The power of Birthright Israel in a time of resilience
Intro
There was something unexplainable in the air during our trip—an energy so profound that it enveloped us, leaving us unable to fully articulate its essence.
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An experience like a Birthright Israel trip is hard to articulate. It was transformative, to say the least, especially during our visit to a country grappling with the aftermath of the Hamas terrorist attacks on Oct. 7, 2023. In retrospect, I wouldn’t have chosen a different time to go.
Witnessing the beauty of Israel in the wake of such horror allowed us to experience firsthand the incredible resilience of its people. I hadn’t visited Israel since my bar mitzvah in 2013, and for many of my fellow travelers, it was their first time. Yet the moment my flight from Toronto landed in Tel Aviv, the unfamiliar city felt like home, and strangers quickly became family.
There was something unexplainable in the air during our trip—an energy so profound that it enveloped us, leaving us unable to fully articulate its essence. Looking back, I believe this feeling stemmed from standing on historic land filled with our ancestors’ stories, witnessing the miraculous existence of modern-day Israel, and immersing ourselves in an environment that encouraged purposeful self-reflection and genuine human connection.
Hands down, the most transformative aspect of the trip was the opportunity to engage with Israelis. If you want to gain valuable life lessons, speak to them. If you want to understand the true meaning of bravery, they are your best teachers. Shockingly, despite having endured the unimaginable just months before our arrival, Israelis imparted powerful lessons about optimism. You learn that as much as we think about what Israelis have to go through, they are thinking of us across the world who have been facing our own unique set of challenges this year. This realization reinforced the deep connections that transcend borders between Israel and the Jewish Diaspora.
It may sound contradictory to say that the trip turned out to be one of the best weeks of my life while simultaneously being an emotional rollercoaster. One moment I found myself floating in the Dead Sea, enjoying the tranquility, and the next I was at Yad Vashem in Jerusalem, confronting the stark horrors of the Holocaust. One minute we were dancing in celebration, and the next we were hearing heart-wrenching stories from a Nova music festival survivor, reflecting on those who lost their lives in pursuit of happiness. The contrast was striking: laughing with young Israelis in the IDF one moment and mourning the young soldiers who had perished just this year at Mount Herzl the next.
This whirlwind of experiences was intensified by the bonds we formed within our cohort, which made the trip even more meaningful. We grew together through this concentrated week of emotional intensity, sharing not only joy but also sorrow and reflection. The hardest part, without a doubt, was saying goodbye. However, it is reassuring to know that we have a second home to return to and that future generations of young Jewish individuals will soon breathe in that same unexplainable air, experiencing the magic that I did on my Birthright trip.
Birthright Israel is more than just a journey to a physical location; it is a pilgrimage to our roots, an opportunity to engage with our heritage and a chance to understand the complexities of the Israeli experience. It forces you to confront difficult realities while simultaneously embracing the beauty and resilience of the people. This duality—the joy and the pain, the past and the present—serves as a powerful reminder of the strength found in community and connection.
As I reflect on this experience, I realize that Birthright is not just a trip; it’s a catalyst for personal and communal growth. It invites us to grapple with our identity as Jews, both in Israel and around the world, and to acknowledge the shared history that binds us. Each individual’s journey may be unique, but the overarching themes of resilience, hope and unity resonate deeply within us all.
In a world filled with uncertainty and division, experiences like this are vital. They remind us of our collective strength, the importance of connection and the enduring spirit of the Israeli people. I left the country with a renewed sense of purpose—eager to share my experience and encourage others to embark on this transformative journey. Birthright is not merely a rite of passage; it is an invitation to embrace our heritage, reflect on our challenges and celebrate the extraordinary resilience that defines us.
Officials from the U.S. Department of the Interior testified on Tuesday about the failures that led to pro-Hamas protesters tearing down and burning government-owned U.S. flags during a rally near the Capitol on July 24.
Republican lawmakers on the House Natural Resources Committee’s subcommittee on oversight and investigations grilled Charles Cuvelier, associate director for visitor and resource protection at the National Park Service, about why the U.S. Park Police were not better prepared to deal with rioters at the “Arrest Netanyahu: Surround the Capitol” march.
“What you’re doing is a disservice to the United States of America, and it disgraces that uniform you wear, and I wore one for 26 years myself,” said Rep. Derrick Van Orden (R-Wisc.), a former Navy SEAL.
In July, the National Park Service granted a demonstration permit to the Answer Coalition, an umbrella organization of anti-Israel and far-left protest groups, to hold a rally and march to “stop the genocide in Gaza” during Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s address to a joint session of the U.S. Congress.
The march portion of the event quickly turned violent, with protesters and police clashing along Constitution Avenue and police firing tear gas into the crowd. The rioters couldn’t access Capitol grounds amid the massive police presence.
At Columbus Circle, in front of Union Station, a major Amtrak and Washington Metro hub, the rioters overwhelmed the smaller contingent of Park Police responsible for that area and defaced monuments, tore down government-owned American flags and burned them and raised Palestinian flags.
