Regime ‘carried out a multi-pronged covert influence campaign intended to undercut’ Trump
Official White House Photo by Shealah Craighead
President Donald J. Trump signs an EO on Iran Sanctions in the Green Room at Trump National Golf Club Sunday, August 5, 2018, in Bedminster Township, New Jersey.
Iran’s military and intelligence services attempted to undermine former President Donald Trump’s reelection prospects, a declassified report from the U.S. intelligence community found.
The report, declassified Monday by Director of National Intelligence Avril Haines, concluded that “Iran carried out a multi-pronged covert influence campaign intended to undercut former President Trump’s reelection prospects — though without directly promoting his rivals — undermine public confidence in the electoral process and U.S. institutions, and sow division and exacerbate societal tensions in the U.S.”
It further assessed that Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei authorized the “whole of government” campaign, which was carried out using “overt and covert messaging and cyber operations.” The report also found that Hezbollah, an Iranian-funded terror group, also engaged in smaller-scale attempts to undermine Trump’s re-election.
Iran’s efforts were “driven in part by a perception that the regime faced acute threats from the U.S.” under Trump, the report details.
The Iranian efforts were aimed largely at “sowing discord in the United States and exacerbating societal tensions” and influencing U.S. Iran policy through methods such as promoting anti-Trump social media content, spreading pro-regime messages and attacking pressure points such as the COVID-19 pandemic response, the pandemic’s economic impacts and domestic civil unrest.
The Iranian campaign was further-reaching in 2020 than in previous election cycles, according to the report, which specifically mentions a previously disclosed campaign by Iranian actors who sent threatening messages to swing-state Democratic voters impersonating members of the right-wing pro-Trump Proud Boys group.
It also discusses several other influence attempts, including disseminating a video demonstrating alleged voter fraud, publishing over 1,000 pieces of online content in the U.S., utilizing “several thousand” inauthentic social media accounts and attempting to gather passwords from U.S. government and campaign officials in order to “gain derogatory information or accesses for follow-on operations.”
Iran’s efforts have not stopped after the election, the report adds, alleging that “Iranian cyber actors were almost certainly responsible” for a website containing death threats against election officials and that Iran is “seeking to exploit the post-election environment to collect intelligence.”
The assessment concluded that the regime’s influence efforts were likely blunted, compared to previous election cycles, due to greater awareness of the issue, information sharing between the government and social media companies — which led the companies to take down Iranian-operated accounts, public information-sharing and sanctions against some of the individuals responsible for the efforts.
According to the report, Iran did not attempt to directly manipulate any election infrastructure, although it did “[exploit] a known vulnerability to compromise U.S. entities associated with election infrastructure.”
The report also alleges that Hezbollah’s Secretary General Hassan Nasrallah backed efforts to undermine Trump in the election.
“Nasrallah probably saw this as a low-cost means to mitigate the risk of a regional conflict while Lebanon faces political, financial and public health crises,” the report reads.
The report also details extensive efforts by Russia to influence the election in favor of Trump and exacerbate domestic divides, and contradicts claims from former DNI John Ratcliffe that China conducted election interference or influence operations.
Some Jewish organizations are calling for additional edits to the curriculum ahead of the vote
Jeff Chiu/AP
In this March 12, 2020, file photo, George Washington High School stands in San Francisco. California's State Board of Education votes Thursday, March 18, 2021, on a long-anticipated model ethnic studies curriculum for high schools across the state.
Some Jewish groups in California are advocating for 11th-hour changes to California’s ethnic studies curriculum just days before the state’s board of education holds a vote on the final model curriculum.
The vote on Thursday will mark the culmination of a controversial years-long effort to implement a statewide ethnic studies program, making California the first to provide a full curriculum for classroom use. The fourth version of the model curriculum, which was released earlier this month, is currently undergoing final revisions and will be presented to the state’s board of education ahead of Thursday’s vote.
Previous drafts have come under fire from Jewish groups for lesson plans that include what they claimed was antisemitic content and references to the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement against Israel. While the fourth iteration of the curriculum is seen as a significant improvement over prior versions, local Jewish activists told JI, some issues remain to be addressed.
“By any reasonable grading parlance, the proposed final version of the ethnic studies model curriculum constitutes an ‘Incomplete,’” Richard S. Hirschhaut, the director of the American Jewish Committee’s Los Angeles office told JI. “Though much improved [from earlier drafts], it remains a work in progress that will require the continued vigilance of the Jewish community and our many partners to ensure that teacher training and classroom instruction accurately reflect and respect the rich mosaic of our diversity. California students deserve nothing less.”
The advocacy groupJews Indigenous to the Middle East and North Africa (JIMENA) put forward a lesson plan — which was included, with some edits, in the second, third and fourth drafts — that covers the Mizrahi Jewish experience. JIMENA’s lesson plan — one of two in the model curriculum that teaches about Jewish Americans — also included the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s working definition of antisemitism, as well as the Anti-Defamation League’s definition. The definition was edited in the latest version to remove links to primary sources, a move that has been protested by some Jewish groups. The current draft also removed a link to a 20-minute video on Jewish refugees from Arab countries.
A second curriculum, written by the Jewish Community Relations Council of San Francisco, highlights the diversity in the American Jewish community and includes its own definition of antisemitism. References to white privilege experienced by some Jewish Americans were removed from the current draft of the lesson plan.
Both lesson plans offered by Jewish groups are listed in a section on “Interethnic Bridge-building,” which falls outside the four core subject areas in the statewide curriculum: Native Americans, African Americans, Asian Americans, and Latino/Chicano Americans. Other groups included in the section include Sikhs and Armenians.
Three lesson plans on the South Asian Muslim community, which include materials on Islamophobia, were combined into a larger lesson plan, which is listed in the Asian-American section of the current curriculum. JIMENA, backed by a number of Jewish groups in the state, has petitioned for its lesson plan on Mizrahi Jewry to also be moved to the Asian-American section.
“We need to be treated equally to all other Middle Eastern communities and all South Asian communities,” Sarah Levin, the executive director of JIMENA, told JI. Levin has the support of a number of organizations pushing for changes ahead of this week’s meeting.
The lesson plan on the South Asian community “includes a definition of Islamophobia and material about Arab Middle Eastern Americans and Muslims,” said Rabbi Serena Eisenberg, the director of AJC’s Northern California office. “But it doesn’t define antisemitism or include material on the Jewish Middle Eastern Americans, which is a large population in California. So we’re back to square one — that in the core part of ethnic studies, Islamophobia is defined and taught, but the lesson plan on antisemitism and Jewish Middle Eastern Americans was put into the supplemental bridge section for groups that are not considered ‘people of color.’ This placement obscures the complexity of Jewish ethnicity — since we know that Jewish ethnicity encompasses a variety of religious, racial, and national dimensions.”
“So we are back to where we started in August of 2019,” she added. “The fix is for the State Board of Education to move the JIMENA lesson plan to the Asian section as well, so that ethnic groups are represented fairly and consistently.”
