When asked about Saudi Arabia’s position on normalization with Israel following US President Donald Trump’s Middle East visit last week, Secretary of State Marco Rubio said, “I think there’s still a willingness to do it.”

By Vered Weiss, World Israel News

Speaking to the US House Foreign Affairs Committee, Secretary of State Marco Rubio declared his belief that more Arab countries will normalize relations with Israel by the end of the year.

“I think we may have good news, certainly before the end of this year, of a number of more countries that are willing to join that alliance,” he said.

When asked about the position of Saudi Arabia on the issue of normalization following US President Donald Trump’s Middle East visit last week, Rubio said, “I think there’s still a willingness to do it.”

“Certain conditions are impediments, October 7 being one of them, but the Saudis have continued to express an interest, as have the Israelis, in reaching that agreement,” he said.

During the Biden Administration, normalization talks were underway and seemed imminent, but were disrupted by Hamas’s invasion of Israel on October 7 2023, which led to Israel’s retaliation and the ongoing Gaza war.

A Hamas document recovered by the IDF showed that slaim Hamas leader Yahya Sinwar was planning the October 7 invasion as an “extraordinary act” that would cause Israel to retaliate and derail normalization talks with Saudi Arabia.

Saudi Arabia was expected to be the next Arab country to join the Abraham Accords, established at the end of Trump’s first term as an agreement among the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain and Morocco to normalize ties with Israel.

Since then, Saudi Arabia has set Israel’s ending the war in Gaza and making tangible steps towards a Palestinian State as preconditions to any normalization agreement.

Although Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has spoken in support of Saudi normalization, he insists that the war in Gaza will only end with the destruction of Hamas as a political and military power and has rejected the establishment of a Palestinian State.

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The meeting follows President Donald Trump’s announcement of plans to lift U.S. sanctions on Syria.

By JNS

U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio met Thursday with Syrian Foreign Minister Asaad al-Shaibani in Antalya, Turkey, marking the first high-level diplomatic engagement between Washington and Damascus in 15 years.

The meeting follows President Donald Trump’s announcement of plans to lift U.S. sanctions on Syria.

Rubio, according to a State Department readout, “welcomed the Syrian government’s calls for peace with Israel, efforts to end Iran’s influence in Syria, commitment to ascertaining the fate of U.S. citizens missing or killed in Syria, and elimination of all chemical weapons.”

He also emphasized the importance of protecting human rights for all Syrians, regardless of ethnicity or religion.

The meeting coincided with a trilateral discussion involving Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan, reflecting Ankara’s role in facilitating dialogue between the U.S. and the new regime in Syria.

This diplomatic engagement follows Trump’s meeting with Syrian President Ahmed al-Sharaa in Riyadh on Wednesday, where the American leader encouraged Damascus to join the Abraham Accords and expel foreign terrorist groups. Al-Sharaa expressed support for these initiatives and proposed economic partnerships with the U.S.

In parallel, Israel is reportedly conducting secret talks with the new Syrian regime, mediated by the United Arab Emirates. According to Channel 12, a recent meeting in Azerbaijan involved IDF Operations Directorate head Maj. Gen. Oded Basyuk and representatives close to al-Sharaa, alongside Turkish officials.

Al-Sharaa has also confirmed indirect talks with Israel aimed at de-escalating tensions and reaffirming commitment to the 1974 Agreement on Disengagement between Israel and Syria.

While these developments suggest a possible shift in regional dynamics, Israeli officials remain cautious, citing al-Sharaa’s past affiliations. Foreign Minister Gideon Sa’ar has previously referred to the new Syrian government as “jihadists in suits.”

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Rubio and President Donald Trump both vowed to rein in the diplomatic agency by refocusing it on what the newly installed White House described Monday as an ‘America-First foreign policy.’

By The Washington Free Beacon

The Senate overwhelmingly confirmed Marco Rubio as America’s new Secretary of State on Monday evening, fast-tracking the now-former Florida senator through a confirmation process in which he gained broad backing from lawmakers in both parties.

Senators voted to confirm Rubio, who was first elected to represent the Sunshine State in the upper chamber in 2011, in a 99 to 0 vote.

During his confirmation hearing last week, Rubio earned praise from both Democrats and Republicans on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, where he once served as a senior member.

Rubio takes over a State Department that aggressively pursued liberal policies under the Biden administration, including through diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives that cost millions in taxpayer dollars.

Rubio and President Donald Trump both vowed to rein in the diplomatic agency by refocusing it on what the newly installed White House described Monday as an “America-First foreign policy.”

