Senator Lindsey Graham called on China to act “more normal” and warned of punishment if it doesn’t, declaring the summit a failure if no concrete changes emerge.

Senator Graham on China:

If they change, China will be rewarded.

If they don’t, they'll be punished. pic.twitter.com/w33MWLTzlD

— Clash Report (@clashreport) May 14, 2026

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Israel and Hamas were initially excluded from the conference lineup, which will be attended by world leaders from Europe and the Islamic and Arab world.

By World Israel News Staff

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu declined an invitation to attend a high-profile international summit on the future of the Gaza Strip, which is set to begin in Sharm El-Sheikh, Egypt, later today (Monday.)

Neither Israel nor Hamas were originally invited to attend the conference, though Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas confirmed his participation in the summit.

The invitation to the Israeli leader came only hours before the event was scheduled to begin. Despite initial reports that he would attend, Netanyahu’s office clarified that he will skip the event because it coincides with the Jewish religious holiday of Simchat Torah.

Notably, two years ago launched its deadly invasion of southern Israel on the the same holiday, which corresponds to the civil calendar date of October 7, 2023.

The summit, led by U.S. President Donald Trump and Egyptian President Abdel Fattah El-Sisi, will bring together major world leaders from across the Middle East, Europe, and Asia.

Among those expected to attend the conference are representatives from Qatar, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, and Jordan, alongside key Western leaders such as British Prime Minister Keir Starmer, Spanish Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez, French President Emmanuel Macron, and Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni.

The conference aims to explore “practical ways to end the war in the Gaza Strip, enhance efforts to achieve peace and stability in the Middle East, and usher in a new era of regional security and cooperation.”

Notably, El-Sisi has harshly criticized Israel’s military campaign in Gaza and has not spoken directly with Netanyahu throughout the war, despite the longstanding peace treaty between Egypt and Israel.

El-Sisi reportedly extended a formal invitation to Netanyahu on Monday afternoon, following a phone call, in which Trump also participated.

Iran was also invited but declined to participate. The Islamic Republic’s foreign ministry publicly confirmed it had received and rejected the invitation.

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Israeli President Isaac Herzog leads a historic summit uniting 150 Jewish leaders worldwide to forge bold ideas, strengthen Jewish identity, and shape the future through innovation, advocacy, and global collaboration.

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The entire project, a hasty and poorly thought-out public relations gimmick, is built around concepts that are never defined.

By Amir Taheri, Gatestone Institute

What do India, Iraq and the Solomon Islands have in a common?

The answer is that US President Joe Biden has certified all three as “democracies” along with 106 other countries, by inviting them to a virtual “Summit for Democracy” on December 9-10, 2021.

Biden’s move reminds me of one of my favorite French phrases: Furnishing the emptiness.

In this case, when you lack a foreign policy, why not pretend that you have one by holding an international summit?

And what is the summit going to discuss?

Well, three objectives have been set: Defending against authoritarianism, fighting corruption, and promoting human rights. Something else forgotten — maybe motherhood and apple pie?

The trouble is that the entire project, a hasty and poorly thought-out public relations gimmick, is built around concepts that are never defined.

To start with, what does Biden mean by democracy?

In the absence of a definition, we must assume that he means democracy is what he says it is. In that case, democracy, which is a system of government that comes in many different forms, is reduced to an ideology that, in turn, makes it anti-democratic.

The exercise reminds us of the creation of the Comintern by Stalin, who pretended that he and he alone could decide who was a “true Socialist.”

But if we adopt the non-ideological definition of “democracy” as a system in which people govern themselves or a least have a share in governing themselves through a more or less freely elected legislature, the exclusion of some countries from Biden’s list becomes puzzling. For example, how could one exclude Kuwait, Jordan, Tunisia, Morocco and even Algeria, but include Iraq?

By excluding Turkey and Hungary, two US military allies, Biden weakens NATO’s pretension of being “an alliance of democracies.”

Excluding Russia is also puzzling.

Vladimir Putin may be a disagreeable fellow, but Russia still has a multi-party system, holds regular elections, is less oppressive, and has fewer political prisoners than the Philippines under President Rodrigo Duterte, whom Biden has invited.

And if authoritarianism is the original sin in this case, why invite so many African “strongmen,” not to mention Jair Bolsonaro of Brazil?

Chile is also invited. But just 10 days after Biden’s summit, it may well end up with Jose Antonio Cast, a political heir to Augusto Pinochet, as president.

Needless to say, the People’s Republic of China is also excluded.

To be sure, by no stretch of the imagination could one regard the one-party state in Beijing as a democracy. However, by our count, at least 20 of the countries invited, including the Solomon Islands mentioned above, are little more than satellites of the People’s Republic.

At the other end of the spectrum, Biden’s invitation excludes at least 20 long-standing allies of the United States.

Biden’s proposed “summit” is a double-barreled gun.

The second barrel is supposed to bring together representatives of civil society and the private sector to help achieve the three objectives set for the summit.

This is puzzling.

If those to be invited come from countries already certified as democracies, it makes little sense to separate them from their democratic governments. If they are to come from excluded countries, however, their inclusion in the Biden scheme would mean transforming them into political opposition groups.