Four people were arrested and charged, and three others remain under investigation for the violence and property damage.
The anti-Israel protesters graffitied slogans, including “Hamas is coming” with a red triangle logo, used by the terrorist group in its propaganda videos to indicate a target for an attack.
Rep. Brandon Williams (R-N.Y.) said on Tuesday at the hearing that he gathered a group of lawmakers that night to re-hoist the American flag. “I was looking for veterans and rednecks,” Williams said. “I assembled about eight other members of Congress to come with me, four of them Navy SEALs.”
“What’s important about this event is that standing up to all forms of riot, not just because of whatever political persuasion they are, but standing up to all of it, is significant and meaningful,” he added. “There are many who failed to speak out against this riot, but there were eight of us that went and made it right.”
Many of the congressmen questioned Cuvelier about why the Park Service cannot deny permits to groups that have a history of violating the law and causing violence.
Cuvelier explained that the department is bound to grant permits under statute and in line with U.S. First Amendment case law, which prevents the government from restricting speech except in cases of “clear and present danger.”
“There’s nothing in the regulation that indicates prior conduct would be a cause for future permitted events” to be denied, he said. “When the clear and present danger occurred about 40 minutes into the permitted event, they then revoked the permit.”
Mark Lee Greenblatt, an inspector general with the Department of the Interior, testified that one problem with holding violent protest groups accountable is that the Park Service does not pursue damages from permit holders that violate the terms of their permits.
“We found no evidence that the Park Service has ever pursued damages from permit holders,” he said. “The Park Service has not established a process for recovering damages and does not have a system for tracking damages that have occurred on those First Amendment events.”
Under the relevant statute, applications for a protest are “deemed granted” automatically within 24 hours unless denied for specific reasons narrowly described by law.
Cuvelier added that the Park Service does not track which groups have violated past permits.“We don’t retain records,” he said. “We base it upon each applicant as it is submitted.”
Those responses met with exasperation from some lawmakers.
“I just don’t even know what that means,” Rep. Rudy Yakym (R-Ind.) said.
The most heated exchange of the hearing came as Cuvelier declined to affirmatively describe the burning of the flags as a “disgrace,” under questioning from Rep. Pete Stauber (R-Minn.).
“For you not to be able to answer that, sir, it’s very disheartening for me,” Stauber said. “Mr. Chair, I’m disgusted.”
“I love our flag,” Cuvelier said.
The committee was supposed to hear from National Park Service Superintendent Kevin Griess, but the Biden administration prevented him from testifying, according to Stauber.
The ranking member of the subcommittee, Rep. Melanie Stansbury (D-N.M.), who was the only Democrat to speak at the two-hour proceeding, questioned whether her Republican colleagues were sincere about wanting to fully fund the Park Police.
“This is a budgetary matter, as we’ve seen time and time again,” she said. “I will be interested to see if our new administration, which plans to create a new government efficiency agency, which is led by outside billionaires and interests, will cut the Park Police funding even more, leaving our public with even less protection.”
Rep. Mike Collins (R-Ga.) said that the answers from the witnesses, including the lack of clarity about how many police officers were at Columbus Circle during the riot, suggest a deeper problem than lack of funding.
“The man doesn’t even know how many people were on site from the National Park Police during this thing,” he said. “We don’t pursue any violators. There’s no process to recoup damages. But in typical bureaucrat fashion, the answer to all the questions is more money so that we can hire more people to watch what’s going on.”
When he was sworn in as a new member of the Scottsdale City Council on Monday, Adam Kwasman used his family’s copy of a Hebrew Bible published by the late renowned Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz.
Kwasman served as a Republican member of the Arizona state legislature from 2013 until 2015. He was elected to the Scottsdale council on Nov. 5, and when he begins his term on Jan. 14, he believes that he will be the council’s first Orthodox Jewish member in history, he told JNS.
Adam Kwasman is sworn in as a member of the Scottsdale City Council in Arizona on his family's copy of a Hebrew Bible published by the late renowned Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz, as his wife Orit Kwasman looks on, Dec. 9, 2024. Credit: Courtesy of Adam Kwasman.
“I am a proud member of Congregation Beth Tefillah, and a congregant of Rabbi Pinchas Allouche, who has a deep connection to the Steinsaltz Yeshiva and considers the late Rabbi Steinsaltz to be his mentor,” Kwasman told JNS.
Steinsaltz, a Chabad rabbi who died at the age of 83 in August 2020, was one of the most well-known, modern-day commentators on Jewish scripture and rabbinical writings, best known for his Hebrew translation and commentary on the Talmud.
“Rabbi Steinsaltz’s influence weighs heavily on the Scottsdale Jewish community and my own family,” Kwasman told JNS, noting that his family, with Allouche’s help, became more religiously observant.