Rubio is already scheduled to meet this week with the foreign ministers from top U.S. allies in India, Japan, and Australia. The discussions, officials told the Associated Press, are aimed toward combating China’s aggression in the Indo-Pacific region.

Rubio described China as a top foreign policy challenge when he appeared before the Senate last week. He also promised to more forcefully confront China’s mass human rights abuses, including most notably its oppression of the Uyghur population.

Rubio will play a critical role in shaping the Trump administration’s Middle East policies following four years of often public bickering between Israel and the Biden administration. Those policies are certain to include robust support for the Jewish state.

Rubio will immediately oversee a tenuous ceasefire between Israel and Hamas, which came after Trump promised to rain “hell” on Hamas if the hostages were not released.

“There are opportunities available in the Middle East that did not exist 90 days ago,” Rubio said during his Senate confirmation hearing, crediting Israel with fundamentally reshaping the region by wiping out Hamas, Hezbollah, and other Iranian proxy groups.

In keeping with Trump’s pledge to eradicate wasteful spending and stop the American government’s embrace of left-wing policies, Rubio signaled his desire to abandon international institutions that pursue anti-Israel and anti-American policies.

This includes the International Criminal Court (ICC), which is facing tough U.S. sanctions for trying to arrest Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

“The ICC has done tremendous damage to its global credibility,” Rubio said last week.

“This is a test run. This is a trial run to see, can we go after a head of state from a nation that’s not a member. If we can go after them and get it done with regards to Israel, they will apply that to the United States at some point.”

U.S. foreign assistance, Rubio added, “is not charity. Fealty to progressive politics became the benchmark for success. That view is diminishing very quickly.”

Ahead of Rubio confirmation, a large number of State Department diplomats vacated their posts at the Trump administration’s behest, including political appointees and career foreign service officers who served in senior roles under former president Joe Biden. A similar effort is reportedly underway at the White House National Security Council.

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Senator Marco Rubio has reportedly been chosen by Donald Trump to be his upcoming Secretary of State, and this is how he deals with anti-Israel activists. feminists.

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Senator Fetterman: ‘My colleague Senator Mark Rubio is a strong choice and I look forward to voting for his confirmation.’

By Vered Weiss, World Israel News

Pro-Israel Democratic Pennsylvania Senator John Fetterman praised the Trump Administration’s potential Secretary of State pick, Florida Senator Mark Rubio, as a “strong choice.”

Rubio has been consistently vocal in his Israel support and went so far as to call the U.S. intelligence leak of a possible Israeli attack on Iran as “treason” against the Jewish State.

Concerning Rubio’s choice, Fetterman wrote in X, “Unsurprisingly, the other team’s pick will have political differences than my own,” Fetterman wrote in a post on X. “That being said, my colleague @SenMarcoRubio is a strong choice and I look forward to voting for his confirmation.”

If Rubio is chosen for the position, Florida Governor Rick Desantis can choose a replacement in the Senate until a special election is held for a new Florida senator.

With the reports about Rubio possibly being chosen as Secretary of State, “Iran’s regime’s supreme leader is in for a difficult morning,” wrote Jason Brodsky, policy director at United Against Nuclear Iran.

When asked by a reporter about a potential ceasefire in Gaza earlier in the year, without hesitation, Rubio said Israel should not stop short of an “elimination of every element of Hamas.”

Reacting to the leak of U.S. intelligence documents about an impending Israeli attack on Iran as “both a federal crime to leak that information, and it’s also an act of treason.”

“It’s aiding an enemy of the United States—a government in Iran that says ‘death to America,’ ‘death to Israel’ every week,” Rubio said.

“We need to know who did this, and they need to be punished,” Rubio said.

Rep. Greg Steube, R-Fla., has called Rubio “an outstanding choice.”

“Senator Rubio has a proven record of promoting freedom, defending American interests on the global stage, and standing firm against threats from the CCP. His leadership will be invaluable in advancing our nation’s values and priorities abroad,” Steube said in a tweet.

Rep. Carlos Giménez, R-Fla., said in a statement that, “President Trump has made a truly historic and brilliant choice in selecting Senator Marco Rubio as our nation’s Secretary of State.”

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US Secretary of State Blinken: ‘The only thing standing between the people of Gaza and a ceasefire is Hamas. They have to decide and they have to decide quickly.’

By Reuters and Algemeiner Staff

U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken on Monday urged Hamas to swiftly accept an Israeli proposal for a truce in the Gaza war and the release of Israeli hostages held by the Palestinian terrorist group.