The biggest risk in Biden’s plan is that it may lead to the re-ideologization of international relations, something that many thought ended with the end of the Cold War.

After centuries of religious wars, Europe first opted for a rule-based international system through the Westphalian treaties, which led to some three centuries of relative peace and stability.

After the Second World War, it was to de-ideologize international relations that the US led the effort to create a new world order built around the United Nations, its charter, and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. That meant equal rights for all member nations regardless of their system of government, religion and dominant ideology.

The rules-based Westphalian system was further developed to become a law-based world order which, though certainly imperfect, ushered in the end of colonialism and prevented the resurgence of ideologies preaching the cult of race, religion or class war.

For decades, US leadership, even when the US itself transgressed, was a key element in sustaining the law-based world order. Biden’s scheme may signal a radical shift in the United States’ global leadership ambitions — from leading a law-based world order to heading a hodgepodge of “democracies” certified by Washington. This is why Biden and his team speak of “values”, a subjective concept, rather than concrete laws developed over decades thanks to painfully shaped international consensus.

Originally, trying to duplicate the United Nations was part of the program of ultra-conservative groups in the US and Western Europe. Under President Barack Obama it morphed into an undeclared ambition of the ultra-left.

This was why Obama went around the UN and its agencies on a number of issues, including the “nuclear deal” with the mullahs of Tehran, the humanitarian catastrophe in Syria, and the public-relations hoax known as “saving the planet”.

Biden, who casts himself as centrist, may be re-appropriating Obama’s strategy by trying to create a doppelganger for the UN. A less audacious version of that was briefly marketed by British Prime Minister Boris Johnson in the form of an alliance of the “Anglosphere” nations.

I have never been a fan of the United Nations as an organization and have written about its deficiencies for decades. However, no one could deny the role it has played and should continue to play in upholding and enforcing the idea of law-based international relations. What is needed is the conservative approach, which means keep what is working and cut what is not through a number of reforms that have been debated for decades to adapt the UN to the exigencies of a changing world. The creation of a pseudo-ideological parallel organ that excludes more than 80 UN member states, including two permanent members of the Security Council; and some 40 percent of humanity, will not do that.

The doppelganger may furnish the emptiness for a few days and furnish a rudderless administration with a few favorable headlines. But it will provide no answer to problems the world faces today, problems that cannot be tackled without the participation of all nations within the framework of a world order based on law, not ideology.

Amir Taheri was the executive editor-in-chief of the daily Kayhan in Iran from 1972 to 1979. He has worked at or written for innumerable publications, published eleven books, and has been a columnist for Asharq Al-Awsat since 1987.

This article was originally published by Asharq al-Awsat and is reprinted by kind permission of the author.

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The themes of the virtual meeting of some 100 countries in December are defending against authoritarianism, fighting corruption, and promoting respect for human rights.

By Batya Jerenberg, World Israel News

A list of guests for President Joe Biden’s virtual Summit for Democracy on December 9-10 was publicized Monday and the invitation-only event has some American allies with elected leaders in, and others, out.

For example, Israel and Iraq will represent the Middle East, while Egypt and Turkey were left in the cold. While the latter two do hold parliamentary elections, they are considered authoritarian regimes with questionable human rights records. Yet Iraq has also been on shaky democratic ground ever since Saddam Hussein was toppled by American-led forces in 2003. On the other hand, the U.S. has a vested interest in keeping in the fold the oil-rich country for which it has bled men and much treasure.

The administration very much wanted all regions in the world to be represented, a senior official speaking on background told the Foreign Policy website.

“What we’re trying to do through the Summit for Democracy is to galvanize democratic renewal worldwide. Because of that, we’re seeking a really inclusive, big-tent approach,” the official said.

One of the summit planners told Reuters, “This was not about endorsing, ‘You’re a democracy, you are not a democracy.’ That is not the process we went through.”

There were also no preconditions for any country to come, officials said.

The ‘process’ has to do with the Biden administration’s concerns regarding its main adversaries, one advocacy group said in reaction to the list of invitees.

“Clearly, strategic considerations about countering China are at play in inviting very troubled, backsliding democracies like India and the Philippines that are in China’s neighborhood,” said Amy Hawthorne, research director at the Project on Middle East Democracy.

“The same might be true for inviting deeply flawed democracy Iraq, the neighbor of U.S. adversary, the Iranian theocracy,” she added.

As announced by the White House in August, there will be three principal themes for the summit: defending against authoritarianism, fighting corruption, and promoting respect for human rights. In a year’s time, the leaders will be invited again to present the initiatives they took in order to advance their commitments in each area.

Political leaders are not the only invitees, the statement said. Heads of civil society, philanthropy and the private sector will also come, to help “drive international collaboration and speak honestly about the challenges facing democracy so as to collectively strengthen the foundation for democratic renewal.”

In keeping with the self-critical phase that the United States seems to be going through at present, the official speaking to Foreign Policy added that America recognizes its own imperfections in this sphere as well.

“We come to this summit as the U.S. also with humility. We understand we have had challenges, and we are seeking to address our own challenges.”

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Here is a recap of the top Israel news stories on August 1, 2019.

And in case you missed our last recap…

The post WATCH: Daily Israel News Recap – August 1, 2019 appeared first on World Israel News.