Jewish groups have also raised concerns over a new lesson plan, titled “An Introduction to Arab American Studies,” that was added into the fourth draft but did not appear in prior versions and was not subject to a 45-day review period. The lesson plan, which highlights the teachings of Edward Said, was co-authored by Dr. Susan Douglass, an educational consultant at Prince Alwaleed bin Talal Center for Muslim-Christian Understanding, housed in Georgetown University’s School of Foreign Service. A November report released by the Department of Education found that the university failed to properly report the Saudi royals’ $20 million gift to the center.
At least four of the links provided in the lesson plan include content referencing Palestine, which activists told JI was a workaround, as the curriculum couldn’t explicitly mention Palestine. “When you click through, you see that those sites talk about not Palestinians but Palestine, which was something the state decided it couldn’t say, because Palestine is not a recognized place. They could talk about the territories, but they can’t say Palestine. But now they’re linking to websites that say Palestine,” an individual involved in the process told JI.
The lesson plan also includes multiple references to “22 Arab countries” and includes a map of those countries that includes the West Bank and Gaza, which are not recognized by the United States as a country.
“Are we really expecting the Arab-American lesson plan to be written by Zionists?” one activist said. “Let’s prioritize our outrage and say we don’t want any overtly anti-Israel content, and we don’t want any links to it. We’re not going to successfully get rid of pro-Palestinian authors in a section about Arab-American studies.”
Activists praised the decision to remove a section, included in the third draft, that highlighted journalist Helen Thomas — who was recorded making antisemitic comments in 2010 — and anti-Israel activist Linda Sarsour in a lesson plan titled “Important Historical Figures Among People of Color.”
The state board of education will meet Thursday to determine whether to greenlight the fourth version of the model curriculum for use in California schools. It will also consider whether to implement suggested changes to the draft, such as adding or removing content and moving lesson plans between sections. The board could also decide to move some lesson plans to its website, where it will still be available to educators, but will not be included in the curriculum.
The fourth draft includes 33 lesson plans, giving educators who choose to use the curriculum an array of materials from which to choose. And activists acknowledge that some educators may still choose not to use either of the Jewish lesson plans. But the inclusion, they explain, is symbolic.
“Are Jews within the core of ethnic studies or not? Are Jews an ethnic group that has very diverse backgrounds, and in California that includes Middle Eastern Jews of color, etc. — are we being excluded from the core?” Eisenberg asked. “Or are we considered in a more inclusive way, in a representative way, alongside other Middle Eastern communities? Symbolically, it’s really important. Because that’s going to mean the difference across the country when people say, ‘Well, you shouldn’t really teach about Jews in the ethnic studies classes, because they’re not really part of the core.’”
A number of states, including Arizona, Minnesota and Texas, have passed or are considering ethnic studies legislation. Jewish organizational leaders told JI that a coordinated national effort is needed to address controversial ethnic studies curricula in other states.
“The Jewish community needs to be acutely aware and pay attention to these bills that are being written and introduced in various states across the United States,” Levin said. “And we need to be proactive in working with our public departments of education and finding out who will be tasked to write these model curriculums or implement them if these bills pass, and we need to stay a few steps ahead. We need to be doing our due diligence and not losing track.”
“As we move into the district-level fight, we need a national organizational effort that shares our best practices, strategy and outcomes, and demonstrates a pro-ethnic studies, pro-Jewish thought leadership for the field,” said Tyler Gregory, executive director of the San Francisco JCRC. Some noted that portions of the original draft of the California model curriculum — which included antisemitic content — could have passed through the state’s board of education had there not been an outcry from the Jewish community weeks before the comment period closed.
“If there’s a vacuum to fill, someone’s going to fill it and it should really be filled by our top institutions,” Levin added. “You have the capacity, the means, the knowledge and the know-how to work on this.”
Rep. Deb Haaland’s (D-NM) historic confirmation on Monday as the country’s first Native American Cabinet secretary set off a mad scramble to claim her seat in the House of Representatives. The race, already in motion, is a crowded one, with eight Democratic candidates now jockeying to succeed Haaland, a one-term congresswoman and former state party chair, in New Mexico’s 1st congressional district, which covers most of Albuquerque. Because the district is reliably blue, whoever earns the nomination is all but assured safe passage in the general election.
But overcoming the state’s somewhat unusual candidate selection system presents its own set of challenges in a special election with no primaries. Instead, candidates from each party will be chosen, as New Mexico law mandates, by a group of elected state central committee members — a process upending the traditional campaign dynamic because it requires that candidates earn favor with party insiders rather than appealing to voters and soliciting donations in order to get on the ballot.
The selection process has earned critics on the left and right who allege it is undemocratic, and a bipartisan bill that would establish a primary system to fill congressional vacancies is currently making its way through New Mexico’s state legislature. But state representative Daymon Ely, a co-sponsor of the legislation, believes it has little chance of passing with just four days remaining until the state’s two-month legislative session comes to an end. “I’m not hopeful,” he said in a recent interview with Jewish Insider.
“If the legislation doesn’t pass then it will be a popularity contest among the Democratic Party insiders on the central committee,” said Fred Nathan, executive director of Think New Mexico, a nonpartisan public policy think tank in Santa Fe.
Lonna Atkeson, a professor of political science at the University of New Mexico, echoed that view. “You’ve got a really inside election,” she told JI. “They’re going to want one of their insiders.”
So which candidate has the edge? Political strategists in New Mexico who spoke with JI divide the eight Democrats currently vying for the seat, most of whom are women, into separate tiers, with a trio of formidable candidates viewed as most likely to prevail: Antoinette Sedillo Lopez, a 63-year-old state senator and former law professor who ran against Haaland in the 2018 primary, pulling in more than $1 million in donations; Melanie Stansbury, a 42-year-old rising star in local politics who serves as a state legislator and previously worked on Capitol Hill; and Randi McGinn, 65, a prominent trial lawyer and confidante of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA).
“They’re the most well-known and have the most momentum in the party right now,” said Matt Gloudemans, a Democratic campaign consultant in New Mexico who is not working for any of the candidates.
The wild-card candidate is Georgene Louis, 43, a state representative whose compelling personal story will no doubt appeal to central committee members who are looking for continuity now that Haaland, one of the first Native American women in Congress, is moving on. Louis, a Native American who currently practices tribal law, was born and raised on the Acoma Pueblo reservation, about 70 miles west of Albuquerque.
“My view is that a progressive native woman’s seat probably should be replaced, ideally, by another progressive native woman,” said Julian Brave NoiseCat, vice president of policy and strategy at Data for Progress, who lobbied for Haaland’s confirmation.
The four remaining candidates, all of whom are regarded as relative underdogs despite their unique credentials, include Selinda Guerrero, Patricia Roybal Caballero, Victor Reyes and Francisco Fernández. Guerrero, a 44-year-old community organizer who identifies as Chicana, Black and indigenous, argues that she is running to represent a “new wave” of the working class, while Roybal Caballero, a 70-year-old state representative, has deep connections with progressive activists in the state. “She has consistently been a grassroots campaigner,” said Dede Feldman, a political consultant and former New Mexico state senator.
