Jared Kushner, former senior advisor to President Donald Trump, and Brooke Rollins, president and CEO of America First Policy Institute (AFPI), participate in a discussion hosted by AFPI and The Abraham Accords Peace Institute, in Washington D.C., on Monday, September 12, 2022.

A who’s who of former Trump administration officials and a coterie of diplomats gathered in a Washington, D.C., downtown office suite on Monday to celebrate the two-year anniversary of the signing of the Abraham Accords, Jewish Insider’s Gabby Deutch reports. The event was jointly hosted by the Abraham Accords Peace Institute, a nonpartisan organization working to build multilateral ties between Accords member nations, and the America First Policy Institute, a Trump-aligned think tank. Speakers praised former President Donald Trump for his accomplishments in the Middle East and bemoaned the media for not giving him adequate credit for the Abraham Accords. 

New administration: “We knew that we had an amazing opportunity,” keynote speaker and former Trump senior advisor Jared Kushner said of the normalization deals that he helped negotiate with Israel, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Morocco and Sudan. He blamed “Trump derangement syndrome” for the Biden administration’s early tepid response to the Abraham Accords. “The current administration, it took them a year to really call it by its name,” he added, “and I think now they’ve embraced it, because they see how good it is, and that was because it’s been enduring in the region.”  

In the game: The only speaker at the event who had never served in government was Bruce Pearl, the Jewish head coach of the Auburn men’s basketball team, who just returned from taking his players on a trip to Israel. Pearl participated in a panel discussion with former top national security officials. “I’m working on taking college basketball teams next year to UAE, to Dubai, and play some games there, and then get on a plane and go to Tel Aviv and play some games there, and create the Abraham Accords Cup and have it be something that is just normal,” Pearl said to applause. “Bringing ESPN alongside us and just see, yes, this is how it is now, and this is how it can be in the future.” 

Who’s who: Diplomats in attendance included Israeli Ambassador to the U.S. Michael Herzog, UAE Ambassador to the U.S. Yousef Al Otaiba, Egyptian Ambassador to the U.S. Motaz Zahran, Finnish Ambassador to the U.S. Mikko Hautala, Hungarian Ambassador to the U.S. László Szabó and Romanian Ambassador to the U.S. Andrei Muraru. Other attendees included  Rep. Claudia Tenney (R-NY), executive vice president of American Friends of Lubavitch (Chabad) Rabbi Levi Shemtov, former Trump administration advisor and Abraham Accords negotiator Avi Berkowitz, former USAID Deputy Administrator Bonnie Glick, former Defense Department senior official and director of the Atlantic Council’s Rafik Hariri Center William Wechsler and Linda McMahon, former administrator of the Small Business Administration and chair of AFPI. 

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Israeli Prime Minister Yair Lapid and German Chancellor Olaf Scholz met in Berlin on Monday.

Israeli Prime Minister Yair Lapid concluded what officials described as a moving and successful visit to Berlin on Monday, increasing hope in Israel that floundering attempts to return to the 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action could pave the way for a new strategic dialogue on how to stop Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons, Jewish Insider’s Ruth Marks Eglash reports. 

New position on Iran: “It is important that Iran does not develop a nuclear bomb,” German Chancellor Olaf Scholz told reporters in a joint press conference with Lapid on Monday, adding that it was unlikely that an agreement would be signed between Iran and the West in the near future. In his public remarks at the Bundeskanzleramt, the chancellor’s office, Lapid welcomed the new position from Europe, saying, “it is time to move past the failed negotiations with Iran.”

Military threat: A senior Israeli official, who briefed the press following the meeting between the two leaders, said the Americans and Europeans had expressed to Israel in “definite terms” that they have many reservations about the possibility of returning to the original nuclear agreement, which Israel has long campaigned against. Asked what the next step might be, the official said the goal was to “hold a strategic dialogue” with Western powers that would lead to a “longer and stronger agreement” and put the threat of military action on the table if Iran continues to destabilize the region and work towards nuclear armament. 

Europe in crisis: In addition to Iran, Lapid and Scholz discussed ways Israel could assist Germany, and Europe, with the looming energy and economic crisis as the continent heads into the winter months. In an effort to push back against Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, Europe has sharply reduced its reliance on Russian gas sources, causing severe shortages; Israel, which recently, together with Egypt, signed a deal to send natural gas to Europe, could become an alternative supplier in the future. Scholz said the two leaders also discussed ways to mitigate the impact of the war, including the possibility of Germany purchasing the Israeli-developed Arrow 3 defense system.  

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Meanwhile, stateside: Iran has taken a “step backward” with its latest response to a European Union nuclear deal proposal, Secretary of State Tony Blinken said yesterday, adding that a near-term agreement is “unlikely.”

Republican Senate candidate Don Bolduc greets supporters at a town hall event on September 10, 2022. in Laconia, New Hampshire.

