Israeli President Isaac Herzog and Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi speak with each other as they arrive to deliver remarks to the press before their meeting at the U.S. Capitol October 25, 2022, in Washington, D.C.

Israeli President Isaac Herzog focused on Arab-Israeli normalization and the Iranian drone threat to Ukraine yesterday on the first day of a two-day visit to Washington, D.C, his first since becoming Israel’s president. Herzog met on Tuesday with leaders from the Jewish Federations of North America, the leadership of dozens of American Jewish groups, Secretary of State Tony Blinken and other senior State Department officials and House leadership, including House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA). He also participated in an N7 Initiative event co-hosted by the Atlantic Council and the Jeffrey M. Talpins Foundation to discuss Arab-Israeli normalization, Jewish Insider’s Marc Rod reports.

Hopeful Herzog: During the N7 event, moderated by former U.S. Ambassador to Israel Dan Shapiro, Herzog expressed confidence that there will one day be a Middle Eastern treaty alliance, akin to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. “It may take a generation to get there, but we’re not far away on so many issues,” he said, particularly highlighting the region’s potential as a source for renewable energy.

Sights on Saudi Arabia: Herzog praised President Joe Biden for visiting Saudi Arabia during his summer trip to the Middle East, during which Biden worked to advance Saudi-Israeli normalization. Experts, including Shapiro, told JI last week that recent Saudi-U.S. tensions make normalization between the two countries a more difficult goal to achieve. “I commend President Biden for taking that trip in the region, including going to Saudi Arabia, because I truly believe that Saudi Arabia is a very important player in the region and also a very central pillar in the Muslim world,” Herzog said. “I say that from an Israeli perspective, not related to the American argument with Saudi Arabia these days, but I’m looking at the grand picture. It was an important step moving forward in many respects.”

Eye on Iran: Throughout the day, Herzog highlighted additional evidence that Israel has collected of Russia’s use of Iranian drones in its invasion of Ukraine, and said he plans to discuss the issue with Biden on Wednesday as well. The comments come as Israel faces criticism from some in the U.S., as well as Ukrainian leaders, for refusing to provide weapons to Ukraine. “We all identify with the plight of citizens in Iran who wish simply to express their desires and liberties,” Herzog said. “And if you take this record of spreading terror, weapons, hate all around the region, and now try to apply it in Ukraine, you see that innocent civilians in Ukraine are killed and hurt and wounded and suffering from Iranian weapons.

Read more here.

President Joe Biden (L) holds a bilateral meeting with Israel’s Prime Minister Yair Lapid at a hotel in Jerusalem on July 14, 2022.

In the absence of any Biden administration officials, veterans of the Trump White House took to the stage at Saudi Arabia’s flagship international conference in Riyadh on Tuesday to remind investors of their accomplishments in connecting Israel and the Arab world. Jared Kushner, who as a White House senior advisor brokered the Abraham Accords on behalf of former President Donald Trump, his father-in-law, went so far as to hail Saudi Arabia as a “startup nation,” using the nickname Israel earned by generating thousands of technology companies. Kushner, who now runs a private equity firm backed by $2 billion in Saudi investment, is reportedly putting some of the cash in Israeli startups, The Circuit’s Jonathan Ferziger reports.

Startup nations: “The Abraham Accords peace that was made in 2020 has unleashed a lot of connectivity in the region,” Kushner said at the Future Investment Initiative conference. “You see this region now, where Israel, which is a startup nation and the [United Arab Emirates], which is a startup nation, and even Saudi Arabia, which is a startup nation, are starting to think about their future generations,” Kushner said. “I think you’re going to see over the next decade a lot of progress and growth coming from this part of the world.”

Slowly and silently: While Saudi Arabia has yet to sign the normalization agreements with Israel that the Trump administration brokered with the UAE, Bahrain, Morocco and Sudan, the kingdom allows some Israeli companies to quietly operate within its borders. “I think the crown prince understands that in order to transform the Saudi economy from an economy that has been almost wholly dependent on oil to one that has a vibrant tech sector, he needs to connect his people to the country that has the most vibrant tech sector in the Middle East, which is Israel,” Mark Dubowitz, CEO of the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, a Washington research institute, told The Circuit. 

Read the full story here.

Elsewhere: In Foreign Affairs, Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-CT) and Yale Professor Jeffrey Sonnenfeld opine that the U.S. should use the recent rift with Saudi Arabia over oil production cuts to rebalance the relationship between the two countries by pausing its arms sales for a year, legislation that Blumenthal has proposed.

Rep. Brad Schneider (D-IL) speaks about his experiences during a trip to Israel and Auschwitz-Birkenau as part of a bipartisan delegation from the House of Representatives on January 28, 2020, in Washington, D.C.

Politics, Judaism and positive U.S.-Israel relations have been important to Rep. Brad Schneider, (D-IL), since long before he entered Congress. In high school, Schneider was president of his youth group, became active in his college’s AIPAC chapter and then got involved with the Jewish United Fund of Metropolitan Chicago after graduation, for which he was an officer in its young leadership division. He chaired the Chicago Alliance of Latinos and Jews for four years, and held a position on the Jewish Federations of North America’s National Young Leadership Cabinet — he was an inaugural member of AIPAC’s New Leadership Network, which ultimately led him to pursue a congressional career, thanks to the relationships he made as part of the program. Joining the latest episode of Jewish Insider’s “Limited Liability Podcast,” Schneider made clear that now, as a member of the House of Representatives, his goals have stayed true. 

