Assistant Secretary of State for Near Eastern Affairs Barbara Leaf told lawmakers on Capitol Hill yesterday that the U.S. is working on efforts to “get Iran to deescalate on a variety of fronts,” Jewish Insider’s Marc Rod reports.

Status update: “There is a lot of misinformation and a lot of disinformation churning around in the media ecosystem right now. We have been very clear that we’ll use diplomacy, indirect or direct, to get after the various threats that Iran poses internationally,” Leaf said. “The best way to constrain the [nuclear] program is to get it back into a diplomatic box with rigorous oversight and inspection regime and so on. JCPOA, for a variety of reasons, is really not actively on the table as it were. But we are trying to get to a place where we can get Iran to deescalate on a variety of fronts.”

Normalization prospects: Leaf called potential normalization between Saudi Arabia and Israel, “absolutely a priority for us” that would bring about broader normalization and “shift things very dynamically in the region.” “There is absolutely the will and determination… on the part of the administration to midwife this,” she continued. However, Leaf said there is “no defined road map at this point” and that “a lot of the discussions are nascent.” The Saudis, she said, have not yet developed “a defined picture of what they might put into the mix” regarding expectations for progress toward Israeli-Palestinian peace as a condition of normalization, although she noted that “they have stipulated that there is a part in any normalization for the Palestinians.”

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Bonus: Bahrain and Iran are expected to resume diplomatic ties “sometime soon,” Leaf told lawmakers.

In a letter sent on Tuesday, a bipartisan group of 35 lawmakers urged the administration to push back against the International Court of Justice’s investigation of Israel, Jewish Insider’s Marc Rod reports. The ICJ investigation comes following a United Nations General Assembly vote to seek an advisory opinion on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. The letter, obtained by JI, urges Secretary of State Tony Blinken to “submit a strong brief to the ICJ opposing an advisory opinion against Israel” that both presses the ICJ to reject the case and defends Israel “on the merits.” It also urges Blinken to seek similar briefs from allies who opposed the UNGA resolution.

Pushback: “This is but the latest in a series of escalating attacks on Israel in the UN system, initiated by the Palestinian Authority, to unfairly and disproportionately single out the Jewish State. We urge you to vigorously support Israel as it defends itself against this proceeding,” the letter reads. “Though non-binding under international law, a negative advisory opinion — a practically assured outcome — would almost certainly be used to further the propaganda assault and the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement against Israel while simultaneously undermining the credibility and effectiveness of UN human rights bodies.”

Making the case: The signatories added that the investigation, and the U.N.’s focus on Israel, are detrimental to the cause of peace and “[distract] attention and resources from grave human rights abuses and violations of international law committed by UN members such as Iran, China, Myanmar, and Russia.” The lawmakers wrote that the brief should defend Israel’s right to self-defense and the merits of a negotiated two-state solution. 

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Ruth Marks Eglash’s eldest children were teenagers during the wave of violence in late 2015 and early 2016 that saw dozens of Israelis killed by Palestinian terrorists. The longtime journalist — now a senior correspondent at Jewish Insider — used to writing about the attacks for an adult audience, found herself having to explain the violence to her three children, the youngest of whom was 12 at the time. One of her daughters “was traveling every day from where we live, from the suburbs, into the city center,” Eglash told JI’s Melissa Weiss. “This whole series of stabbing and shooting and vehicle attacks started happening in Jerusalem almost every day,” continued Eglash. “And they were all near her school, which is right in the center of the western part of Jerusalem… And she was coming home and asking me, ‘What’s happening? Why was there a suspicious package? There was a pigua, a terrorist attack. We heard the ambulances, they wouldn’t let us out of the building. What’s happening?’”

Author’s inspiration: The questions inspired Eglash, whose debut novel, Parallel Lines, hits bookstores tomorrow, to take off her reporting hat and approach a new way of writing, one that hews closely to her instincts as a journalist used to bringing nuance and context to complex situations. Parallel Lines traces the journeys of three fictional teenage girls — one from a secular Jewish family, one from an observant Jewish family and one Muslim — amid the uptick in violence that kept Jerusalem on edge for six months.

A different audience: “The idea for this book really came from the children asking me questions,” Eglash explained. “When I thought about it, I thought, ‘Here we are, we explain as journalists, we explain the conflict to our audience, which is mostly adults, but at the same time, there are children involved here.’ It’s an adult conflict that is going on and on and on. It’s an intractable conflict. There is no solution. No one’s working to find the solution. And at the same time, there’s another generation of young people growing up in the middle of it.”

Read the full interview here.

A new super PAC is targeting a far-left city councilwoman in Brooklyn over her positions on police funding and antisemitism — even as she is now running unopposed in the June 27 primary election. The recently created group, SAFE NYC, launched its first ad campaign late Tuesday evening in an effort to bring increased scrutiny to Shahana Hanif, a democratic socialist who represents sections of Park Slope, Carroll Gardens and Gowanus, among other neighborhoods in Brooklyn, Jewish Insider’s Matthew Kassel reports.

Key issues: Hanif, 32, has expressed support for defunding the police and was one of just two council members who voted against a resolution to recognize April 29 as “End Jew Hatred Day.” More recently, Hanif spoke out in defense of a CUNY Law School commencement speaker whose remarks about Israel drew accusations of antisemitism.

Costly campaign: SAFE NYC is now seeking to highlight those issues in a new ad campaign that includes digital ads, direct mail, a website and, potentially, outdoor advertising, according to a consultant who is leading the effort. The independent expenditure — which will be “in the mid-to-high five figures,” the consultant confirmed — is slated to continue through the final weeks of the primary.

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