“This Chumash is the first one my wife and I bought as a couple when we were first married,” he told JNS. “The Steinsaltz edition of the Chumash has imagery embedded within the text that makes the narrative come alive in a way that is absolutely incredible.”
“I connect deeply with that mission of trying to take what was past and make it present,” he added. “Now this Chumash is not just an heirloom that we will be able to pass down, but has a communal, historical significance to it that is indicative of the beauty of our community.”
Kwasman told JNS that his faith will inform his legislative goals for the city.
“Even though I am a former Arizona state legislator, I wasn’t observant when I served in the statehouse, so my greatest achievement came after not being in office,” he said. “I want to continue some of my work from that time, like when I helped pass the moment of silence legislation with former Gov. Doug Ducey which was signed into law on what would have been the 120th birthday of Rabbi Menachem Mendel Schneerson.” (The Lubavitcher Rebbe died at age 92 on June 12, 1994.)
Adam Kwasman is sworn in as a member of the Scottsdale City Council in Arizona on his family's copy of a Hebrew Bible published by the late renowned Rabbi Adin Steinsaltz, pictured with his wife Orit Kwasman and their children, Dec. 9, 2024. Credit: Courtesy of Adam Kwasman.
He added that he hopes the city will adopt the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s working definition of Jew-hatred, “which can be implemented at the municipal level to ensure that schools aren’t teaching alternative histories about Israel.”
Kwasman hopes that his religious observance inspires others.
“I campaigned as an observant Jew, proudly wearing my yarmulke, and if I can be an inspiration to the Jewish community in a time of hardship then I’ve won,” he said. “That’s the real victory.”
Members of the U.S. House of Representatives challenged the organizer of a protest in July that devolved into antisemitic vandalism and the burning of an American flag, pointing out relationships with radical groups and the Chinese Communist Party.
Rep. Bruce Westerman (R-Ark.), chair of the House Committee on Natural Resources, and Rep. Paul Gosar (R-Ariz.), chair of the Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigation, led a letter on Monday signed by eight other Congress members to Manolo De Los Santos, executive director of The People’s Forum.
The left-wing organization describes itself as “a movement incubator for the rocking class and marginalized communities to build unity across historic lines of division at home and abroad.”
Congress members sought answers for the organization’s role in a demonstration on July 24 at Union Station in Washington, D.C., demanding a host of documents. The letter described The People’s Forum’s protests and their organizing of anti-Israel demonstrations across the country as part of “the broader ‘Shut it Down for Palestine’ (SID4P) movement, whose membership roster is comprised of radical anti-Israel organizations.”
The protest took place one day before Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu addressed a joint session of Congress on July 24 that some legislators made a point of not attending.
The legislators identified a list of event partners that included the Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR), American Muslims for Palestine (AMP), Code Pink and The People’s Forum. They wrote: “Concerningly, these groups and their affiliates not only destroy property and cause violence on university campuses and federal lands, but also have ties to U.S. foreign adversaries like Hamas, Iran, and the Chinese Communist Party (CCP).”
The letter described how “The People’s Forum and its partner organizations under SID4P, including Students for Justice in Palestine and AMP, have well-documented connections to Hamas and Iran. For example, SJP and AMP founder Hatem Bazian raised money for KindHearts, which was investigated and had its assets frozen due to coordination with Hamas and Hamas officials.”
Congress members concluded with a list of document demands including The People’s Forum’s communications with event co-organizer ANSWER and Neville Roy Singham, a funder of the group that the letter characterizes as seeking “to promote radical leftist policies in the U.S. on behalf of China.”
Nearly two-thirds (64%) of Jewish women surveyed by Hadassah, The Women’s Zionist Organization of America, reported that antisemitism had impacted their work, lives or relationships, according to new data released by the organization on Tuesday.
More than 1,000 people responded to the survey, the results of which also found that 62% said they had felt physically or psychologically unsafe and 52% of Jewish women reported hiding being Jewish.
“Every day, Jewish women are suffering in silence, isolation and fear as they live in the shadows of hate,” said Carol Ann Schwartz, national president of Hadassah.
In addition, 33% said they had experienced hate due to their Jewish or Zionist identity, and 22% said they had been excluded from groups or events because of their identity.
Schwartz called the responses a “call to action for us all.”
“We must urgently strengthen policies against rising antisemitism and empower our communities to rise up, together, and confront hatred in every form,” she said.
Peter Mehler and Zechariah Mehler will walk into a Milwaukee courtroom on Dec. 12 and potentially face three years in prison for the crime of destroying a mural showing a swastika within the Star of David that read: “The irony of becoming what you once hated.”
This father-and-son duo are heroes who deserve the keys to the city, not prison. What a despicable travesty of justice for them to be under such stress and expense as to face a trial. Can one imagine what would happen in a black neighborhood if a Ku Klux Klan sign or KKK members were involved?
Sadly, many Jews today realize that governments aren’t protecting us and that we must stand up to Jew-haters.