Hamas negotiators were expected to meet Qatari and Egyptian mediators in Cairo on Monday to deliver a response to the phased truce proposal which Israel presented at the weekend.

“Hamas has before it a proposal that is extraordinarily, extraordinarily generous on the part of Israel,” Blinken said at a meeting of the World Economic Forum in the Saudi capital Riyadh.

“The only thing standing between the people of Gaza and a ceasefire is Hamas. They have to decide and they have to decide quickly,” he said. “I’m hopeful that they will make the right decision.”

A source briefed on the talks said Israel’s proposal entailed a deal for the release of fewer than 40 of the roughly 130 hostages believed to be still held in Gaza in exchange for freeing Palestinians jailed in Israel.

A second phase of a truce would consist of a “period of sustained calm” – Israel’s compromise response to a Hamas demand for a permanent ceasefire.

A total of 253 hostages were seized in a Hamas attack on southern Israel on Oct. 7 in which about 1,200 Israelis were also killed, according to Israeli counts.

A French diplomatic source said there was a convergence on the number of hostages released in return for Palestinians held in Israeli prisons, but that obstacles remained on the longer term nature of truce.

“We’re not far off from a deal, but that’s not the first time,” the source said.

Britain’s Foreign Secretary David Cameron, who was also in Riyadh for the WEF meeting, also described the Israeli proposal as “generous.”

It included a 40-day pause in fighting and the release of potentially thousands of Palestinian prisoners as well as Israeli hostages, he told a WEF audience.

“I hope Hamas do take this deal and frankly, all the pressure in the world and all the eyes in the world should be on them today saying ‘take that deal,’” Cameron said.

Cameron is among several foreign ministers in Riyadh, including from the U.S., France, Jordan and Egypt, as part of a diplomatic push to bring an end to the Gaza war.

SAUDI TIES

Blinken reiterated that the U.S., Israel’s main diplomatic supporter and weapons supplier, could not back an Israeli ground assault on Rafah if there was no plan to ensure that civilians would not be harmed.

Blinken met with Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, where they discussed the urgent need to reduce tensions in the region, the U.S. Department of State said in a statement.

More than a million displaced Gaza residents are crammed into Rafah, the enclave’s southernmost city, having sought refuge there from Israeli bombardments. Israel says the last Hamas fighters are holed up there and it will open an offensive to root them out soon.

Blinken also said the U.S. and Saudi Arabia had done “intense work together” over the past few months towards a normalization accord between the kingdom and Israel. That goal has been disrupted by the Gaza war.

“To move forward with normalization, two things will be required: calm in Gaza and a credible pathway to a Palestinian state,” he said.

In return for normalization, Arab states are pushing for Israel to accept a pathway to Palestinian statehood on land it captured in the 1967 Middle East war – something Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has repeatedly rejected.

Saudi Arabia’s foreign minister, Prince Faisal bin Farhan bin Abdullah also said on Monday that an accord between Washington and Riyadh over normalization was “very, very close.”

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Blinken also affirmed Israel’s right to defend itself and to ensure massacres like October 7th don’t happen again.

By Vered Weiss, World Israel News

At the World Economic Forum at Davos, Switzerland, noted journalist and commentator on the Middle East Thomas Friedman asked US Secretary of State Antony Blinken, “Do Jewish lives matter more than Palestinian and Muslim lives, given the incredible asymmetry in casualties?”

“No. Period,” Blinken responded, “What we’re seeing every single day in Gaza is gut-wrenching. And the suffering we’re seeing among innocent men, women, and children breaks my heart.”

Antony Blinken is descended from Hungarian Jews and his paternal grandfather Maurice Henry Blinken was described as “an early backer of Israel” by The New York Times.

Blinken explained that it was the Biden Administration’s priority to increase humanitarian aid to Gaza and to minimize civilian casualties.

Currently, the Hamas Health Ministry claims casualties in Gaza have reached 24,000, but these numbers haven’t been verified and Israel has stated that at least 9,000 of the dead are terrorists.

Blinken also affirmed Israel’s right to defend itself and to ensure atrocities like October 7th don’t happen again.

He said, “Israelis have to live with security. They can’t have a repeat of October 7th. No country would accept a repeat of October 7th.”

Blinken added, “It’s hard to overstate the psychological impact on the country as a whole of what happened on that day.”

He continued, “There are large swaths of the world (where)…information environments have been used and abused in such a way that large numbers of people don’t believe October 7th actually happened.”

“They don’t believe that Hamas slaughtered men, women, and children, that it executed parents in front of their kids, that it executed kids in front of their parents, that it burned families alive. They don’t believe it.”