Dynamic district: “My district is, and I think always will be, a swing district. People living in this district tend to be in the middle, whether it’s center-left, center-right, they’re in the middle. I have always said I’m committed to working with anyone as long as they come to the table with an open mind, bring ideas…I’ve done that before I was in Congress, as long as I am in Congress I will continue to do that, and I think I get a lot of support across my district, and part of that is being able to talk to each other. I have a saying, I raised my kids with this idea, I’ve practiced it in my professional career as well as in politics: I don’t have to prove you wrong to be confident of my beliefs, but I’m not [so] certain of what I know not to listen to what you have to say, and maybe learn and move from where I am. And if you have that philosophy, you can work with anybody. And I do.”

Rising tide of antisemitism: “You know, this is a scary moment, and it’s not a new wave [of antisemitism], this wave has been growing for a number of years. That’s why we formed the Antisemitism Task Force back in 2014, and we’re seeing antisemitism rise across the country and around the world. What Kanye [West] said isn’t just reprehensible, it should strike fear in all of us. Kanye has more followers than there are Jews in the world, and the stuff he is saying is dangerous, it’s threatening, it’s a real concern. It’s not just Kanye, however, I mean, we’re seeing antisemitism across the board.” 

Breaking down BDS: “There’s broad support for the U.S.-Israel relationship, and condemnation of those who would boycott Israel, who would seek to delegitimize Israel. And as I mentioned before, we have so much turnover in Congress, it’s not enough just to make this statement a few years ago [when the House passed a BDS resolution bill that didn’t make it through the Senate], we’re gonna have to explain to new members why this is an important issue, help them understand the details of it.”

Read more and listen to the podcast here.

With less than two weeks to go before Election Day, voters and political observers in New York, Pennsylvania and beyond tuned into last night’s Pennsylvania Senate debate and New York gubernatorial debate. The debates — expected to be the only debates in both races — focused largely on domestic policy, but the candidates in each turned briefly to foreign policy.

Deep divides: In Pennsylvania, Republican Dr. Mehmet Oz and Democrat John Fetterman articulated positions on abortion, education, fracking and the 2020 election. Oz, who did not live in Pennsylvania before this year, cast himself as a political outsider and a “candidate for change.” Fetterman, who requested closed captioning as he recovers from a stroke, told voters, “My campaign is all about fighting for anyone in Pennsylvania that ever got knocked down and had to get back up again.”

60 seconds: Asked about the biggest foreign-policy challenge facing the country, Fetterman named China. “I believe China is not our friend, and I believe that we can be able to push back and we need to stand against China,” he said. When asked the same question, Oz said the biggest challenge is “the fact that our country is not projecting strength.” He criticized U.S. nuclear negotiations with Iran: “We have gone to them and tried to sign a deal that would allow them once again to have the nuclear power to blow up Israel, which they promised they would do. John Fetterman supports that deal,” added Oz. The solution to what Oz described as America’s foreign-policy weakness is to produce energy at home. “The best way for America to establish its dominance is to unleash the energy here in Pennsylvania and across the country,” he said. 

New York state of crime: In New York’s gubernatorial debate, Rep. Lee Zeldin (R-NY), the GOP nominee, hit Gov. Kathy Hochul for her administration’s handling of crime-related issues. “People are at home, waiting for action, to make sure that the handcuffs are going on criminals instead of law-abiding New Yorkers. So that people can go walk the streets of Manhattan instead of having to call an Uber just to go two blocks because they’re afraid. People who have changed their behavior, they’re not riding the subway at the same hours. Maybe they’re Jewish, they take their yarmulke off because they’re afraid of being attacked.”

Trump factor: In a segment in which the candidates posed questions to each other, Hochul asked Zeldin, “Is [former President] Donald Trump a great president?” Zeldin responded in part, “Whether it’s our work to secure the southern border, strengthening the U.S.-Israel relationship, moving the Embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, getting the Abraham Accords push, maybe the effort to go after the Iran nuclear deal, which was fatally flawed, and fortunately he stopped it…all of that work is our job.”

Gun laws: Hochul addressed the Supreme Court decision to strike down New York’s concealed carry law. “They took away my right as governor to protect the citizens on our subways, synagogues, or sitting in a classroom from having a concealed-carry weapon,” Hochul said.

Vaccine talk: In a wider conversation about COVID-19 vaccines mandates, Zeldin was asked by moderator Susan Arbetter whether he supports polio vaccine mandates, several months after the state declared an emergency after a confirmed case in an unvaccinated individual in Rockland County. “Right now the position of the state is that there is a polio emergency and I’m not proposing any new changes,” Zeldin said. “Right now there are vaccine mandates that are out there all across the board, on all different kinds of fronts. What I would specifically say is that the COVID vaccine mandate is different than the polio vaccine mandate.”