There has been a 570% increase in antisemitic incidents since 2015 in Milwaukee, according to the Milwaukee Jewish Federation and Jewish Community Relations Council, and Jews who stand up to Jew-haters and remove Nazi murals should not be facing punishment. We live in a society where we see anti-American forces destroying cities nationwide, campuses being desecrated, and those who harm Jews behaving with impunity. A Nazi mural is incitement to further antisemitic violence, which is already prevalent in Milwaukee.
As proud Jews and Americans, the Mehlers took action, as every decent person should do. Jews nationwide must stand up to Jew-haters and governments that for too long have permitted the haters to behave as they want. The Milwaukee district attorney, John Chisholm, must drop all charges. It is despicable that the Mehlers are facing a trial. Those who hate Jews and hate America must be challenged, not coddled.
Before the incident, local alderman JoCasta Zamarripa said, "There is no place in our city for a mural that lifts up a swastika,” and all 15 common council members sent statements asking for it to be taken down. The Milwaukee Jewish Federation described the mural as “horribly antisemitic” in a Facebook post.
There are people in this world who talk and people in this world who do. There are those among us who don’t stand by and want to wait for a physical attack or some other terrible scene and the inevitable speeches by politicians. Instead, they act, and those that do are heroes.
This is 2024, and we have had enough. As Israel’s late Prime Minister Menachem Begin once said: “We are not Jews with trembling knees.” We stand up, and when we see something, we do something.
The landlord of the building on which the mural was displayed is Ishsan Atta, who has compared Israel to the Nazis.
As the chairman of Betar—the international Zionist movement—I know Zechariah Mehler; he is president of Betar Milwaukee. The Mehlers have told me they believe in the way of the Zionist leader Ze’ev Jabotinsky, and I have shared with them his words in preparation for court.
As Jabotinsky said back in 1911, “Instead of excessive apology and instead of turning our backs to the accusers—as there is nothing to apologize for, and nobody to apologize to—it is long overdue to respond to all current and future accusations, reproaches, suspicions, slanders and denunciations by simply folding our arms and loudly, clearly, coldly and calmly answer, ‘Go to hell!’ … We are hated not because we are blamed for everything but we are blamed for everything because we are not loved. We do not have to apologize for anything. We are a people as all other peoples; we do not have any intentions to be better than the rest. We do not have to account to anybody; we are not to sit for anybody’s examination and nobody is old enough to call on us to answer. We came before them. We are what we are, we are good for ourselves, we will not change, and we do not want to.”
The only thing the Mehlers should hear from anyone is: “Thank you for your actions and keeping our community safe.”
Milwaukee’s district attorney must immediately drop charges. If he chooses not, then Jews and decent people nationwide will want to avoid this city as it embraces antisemitism and today’s Nazis. It’s a choice between standing with Nazis or standing against them.
Victoria Coates first went to Israel 10-and-a-half years ago, in May 2014, with Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas), for whom she was senior national security adviser. “At this point, I actually have no idea how many times I’ve been there,” Coates told JNS in her art-filled office at Heritage Foundation, where she is vice president of the national security and foreign policy institute.
Coates’s favorite trip to the Jewish state was during Christmas in 2019. “I was there with my husband, and we go into the room at the King David and there’s a card on the table that says ‘Dear guest,’ you know whatever. And they scratched it out and they wrote, ‘Dear Dr. Coates, welcome home,’” she told JNS. “My husband said, ‘That’s sweet, but do you realize you don’t live here?’ Actually right now, I don’t know.”
During a wide-ranging interview with JNS, which ran about an hour, Coates wore necklaces with a Jerusalem cross and a Philadelphia Eagles logo. She is Christian and divides her time between Washington and the City of Brotherly Love. The former deputy national security advisor for the Middle East and North Africa under President Donald Trump is also a staunch Zionist, whose bookThe Battle for the Jewish State: How Israel—and America—Can Win is due out on Dec. 17 from Encounter Books.
“The purpose of this book is to explain why the pro-Israel side is correct and to chart a safe course at a moment when the U.S.-Israel alliance hangs in the balance,” she writes in the book, which she penned before the outcome was known of the November U.S. presidential election. (“I really wish the Israelis had tipped me off that they were going to take out Nasrallah and Sinwar,” she told JNS, referring to senior leaders of Hezbollah and Hamas. “I would have liked to include that.”)
Regardless of who won the election, “the good news is that the pro-Israel side still comprises a significant majority of Americans, but with the balance shifting among the younger demographic,” she writes, “we cannot assume that it will prevail without concerted effort against an increasingly aggressive threat.”
She notes in the book the difference, which “could not be more stark,” between the “successful, if unorthodox, approach to the Middle East under President Trump and the decades of bipartisan failure most recently manifested in the Biden-Harris administration.”