Reyes, 28, is a former legislative director for New Mexico’s Democratic governor, Michelle Lujan Grisham, and has been endorsed by Reps. Ritchie Torres (D-NY), Chris Pappas (D-NH), Marc Veasey (D-TX) and David Cicilline (D-RI). If elected, Reyes boasts that he would be the youngest Democrat in the House as well as the first openly gay congressman to represent New Mexico. So would Fernández, a 39-year-old former TV and film industry worker who is HIV-positive and vows to provide a voice “for those who are most marginalized,” including people with preexisting conditions.
“I am very much a political outsider,” Fernández told JI in a recent phone conversation, adding that he is a “lifelong social justice advocate.”
In interviews with JI, the candidates were eager to highlight their progressive policy agendas on issues like universal healthcare, climate change and the $15 minimum wage hike in a race where it is politically expedient to lean left, given the partisan makeup of the district.
But their views on foreign policy, particularly around Israel, are less predictable — and illustrate a growing tension between progressives who are supportive of the Jewish state and those who are more critical of the longstanding U.S.-Israel relationship.
Sedillo Lopez is perhaps the most interesting test case. In 2018, she earned an endorsement from Justice Democrats, the influential progressive political action committee which previously characterized Israel as a “human rights violator,” and was recently backed by the People for Bernie Sanders. But speaking with JI, she emphasized that she is a staunch supporter of the Jewish state. “Israel is crucial, spiritually as well as politically,” said Sedillo Lopez, who traveled to Israel three years ago on a Latino leadership tour with the AIPAC-affiliated American Israel Education Foundation.
“It was transformative to me in so many ways,” she recalled. “I learned so much, and I know that sounds lame, but the biggest thing was how close everything is together. I live in New Mexico, and it’s a day’s drive to get out of the state. So it was amazing to me to see why security is so crucial.”
Since then, Sedillo Lopez has learned through a genealogy research initiative conducted by the Jewish Federation in New Mexico that she descends from Sephardic Jews who fled the Inquisition in Spain. “I’m very proud of that, although I have to say, like most Latinos, I have Indian blood, but I don’t have any culture,” she said, noting that while she appreciates her Jewish heritage, she doesn’t claim it.
Despite her affiliation with Justice Democrats — a spokesman for which did not respond to requests for comment about whether it would be making an endorsement in the race — Sedillo Lopez believes that Israel has a strong progressive record. “A lot of the things that I advocate for are in place there,” she said, referring to the state’s universal healthcare system along with its relatively enlightened approach to LGBTQ rights. “I was impressed,” she said. “I was like, ‘Hey, it works, this can work.’ You know, these ideas are progressive ideas.”
Sedillo Lopez rejects the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions movement and supports a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict as well as continued aid to Israel.
Stansbury, by comparison, was less well-versed on such matters. Though she spent some time backpacking through Israel in her early 20s, she was unfamiliar with the BDS movement and declined to comment on the 10-year memorandum of understanding guaranteeing military assistance to Israel. “I haven’t dove into this issue,” she said.
More broadly, she expressed a desire to “lead with diplomacy” in the Middle East, “restore the Iran deal” and recognize the “special relationship” with Israel. “But I also am a major proponent of the basic self-determination and human rights of Palestinians and their ability to establish a sovereign state,” Stansbury added. “So to the extent that, as a congressperson, I weigh in on these issues both in terms of legislation and the budget and the way in which the U.S. supports both Israel and aid to Palestine, that’s the kind of lens that I look through all this.”
Stansbury, a scientist who is deeply invested in water resource management in New Mexico, sees parallels between her state and Israel — and hopes to learn more about the connection if she is elected. “There’s a lot we can learn from the innovation that’s been happening in Israel,” she said. “How do we modernize our infrastructure? How do we help farmers make the transition to more water-efficient agriculture? The work that’s been done at universities like Ben-Gurion and folks in the Negev is world-class,” she added. “That is the beacon.”
Because of her experience on such matters, John Feldman, a rabbi in Albuquerque, believes Stansbury is strongly positioned to address the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. “Her expertise in water as a scientist and her concern for human rights and her support for Israel all dovetail in such a way that, I think, she could really be a constructive mediator in terms of our U.S.-Israel relationship,” he said, adding that water and science “could well be a bridge for peace.”
McGinn, who supports continued aid to Israel and opposes BDS, said she has had conversations with J Street in her time as a candidate. “Israel will always be our biggest ally and our friend,” she said, but added her concern that the Trump administration had destabilized the region. “This has been a problem for thousands of years, and I think this last administration has actually harmed the peace process,” she said. “They keep saying they’re doing great. But in fact, I think they’ve gone backwards, and we’re stoking the fires and making things more difficult.”
She endorsed a two-state solution as the “only way forward to peace,” but said it would be difficult to get there given the charged geopolitical dynamic. “I’m just afraid that we are farther away from that than we were four years ago,” McGinn, who has never been to Israel, told JI. “That’s my concern about the region.”
Perhaps because Israel is unlikely to be a major subject of debate in a race that is expected to be centered on domestic policy matters, the other candidates displayed varying levels of familiarity with issues of concern to Jewish community members as well as pro-Israel advocates — though all made clear their desire to take an active role in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
Roybal Caballero expressed a strong kinship with Jewish community members in the Southwest, noting that she was a founder of the Mexican American Jewish Relations Coalition in El Paso. “We met for the express reason of trying to improve relationships in our communities,” she recalled, “because we found out that we didn’t know enough.”
Though she has no position on BDS, she said she was eager to visit Israel, describing a trip there as a “dream.” Roybal Caballero, who favors a two-state solution, added that she would support President Joe Biden’s approach to the conflict as he hones his Middle East foreign policy agenda during his first term. “I think a two-state solution is probably the best hope, and as the settlements continue, it’s going to force a solution, and we’ve got to be attentive to that,” she said. “We’ve got to continue to create an approach or relationships from mutual respect.”
“History is important,” she added. “Israel’s role in that history, and Palestine’s role in that history, just as our tribal nations’ role in that history, and our Western role, has all been a fight for survival, but not at the exclusion of each other.”
Fernández, who has never visited Israel, was less familiar with a number of the issues, including the memorandum of understanding, during the interview. “I can tell you that I don’t believe in withdrawing aid,” he said. Fernández later emailed his thoughts on the BDS movement after speaking with JI. “While my knowledge regarding the BDS movement is limited, I’d like to make it clear: I would not support it or anything like it,” he said. “Boycotts, divestments and sanctions are not the best means to productively foster peace between Israel and Palestine.”
Louis was also unacquainted with BDS but said she was learning more about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict as she pursues higher officer. “I’m not the expert, but I have been reading up,” she said. “I have been also talking to members of my community about it. But it’s my understanding that the U.S. and Israel just share an unbreakable bond. We have built on a commitment to our common history, values and interests, where Israel is our most important ally in the region, and one of our most important in the world.”