The Secretary of State said that despite the war, he envisions Arab countries willing to normalize relations with Israel but only with the assurance of a Palestinian State.

Blinken said, “You now have something you didn’t have before, and that is Arab countries and Muslim countries even beyond the region that are prepared to have a relationship with Israel in terms of its integration, its normalization, its security.”

He added, “But you also have an absolute conviction by those countries, one that we share, that this has to include a pathway to a Palestinian state.”

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Kissinger’s consulting firm said he died at his home in Connecticut.

By Nancy Benac, The Associated Press

Former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, the diplomat with the thick glasses and gravelly voice who dominated foreign policy as the United States extricated itself from Vietnam and broke down barriers with China, died Wednesday, his consulting firm said. He was 100.

With his gruff yet commanding presence and behind-the-scenes manipulation of power, Kissinger exerted uncommon influence on global affairs under Presidents Richard Nixon and Gerald Ford, earning both vilification and the Nobel Peace Prize. Decades later, his name still provoked impassioned debate over foreign policy landmarks long past.

Kissinger’s power grew during the turmoil of Watergate when the politically attuned diplomat assumed a role akin to co-president to the weakened Nixon.

“No doubt my vanity was piqued,” Kissinger later wrote of his expanding influence. “But the dominant emotion was a premonition of catastrophe.”

A Jew who fled Nazi Germany with his family in his teens, Kissinger in his later years cultivated the reputation of a respected statesman, giving speeches, offering advice to Republicans and Democrats alike, and managing a global consulting business. He turned up in President Donald Trump’s White House on multiple occasions. But Nixon-era documents and tapes, as they trickled out over the years, brought revelations — many in Kissinger’s own words — that sometimes cast him in a harsh light.

Never without his detractors, Kissinger after he left government was dogged by critics who argued that he should be called to account for his policies on Southeast Asia and support of repressive regimes in Latin America.

For eight restless years — first as national security adviser, later as secretary of state, and for a time in the middle holding both titles — Kissinger ranged across the breadth of major foreign policy issues. He conducted the first “shuttle diplomacy” in the quest for Middle East peace. He used secret channels to pursue ties between the United States and China, ending decades of isolation and mutual hostility.

He initiated the Paris negotiations that ultimately provided a face-saving means — a “decent interval,” he called it — to get the United States out of a costly war in Vietnam. Two years later, Saigon fell to the communists.

He pursued a policy of detente with the Soviet Union that led to arms control agreements and raised the possibility that the tensions of the Cold War and its nuclear threat did not have to last forever.

At age 99, he was still out on tour for his book on leadership. Asked in a July 2022 interview with ABC whether he wished he could take back any of his decisions, Kissinger demurred, saying: “I’ve been thinking about these problems all my life. It’s my hobby as well as my occupation. And so the recommendations I made were the best of which I was then capable.”

Even then, he had mixed thoughts on Nixon’s record, saying “his foreign policy has held up and he was quite effective in domestic policy” while allowing that the disgraced president had “permitted himself to be involved in a number of steps that were inappropriate for a president.”

As Kissinger turned 100 in May 2023, his son David wrote in The Washington Post that his father’s centenary “might have an air of inevitability for anyone familiar with his force of character and love of historical symbolism. Not only has he outlived most of his peers, eminent detractors and students, but he has also remained indefatigably active throughout his 90s.”

Asked during a CBS interview in the leadup to his 100th birthday about those who view his conduct of foreign policy over the years as a kind of “criminality,” Kissinger was nothing but dismissive.

“That’s a reflection of their ignorance,” Kissinger said. “It wasn’t conceived that way. It wasn’t conducted that way.”

Kissinger continued his involvement in global affairs even in his last months. He met Chinese leader Xi Jinping in Beijing in July, as bilateral relations were at a low point. And 50 years after his shuttle diplomacy helped end the 1973 Mideast war, when Israel fended off a surprise attack from Egypt and Syria, Kissinger warned of the risks of that conflict repeating itself after Israel faced a surprise assault by Hamas on Oct. 7.

Tributes for Kissinger from prominent U.S. officials poured in immediately upon word of his death. Former President George W. Bush said the U.S. “lost one of the most dependable and distinctive voices on foreign affairs” and former New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg said Kissinger was “endlessly generous with the wisdom gained over the course of an extraordinary life.”
Kissinger’s consulting firm said he died at his home in Connecticut.

Kissinger was a practitioner of realpolitik — using diplomacy to achieve practical objectives rather than advance lofty ideals. Supporters said his pragmatic bent served U.S. interests; critics saw a Machiavellian approach that ran counter to democratic ideals.

