. “After we walked together among the barbed wire and guard towers of Buchenwald where he was held as a teenager and where his father perished, Elie spoke words I’ve never forgotten — ‘Memory has become a sacred duty of all people of goodwill.’ Upholding that sacred duty was the purpose of Elie’s life.”

Agree to disagree: Obama and Wiesel shared a warm relationship, despite a deep disagreement over the Obama administration’s approach to Iran. Wiesel was a vocal opponent of the 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action and attended former Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s address to a joint session of Congress that year, in which the Israeli leader warned against entering into a nuclear agreement with Tehran. “Whatever differences they had,” Wiesel’s son, Elisha, told JI, “my father and President Obama shared a deep and abiding love for this country.”

Read the full story here.

A person is seen at the site targeted by aerial attacks on December 05, 2021 in Sana’a, Yemen.

Observers and U.S. partners inside and outside the Middle East have raised alarms in recent weeks about the growing threat of weaponized drones used by Iran and its proxies to attack U.S. troops and partner nations — and Congress appears to be taking notice, Jewish Insider’s Marc Rod reports.

Crackdown: On Friday, a bill clarifying that the creation and proliferation of weaponized drones and drone technology is covered under the U.S.’s conventional weapons sanctions on Iran sailed through the House Foreign Affairs Committee by a bipartisan voice vote. The bill was first introduced less than two weeks ago.

Upper chamber: The sanctions approach is also likely to find support in the Senate. “[Drones] should be part of any sanctions conversation with Iran,” Sen. Marco Rubio (R-FL), the top Republican on the Senate Intelligence Committee, who also sits on the Foreign Relations Committee, told Jewish Insider last week.

Not enough: In what several senators characterized as another move to counter to Iranian drones, a bipartisan group of senators last week blocked efforts to stop a sale of $650 million in air-to-air missiles to Saudi Arabia. But Saudi Arabian officials said last week that they need hundreds more Patriot missiles to maintain their defenses against the drones. “That’s a big danger,” Rubio said, of the Patriot missile shortage. “Whatever it takes to defeat any sort of Iranian proxies from presenting a danger not just to them but to others in the region and the world.”

Falling behind: Some observers in Israel say the U.S. has not been aggressive enough in its response to the drone threat. “If some militias use Iranian drones to attack American targets like the Al-Tanf base [in the Syrian desert near the borders of Iraq and Jordan] or American bases in Iraq, they should shoot back. It’s simple,” Professor Ephraim Inbar, president of the Jerusalem Institute for Strategy and Security, told JI last week. “Once Americans were good cowboys, they are no longer so.”

Window of opportunity: Yoel Guzansky, a senior research fellow at the Institute for National Security Studies who also served in Israel’s National Security Council, told JI that the drone issue is “a chance for Israel to offer its assistance” to Saudi Arabia, though the chances of that happening “are very low right now.”

Read more here.

Menorahs are lit during a party on the 6th night of Hanukkah in New York City.

The four former State Department special envoys to monitor and combat antisemitism agreed on Friday that the U.S. needs a domestic official tasked with monitoring and combating domestic antisemitism, in addition to the current position that handles antisemitism abroad, Jewish Insider’s Marc Rod reports.

Coming together: Gregg Rickman, Hannah Rosenthal, Ira Forman and Elan Carr, the four ex-officials who have held the post since its creation in 2004, spoke together last week at a webinar organized by the Anti-Defamation League, Hadassah, the Jewish Council for Public Affairs, The Jewish Federations of North America and an array of other Jewish organizations. The webinar was designed to highlight the special envoy’s role amid delays in confirming the Biden administration’s nominee for the post, Holocaust historian Deborah Lipstadt. It was the first time all four ex-envoys have spoken together.

Many hats: Carr said that the Trump administration had tasked him with taking on some domestic responsibilities in addition to his foreign duties — although budgetary constraints made that difficult. He argued that the position should be “dual-hatted,” with a joint posting at the State Department and the White House so that the envoy can address both foreign and domestic antisemitism. “They can bring the same focus domestically in the United States, because we need it domestically in the United States,” Carr said.

Doubling up: Forman argued that a separate domestic position should be established, given that the State Department envoy office is chronically under-resourced, and is already unable to tackle the full spectrum of foreign issues. “I think we’ve got to figure out a way to have some kind of position that is dealing accordingly with domestic antisemitism,” Forman said. “There’s too much even to do just in the foreign policy region. But we have a rising problem of antisemitism here.”

Whoops: Rosenthal also lamented that that the State Department envoy was upgraded to ambassador rank — requiring Senate confirmation — last year. “I always opposed this becoming an ambassador rank because of exactly why we’re on this call,” Rosenthal said. “We would have had Deborah in place… I never cared about what my title was, nor did anyone in another country. So all this did — by changing the language — was make it a political issue, and that’s what we’re facing now, and I’m very sorry to see it.”

Read more here.

Bonus: The House Foreign Relations Committee, in a party-line vote, also approved a bill establishing an office and special envoy to monitor and combat Islamophobia.