Coates was in Israel in July 2014 when Phil Gordon, an adviser to President Barack Obama, delivered a speech. “As the rockets were starting to fly, he said, ‘You’ve got to give them a state,’” she told JNS. “I was going to Naftali Fraenkel’s shiva and I’m like, there’s something wrong here with these people and with what they’re doing.” (The latter was one of the teens kidnapped from Gush Etzion and murdered.)
“Being in the administration, and being on the inside and so close to what actually happens, that’s where I think it was important that it’s somebody who’s not Jewish, who is American to say, ‘Here is the value.’ I am Christian,” she said. “But the value of the relationship transcends my religious interest in the Holy Land.”
Victoria Coates (center) tours the Golan Heights in Israel with former Israeli military spokesman Jonathan Conricus (left). Courtesy of Victoria Coates.
‘Discontinued education’
Coates holds undergraduate, graduate and doctoral degrees in art history. Her first book, in 2016, was David’s Sling: A History of Democracy in Ten Works of Art. She told JNS that she hopes to do another such history, in 12 works of art, of Christianity.
“I really wish I could have a time machine and go back because I was one credit shy of a double major with political science and assumed I was going to be an art historian at that point, so I didn’t really care,” she said. “But it would have been helpful to explain it.”
She went through graduate school and “did the gypsy scholar circuit,” settling at the University of Pennsylvania for her doctorate. She had kids and worked on some projects and taught a lot in what “is now in hindsight the time when academia really started to polarize,” she said.
“It just became poisonous, and I’ve always been very conservative,” she said. “Maybe not by Kevin standards,” she added with a laugh, referring to Kevin D. Roberts, the president of the Heritage Foundation.
Coates started writing about national security issues, mainly about the Iraq war and the role of Donald Rumsfeld, then the U.S. defense secretary, in the war, for the blog RedState.
“After he retired, he got in touch and said, ‘Do you know any academics who can help me with my books? I’m going to write this big, huge book and use all these documents,’” Coates said. “I said, ‘No. They all think you have horns and a tail.’ My husband was the one who said, ‘Look you’re not happy. Why don’t you do it?’”
(From left) Victoria Coates, former U.S. official John Bolton, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Israeli official Ron Dermer tour overlook the Israeli border with Jordan. Courtesy of Victoria Coates.
She worked as Rumsfeld’s research director and then was senior adviser to the 2012 presidential campaign of Rick Perry, then the Texas governor. The following year, she joined Cruz’s Senate office. Even as she has swapped art history for foreign policy, however, Coates has retained elements of her scholarly toolkit.
“I approached the book like a 101 syllabus, assuming an educated audience. Assuming an audience that is able to consume a lot of material,” she told JNS. “It was my mother who asked for the acronym list. She’s a pretty bright woman, and she said, ‘I am getting lost. You need a list. I just need somewhere to go. There are so many acronyms. There are so many names.’”
In a college course, a professor has three months, essentially, to teach students a base level of information. “It was always my approach that you do that better with illustrative stories and characters they can trace, so they develop a framework,” Coates said.
“For some, that’s the only class they’ll take and they feel good, and that was very much part of the point of the book—to arm specifically an American audience with, why does this matter?” she added. “Others go on to graduate work, but that foundation is what you lay, and there is an art to doing that as an educator.”
Victoria Coates speaks with U.S. President Donald Trump in the Oval Office of the White House, January 2020 after the Soleimani action. Courtesy of Victoria Coates.
Historical arcs
Throughout the forthcoming book, Coates traces narrative arcs, including those that span decades. “Fifty years ago, Arafat thus laid the foundation for the pro-Hamas response to Oct. 7, 2023, in America, appropriating the American founders, notably Washington, for the Palestinian cause,” she writes, “and making Israel, and Jews in general, who opposed the invitation for a terrorist mastermind to speak at the United Nations, the agents of ‘enmity and hostility.’”
“My favorite one,” she told JNS, “is actually the Saudi trajectory.”
That, to Coates, led from the emergence of AIPAC as a major force in the early 1980s and the “terrible concerns” about airborne warning and control systems (AWACS), whose sale to the kingdom President Ronald Reagan announced in 1981, and Washington’s guarantee that Israel would have a qualitative military edge (QME) to “openly discussing the Saudi-Israel deal.”
“I don’t know that we’re going to get it done next year, but I bet dollars to doughnuts that President Trump will get that done,” she told JNS.
After serving on the White House National Security Council, Coates advised Dan Brouillette, the U.S. energy secretary at the time, on national security in early 2020. In that role, she spent time in Saudi Arabia that autumn.
“This is not your father’s Riyadh,” she told JNS of the Saudi capital. “It is changing from visit to visit.”
A miniature, of the Barakah nuclear power plant in Abu Dhabi, which Victoria Coates calls “one of my favorite items,” on a shelf in her office at the Heritage Foundation in Washington, D.C. Photo by Menachem Wecker.
