The Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs is one of Israel’s leading think tanks in the fields of national security, regional diplomacy, and international law. This periodic activities report reviews the Center’s applied research and diplomacy in response to critical threats to Israel and the Jewish world as we develop new models and opportunities in a rapidly shifting, unstable Middle East.

In the course of the last six months, the Jerusalem Center’s intelligence and national security experts exposed and assessed the core threats destabilizing the Middle East today. Jerusalem Center experts continue to expose and place in context the terror strategies and tactics of ISIS, Hamas, Hizbullah, Syria, and Iran. Our analysts have uncovered the political forces competing in the Palestinian realm on the eve of municipal elections on the West Bank.

The Jerusalem Center also led strategy and public diplomacy initiatives with high-level Iranian dissidents, Syrian opposition leaders, Kurdish leaders from Syria and Iraq, and other figures from neighboring countries. Our analysts briefed visiting foreign delegations, including a Chinese think tank and U.S. Members of Congress. The Center’s research and assessment on delegitimization, boycott-divestment-sanctions (BDS), and assaults against Israel have set the pace and helped both Israeli government and private initiatives to combat the political and economic warfare against Israel and the Jewish world.

The Jerusalem Center operates one of the largest Israel advocacy/Middle East analysis website networks in the world, with 1,800,000 monthly page views across websites in four languages. Facebook and Twitter are today major components in the Center’s communication strategies.

The Center undertook a major new initiative in recent months to exploit digital video and multi-media platforms to maximize distribution of our analyses and policy recommendations via social media. Our success in expanding the viewership and messages is exemplified by this video adaptation of one printed study, The Knife and the Message: The Roots of the New Palestinian Uprising. Within weeks, this video was seen by more than 75,000 YouTube and Facebook viewers.

Contents

Jerusalem Center Experts

New Publications

BDS Unmasked: Radical Roots, Extremist Ends
By Dan Diker

The Fraying Palestinian Political Entity in the West Bank
By Pinhas Inbari

The Knife and the Message, The Roots of the New Palestinian Uprising
By Hirsh Goodman and Brig.-Gen. (res.) Yossi Kuperwasser, editors

International Law

Amb. Alan Baker, the Jerusalem Center’s expert on international law, analyzes the myriad issues of Palestinian incitement, Jews as the indigenous people, land ownership, boundaries, the International Criminal Court, and delegitimization of Israel.

Work in Progress

Outreach – Applied National Security and Diplomacy

In recent months, the Jerusalem Center has met with leaders, dissidents, and military officials from Israel’s immediate neighbors, including Iranian, Kurdish, Syrian, and Palestinian figures. Jerusalem Center experts have briefed delegations from China, the U.S. Congress, and Iranian dissidents/exiles.

Discussions on the Jewish World

The Jerusalem Center has hosted scholars and leaders to discuss European Jewry, anti-Semitism, and the assassination of Argentine prosecutor Roberto Nisman.

Student Leadership Program in Arab-Israel Studies

Social Media Initiatives – Websites, Twitter, Facebook, YouTube

Jewish Political Studies Review

Jerusalem Center's Experts

New Publications

Many believe BDS is a progressive, nonviolent movement to boycott Israeli goods produced in the disputed West Bank. This is a deception.

The BDS leadership’s publicly stated goal is to delegitimize and isolate Israel internationally with the strategic objective of causing its implosion.

There is a sharp point of intersection between anti-Semitism and the BDS and delegitimization campaigns. In the Palestinian view, Zionism cannot be countenanced as the national movement of the Jewish people because the Jews are not a people and possess no national or sovereign history in Palestine/the Land of Israel.

The Palestinian Authority is failing to control extensive parts of the West Bank.

As a result, some districts of the West Bank are developing in different directions, thereby accelerating the process of the PA’s disintegration. The tearing of the Palestinian political and social fabric will only increase as Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas nears the end of his tenure.

The fragmented Palestinian West Bank will be a weaker entity than the weak states that collapsed in the Arab Spring. When the Palestinian entity collapses, the vacuum will be filled by the negative forces that have become the nightmare of the world.

Are there really lone-wolf terrorists? The Jerusalem Center’s study, written in early 2016, remains the groundbreaking analysis of the forces at play in the latest round of Palestinian violence. A video version, released in July 2016, has been seen by tens of thousands of viewers.

The latest wave of Palestinian violence against Jews is a new phenomenon, an insidious wave of seemingly unorchestrated attacks, perpetrated by unlikely assailants, and generally untraceable to any particular organization. This Jerusalem Center study reveals that the Palestinian president and those under his authority are indeed instructing young Palestinians what to do; not sending them into battle as soldiers, but goading them into action through deliberate incitement-driven messaging, distortion and fabrication.

Between Rabin and Arafat: A Policy Advisor's Diary, 1993-1994 (Hebrew)

Islamic Eruptions in the Middle East and Israel’s Need for Defensible Borders

Protecting the Status of the Temple Mount in Jerusalem

By Nadav Shragai

The impact of the two waves of terror instigated by the Palestinians in 2014 and 2015 on the status quo on the Temple Mount is the major focus of this study.

International Conference – “100 Years since the Sykes-Picot Agreement: Lessons for the Middle East”

A century after the Sykes-Picot Agreement was signed in 1916 by France and Britain, the Middle East remains a political powder keg and the battlefield for successive armed conflicts. The boundaries drawn just a century ago by Western powers are evaporating. This study reviews historical facts and sheds new light on the many failures of the Sykes-Picot agreement and its implementation during the past century.