“I will support the U.S.-Israel relationship, and I think, from what I understand, the two-state solution is the one that seems to be most beneficial,” Louis added. “I just think the United States has a responsibility to work with Israelis and Palestinians, as well as regional and international partners, to reach a peaceful end to the hostilities that are going on right now.”
Reyes and Guerrero were more critical of Israel. Reyes, who supports a two-state solution, told JI that he had not yet made up his mind as to whether he would back the BDS movement as a member of Congress and suggested that he would support conditioning aid.
“Following the Oslo agreement, Israel made a commitment to the U.S. that it would not build new settlements or expand existing ones,” he said. “There are current violations of this treaty. The United States must lead with a human rights-centered approach when evaluating appropriations. Our budget should reflect our commitment to human rights and conditions should be set, as they are in trade agreements and other international commitments, that require an adherence to these values.”
Guerrero went a step further, calling directly for the U.S. to condition aid to Israel. “I am not in support of U.S. tax dollars being used to oppress and harm,” she declared. “We have seen the oppression of Palestinian people for far too long,” Guerrero said, “and we know that Palestinians across the region are suffering greatly.”
The community activist also supports BDS. “Divestment is a primary thing that I would be advocating for as a U.S. congressperson,” she said, “because we have to be able to support diplomacy and not violence.” Guerrero added that it was not for her to decide whether the Israelis and Palestinians pursue a two-state solution. “I feel like my role is to support equality for all of the people, for all of its citizens,” she said. “This has been a long fight, and so it’s time for us now to stop the violence. We must support them, whether it’s a one state, two state, a confederation, some other form.”
“The reason I support the boycott and the divestment is because, in particular, we want to put enough pressure so that the violence and the harm can stop,” Guerrero, who said she is actively involved with Jewish Voice for Peace, told JI. “I think it’s important. And so my position is to advocate and support Palestinians and Israelis to make determinations for their own selves with the full rights and support to be able to do so.”
Despite her support for the boycott, Guerrero said she was open to visiting Israel. “I would be honored,” she said. I’ve been invited by many of the people that I do work with in the region.”
Pro-Israel groups, including Democratic Majority for Israel and the Jewish Democratic Council of America, have yet to make endorsements in the race. But Jeff Mendelsohn, executive director of Pro-Israel America, told JI that he was watching with interest. “Pro-Israel America is paying close attention to the upcoming special elections, including the expected race in NM-1 to replace Rep. Deb Haaland,” he said. “While we don’t get involved in every race, we will continue to support candidates who understand and value the U.S.-Israel relationship, particularly when running against candidates who would weaken our strategic alliance.”
Maggie Toulouse Oliver, New Mexico’s secretary of state, said on Monday that the special election will be announced within 10 days, after which it will take place in a few months or so.
The Democratic Party of New Mexico is now electing new central committee members who will pick the next candidate, with Bernalillo County concluding its ballot counting process on Monday and Santa Fe County on Tuesday, according to Miranda van Dijk, a state Democratic Party spokeswoman, who said a member list was not immediately available. The process for all counties in the district will conclude on April 3.
Brian Colón, New Mexico’s Democratic state auditor, said he was energized by the number of candidates who have entered the race, but discouraged by the process through which the winner will be chosen. “As a former state party chair and statewide elected official, I’m inspired by the abundance of riches we have in terms of the field of candidates,” he told JI. “It is striking, however, that in this situation so few people will get to determine the next representative.”
The American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) began its virtual national council meeting on Monday with remarks from House Foreign Affairs Committee Chair Rep. Gregory Meeks (D-NY), Committee Ranking Member Rep. Michael McCaul (R-TX) and Israel’s Ambassador to the U.S. Gilad Erdan.
The influential pro-Israel lobbying group’s annual in-person Policy Conference, usually attended by thousands, was canceled many months prior amid concerns about the coronavirus. The organization is virtually convening 900 activists for 500 congressional meetings this week, to account for the standard activities on the Hill that typically cap off the larger conference, a source familiar with the effort informed JI.
AIPAC’s legislative agenda this year, the focus of the national council meeting, will seek to “gain bipartisan support” on three major issues: supporting normalization between Arab states and Israel, deterring Iran and supporting security assistance to Israel, AIPAC spokesman Marshall Wittman told JI.
On normalization, AIPAC is throwing its support behind a yet-to-be finalized bill which will be introduced by Sens. Rob Portman (R-OH), Cory Booker (D-NJ), Ben Cardin (D-MD) and Todd Young (R-IN). The bill will seek to further strengthen and advance the normalization agreements between Israel, the United Arab Emirates, and other Arab states, and support further efforts.
Rep. Brad Schneider (D-IL) is taking the lead on the House counterpart to the legislation, and is “working with colleagues on both sides in both chambers to grow on past progress in normalizing relationships with Israel,” a Schneider spokesman told JI.
AIPAC is encouraging House members to sign a letter authored by McCaul and Rep. Ted Deutch (D-FL) to the chair and ranking member of the House Appropriations Committee — which holds a primary role in determining government spending — encouraging them to continue to support the 2016 memorandum of understanding between the U.S. and Israel.
Under the terms of the 2016 agreement, the U.S. will provide $3.3 billion in defense funding and $500 million for joint missile defense programs as part of this year’s federal appropriations. A section of a draft of the letter obtained by Jewish Insider pushes back on calls from some members of the Democratic Party’s left wing to condition aid to Israel. The letter is expected to garner broad bipartisan support, a congressional staffer familiar with the matter told JI.
On Iran, the lobbying powerhouse is urging senators to sign onto a letter by Sens. Robert Menendez (D-NJ) — chair of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee — and Lindsey Graham (R-SC) urging President Joe Biden to reach an agreement with Iran that both prevents Tehran from ever acquiring a nuclear weapon and limits its other malign activities, including its ballistic missile program.
A Menendez spokesperson said the senator is currently circulating the letter for signatures and input from other offices, and is hoping to send it this week. That letter will follow two bipartisan House letters last week, which also urged Biden to address Iran’s provocative behavior.
In his first book, Plunder: A Memoir of Family Property and Nazi Treasure, Menachem Kaiser details his experience returning to Poland with the intention of reclaiming an apartment once owned by his grandfather, who survived the Holocaust. The process of laying claim to the property in Sosnowiec was a bureaucratic nightmare as he sought redress through the Polish court system.
But the book gains momentum when Kaiser embeds with a group of rambunctious Silesian treasure hunters who guide him through the elaborate Nazi tunnel system known as Project Riese, located in modern-day Poland. “It was as if I’d stumbled onto an alternate Poland,” Kaiser writes, “where the history was of a different mode, a different mood.”
The thread that unites these two seemingly opposing narratives is Kaiser’s previously unknown cousin, Abraham Kajzer, the author of a memoir, Za Drutami Śmierci, which describes the time he spent as a slave laborer in the tunnels during the war — a story revered by Polish treasure seekers who regard it as a kind of Rosetta Stone to locating lost valuables.
In a recent interview with Jewish Insider, Kaiser, a 35-year-old writer and journalist who grew up in Toronto and now lives in Brooklyn, discussed the process of working on the book and hinted at his next project.
The interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Jewish Insider: What’s the reaction to your book been like so far?
Menachem Kaiser: Really gratifying. TheNew York Times ran a review last week, so that has kind of changed the profile of the book rather dramatically. But that doesn’t really mean that many more people have read it already. A couple of my close friends have read it. My parents have read it. It is a family story, so having your family read it is always going to be interesting. But so far, they’ve been really supportive. They had some notes, some of which I was able to address, and some of which I wasn’t.
JI: Will the book be published in Polish?
Kaiser: No Polish yet. It’s a place I feel quite committed to, and it would mean a great deal for me to have the book published there. So I’m confident it will happen eventually. As of now, foreign rights have been picked up in Germany, Netherlands, the U.K. and Australia, I think.
JI: Do you think it’ll be hard to publish there given the Polish government’s role in stifling historical analysis of the Holocaust.
Kaiser: It’s hard to know how much that has an effect, but certainly there’s a pretty vibrant publishing community and industry there. So if it’s not right for one press, it could be right for a more independent press or a smaller press. But I’m pretty committed to really doing everything I can to see it be published in Poland.
JI: Can you describe the process that took you to Poland in the first place to reclaim your grandfather’s apartment?
Kaiser: Most of it happened kind of accidentally. I moved to Lithuania in 2010 for reasons that had nothing to do with family history. I did a Fulbright there, and ended up studying at the Vilna ghetto. While I was there, I had this chance encounter with this really colorful character who invited me to come with him to Krakow, which is where he spent a lot of time for Rosh Hashanah. That’s why I initially went to Poland. I had never really planned to go. I never planned to not go, but it wasn’t really on my map, even though my grandparents are from there. We didn’t grow up in my family with this idea of making that pilgrimage. Some of my siblings have gone on March of the Living and stuff like that, and some haven’t. It would be nice to go, but it wasn’t seen as anything mandatory. So I went, initially, really for nothing to do with my family, really just to go for Rosh Hashanah. But once I was there, I felt like I should at least make a visit to my grandfather’s hometown. So I went to Sosnowiec. My father gave me this address, he dug it up, and I visited the building, and then I left. For many years, I never really thought I’d ever go back. I never really felt there was any reason to go back. I thought it was a one-time thing — see the building, take pictures. I had a meaningful interaction, and that felt sort of done, like a complete journey.
JI: Then what happened?
My father kept mentioning that he had these documents in the house that belonged to my grandfather, and it never really felt that urgent, so it took me like quite a few years to sort of get around to reading them. And these documents were sort of what my grandfather, when he died, had given to my grandmother, and my grandmother had given to my father, which were all the different applications and documents and letters that had tried to reclaim the building, or at least be compensated for it from after the war for, like, 20, 30 years. I never knew my grandfather, and I never really knew that much about him, but reading those documents was quite moving, and it really inspired me to sort of enter these questions. I felt very interested, and it was like a sentimental encounter. But even at that point, I wasn’t that interested in writing a book. I didn’t really see where the book was. I saw this as, like, a personal journey. I contacted a lawyer in 2015 and that whole mishegoss started, and then about a year later, the extra mishegoss with the treasure hunters began — and at that point, I thought, here’s a book.
JI: You originally considered writing this book as a novel. Can you elaborate on your thought process there?
Kaiser: I didn’t quite set out to write it as a novel. But it was a sort of question in the back of my mind, because of all the difficulties I encountered, if it would have been better served writing it as a piece of fiction rather than as a memoir, for two main reasons. One is that I never knew my grandfather, and I don’t actually learn that all that much about him in the course of writing the book, even though it’s him that I’m trying to connect to. So in a novel, I would have been sort of granting myself the license to imagine him, to create those emotional stakes and also to project onto the character what this means — instead of me trying to. At every point, I sort of have to question the moral authority of the quest, because it’s getting mediated. I never lived there, it wasn’t my building, I didn’t grow up there. So all those questions sort of become moot if I could just imagine the protagonist. The second reason is that because it was so messy. As a court case, it was so nonlinear. In a novel, it’s whatever I wanted it to be, like I can sort of make it much neater. And I was really worried the whole time writing the book that it wouldn’t have an ending. I sold the book while the court case was still very much ongoing, and I was very nervous. As the months ticked on, and there was no resolution, it wasn’t clear to me how I could end it. If it was a novel, I could have just made it up.
JI: Dwight Garner mentions in his Times review that the tone of your memoir reminded him of Jonathan Safran Foer’s first novel, Everything Is Illuminated. Did you have that book in mind, or any other works of literature that deal with the Holocaust, when you wrote this memoir?
Kaiser: No, not really. Jonathan Safran Foer’s is a novel, and I was very explicitly not writing one of those. It’s interesting how that book has sort of now laid claim. Like, if you have high jinks in Eastern Europe, you’re now going to be compared to that. And if you’re like a Jew writing funny, weird, sort of surreal things, it’s going to be compared to that book. I was very conscious of the genre, because I think it’s a tricky one to write in, just because it’s sort of Holocaust-adjacent. It’s just something that is very charged, how to write honestly about it and about your experiences in it are never clear. It’s a thing people care a tremendous amount about, and that’s why I was so hesitant to write this book in the first place because, not that it’s really about the Holocaust, but it’s within that category, and I sort of wilted at the prospect of trying to write into that memory space. It’s such a charged space. I didn’t really feel up to it.
JI: Poland has a pretty poor track record when it comes to acknowledging the Holocaust, but it also seems like there’s, interestingly, a fair bit of philosemitism in the country. For instance, there’s a popular Jewish culture festival in Krakow. What do you make of that?
Kaiser: Let me preface by saying I’m not an expert in this stuff, and I think it’s really important to be really honest about my ignorance. I don’t speak Polish, so any sort of insight I have into Polish society writ large is going to be really limited. But my experience is I started going to Poland, and I was going pretty consistently, in 2011. So for years and years and years, it felt like it was on a really incredible trajectory. Everyone I would meet was so overwhelmingly supportive and curious, and there was just tremendous institutional support. There is a tremendous amount of curiosity and support for Jewish history. The Jewish festival you mentioned is a great example, which is completely fueled by non-Jews. That was my experience, and it did feel like a slow but steady sort of process toward a true reckoning. For example, it did feel way ahead of where Lithuania was, which had very little institutional support, and you wouldn’t meet that many locals who were invested. In Poland, people are doing their PhDs, for example, on questions of Jewish history. It just felt really deep and a real reckoning.
Then in 2015 a new government came to power. It was the Law and Justice Party, a sort of unapologetically nationalist, Euro-skeptic, far-right party. So, politically, they do what’s sort of politically expedient, and they’re not out-and-out Holocaust deniers, but their certain sort of Polish nationalism has been very evident in terms of, like, how they are operating museums. History in Poland is very political, especially World War II history, and so you’ll have government departments dedicated to preserving memory. These things end up really being very political questions that are fought in government rather than in various institutions. So that has been very dispiriting. The last few years, there’s been this slow and steady assault on historical integrity.
