Incoming Israeli Ambassador to the U.S. Michael Herzog

The best strategy for preventing a nuclear-armed Iran is “serious deterrence,” Israeli Ambassador to the U.S. Michael Herzog said in a Monday virtual event with The Washington Post, reports Jewish Insider’s Gabby Deutch. “I do believe that if you reinstate deterrence, you will prevent war. I certainly believe that if you show assertiveness vis-a-vis Iran, as Israel has shown in the last few years in the region, you will deter Iran,” Herzog said. When pressed by Post national security correspondent Souad Mekhennet to explain what deterrence looks like, Herzog did not offer specifics.

Wait and see: “We maintain our options open, we will build our capabilities to counter Iran, we will maintain our freedom of action. And we’ll decide in due time what action to take,” said Herzog. He added that the main thing he would hope to see in a nuclear agreement is “a deal without sunsets, or if at all, sunsets in a very far distance,” referring to the so-called “sunset clauses” in the 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action, whereby certain terms of the agreement expire after a predetermined number of years.

Expert negotiator: Before becoming ambassador late last year, Herzog served for decades as a member of Israel’s negotiating team and played a role in talks with Palestinians and Jordanians. He touched upon that experience when the conversation turned toward Israel’s normalization agreements with several Arab states. Why, Mekhennet asked, is peace with the Palestinians so much harder to achieve than the agreements reached with the United Arab Emirates, Morocco and Bahrain?

Conflicting narratives: “We’re talking about two national movements with claims to the same piece of territory with conflicting narratives,” Herzog said of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, drawing a distinction to Israel’s new regional partners with whom it does not share borders. “It’s extremely difficult to bridge over these gaps. It’s not that we haven’t tried. We tried for many, many years, and there were all sorts of offers on the table.”

Russia response: Herzog also addressed Israel’s response to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and criticism from some other Western nations that Israel’s early response was weak. “It took Israel, though, a bit longer to condemn the actions, or at least this was how the rest of the world felt about it,” said Mekhennet. “Why did it take so long for Israel to condemn Russia?”

Back to reality: “I disagree with the premise of your question. It took Israel a day or two, but we condemned unequivocally,” said Herzog, but he added, “We do have some constraints because we have a Russian military neighboring us in Syria, and it’s critical for Israel to maintain freedom of action against Iran in Syria.”

Read more here.

Noa Tishby

As Israel’s first special envoy for combating antisemitism and delegitimization, Israeli actress and author Noa Tishby knows she has her work cut out for her. Antisemitic attacks – both online and in-person – are on the rise, and Israel is the rare country whose right to exist is regularly challenged, Tishby told Jewish Insider’s Ruth Marks Eglash this week in an exclusive interview, her first since being appointed.

Collective effort: “I know we have a lot of work to do,” said Tishby, who over the past decade has become an icon in the world of Jewish advocacy and whose 2021 book, Israel: A Simple Guide to the Most Misunderstood Country on Earth, received broad praise. “No one individual will ever eliminate antisemitism — this is a fight that must be done collectively by Jews and non-Jews alike, and I will work tirelessly to help lead that effort.” Tishby was appointed to the post, for which she is not being paid, by Israeli Foreign Minister Yair Lapid.

Bridging the divide: In her new role, Tishby, 44, who splits her time between Los Angeles and Israel, plans to use her celebrity status and her large social media presence, as well as her unique voice on the subject, to take on the fight and, she said, work to serve as a bridge between the country of her birth and her new home. “I like to say that I am 100% Israeli and 100% American, and I believe I can be a bridge between the sides,” said the actress, recognizing that just as Israel struggles to explain itself and its actions, Americans often view the Jewish state, and its conflict with the Palestinians, through an incorrect and narrow paradigm. “Framing this situation as a pro-[Palestinian] or pro-Israel issue is problematic at the core.”

Read the full interview here.

Bonus: The co-chairs of the House Bipartisan Task Force for Combating Antisemitism said in a statement that Tisby is “a powerful voice in defending the Jewish people and the State of Israel” and praised Lapid’s “leadership and vision” in creating the post. Rep. Ritchie Torres (D-NY) lauded Tishby as a “dear friend” and “a true Renaissance woman.”