At the Energy Department, Coates wasn’t able to move around during the COVID-19 pandemic. “So the secretary had me go to Abu Dhabi for two months over the summer of that year and then come home and then go to Riyadh for two months,” she said. “It was seismic in the kingdom to contemplate the possibility that a candidate, who had threatened to treat them as a ‘pariah,’ might become president.”
On one of her office shelves, Coates has a miniature of the Barakah nuclear power plant in Abu Dhabi, which she calls “one of my favorite items.”
For Coates, it was a “fascinating time” to be in the kingdom.
“They gave me permission to go everywhere, so I was all over the country. I went out to Dhahran, the headquarters of Aramco, where I drove a car. Everybody came out, and they took pictures,” she told JNS. “It wasn’t because the consul general out there was a woman and I was a woman, and we were in a car. They were taking pictures of it because it was a hydrogen car. That’s how different it is.”
“Is everything perfect? No. But it is changing fast, and that is momentous for the Middle East,” she added.
Conversations that used to only occur quietly—and never with a journalist—now take place in the open. “Now everyone’s like, ‘when, not if. We’ll get Gaza resolved,” she said. “That’s all due to Trump and the policies that he laid out originally in that AIPAC speech in 2016.”
“He deserves the Peace Prize for that, and, of course, it wasn’t even considered,” she said.
"My growing collection of Israeli prime ministers," Victoria Coates says of a display in her office at the Heritage Foundation in Washington, D.C. Photo by Menachem Wecker.
To Coates, neither the current Israeli government nor the Saudi government had confidence in the Biden administration, which she thinks was the one insisting that the Palestinian question must be a prerequisite for further Abraham Accords progress.
“More perhaps than ‘pariah,’ it was the monkeying with the strategic petroleum reserve, which is a very artificial, distorting way to try to adjust prices,” Coates said. “Just very counter to anything. For them, this is a business, not a political messaging tool.”
Not out of left field
When Coates considers Jew-hatred today, she notes that “in many ways, the Holocaust was the catalyst, but the origins of it obviously go back, certainly, 100 years.”
“This didn’t come out of left field,” she said.
“I hate to date myself, but this is helpful. When I was born, Israel was 20 years old. Israel is now 76 years old. Wild difference over the course of those 56 years,” she said. “The reality that emerged in the mid-1970s that the Arab nations weren’t going to attack again. They were sick of it.”
The mistake, she said, was the United Nations inviting Yasser Arafat, leader of the PLO, “and somehow suggesting they were a de facto state, which they just weren’t.”
“That’s the point in the book. This isn’t fair to them. They have none of the trappings of statehood. They never were a state. They have no way to manage a state and insisting that they be one to placate your domestic population is no service to the Palestinians,” she said.
The “actually reasonable situation” in the 1980s then “disintegrates into the intifada,” followed by the “desperate ‘Hail Mary’ of Oslo, which just abjectly failed,” according to Coates.
“Here we are in 2024, and I’ll have to look. I think Israel is No. 18 on the U.S. News and World Report list of most powerful nations, and the Palestinians are not a state,” she said. “If you insist they’re apples and apples, when you’re dealing with apples and oranges, you cannot get to a resolution.” (Israel ranks 10th on the U.S. News list.)
“My recommendation is: Israel has to win,” she said.
One of the main points of her book, as the title articulates, is that the United States and the Jewish state are in this together.
A menorah, a gift from Chabad, in the office of Victoria Coates at the Heritage Foundation in Washington, D.C. Photo by Menachem Wecker.
When Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu addressed a joint session of the U.S. Congress on July 24, riots broke out in Washington, including at Union Station.
“We watched the 15-minute parade of protesters go right past the Heritage Foundation, down to Union Station and rip down those flags,” Coates told JNS. “Those weren’t Israeli flags. Those were American flags.”
“This is an American problem. It’s not a Jewish problem, and it’s not an Israeli problem, although it is a problem for both,” she said.
Some are saying that America isn’t reliable, and the Jewish state must be independent.
“For those of us who’ve actually done this, that is not possible right now, but it could be,” Coates said. “I think it’s in America and Israel’s interests to get there. It’s probably a 25-year journey. It’s probably a centennial thing. But how great for the United States to have an independent but closely linked ally—this beacon in the Middle East the rest of our partners and allies are integrated with.”
Would Coates like to join the new administration, JNS asked.
“I’m in a Zen place,” she said. “The incoming administration is going to have a sprint, not a marathon. From where we, as Heritage, sit, that is going to be extremely important, and so I am very happy being here, managing that.”
“Obviously, if they were to call, I would have the conversation, but it seems to me I’m probably most helpful for this initial period here,” she added. “We need a robust Heritage talking to them all day every day.”
NATO Secretary General Jens Stoltenberg at a fireside chat with Victoria Coates, a vice president at the Heritage Foundation, at Heritage in Washington, D.C., Jan. 31, 2024. Credit: Heritage Foundation.
Air defense
Early on in the interview, Coates told JNS that she wanted, before the conversation concluded, to discuss the book’s dedication.