JI: Can you talk about the mix of emotions you felt when you went back to reclaim the apartment?
Kaiser: When I initially began this journey, I had a very sort of, let’s call it, inherited conception of my mission, which was very — myopic is too strong of a word, but it didn’t really care or consider the people who live in the building. That wasn’t really part of the equation. It was like, you know, my family owned this building, and I’m coming to take it back. That’s the narrative. And in the book, I really struggle. I get pushback, which was really surprising and upsetting to me at first, of people accusing me of appropriation. I found that very upsetting, and I have a very strong reaction to that in the sense of like, no, my legal and moral right aren’t really questionable here. Yet a message does get through, which is your actions will have effects on people. And so you have to take that into account without sort of compromising your moral slash legal right.
That becomes really a question of narratives. So I ended up going into the building and meeting some of the people and developing relationships with them, which was sort of expanding the frame, if you will, if you sort of take into account the story of a building, and that story doesn’t start when the Jews moved out. You start framing the question as more than just ownership. And it’s very tricky, it’s very complicated, and people are going to be upset. And even if I don’t really have any compunctions about the moral right, I’ll be the first to say that it is very complicated. It didn’t seem complicated when I started, and that’s because my vision was pretty narrow, but as I continued on, that kind of expanded. I would like to think my sort of moral range got wider in taking into account the people who actually lived there.
JI: What was it like hanging out with these tunnel people?
Kaiser: I spent a ton of time with them, especially after they realized I was related to Abraham. They sort of regarded me as a celebrity. They’re interesting. They’re a little hard to describe within an American context, because there isn’t really an analog here. The way I ended up describing them is, like, somewhere between war reenactors and extremely amateur archeologists. There’s a range of them in terms of how professional they are, and so you have like some guys who are just real hobbyists who just go out on the weekend with metal detectors, and then you have guys who have really sophisticated, expensive equipment, and sometimes they’re even sponsored by larger companies. So a real range, hanging out with them. Definitely the more serious ones, or at least that I met, were more rural, though that’s not always true. They tend to be male, but not all of them. Kind of macho, sort of, a little bit of bravado. They definitely drink.
They’re having fun. They form these exploration groups, and some of them have been together for 20 years. They’re friends. But it is a subculture, and it’s a very active subculture. And so they have their own weird politicking, and their weird fights, and their disputes and alliances. But everything sort of changed in 2015, when two of these guys claimed to have found the golden train. And when that happened, the world took it very seriously, and they got international media attention for a few months. I wasn’t there; I came in the aftermath of that. But there was a lot of attention, and so all of a sudden, the pie got bigger, and to the extent there’s competition, it got a lot fiercer. So that was in recent memory, what they call the golden train fever.
JI: Do you still talk to them?
Kaiser: They’re very active on Facebook, so when it’s my birthday, I’ll get tons and tons of messages from them. They’re really excited about the book. A lot of them don’t speak English, so I would need a translator, but I’m definitely in touch with a few of them.
JI: What do you think books about the Holocaust will look like after all of the survivors have died and there is no one left who can bear witness?
Kaiser: Ultimately, I don’t know. I guess it sort of fades into background history in 10 generations or something. But for the time being, I think we’re transitioning into a literature that reckons not just with the event, but with the memory of the event. And so for many of us who don’t have first-hand experience, we have very intense second-hand experience. I think we’re moving into that space. I think the first-person testimony is the most important and the most powerful mode, and I think, in a lot of ways, for a while, people tried to replicate that, even though they didn’t have that, like people sort of writing with that distance, but not necessarily being super honest about that distance. But within my little circle of friends, many writers and artists who are Jewish and who have grandparents or great grandparents from that region and who are affected by the trauma, I think that becomes the more compelling artistic question of, like, we’re not going to really reckon with the event. We don’t have anything to say about the Holocaust itself. But in a personal way, we sort of reckon with our experience of the memory of it, whether we see that as a burden, a responsibility, a trauma, or sort of the binds in our family. I just think that’s a very pressing question, in my limited view, that seems to be becoming more and more prominent.
JI: Do you ever intend to go back to Sosnowiecor to the tunnels?
Kaiser: Those are a little bit different questions. The court case is still ongoing, and so now this stuff is going to be done via Zoom for at least the foreseeable future, but I would be very interested if and when all the court stuff comes to a close. It would be meaningful for me to sort of be there for whatever the final event is. I’d like to be there. I would go back. The tunnels are spectacular. They’re very strange and very disturbing, but pretty wild in person. So I’m hoping when COVID becomes less of an impediment to go back and maybe throw a really big book launch party in Poland. That would be fun.
JI: You get into conspiracy theories in your book. What do you make of the rise of antisemitic conspiracy theories in the U.S.?
Kaiser: One of the lessons I took from my book and studying these conspiracy theories is that stuff that seems really benign because it’s so preposterous has a really dark underbelly. We’ve gotten really used to laughing at really silly things. Like QAnon, for example, stuff that seems laughable, it could still very quickly sort of coalesce into something very dangerous. And that’s something I saw with these sort of really ridiculous Nazi conspiracy theories, and that people believe them or say they believe them, and you’re like, it doesn’t seem harmful. When someone’s like, yeah, the Nazis had flying saucers, you’re like, that seems silly. But when you start really bearing down on what that means, and what that sort of system of beliefs imply, it becomes a really noxious kind of revisionism, and whether the adherents of these conspiracy theories know that or not, it ends up encouraging and attracting some really noxious beliefs. A recent example of that is the Jewish space lasers from Marjorie Taylor Greene. She said it, and we all had a good laugh at it. It’s so silly, and it seems harmless. But these things sometimes work in ways that are not visible, how belief structures work and the communities that form around them quickly become very dangerous.
JI: You were raised Orthodox. Are you still?
Kaiser: Let’s pass on that question.
JI: Are you working on anything new?
Kaiser: I have a basically finished novel that I wrote in grad school about radical, somewhat terrorist Yiddish poets in interwar New York City. I haven’t had the chance to go back into that for a few years, but I’m looking forward to dipping back in.
Republican lawmakers in the Senate and House have introduced a surge of legislation in recent weeks seeking to further crack down on Iran and put the brakes on the Biden administration’s efforts to rejoin the 2015 nuclear deal.
Some of the measures have gained minimal traction, but others have found support among GOP lawmakers.
In the Senate, a bill sponsored by Sen. Bill Hagerty (R-TN) seeking congressional oversight over sanctions reductions has gained 27 cosponsors. A resolution introduced by Sen. Tom Cotton (R-AR) opposing any form of sanctions reduction that does not address both Iran’s nuclear program and its other provocations — such as its recent attack on U.S. personnel in Iraq and its exporting of terrorism through its Middle East proxies — has gained 31 cosponsors. The House companion legislation to Hagerty’s bill and Cotton’s resolution have 24 and 30 GOP sponsors, respectively.
Rep. Michael McCaul (R-TX), who sponsored the House version of Hagerty’s bill, told JI that the legislation seeks to give congressional oversight on sanctions relief in order to give the American people a voice in the process.