Marjorie Eastman

In North Carolina’s cutthroat Republican Senate primary — the dynamics of which have increasingly been shaped by former President Donald Trump — one underdog candidate is making a somewhat quixotic argument that the GOP should look further back to seek guidance from another influential conservative figurehead: Ronald Reagan. “I’m all about Ronald Reagan’s big tent,” Marjorie Eastman, an author and Army veteran, told Jewish Insider’s Matthew Kassel in a recent interview. “We have quite a lot at stake, we have a bigger mission, and the values that conservatives have are what we need to really help our country move forward.”

Fraught landscape: By invoking the 40th president, Eastman is harkening back to an era of American politics that looks decidedly more civilized than the fraught political landscape on which Republican primaries now play out. Eastman, 42, is one of several Republican candidates vying to succeed retiring Sen. Richard Burr (R-NC) in the May primary, which has been among the nastiest elections of the midterms as Trump has exerted his influence with an endorsement of Rep. Ted Budd (R-NC).

Glass half full: Despite an uphill challenge, Eastman, who declared her candidacy months after Budd was anointed, said she was unfazed by Trump’s pick. “North Carolinians are very smart voters, they think for themselves, and they take all the information in,” she told JI. “It doesn’t matter if you believed in the last administration, liked the policies, maybe you’re a little bit more of a moderate or not. I just find that North Carolinians are very, very focused on moving forward.”

‘Right thing to do’: While Eastman acknowledged that, as a self-described political outsider, she does not have a voting record on such matters, she said she was “100% behind Israel.” Her views, she said, are personally informed by a family story connected with the Holocaust, noting that her son is named after her husband’s grandfather, who fought in the Dutch resistance during World War II. “He would tell him stories of how he would hide Jewish families in his barn to protect them and put his own family at risk in doing that,” Eastman told JI. “That was the right thing to do, to take care of people.”

Respecting differences: Eastman, who served in Iraq and Afghanistan during her 10 years as an Army intelligence officer and commander, said her military experience has contributed to a more tolerant view of human differences that is particularly important amid rising incidents of antisemitic attacks. “When you serve together in the military, you come from all walks of life,” Eastman said. “We don’t have to agree on everything, we can be different, but that’s exactly right. We respect our differences, and differentiation adds value, but let’s focus on how we can move together and focus on the mission at hand.”

Read the full interview here.

Israeli Minister of Defense Benny Gantz speaks during a meeting with U.S. Secretary of Defense Lloyd Austin at the Pentagon December 9, 2021 ,in Arlington, Virginia.

Israeli Defense Minister Benny Gantz expressed uncertainty on Monday about the future of the Israeli coalition government led by Prime Minister Naftali Bennett and Foreign Minister Yair Lapid after the coalition lost its one-seat majority in the Knesset last week, Jewish Insider’s Marc Rod reports.

Quotable: “I hope that we can keep the government… it is very hard to see where are we going to be next week,” Gantz said at a virtual event on Monday with The Washington Institute for Near East Policy. “I know where we want to be next week. We want to be with a functioning government, responsible government that serves the entire society of Israel.”

Downgrade: Gantz also discussed a range of topics regarding Israeli-Palestinian relations and security policy. He repeatedly stated that, in the near term, Israel must “find ways to live with the Palestinians” in a “two-entity situation” short of a two-state solution. He said that the invocation of a two-state solution “creates a huge gap between an old phrase on one hand and a very faraway vision on the other hand.”

Next steps: Gantz said it is “very important” that some PA officials and local leaders have condemned the wave of recent terrorist attacks in Israel, but noted that others are “inciting terror.” He called for “concrete action by the Palestinian Authority” but said Israel “obviously won’t be waiting for them.” He pledged that, if overall tensions remain low, he will expand various programs benefiting Palestinians, including a program allowing some Palestinians to pray at the Al-Aqsa Mosque without permits and issuing work permits to Palestinians living in Gaza. “If it stays quiet, I will increase it,” Gantz said, of the work permits. “If it goes wrong, I’ll have to cease it. I hope they will understand it.”

Deal or no deal: The defense minister also addressed the possibility of a new Iran deal, calling on negotiators to “minimize the loopholes that we are seeing within the deal itself.” He noted that Iran is much closer to a nuclear weapon than it was in 2015 when the original Iran deal was struck, and predicted that the funds Iran would gain through a deal would generate an uptick in other regional malign activities. “I understand the American wish to put the Iranian issue back in the box. But if you don’t close the open loopholes, you’re going to get a serious problem down the road,” he said. “I understand what are the benefits of a potential deal as long as it [has] taken care of what needs to be taken care of.”

Read the full story here.