He was castigated for authorizing telephone wiretaps of reporters and his own National Security Council staff to plug news leaks in Nixon’s White House. He was denounced on college campuses for the bombing and allied invasion of Cambodia in April 1970, intended to destroy North Vietnamese supply lines to communist forces in South Vietnam.

That “incursion,” as Nixon and Kissinger called it, was blamed by some for contributing to Cambodia’s fall into the hands of Khmer Rouge insurgents who later slaughtered some 2 million Cambodians.

Kissinger, for his part, made it his mission to debunk what he referred to in 2007 as a “prevalent myth” — that he and Nixon had settled in 1972 for peace terms that had been available in 1969 and thus had needlessly prolonged the Vietnam War at the cost of tens of thousands of American lives.

He insisted that the only way to speed up the withdrawal would have been to agree to Hanoi’s demands that the U.S. overthrow the South Vietnamese government and replace it with communist-dominated leadership.

Pudgy and messy, Kissinger incongruously acquired a reputation as a ladies’ man in the staid Nixon administration. Kissinger, who had divorced his first wife in 1964, called women “a diversion, a hobby.” Jill St. John was a frequent companion. But it turned out his real love interest was Nancy Maginnes, a researcher for Nelson Rockefeller whom he married in 1974.

In a 1972 poll of Playboy Club Bunnies, the man dubbed “Super-K” by Newsweek finished first as “the man I would most like to go out on a date with.”

Kissinger’s explanation: “Power is the ultimate aphrodisiac.”

Yet Kissinger was reviled by many Americans for his conduct of wartime diplomacy. He was still a lightning rod decades later: In 2015, an appearance by the 91-year-old Kissinger before the Senate Armed Services Committee was disrupted by protesters demanding his arrest for war crimes and calling out his actions in Southeast Asia, Chile, and beyond.

Heinz Alfred Kissinger was born in the Bavarian city of Fuerth on May 27, 1923, the son of a schoolteacher. His family left Nazi Germany in 1938 and settled in Manhattan, where Heinz changed his name to Henry.

Kissinger had two children, Elizabeth and David, from his first marriage.

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The lawmakers claimed building homes in the contentious E1 corridor constitutes a “red line” for the U.S.

By World Israel News Staff

Twenty-nine far-left Democrats on Friday called on the Biden administration to pressure Israel to cancel plans to build homes for Jewish residents in what is known as the E1 corridor connecting Jerusalem and Ma’ale Adumim in Judea and Samaria.

The letter comes ahead of a planned visit to the region by President Joe Biden.

“We urge you to continue emphasizing in the lead-up to [US President Joe Biden’s July 13-14] visit [to Israel and the West Bank] that settlement construction in E-1 remains a red line for the United States and to use every diplomatic tool at your disposal to ensure that Israel does not further advance these devastating plans,” said the letter to Secretary of State Antony Blinken.

The letter was spearheaded by led by Reps. Mark Pocan (D-Wisc.) and Jan Schakowsky (D-Ill.).

A Civil Administration subcommittee is slated to hold its final hearing in July on Palestinian objections to the construction, which include the claim that building Jewish homes in the area would crush the hopes of a contiguous Palestinian state with eastern Jerusalem as its capital.

Building plans have been delayed for almost two years amid international pressure.

U.S. Ambassador to Israel Tom Nides has also urged the Israeli government to back down from the plan.

The area, about 12 square kilometers (4.5 square miles), would see about 3,500 additional housing units if the plan goes ahead, and is meant to ameliorate a housing crisis in Ma’ale Adumim, a town of about 40,000 people.

Both E1 and Ma’ale Adumim are in Area C, which is under Israeli security and administrative control.

However, it is expected to take several years to complete the necessary bureaucratic measures before construction can begin.

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Seven men, including a Palestinian national, have been designated as Global Terrorists, and have had their assets frozen.

By Donna Rachel Edmunds, World Israel News

The United States, in conjunction with Qatar, has taken action against a major Hezbollah finance network, imposing sanctions on seven alleged financiers of the Lebanese group in the Gulf region.

According to the U.S. State department, three men have been sanctioned as Specially Designated Global Terrorists for having given financial or other assistance to Hezbollah, and four others have likewise been designated, for lending their support to the supply chain.

Six of the men are citizens of Qatar, Bahrain and Saudi Arabia, while the seventh is a Palestinian national.

Additionally, a Qatar-based real estate company, AlDar Properties, has also been designated as it is owned and controlled by one of the men, Sulaiman al-Banai.