“I don’t want to see us again fall back into the scheme of Tehran blackmailing us and extorting us and us giving up sanctions for really very little of anything,” Hagerty said in an interview with Jewish Insider last week. “The concern I’ve got is that the Biden administration wants to roll back our sanctions, just in exchange for reentering the deal. It took us a long time to get the sanctions in place. We’ve got pressure on Iran now that is like never before. And this is not the time to be backing off.”
Rep. Andy Barr (R-KY), who introduced a House bill that seeks to compel the Biden administration to submit any replacement agreement for Senate consideration as a treaty, offered a similar argument.
“If the Biden administration wants to jeopardize the national security of Israel, one of our greatest allies, they should go through Congress to do so,” Barr told JI. “The Biden administration should work with Congress and our allies in the international community to construct similar sanctions implemented at the beginning of the Obama administration that proved effective, instead of accepting as a foregone conclusion that the Iranians will eventually become a nuclear power.”
Hagerty said Iran’s continued provocations under the Trump administration’s “maximum pressure” sanctions regime served as evidence that the U.S. should not back down on sanctions.
“I certainly would not want to provide more resources to Iran to do this,” he said, emphasizing that the 2015 deal had freed up funds to the regime.
The Tennessee senator said he expects sanctions to have more long-term success in curbing Iranian activities.
“We need to continue to put pressure on them,” he said. “Their economy is contracting, that has got to be felt broadly, in Iran, and that’s going to put pressure on the regime much more than anything else we could do right now.”
McCaul said that by limiting the Iranian regime’s access to funds — particularly $70 billion in oil revenue — sanctions created leverage for the U.S. in negotiations with Iran.
“I hope the Biden administration will use that leverage to secure a better, comprehensive deal with Iran,” he said. “President Trump’s crippling sanctions gave the Biden administration an opportunity we cannot afford to squander.”
Barr echoed McCaul’s sentiments. “Iran came to the negotiating table in the first place [in 2015] because of the crushing economic sanctions imposed by the United States and our allies,” he told JI.
Hagerty indicated that he believes the 2015 deal’s European signatories — France, the United Kingdom, Germany and Russia — have fundamentally different interests in negotiations than the U.S. does.
“Think about what the incentives are here: The Europeans want us to get into this deal because they want the sanctions released because they want to be back doing business with Iran again,” he explained.
The Tennessee Republican said the U.S. should not reengage in talks with Iran until the regime stops all of its attacks on U.S. forces, allies and contractors, and halts nuclear enrichment. Iranian officials have said that they will not return to the negotiating table until the U.S. has lifted sanctions on Tehran.
“They need to take a step back themselves, rather than expecting us to step up and fund them and make concessions without them doing anything,” Hagerty said.
Secretary of State Tony Blinken has pledged repeatedly that the U.S. will not withdraw any sanctions against Iran until it brings its nuclear enrichment back to compliance with the 2015 deal, but has also said that the U.S. is ready for talks to resume.
Hagerty argued that his legislation “ought to be widely bipartisan,” noting that it follows a similar framework to the 2017 Countering America’s Adversaries Through Sanctions Act, a provision of which prevented the president from repealing sanctions against Russia without congressional approval.
But bipartisan support has thus far not been forthcoming for Hagerty’s bill, nor any of the other GOP-led legislation addressing Iran’s nuclear program and the 2015 agreement. Without any Democratic support, the legislation is unlikely to pass through either chamber of Congress.
Nevertheless, the deluge of legislation reflects deep GOP opposition to and concern about the Biden administration’s approach to Iran — which has also taken center state during recentcongressionalhearings with Biden’s foreign policy appointees. “Members of Congress feel strongly about the Iran issue given the national security implications,” McCaul said “For an issue as important as this, we need all hands on deck.”
Democrats have been comparatively much less active in terms of legislative action on Iran. In the House, a bipartisan group of five centrist Democrats and one Republican introduced a resolution last week condemning Iran’s nuclear program. Senate Democrats introduced a resolution in late February calling for “a diplomatic resolution to Iran’s nuclear program”; it has 11 Democratic cosponsors but no GOP support.
Two other pieces of Iran-related legislation in the House — one calling for an inquiry into potential additional sanctions that could be placed on Iranian leadership and another calling, in broad terms, for a “democratic, secular, and non-nuclear” Iran — have bipartisan support, but do not directly address Iran’s nuclear program.
In addition to the resolutions, House members have also issued at least four letters regarding Iran since the 2020 election, including one from Democratic lawmakers urging sanctions relief and a quick reentry into the 2015 deal, one from Republicans urging a more aggressive approach to the Iranian regime and two bipartisan letters — one laying out a middle path and the other urging continued pressure on Iran.
For immigrants and refugees arriving in the U.S., there is no “Welcome to America” guidebook. Even after they have managed the most urgent needs — finding a home, enrolling their children in school — each immigrant must attempt to answer for themselves a very loaded question: What does it mean to become an American?
A new book by Roya Hakakian, who, along with her Persian Jewish family, came to the U.S. from Iran in the 1980s, ostensibly attempts to help immigrants answer that question. In A Beginner’s Guide to America: For the Immigrant and the Curious, Hakakian draws on her own experience as a refugee to inform others embarking on the same journey, at least in theory.
In reality, Hakakian says her desired audience is native-born, English-speaking Americans, who she is urging to confront their biases toward immigrants. “Somebody who’s a newcomer to America can’t pick up a guidebook in English and learn from it. This isn’t really intended for the audience that it proclaims to be intended for,” Hakakian told Jewish Insider in a recent phone interview. “In the title [is] ‘for the curious,’ and I am hoping the curious are the native-born Americans who are interested in the issue of immigrants and immigration.” She wants people who have never before experienced being a foreigner here to imagine: “What do [immigrants] really experience, see, hear, and feel when they arrive?”
Hakakian’s new book, written in the second person, is not a memoir — she already wrote one of those — although she draws heavily from her own experiences. But Hakakian also did not want to write an op-ed, or anything resembling one. “I thought that remaining lighthearted throughout would be a way of hopefully breaking the ice, if there’s any ice between us — which, perhaps since 2016, there has been between the immigrant and the native born,” she said.
A refugee from Iran is different from a Chinese immigrant; an asylum seeker from Mexico is not the same as an Indian in the U.S. on a student visa. But in A Beginner’s Guide to America, Hakakian wants to show readers that these differences are not significant in the broader context of what it means to be an immigrant, or to belong to a nation of immigrants. “There are certain overarching experiences for any immigrant, regardless of where they come from, that make all of us far more similar than they make us different,” said Hakakian.
“Part of what has really poisoned our national conversation about immigrants and immigration,” Hakakian argued, “is that scientists or sociologists or policymakers have so focused on the specifics of each immigrant community — the Cubans, the Indians, the Chinese, the Polish — and trying to create data about the pros and cons of each one of these communities coming to the United States.”