Last summer, a group of five Jewish Democrats in the New Hampshire Statehouse forcefully spoke out against a GOP fundraiser co-sponsored by a Republican lawmaker who, months earlier, had shared an article from a well-known neo-Nazi website on social media. Now, as New Hampshire voters head to the polls today in the state’s primary, one of those legislators is advancing the fight as he calls on Don Bolduc, a top Republican candidate for U.S. Senate, to reject an endorsement from Dawn Johnson, who drew fierce and bipartisan backlash after she tweeted a link to The Daily Stormer two years ago, Jewish Insider‘s Matthew Kassel reports.

What do you meme: Paul Berch, a longtime Democratic representative from southwestern New Hampshire, said he learned with “regret” that Bolduc, a retired Army general, had accepted support from Johnson, whom he accused of amplifying “a virulent and hateful meme about Jews.” The article, which promoted a discredited conspiracy theory about election fraud in the 2020 presidential race, featured an antisemitic cartoon of a grimacing Jewish man with a long, hooked nose bearing a “rent hike” notice alongside a doctored image of Georgia’s Republican governor, Brian Kemp. “Riggers, Jews … Bad News!” the meme stated. “Perhaps Ret. Gen. Bolduc is unaware of this history,” Berch, who is regarded as a leading voice against antisemitism in the New Hampshire Statehouse, said in an email to JI on Sunday. “I call upon him to forthwith reject this endorsement.”

Background: Johnson faced widespread condemnation from both sides of the aisle — as well as calls for her resignation — when she posted the Daily Stormer article in December 2020. The newly elected state representative had initially attempted to upload the link to Facebook but was blocked from doing so. “When you try to share truth FB says NOPE we will not allow it,” she griped at the time. In an interview with JI on Monday evening, Johnson said she had found the Daily Stormer article through a “Google search” and did not immediately “think anything of it” because she had never heard of the site before. “I don’t live in that world,” she said, adding: “I’m not like that at all.” Johnson claimed she had not noticed the antisemitic meme and was otherwise unaware it was offensive when she was roundly criticized for sharing the post. “I didn’t even understand it,” she said of the cartoon. “Someone had to explain it to me.” 

Race report: Bolduc, who unsuccessfully ran for Senate in 2020, has leapt into contention ahead of the primary, even as he has drawn scrutiny for a host of controversial statements. The former general has called Republican Gov. Chris Sununu “a Chinese Communist sympathizer,” voiced support for sending U.S. forces into Ukraine and advocated for abolishing the FBI as well as repealing the 17th Amendment, which allows for the direct election of U.S. senators by popular vote. Former President Donald Trump has stayed out of the primary but recently praised Bolduc — who has far outpaced Morse in some polling but has otherwise lagged in fundraising — as a “strong guy, tough guy.”

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University of Vermont in Burlington

The U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights has opened an investigation into a complaint alleging that Jewish students at the University of Vermont faced numerous instances of discrimination and harrassment, which have altogether created a “hostile environment on campus,” Jewish Insider’s Tori Bergel reports. The complaint, jointly filed in October by the Louis D. Brandeis Center for Human Rights Under Law and Jewish on Campus, names four incidents that occurred in 2021 and includes testimonials by students who admitted that they feared openly expressing their Jewish identity on campus.

Group think: The first two incidents mentioned in the complaint involved student groups that were alleged to have discriminated against pro-Israel students. A social media account tied to a campus group to support survivors of sexual assault posted on Instagram that it would “follow the same policy with zionists that we follow with those trolling or harassing others: blocked,” going on to say that “we will not be engaging in conversation about . . . Zionism.” The group “basically, in one fell swoop, excluded the Jewish Zionist students from this sexual assault survivor group,” Brandeis Center President Alyza Lewin told JI. “That was extremely traumatic, particularly for Jewish survivors of sexual assault.”

TA trouble: The complaint also named a university teaching assistant who repeatedly made comments on social media targeted at student supporters of Israel. In a series of tweets on April 5, 2021, she wrote, “is it unethical for me, a TA, to not give zionists credit for participation??? i feel its good and funny, -5 points for going on birthright in 2018, -10 points for posting a pic with a tank in the Golan heights, -2 points just cuz i hate ur vibe in general.” In a tweet the following month, the TA wrote that “the next step is to make zionism and zionist rhetoric politically unthinkable,” adding that it should be “worthy of private and public condemnation, likened to historical and contemporary segregationist movements.”

Student response: Incidents like these, as well as other actions against members of UVM’s Jewish community, have made many students feel unsafe on its campus. Avi Zatz, a former UVM student who transferred to the University of Florida after his second year, said that antisemitism on campus was a significant factor in his decision to leave. “It would be hard to find a Jewish person at UVM, who is identifiably Jewish, who hasn’t experienced something [of antisemitic nature],” Zatz said. “Things like if you run into the wrong person, they’ll call you a baby killer or something for being Jewish, if you’re wearing a Jewish star or something. It’s just like an everyday culture [where] you have to hide that you’re Jewish or hide the extent to which you’re Jewish in order to be a normal successful student.”

Read more here.