The sanction makes it a potential crime to do business with any of the men or the company in America, and freezes any American assets they may hold.

“This represents one of the most significant joint actions we have taken with a Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) partner to date and underscores our extensive bilateral cooperation on countering terrorism finance,” the U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a statement.

“Hizballah seeks to abuse the international financial system by developing global networks of financiers to fill its coffers and support its terrorist activity,” Office of Foreign Assets Control Director Andrea M. Gacki said, adding: “The cross-border nature of this Hizballah financial network underscores the importance of our continued cooperation with international partners, such as the Government of Qatar, to protect the U.S. and international financial systems from terrorist abuse.”

The action was confirmed by Doha on Wednesday night in a statement confirming that seven men and one business had been designated, without naming the individuals or business in question.

Hezbollah emerged as a guerrilla terror group in the 1980s, but has since gone on to wield considerable influence in Lebanon through the country’s political system. The party gained the third largest number of seats in Parliament at the last election in 2018, which it leveraged to take 18 of 30 cabinet positions. The party has also created its own parallel institutions within Lebanon’s educational, social, and economic sectors.

However, the Iranian-backed group also acts as a Shia militia. A 2021 Congressional research paper noted: “For nearly two decades, Hezbollah’s stated objective was to drive IDF forces from southern Lebanon, through a range of attacks on Israeli military and civilian targets. Since the Israeli withdrawal in May 2000, Hezbollah has used the remaining Israeli presence in … disputed areas in the Lebanon-Syria-Israel tri-border region to justify its ongoing conflict with Israel—and its persistence as an armed militia alongside the Lebanese Armed Forces (LAF).”

Hezbollah was designated as a Foreign Terrorist Organization by the United States in 1997, and as a Specially Designated Global Terrorist in 2001. The Gulf Cooperation Council designated Hezbollah as a terrorist organization in 2016.

“The United States will continue to cooperate with partners, such as the Government of Qatar, to protect the U.S. and international financial systems from terrorist abuse,” Blinken said, adding: “Concurrent with this action, the Government of Bahrain has frozen bank accounts and referred three individuals to their prosecutor’s office.”

Pointing out that 14 other countries have already taken action to designate, restrict, or ban the terror group, Blinken added: “We urge other governments to follow suit.”

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A lifelong Republican, Shultz held three major Cabinet positions in GOP administrations during a lengthy career of public service.

By World Israel News Staff and AP

Former Secretary of State George P. Shultz, a titan of American academia, business and diplomacy who spent most of the 1980s trying to improve Cold War relations with the Soviet Union and forging a course for peace in the Middle East, has died. He was 100.

Schultz died Saturday at his home on the campus of Stanford University, where he was a distinguished fellow at the Hoover Institution, a think tank, and professor emeritus at Stanford’s Graduate School of Business. The Hoover Institution announced Schultz’s death on Sunday. A cause of death was not provided.

A lifelong Republican, Shultz held three major Cabinet positions in GOP administrations during a lengthy career of public service.

He was labor secretary, treasury secretary and director of the Office of Management and Budget under President Richard M. Nixon before spending more than six years as President Ronald Reagan’s secretary of state.

Supporters of Israel expected Shultz to be hostile to Israel when he became secretary of state. They were pleasantly surprised. At the 1987 conference of American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) he slammed the idea of the Palestine Liberation Organization being qualified to participate in an international peace conference.

“Remember how afraid we were of Shultz when he first came?” an AIPAC delegate said at the time. “And now look at him!”

Schultz was the longest serving secretary of state since World War II and had been the oldest surviving former Cabinet member of any administration.’

Moshe Arens, a former Israeli ambassador to the U.S., writing in Haaretz in 2016 of a recent speech Shultz made while visiting Israel, said:

“In his speech he recalled the first contact he had had with Israel – his Israeli graduate student in Economics at the University of Chicago, Yossi Levy. Levy, a brilliant student, surprised him when on the eve of the Six-Day War informed him that he would have to interrupt his studies and return to Israel to join his army unit. A week later he learned that Levy had fallen in battle.

“‘I asked myself,” Shultz said, ‘what kind of a country is this that commands such loyalty from such talented people, and what kind of a region is this that has conflicts that take the lives of such talented people.'”

Arens also wrote that Shultz “took up the cause of Soviet Jewry. He knew the names of the refuseniks denied the right to go to Israel, many of them languishing in Soviet prisons. In his negotiations with Soviet leaders attempting to wind down the Cold War, he would always bring up their names pleading for their release.”