At various points in its history, Hakakian pointed out, the U.S. has explicitly restricted immigration by national origin or ethnicity. But in her view, more than 200 years of history show a nation that has accepted newcomers from all around the world, and “that has enabled us to do and think and see things in ways that a more homogenous people can’t.”
In recounting her family’s immigration story to JI, she said she hadn’t wanted to leave Iran, despite understanding the 1979 Islamic Revolution had made the state oppressive and authoritarian.
“Despite all the bad that was going on, I really didn’t think that leaving was the answer,” Hakakian said. As a teenager, she added, “you develop a lot of attachments,” and the Iranian Jewish community had encouraged her as a young writer. Leaving her life behind did not seem like the answer to the country’s turn toward repression.
Her brothers had gone to the U.S. in the 1970s as students, not refugees. They lived in America through the early years of the Ayatollah’s regime, while Hakakian and her parents remained in Iran, even as most other members of the Iranian Jewish community fled.
Hakakian’s father was the principal at a Hebrew day school, making leaving even more difficult. But then Iraq invaded Iran, and Hakakian’s brothers, if they returned, would have been drafted to the military. “It also became very clear that Iran was heading in a direction of bad economy [and] poor governance, and the future wasn’t looking bright,” Hakakian said.
In 1984, she and her mother joined her brothers in the U.S. “My father kept hoping that the political situation would change and my brothers would return, but after five years, when it became very clear that it wouldn’t, then we decided to meet,” she recounted.
Unlike many refugees, Hakakian and her family did not move to an area with other people from their home country. Instead, they wound up in Borough Park, a Brooklyn neighborhood with a large Hasidic population that in some ways reminded her of the country she had left. “I had run away from a religious state,” Hakakian explained, leaving behind the “pressure of, ‘You can wear this and you can’t wear that,’ and ‘You can do this as a woman and you can’t do that.’”
Back in Iran, her family had been religiously observant, but not to the extent as the members of Borough Park’s Hasidic community. “As soon as we moved in, one of the very first things I was told was, ‘You can’t carry a bag or anything on Shabbat,’ [and] ‘You cannot wear pants,’” Hakakian said. “I couldn’t believe my ears. I had such a hard time with all that.”
Still, Hakakian stayed close to the Jewish community. She told JI that she finally began to feel like an American when she enrolled at Stern College at Yeshiva University and moved across the East River to Manhattan.
Hakakian now lives outside of New Haven, Conn., in an area with few other Iranians. But she closely follows politics in her home country and writes frequently about Iran, particularly on women’s rights and the country’s mandate that women wear the hijab. “The way we exercise our heritage is by keeping in touch, especially now through social media,” Hakakian explained. “I have [almost] 10,000 followers on Facebook, and I would dare say half of them live in Iran.”
In just over a week, Israelis will head to the polls to vote in the country’s fourth national election in two years.
But for weeks, speculation has mounted that this vote could be followed by yet another election later this year. How could that possibility play out — and how likely is it?
“My sense is we’re going to a fifth round,” former Israeli Ambassador to the U.S. Michael Oren told Jewish Insider on Sunday. “This election is between Bibi [Netanyahu] and anti-Bibi… and on the anti-Bibi side there are left-wing parties and right-wing parties, secular parties and religious parties,” said Oren, who served as a Knesset member with Kulanu from 2015 to 2019. And all those parties would have to set their differences aside to unite to oust Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, he suggested. “And I just don’t know if they’re able to do that.”
Israel held three consecutive elections — in March 2019, September 2019 and March 2020 — before it was able to form a government. That shaky and short-lived national unity coalition dissolved last year after just seven months, resulting in a new election. The upcoming March 23 vote is not technically a fourth consecutive election, but a fourth vote within a very short timeframe.
How could it happen yet again? Following the election, every party in the next Knesset will meet with President Reuven Rivlin to recommend one party leader to be tasked with forming the next government. Rivlin will then bestow the mandate on the candidate with the most recommendations by April 6. That candidate has six weeks to attempt to cobble together a majority coalition of at least 61 seats in the 120-seat chamber. If they fail, Rivlin can hand the mandate to a second candidate, but if nobody can form a government by July 6, a new election will automatically be triggered.
Why does the coalition-building process seem predestined to fail? In an average of the four most recent polls, the pro-Netanyahu bloc — Likud, United Torah Judaism, Shas and the National Religious Party — are predicted to receive 51 seats. The anti-Netanyahu bloc — Yesh Atid, New Hope, the Joint List, Yisrael Beytenu, Labor, Blue and White and Meretz — are expected to receive a combined 58 seats. Potential kingmaker Yamina leader Naftali Bennett — who has vowed to replace Netanyahu but yet has not ruled out sitting in his coalition — is predicted to receive 11.
Veteran political strategist Dahlia Scheindlin pointed out to JI last month that, even if Likud receives 30 seats in the election, the other parties “could all form a government behind Netanyahu’s back.” And even without the inclusion of the Joint List, a coalition of Arab parties, “there’s plenty of permutations you can think of that get you to 61 without Likud.”
But the anti-Netanyahu bloc is deeply divided, and getting those parties to join one government seems a near-impossible feat.
Both Bennett and New Hope leader Gideon Sa’ar have vowed not to sit with the Joint List, and Bennett has said he won’t serve in a coalition led by Yesh Atid leader Yair Lapid. Yisrael Beytenu leader Avigdor Liberman has long been antagonistic to the Joint List — going so far as to switch Knesset seats when he wound up sitting next to Joint List leader Ayman Odeh, who he has labeled a “terrorist” — and the two parties would make markedly hostile coalition partners.
“The Arab population is now a factor” in electoral politics, Oren told JI. He said while the Joint List is unlikely to join any government coalition, “they could support it from outside,” allowing a minority government to be formed.
Times of Israel political reporter Tal Schneider told JI in late January that “I can’t see right now a way with the numbers” to avoid a fifth election. “Both sides don’t have enough seats, both sides are probably unwilling to work with the Joint List, so as long as people in Israel treat the Joint List as outcasts, I don’t see any of them getting enough numbers to bring in a government.”
In an interview on JI’s “Limited Liability Podcast” last month, Walla! News reporter and Axios contributor Barak Ravid said another vote is a distinct possibility. “My assessment is that right now, most chances are — and I hope you’re all sitting down — most chances are that we’ll go for a fifth election.”
Most Israeli politicians have publicly vowed that they will do everything possible to avoid yet another round of elections. A new vote would harm Israel’s just-recovering economy and likely cause further damage to record-low public faith in government.
But Oren noted that not every pre-election campaign vow holds up once coalition talks begin.
“We’ve learned from [Blue and White leader] Benny Gantz that all these parties say they won’t sit with X and they won’t sit with Y, and when it actually comes to coalition negotiations, they’re willing to sit” with those parties, Oren said.
“I always say Bibi is like Hamas,” Oren added. “When Hamas goes to war, it only has to not lose, in order to win. Bibi has to only not lose in order to win.”
If no government can be formed, he noted, Netanyahu will continue to serve as prime minister through future election cycles. “If he doesn’t lose, he’s prime minister for another four or five months.”