Conference Agenda

Videos from the Sykes-Picot Conference

International Law

In light of the unprecedented attempts by Israel’s detractors to turn virtually every issue of the Israel-Arab conflict, generally, and Israeli-Palestinian relations, in particular, into a question of legitimacy, international law issues have become major components of the activities of the Jerusalem Center.

Legal questions regarding the BDS campaign, the wave of stabbing attacks in Israel, and the selective and hypocritical European reticence to describe them as acts of terror, as well as the ongoing incitement by the Palestinian leadership and media, have been analyzed and addressed by Center experts. Clearly, and pending any return to a mode of negotiations, legal questions and issues will continue to serve as a central factor in the present realities faced by Israel, and in the day-to-day research of the Jerusalem Center.

In August 2016, Baker released, “The Curious State Department Announcement on Israeli Settlements.” He wrote, “The terminology used and the biting and incisive verve of the statement raise some serious questions as to the basic knowledge, seriousness, professionalism and responsibility of the writer and of whoever approved the issuance of the statement.”

In July 2016, Amb. Baker published a legal analysis on “International Funding for Salaries and Benefits to Terrorists”. He argued, “The direct and indirect channeling by the Palestinian official bodies of international donor funding to pay salaries of Palestinians imprisoned for acts of terrorism raises serious legal and moral issues that must be addressed.”

Work in Progress

Why “Unilateralism” Is a Flawed Policy for Israel

By Hirsh Goodman

The proposal endangers Israel. Today, only by standing firm and not running away in the face of adversity, Israel controls its own destiny, maximizes its security, and fully maintains the only cards it has with which to negotiate its future. Maintaining the present is the path to the future, not repeating the mistakes of the past.

Video (in Hebrew): The Impossibility of Dividing Jerusalem, Facts and Figures

By Nadav Shragai

White arches illustrate mortar ranges from east Jerusalem neighborhoods

The demographic and geographic realities of the municipality of Jerusalem preclude the division of the city, as it was between 1949 and 1967. Dividing the city would create economic and security crises and endanger the viability and security of Jewish, Muslim, and Christian communities in Jerusalem.

Outreach – Applied National Security and Diplomacy

Visit to the Jerusalem Center by Iranian Dissidents and Exiles

Visit to the Jerusalem Center by the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences (CASS)

Discussions on the Jewish World

Anti-Semitism in the British Labour Party against the Background of Brexit

Dr. Manfred Gerstenfeld

Student Leadership Programs in Arab-Israel Studies

Together with the Jerusalem Center’s successful year-round intern program for students from around the world, the Student Leadership Program is a high-level, advanced academic program designed for the elite college-bound student interested in the various issues surrounding the Israel-Arab conflict. It provides an intensive, demanding, and often emotional immersion into the historical, cultural, and political aspects of the Middle East from a variety of experts. Throughout the year, students visit important sites in the area and meet with individuals and groups that are active in Israel-Arab affairs. Students who returned to the United States have been active on campus responding to challenges to Israel’s legitimacy.

Here are samples of one graduate’s recent articles:

• “Hillel Can't Be a Soapbox for Jewish Millenials’ Anti-Israel Crusade”, Ha'aretz, Jared Samilow
• “Watch Out, Jewish Students: The anti-Israel Movement Will Boycott You Next”, Ha'aretz, Jared Samilow

Over the last few months, Jerusalem Center interns have been involved in researching BDS, Arab political culture, cooperative Arab-Israeli economic programs, and Iranian infiltration and corruption of states outside of the Middle East. One student worked closely with staff to produce the film version of the much-viewed video, “The Knife and the Message.”

Social Media Initiatives – Webpages, Facebook, YouTube, Twitter

The Jerusalem Center is devoting great efforts to provide information via the new media networks. All articles, analyses, videos, and interviews are featured on the Center’s dedicated sites:

Since May 2002, the Jerusalem Center has published the highly-acclaimed Daily Alert – a daily news digest designed for the leadership of organized American Jewry (sponsored by the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations). All back issues of Daily Alert are available from its website, together with a searchable data base of over 60,000 Daily Alert articles. Daily Alert is also available in mobile format.

The Jerusalem Center offers websites in English, Hebrew, French and German.

The Jerusalem Center operates one of the largest Israel advocacy/Middle East analysis website networks in the world, with 1,853,850 page views registered across our websites in August 2016 by 212,284 unique visitors. The Jerusalem Center’s English website offers more than 4,000 full-text articles.

The Center’s Twitter followers now number more than 20,200, among them many of the leading Middle East experts, journalists, and diplomats. Likewise, the Center’s Facebook followers now number 15,000, along with 8,600 subscribers to the Jerusalem Center’s YouTube channel with its more than 800 videos.

Recent Videos

Jewish Political Studies Review

Recent editions of the JPSR have been devoted to articles on the “Tenth Anniversary of the Disengagement from Gaza” and the influence of Arab leaders, specifically Haj Amin al-Husseini, on Nazi Germany's war against the Jews.

After the exposé of donations and money-laundering for Hamas by a major international non-governmental organization, World Vision, the Jerusalem Center widely circulated its 2015 analysis in the JPSR: “World Vision: Strategies for Fund-Raising and Support for Hamas.”