“For my grandfather, U.S. Army Captain Howard Allen Downey, who stormed up Utah Beach in the D-Day invasion to liberate Europe from the Third Reich,” Coates writes in the book, “and for my mother, Anne Downey Gardner, whose namesake anti-aircraft gun, the ‘Baby Anne,’ was hunting Nazis when she was 6 months old.”
The dedication includes a photo of the “Baby Anne.”
Her grandfather was part of the second wave on D-Day, on June 6, 1944, “and then fought his way across Europe,” Coates said. Her mother was exactly 6 months old on D-Day, having been born on Dec. 6, 1943.
“He named his anti-aircraft gun after her and had her little pink shoes hanging over the gun. We have the shoes,” she said. “When she was in Israel for her 75th birthday, the then political director of the MFA and a senior guy at the IDF gave her this wonderful model of the three interceptors: Iron Dome, David’s Sling and Arrow.”
“It says on it, ‘Happy birthday Mrs. Gardner. Air defense has come a long way in 75 years,” Coates said.
If Washington and Jerusalem play their cards correctly, the Middle East can transform even more than it has with the fall of Bashar Assad’s regime in Syria and the decimation of Hamas and Hezbollah, former U.S. and Israeli diplomats told JNS on the sidelines of the Tikvah Fund’s Jewish Leadership Conference on Sunday.
“We don’t know what the Syrian government is going to look like, but we know what it’s not going to look like. It’s not going to look like Assad,” Michael Oren, a former Israeli ambassador to the United States, told JNS at the Manhattan event, during which he also delivered remarks. “Iran is now totally isolated. That also has its risks.”
Oren cautioned that Tehran, which “is already debating whether or not to break out and create a nuclear weapon,” may decide that it has a limited window in which to act before U.S. President-elect Donald Trump takes office on Jan. 20.
Trump exercised a “maximum pressure” campaign on Iran through heavy sanctions during his first term, which included the United States withdrawing from the Iranian nuclear deal in May 2018. His nominees for senior positions in his forthcoming administration suggest that he intends to remain tough on the Iranian regime.
“Israel has to be extremely vigilant during this period,” Oren said, of the coming weeks before Trump takes office. “But generally speaking, this is a transformative revolutionary event for the Middle East that, if it is handled correctly by the United States, by our allies, could truly, truly bring about a new Middle East.”
Oren advised in the interim giving “a cautious embrace to the new rebel government in Syria” and to “press the isolation of Iran, to get Iran to dismantle its nuclear program, perhaps even bring down the regime.”
He told JNS that he is not calling for regime change in Iran. “But none of us will be particularly distraught if it actually happened,” he said. Concerned parties should “take this moment to make a peace between Israel and Saudi Arabia, perhaps even to address the Palestinian problem in a new and creative way,” he said.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7fNw3CBrWLw
‘Poof, it’s gone’
Elliott Abrams, a former U.S. deputy national security advisor who served as special representative for Iran under Trump, cautioned against too much prognosticating, especially in a rapidly evolving region like the Middle East.
“The first thing we know is people can't predict,” the chairman of the Tikvah Fund told JNS. “Who predicted a month ago that Assad would be in exile for the rest of his life?” (Abrams interviewed former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations and former presidential candidate Nikki Haley during a session at the Tikvah event.)
Abrams noted that Israel's weakening Hamas and Hezbollah led to Iran’s failure to answer Assad’s pleas for help and the walls closing in on his brutal dictatorship.
“He turned to the Iranians. Nothing. Hezbollah, nothing. Poof. It’s gone,” Abrams said. “Now, of course, we have to see what kind of regime does form in Syria, but the existential threat to Israel is Iran, and they’re weaker.”
JNS asked if now is the time to make a move against Iran. “I’m sure this will be a discussion first in Jerusalem in the cabinet, second between Netanyahu and Trump, and I’m sure the Israelis are thinking about that,” Abrams said.
Questions remain about Iran’s military capacity and what the Islamic Republic might do, if anything, if attacked.
“What is Trump’s attitude? What is he telling them?” Abrams said. “I think we’re going to find out in short order. But it’s got to occur to the Israelis, the iron is hot, do we strike now?”
Elliott Abrams, chairman of the Tikvah Fund, at Tikvah's Jewish Leadership Conference in New York City on Dec. 8, 2024. Photo by Sean T. Smith/Simon Luethi via Tikvah Fund.
Trump has suggested in recent months that he would be open to negotiating a new nuclear accord with the Iranian regime. Abrams thinks Tehran would be more open to such an entreaty, “because they’re scared.”
“They know they’ve lost Hamas. They know they’ve lost Hezbollah,” he said. “They know they are totally vulnerable to Israel.”
Abrams warned that Trump could fall into the same trap that ensnared the Biden administration—thinking Iran will negotiate in good faith while it buys time to advance its nuclear program.