Opposed Iran deal

Shultz opposed the 2015 Iran deal. In an April 2015 Wall Street Journal op-ed co-written with former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, Shultz said:

“Mixing shrewd diplomacy with open defiance of U.N. resolutions, Iran has gradually turned the negotiation on its head. Iran’s centrifuges have multiplied from about 100 at the beginning of the negotiation to almost 20,000 today. The threat of war now constrains the West more than Iran. While Iran treated the mere fact of its willingness to negotiate as a concession, the West has felt compelled to break every deadlock with a new proposal. In the process, the Iranian program has reached a point officially described as being within two to three months of building a nuclear weapon. Under the proposed agreement, for 10 years Iran will never be further than one year from a nuclear weapon and, after a decade, will be significantly closer.”

Shultz marked his 100th birthday in December by extolling the virtues of trust and bipartisanship in politics and other endeavors in a piece he wrote for The Washington Post.

“Trust is the coin of the realm,” Shultz wrote. “When trust was in the room, whatever room that was — the family room, the schoolroom, the locker room, the office room, the government room or the military room — good things happened. When trust was not in the room, good things did not happen. Everything else is details.”

Over his lifetime, Shultz succeeded in the worlds of academia, public service and corporate America, and was widely respected by his peers from both political parties.

After the October 1983 bombing of the Marine barracks in Beirut that killed 241 soldiers, Shultz worked tirelessly to end Lebanon’s brutal civil war in the 1980s.

As the nation’s chief diplomat, Shultz negotiated the first-ever treaty to reduce the size of the Soviet Union’s ground-based nuclear arsenals despite fierce objections from Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev to Reagan’s “Strategic Defense Initiative” or Star Wars.

The 1987 Intermediate Range Nuclear Forces Treaty was a historic attempt to begin to reverse the nuclear arms race, a goal he never abandoned in private life.

“Now that we know so much about these weapons and their power,” Shultz said in an interview in 2008, “they’re almost weapons that we wouldn’t use, so I think we would be better off without them.”

Kissinger, reflecting in his memoirs on the “highly analytic, calm and unselfish Shultz,” paid Shultz an exceptional compliment in his diary: “If I could choose one American to whom I would entrust the nation’s fate in a crisis, it would be George Shultz.”

George Pratt Shultz was born Dec. 13, 1920, in New York City and raised in Englewood, New Jersey. He studied economics and public and international affairs at Princeton University, graduating in 1942. His affinity for Princeton prompted him to have the school’s mascot, a tiger, tattooed on his posterior, a fact confirmed to reporters decades later by his wife aboard a plane taking them to China.

At Shultz’s 90th birthday party, his successor as secretary of state, James Baker, joked that he would do anything for Shultz “except kiss the tiger.” After Princeton, Shultz joined the Marine Corps and rose to the rank of captain as an artillery officer during World War II.

Start in economics

He earned a Ph.D. in economics at MIT in 1949 and taught at MIT and at the University of Chicago, where he was dean of the business school. His administration experience included a stint as a senior staff economist with President Dwight D. Eisenhower’s Council of Economic Advisers and as Nixon’s OMB director.

Shultz was president of the construction and engineering company Bechtel Group from 1975-1982 and taught part-time at Stanford University before joining the Reagan administration in 1982, replacing Alexander Haig, who resigned after frequent clashes with other members of the administration.

In 1986 testimony to the House Foreign Affairs Committee, he lamented that “nothing ever gets settled in this town. It’s not like running a company or even a university. It’s a seething debating society in which the debate never stops, in which people never give up, including me, and that’s the atmosphere in which you administer.″

After Reagan left office, Shultz returned to Bechtel, having been the longest serving secretary of state since Cordell Hull under President Franklin D. Roosevelt.

He retired from Bechtel’s board in 2006 and returned to Stanford and the Hoover Institution.

In 2000, he became an early supporter of the presidential candidacy of George W. Bush, whose father had been vice president while Shultz was secretary of state. Schultz served as an informal adviser to the campaign.

Shultz remained an ardent arms control advocate in his later years but retained an iconoclastic streak, speaking out against several mainstream Republican policy positions. He created some controversy by calling the war on recreational drugs, championed by Reagan, a failure and raised eyebrows by decrying the longstanding U.S. embargo on Cuba as “insane.”

Shultz was married to Helena “Obie” O’Brien, an Army nurse he met in the Pacific in World War II, and they had five children. After her death, in 1995, he married Charlotte Maillard, San Francisco’s protocol chief, in 1997.

Shultz was awarded the nation’s highest civilian honor, the Presidential Medal of Freedom, in 1989.

