Nikki Haley credits Israel’s military engagements for accelerating the fall of Assad
The former U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations was one of the featured speakers at Tikvah Fund’s Jewish Leadership Conference on Sunday
Haley Cohen
Nikki Haley in an interview with Tikvah Chairman Elliot Abrams, Dec. 9th, 2024.
The fall of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad happened because of “the strength of Israel,” former U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Nikki Haley told attendees on Sunday at the Tikvah Fund Jewish Leadership Conference in Manhattan.
Haley warned that the lightning-fast rebel takeover of Syria, which came after Israeli military achievements against Hamas in Gaza and Hezbollah in Lebanon, is today “a net positive for Israel,” but that could change, as “every hour going forward is going to mean something.”
“We have to be very careful,” Haley said in an interview on stage with Tikvah chairman Elliott Abrams. “If you look at the organizations coming in … there are other opportunists,” she said, pointing to ISIS and Al-Qaida. To ensure Iranian influence doesn’t grow stronger, Haley called for the incoming Trump administration, as well as Israel, to “go ahead and step in [and] immediately reach out to Turkey,” which supports the main rebel group, Hayat Tahrir al-Sham.
“If we don’t do it, Russia will,” Haley said. “We need to go in there fast,” she said, emphasizing the importance of “diplomatic conversations,” rather than a need to send in U.S. military troops.
“I do hope that we are proactive on this and see this as a great opportunity for Israel, if we get this right, but a great opportunity for America as well,” Haley said.
Also at the daylong conference, Ben Sasse, the former Nebraska senator and former president of the University of Florida, was awarded the 2024 Tikvah Fund Herzl Prize. Sasse, who was among the first university presidents to condemn Hamas’ Oct. 7 terrorist attack in Israel, spoke on Sunday about the “morally backward” U.S. campuses of the past year.
The reactions of university administrators to the Gaza war protests were “like a recipe, not just for exacerbating distrust in higher education, but also for trying to persuade the moderate public that the humanities are pointless [and] anti-truth,” Sasse said. “It’s hard to imagine a better playbook to get the public disinterested in higher education than the absurdities of Columbia [University in the last year].”