View in Browser

President Donald J. Trump and TV/Radio host and author Mark Levin are now CONFIRMED to attend the RJC's Annual Summit in Las Vegas from October 27-29!

PREVIOUSLY ANNOUNCED SPEAKERS INCLUDE:

Gov. Ron DeSantis
Sen. Tim Scott
Vice President Mike Pence

Ambassador Nikki Haley

Vivek Ramaswamy

Governor Chris Christie

Governor Sarah Sanders

Senator Steve Daines

Senator Lindsey Graham

Senator Rick Scott

There are more big speaker announcements coming, too!

Register before September 18 and get the Early Bird rate of $1,500 per person. The ticket price goes up by $750 after that date.

(This event is for RJC Leaders. Leadership dues begin at the $1,000 level.)

Barak Ravid reports at Axios on a debate among White House insiders over the proposed meeting of President Joe Biden and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. He writes:

President Biden has decided to meet with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly — not at the White House — after a long internal debate over political optics and foreign policy considerations, according to three US officials.

… One senior US official said that many in the White House thought an Oval Office meeting with Netanyahu now would harm Biden politically in the Democratic Party. [Emphasis added]

A second US official said several of the president's aides were concerned about a scenario in which thousands of Israelis and American Jews would descend on the White House to protest the meeting. The official said the White House didn't want to "import" Israel's domestic political debate to Washington.

A third US official said some of Biden's advisers who objected to an Oval Office meeting believed it would send the wrong signal about what the president thinks about the judicial overhaul and the Netanyahu government's policies.

... US officials told Axios the White House told Netanyahu's aides the prime minister will be invited to Washington at a later stage this year. A senior US official said the White House wants to see how the situation surrounding the judicial overhaul develops in the next few weeks.

The RJC responded to this report on Twitter/X: “Bottom line: meeting with the Prime Minister of Israel is a liability in today’s Democratic Party. Shameful.”

The Biden administration has agreed to a deal that will give Iran access to $6 billion in hard currency and five Iranians arrested in the US on criminal charges in exchange for 5 American hostages held by Iran. Richard Goldberg writes at the New York Post that this deal will lead to more hostage-taking of American citizens, more terrorism, more money toward Iran's nuclear weapons capabilities, and more repression of Iranian women. But Goldberg makes it clear that the deal is even worse than it looks:

... In June and July, the Biden administration unfroze more than $10 billion of Iranian assets held in Iraq, allowing Baghdad to move payments for Iranian electricity into accounts in Oman established for Tehran’s use — payments that will continue on a rolling basis.

Now comes $6 billion more transferred to accounts in Qatar, providing the regime additional budget support.

Multiple reports also suggest Washington is allowing Tehran to trade $7 billion in International Monetary Fund special drawing rights for fiat currency.

At the same time, US officials now admit they’re allowing Iranian oil exports to China to skyrocket with estimates ranging from 1.4 to 2.2 million barrels per day flowing in August — their highest levels since President Donald Trump ended America’s participation in the old Iran nuclear deal.

Conservative estimates put this sanctions relief at $25 billion in annual revenue. Iran is now eyeing the transfer of another $3 billion from Japan.

All told, this is at least a $50 billion protection racket — not just a $6 billion hostage payment.

How can this occur without Congress holding one hearing or one vote? Because the deal was negotiated in secret and the White House insists there is no deal.

... President Biden is mortgaging our national security to rent a false sense of nuclear quiet in Tehran until next November. Congress must not let him get away with it.

Further reading:

• Heinonen & Stricker -- Twenty Years Later, Iran Remains In Non-Compliance With Its Nuclear Nonproliferation Obligations

• Kredo -- Iran Can Produce 10 Nuclear Bombs in 4 Months, Watchdog Says

• Schanzer & Krivine -- Biden’s Iran Hostage Deal Imperils Israel and the Rest of the World

The RJC PAC is proud to offer RJC members a secure, direct, and impactful way to support the GOP's outstanding incumbents and terrific challengers for the House and Senate in 2024: the RJC PAC Portal. And now, you can donate to Republican Presidential candidates there too!

The RJC PAC Portal is the best way for RJC members to contribute to Presidential, Senate and House candidates.

Bookmark the RJC PAC Portal and be sure to use that link whenever you’re making a political donation in this crucial election cycle!

Jonathan Tobin looks back at the Oslo Accords and writes:

Even the most stubborn believers in land for peace have long since stopped lauding the accords. In Israel, the overwhelming majority of people learned over the following years of terrorism and bloodshed that rather than a historic reconciliation, the negotiations and the accords they produced proved an epic disaster rooted in wishful thinking. Even in the United States, where most liberal Jews and the Democratic administration still cling to the failed Oslo formula of “land for peace,” the accords are regarded with a degree of embarrassment...

The empowerment of [Yasser] Arafat and the Palestinians was intended by Oslo’s Israeli architects to be a way to get them to give up their hopes for Israel’s destruction in exchange for an independent state. But instead of trading land for peace, all Israel did was exchange territory for terrorism. That was something that should have become abundantly clear even to the most obtuse observers...

[T]he international community still acts as if Oslo hadn’t demonstrated the Palestinians’ unwillingness to make peace no matter what they were offered.

That’s also true with respect to the United States, where the Biden foreign-policy team remains undeterred by Abbas’s expressions of hate. They are still financially supporting a Palestinian government led by a Holocaust denier and antisemite, and trying to undermine Netanyahu in the vain hope that [Mahmoud] Abbas or a successor will finally vindicate their policy of pressuring Israel to weaken its security and give up its rights to parts of the ancient Jewish homeland.

Three decades of proof of Palestinian rejectionism hasn’t lessened the clamor for more land for peace trades that will lead to even more harm for Israel.

...Thinking back 30 years ago, one can’t blame those who celebrated what they were told was a deal that would end the conflict. But we can fault those who refuse to draw conclusions from what followed.

The corrupt Palestinian Authority must not be a part of any Saudi-Israel deal

Former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and RJC Board of Directors member Sander Gerber remind us that giving money to the Palestinian Authority simply wastes it on corruption and terrorism, doing nothing for Palestinians themselves or the civil society they need to build. Pompeo and Gerber suggest that Saudi Arabia and the US create an "aid organization that would be independent of the PA's cronyism and of the United Nations" and "move past the outmoded Palestinian Authority, which has long been an obstacle to peace."

The top myths about US aid to Ukraine

Luke Coffey, a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute, writes that: "For Americans who believe in respect for national borders, the primacy of national sovereignty, and the right to self-defense, support for Ukraine is natural." He pushes back on four commonly heard arguments against US aid to Ukraine.

'We had wrong assessments': Almost all remaining Yom Kippur War files declassified

Ahead of the 50th anniversary of the Yom Kippur War, Israel's State Archives have released thousands of documents and records of the intelligence failure that preceded the war, the debates on a preemptive strike, and much more.