Survivors include his wife, five children, 11 grandchildren and nine great-grandchildren.

Funeral arrangements were not immediately announced.

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Among the accomplishments Secretary of State Mike Pompeo chose to underscore with less than a week to go in office were his moves supporting Israel, ILTV reports.

The post WATCH: Pompeo touts his pro-Israel accomplishments as term ends appeared first on World Israel News.

Here is a recap of the top Israel news stories on November 23, 2020.

And in case you missed our last recap…

The post WATCH: Daily Israel News Recap – November 23, 2020 appeared first on World Israel News.

The secretary’s problem regarding his planned departure, says the magazine, is “how to get out in one piece.”

By World Israel News Staff 

U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, at the center of praise in Israel on Monday with his announcement that Israeli communities in Judea and Samaria are not illegal, might be on his way out of the State Department.

Pompeo “has told three prominent Republicans in recent weeks that he plans to resign from the Trump Administration to run for the U.S. Senate from Kansas in next year’s elections,” Time magazine reported on Tuesday.

The secretary’s problem regarding his planned departure, says the magazine, is “how to get out in one piece.”

According to the magazine, “recent developments, including the House impeachment inquiry, are hurting him politically and straining his relationship with Trump.”

As a result,”Pompeo is rethinking his calendar,” according to the top Republicans cited in the Time report.

“There is no indication whether Pompeo has discussed his plans with President Trump,” according to the magazine.

“Trump has recently groused about Pompeo’s failure to defend him vigorously enough and rein in State Department officials who have told investigators about the Administration’s back channel dealings with Ukraine,” says Time, based on its sources.

“The President’s complaints, first reported by NBC News, also have caused Pompeo to reconsider whether sticking with Trump would help or hurt a Senate run, says one of the sources,” as cited by the magazine.

However, it is not only diplomatic issues which might impact whether the secretary of state runs for a Senate seat representing Kansas.

“The pain Trump’s trade policies [are] inflicting on the state’s farmers are threatening to suppress Republican enthusiasm and turnout next year,” says Time, quoting “a prominent Kansas Republican.”

A number of senior Israeli officials have given positive feedback about their interaction with Pompeo, who they consider more sympathetic than his predecessor, Rex Tillerson.

Former U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations Nikki Haley has written in a new book that Tillerson opposed the move of the U.S. embassy in Israel to Jerusalem.

“We would miss Mr. Pompeo if he decides to step down as secretary of state,” a senior Israeli official told World Israel News, “though we have confidence that the close relationship with the Trump Administration would continue under a new secretary of state, as well.”

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It appears that President Trump’s nominee for Secretary of State, CIA director Mike Pompeo, views Israel favorably and sees the Iran nuclear deal as fatally flawed.

By: Ebin Sandler, World Israel News

By all accounts, President Donald Trump is preparing to nominate CIA chief Mike Pompeo to serve as the next US Secretary of State following Trump’s dismissal of Rex Tillerson earlier in the week. Tillerson and Trump failed to see eye to eye on the fate of the nuclear deal with Iran, which the president is determined to either significantly alter or eliminate completely.

In the past, Pompeo’s positions on Israel have reflected an appreciation for the Jewish state’s role in maintaining stability in the Middle East. According to former Israeli ambassador to the US, Michael Oren, Pompeo has a very positive disposition toward Israel, the Jerusalem Post reported. Oren’s comments were based on interactions with Pompeo when the latter served as a congressman representing Kansas.

Oren explained to the Post that Pompeo breaks the mold of many State Department career employees and appointees, whom he says pursue an Arabist worldview in their positions at the agency. Oren cited as examples of this posture former Secretaries of State John Kerry, Condoleezza Rice, and Madeleine Albright.

Pompeo has been described in the past as “a friend of American Jews and a true friend of Israel” by Matt Brooks, who leads the Republican Jewish Coalition. During a 2015 visit to Israel as a congressman from Kansas, Pompeo was briefed by the Israel Police and made a stop at the Western Wall. At that time, Pompeo lauded Israelis’ “admirable restraint in the face of unspeakably cruel attacks,” in reference to a wave of Palestinian terrorism, including a rash of fatal stabbings.

With regard to Iran, Pompeo unequivocally criticized the nuclear deal signed with the Islamic Republic in 2015, subsequently tweeting that he advocates “rolling back this disastrous deal with the world’s largest state sponsor of terrorism.” Pompeo favors extending sanctions on Iran, in addition to taking further actions to reign in the nation’s regional aggression and nuclear ambitions.

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