This week saw the publications of an important article by former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, RJC Board of Directors member Sander Gerber, and Stuart Force, the father of Taylor Force. They write:

The Biden administration has signaled its desire to resume aid to the Palestinian Authority (PA) as a way to jumpstart the moribund Israeli-Palestinian “peace process.” The obstacle to peace, however, is not the absence of US assistance but the PA’s incentivizing of terrorism. The bipartisan Taylor Force Act blocks US funding for the PA until it changes this behavior. There is no indication that it has, making any resumption of US taxpayer aid a contravention of this important law and a further hindrance to peace.

The PA’s “pay-for-slay” policy, codified in PA law, pays monthly benefits to the families of dead terrorists and terrorists in Israeli prisons, with more money awarded to those who killed more innocent people. The Taylor Force Act (TFA) is named for US Army veteran Taylor Force, who was stabbed to death while on a visit to Israel in 2016, and it was signed into law by President Donald Trump in 2018. The TFA withholds US aid to the PA until the “pay for slay” policy is ended.

If the Biden administration tries to run around the TFA, it will be guilty of money laundering for terrorists. The Biden administration should disable terror by focusing on fundamentally reforming Palestinian governance, not enabling the unrepentantly terror-sponsoring PA by circumventing the plain meaning of a bipartisan bill passed just three years ago.

Keep reading here.

The Biden administration wants to return the US to the dangerous Iran nuclear deal. The 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA) was a terrible deal, and the Obama/Biden administration lied to the American people to get us into it in the first place. Jeff Dunetz at The Lid blog summarizes 15 key points that illustrate the dishonesty of the Iran deal’s proponents and shows why returning to the deal would be a terrible mistake. They include:

• The JCPOA allows Iran to go nuclear between 2025 and 2030.

• Iran never reported to the IAEA their nuclear history.

• There are no anytime-anywhere inspections.

• A secret side deal discovered by the Associated Press allows Iran to upgrade and modernize its centrifuges and increase its enriching capacity, before the deal expires.

Lee Smith warned us about the Iran deal years ago. Now he’s back, with insightful analysis of the Obama/Biden administration intentions behind the deal, and why it’s still a bad idea. He writes:

But facts- and results-based analysis misses the main purpose of the JCPOA, which had nothing to do with preventing Iran from building nuclear weapons. Rather, the agreement guaranteed Iran the money and technology it needs to build a bomb while putting Iran’s nuclear program under the protective umbrella of an international agreement guaranteed by the United States. The purpose of the JCPOA, in other words, was to put the nuclear issue in brackets by giving the Iranians a bomb that they were manifestly unable to build on their own—and, in doing so, to remove the obstacle that prevented [Barack] Obama from realigning American regional interests with those of the revolutionary regime.

…Downgrading Israel as an American ally was a way to take down the pro-Israel wing of the Democratic Party, whose power depends on the strength of the US-Israel relationship and which is generally seen as less “progressive”—and which had generally supported his rival, Hillary Clinton. By making the US-Israel relationship toxic, Obama made the wing of the party leprous. Unmaking “Jewish power” within the Democratic Party meant permanently decoupling the United States from Israel by wedding America to the most credible anti-Israel force in the Middle East, the Islamic Republic of Iran. It was through that deliberate political math that Obama’s Democratic Party became the Party of Iran.

Marc Rod at the Jewish Insider reports on a bipartisan letter in the US House that calls on the Biden administration to work toward agreements with Iran “that address the full range of threats that Iran poses to the region,” including Iran’s efforts to develop nuclear weapons and the means to deliver them; its support of terrorist groups; and its human rights violations. The letter is signed by 70 Democrats and 70 Republicans.

Please visit the RJC’s new Iran deal portal, where you can learn more about the failures of the 2015 Iran deal and see the RJC’s stance on dealing with Iran going forward. Most importantly, we’ve made it easy for you to tell President Biden that you oppose the US reentering the failed 2015 Iran nuclear deal.

Click here to use our interactive tool to send an email to the White House today!

President Joe Biden signed the $1.9 trillion “Covid relief” bill today. The package is considered the largest expansion of the welfare state in decades and was pushed through with zero Republican support.

The Republican National Committee has a report on what is inside that bill, which is considered the largest expansion of the welfare state in decades. Less than 10 percent of it will go to Covid-related spending; the rest is “a progressive wish list” that includes:

• $350 billion for a blue state bailout, with funding being distributed by a formula that’s biased towards primarily Democrat-run states, hundreds of billions more than what estimates say is needed.

• $86 billion for a pension bailout that pre-dates COVID-19.

• $100 million for the EPA to “address health outcome disparities from pollution.”

On that page you’ll also find a list of the important items that Republicans attempted to add to the bill and Democrats rejected, such as an amendment to hold accountable states that underreported nursing home deaths.

Watch Now: Replay of Our Virtual Event with Jonathan Schanzer

Last month we had a great event with Jonathan Schanzer, senior vice president for research at Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD). His topic was "American Foreign Policy in the Middle East Under Biden: Continuity or Change?" The recording of that event is now available on the RJC web site.

Go to the RJC homepage and scroll down to the "RJC Live" section. There's a drop-down menu there to select the video you want to see.

RJC National Leadership Meeting Announcement

We've received many inquiries about when the next RJC Annual Leadership Meeting will take place. We are still evaluating our options for a national leadership meeting in Las Vegas in 2021, but with the continued threat of Covid, our usual timelines of March or April for that event are not possible. Currently, we are looking at dates in the late fall, and we will keep you up to date as developments arise.

While RJC offices are closed and our staff are teleworking, you can reach us by email or by phone (please leave a voicemail message and your call will be returned). Contact information for our offices can be found on our web site. Please visit us online for the latest RJC news, to see details of upcoming events, and to donate to the RJC.