“I frankly don’t think the Iranians are willing to do that, because the kind of changes that would be needed,” Abrams said. “Forget the proxies, forget the nuclear program. Then it’s not really the Islamic Republic of Iran anymore.”
“My guess,” he told JNS, “is they want to negotiate with Trump. They don’t want to achieve anything. They want to string it out. They want him to say to the Israelis, ‘Don’t do anything. Don’t attack. We’re talking.’”
Abrams added that he worries about “an Iranian phony negotiation to kill time.”
Trump’s nominations so far for senior roles in his forthcoming administration, including Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) for secretary of state, and Rep. Mike Waltz (R-Fla.) as national security advisor, suggest that a sharp focus on Iran and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict will remain in the new government.
But only one man’s position will count in the end—Trump’s, according to Oren.
“Appointments are great, but at the end of the day, policy is made by one individual, and they carry out those policies,” the former Israeli envoy told JNS. “At the end of the day, we have to wait and see what the president’s positions are going to be.”
While the talking heads overcomplicate President-elect Donald Trump and his intentions, Sebastian Gorka, who served as a deputy assistant to in the first administration, reveals some straightforward ways to know what to expect after the inauguration.
Trump’s incoming counter-terrorism chief says the United States will be in good hands with the American patriot at the helm.
Learn how Gorka envisions Trump’s second term; his view on the battle against embedded elites across the globe; waking up from the two-state delusion; the dramatic fall of the Assad regime in Syria; and Trump’s love for America.
As chaos envelops Syria—with one gang of terrorists overthrowing the other gang of terrorists who ran the government—the question needs to be asked: Can you imagine the danger Israel would now be facing if it had surrendered to U.S. demands in the 1990s to give up the Golan Heights?
This isn’t some theoretical what-if scenario. During the first Clinton administration, a team of State Department negotiators led by Dennis Ross spent several years trying to pressure Israel to give over the Golan to Syrian dictator Hafez Assad (father of the recently deposed dictator Bashar Assad, his second-oldest son).
Today, Ross can be seen on television and quoted in news articles presenting himself as an expert and offering unsolicited advice to Israel. Most consist of demanding that Israel make more concessions.
But from 1993 to 1994, Ross was not just a source of useless hot air. He was in a position to directly pressure Israel to hand strategic territory to an insane dictator who was building weapons of mass destruction. And he did, frequently.
In his 2021 book Red Line, Joby Warrick of The Washington Post revealed that in 1988, the CIA convinced one of Syria’s top chemical-weapons scientists to secretly provide the United States with information about Syria’s efforts to manufacture sarin gas and other deadly nerve agents.
The secret agent, who called himself “Ayman” and was known in the CIA by the code name “The Chemist,” provided information to the CIA continuously for the next 13 years.
Meaning that when Dennis Ross and his team began pressuring Israel to give up the Golan in 1993, the Clinton administration had already known from the inside—for five years already—the true evil nature of the Assad regime and its chemical weapons plans.
Yet in Ross’s account of his role in the Syria negotiations in his book The Missing Peace, he speaks fondly of Assad and about his friendly, sometimes warm relationship with the chemical-weapons war criminal.
Ross recalls wistfully one time when Assad was “holding my arm as he shook my hand to convey greater warmth and appreciation.” Assad “respected my knowledge and my attention to detail.” When the Syrian leader complimented him, “You never forget a thing,” Ross obsequiously replied, “I learned that from you, Mr. President.” The two joked around about which of them could stay in the negotiating room longer without taking a bathroom break.
And the human touch! In talks that took place a day after Assad visited the grave of a loved one, the warmongering dictator was “soft-spoken, fatalistic and clearly touched when I expressed my sorrow for his loss and the difficulty of this time for him personally,” Ross writes.
It’s painfully reminiscent of what some Western journalists wrote about Adolf Hitler in the 1930s.
Assad was the man who twice tried to annihilate the Jewish state—first as Syria’s defense minister in the 1967 Six-Day War and then as Syria's president in 1973’s Yom Kippur War. The man who daily ranted against Israel and Jews. The man whose schools raised entire generations of young Syrians to become antisemitic fanatics. The man who, at the very moment he was negotiating with Ross, was feverishly developing chemical weapons with which to slaughter millions of Israeli Jews. Assad literally aspired to finish Hitler’s job by asphyxiating millions of Jews with poison gas.
The only thing that stood between Israel and Hafez Assad’s chemical weapons was the Golan Heights. The same is true for Assad’s equally monstrous son, the deposed dictator Bashar Assad. If Israel had been foolish enough to follow along with Dennis Ross and his State Department colleagues, the Assads would have had the Golan—and their guns and poison gas would have been trained on the families who live in Israel’s Galilee, Jewish and Arab alike.
Today, Dennis Ross is again dishing out “expertise,” hoping that nobody remembers the awful advice he gave Israel about surrendering the Golan Heights. But Israelis, who are watching the unfolding chaos on their northeastern border, have not forgotten. They know just what the consequences would have been.
