A meeting between Israel’s prime minister and Saudi Arabia’s crown prince would make sense.
The Trump administration has worked for nearly two years to get Riyadh and Jerusalem openly working together. Crown Prince Mohammed loves risk and is eager to turn the page from the Jamal Khashoggi murder. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo’s Mideast trip this week seems choreographed for a dramatic finale starring the crown prince.
Mr. Pompeo’s trip is intended to underscore that far from fading out of the Middle East, the U.S. is leading a broad coalition against Iran. The linchpins of the effort are Israel and Saudi Arabia, which share a fear of Iranian expansionism and are the closest U.S. allies in the region. They have maintained informal but not-so-secret contacts, sharing intelligence on their common nemesis. Why not make it official?
A Netanyahu-Mohammed meeting would be a capstone of the Trump administration’s effort to isolate and contain Iran. The so-called Arab Street’s indifference to the U.S. Embassy’s move to Jerusalem is said to have given the crown prince the confidence to take his relationship with Israel public at the right time. On a more political level, it surely would divert public and media attention from problems currently besetting each of the three leaders involved.
For President Trump, it would be a respite from arguments over the government shutdown and his abrupt decision to withdraw from Syria. For Mr. Netanyahu, facing domestic political problems and a new election, it would be a dramatic breakthrough on the order of Anwar Sadat’s 1977 visit to Jerusalem. And for Crown Prince Mohammed, it could restore some of his international luster, tarnished by the Khashoggi murder (in which the Saudis insist the crown prince had no involvement).
Such a meeting would offer only upsides for Messrs. Trump and Netanyahu. For Crown Prince Mohammed it would entail some risk. Openly cooperating with Israel without resolving the future of Jerusalem and its Islamic holy sites surely would provoke opposition from religious Saudis, though only sotto voce given the crown prince’s severe repression of domestic opponents. On balance it would appear he has achieved an international success without domestic repercussion.
For two years Mr. Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, has worked to unite Israel and Saudi Arabia in a Mideast peace deal, ideally including full diplomatic relations. It isn’t clear the two countries are ready to go that far, but it does seem likely they are ready to leapfrog the intractable Palestinian issue and publicly cooperate with the U.S. to bring Iran to heel. Tehran’s growing influence in Syria, Lebanon and Yemen, and its intention to possess missiles that could reach the U.S., raises new alarms that militate in favor of a public Saudi-Israeli embrace.
Crown Prince Mohammed has been dropping hints that a formal rapprochement may be in the offing. On his April visit to the U.S., he publicly said when asked that the Jewish people, like “each people, anywhere, has a right to live in their peaceful nation.” Then he offered an Islamic justification: “Our Prophet Muhammad married a Jewish woman.” (A skeptic might note that before marrying the Jewish widow Safiyyah bint Huyayy, the prophet required her to convert to Islam.)
Until recently a public meeting between Israel’s prime minister and Saudi Arabia’s de facto ruler would have seemed impossible. Then again, so did the Sadat visit, President Nixon’s 1972 trip to China, and Mr. Trump’s summit with North Korea’s Kim Jong Un last year. New reality often sweeps away the logic of impossibility. And Mr. Trump loves spectacles. Imagine him watching the historic drama on television—or flying to Riyadh to join it.
Ms. House, a former publisher of The Wall Street Journal, is author of “On Saudi Arabia: Its People, Past, Religion, Fault Lines—and Future” (Knopf, 2012).
Edgar…The issue of John MacCormack is very much also the issue of Ireland and the kind of country it became after Independence. He was born in Athlone then went a little west to college in Summerhill College in Sligo. It is one of these typical colleges run by the Church essentially. I suspect it was a boarding college. This would have left an effect. These boarding colleges in that impoverished country were very like a prison. Another significant date, apart from his wonderful singing, was the Eucharistic Congress held in Dublin in 1932, in which he sang. I doubt if many of the catholic people there understood what was happening int he world, and as for John MacCormack I simply do not have the information. But this Eucharistic Congress was linked to the position of the Catholic Church internationally, and I am thinking here mainly of Ireland, Spain, Germany, and not to forget Poland. Lithuania may also be interesting to investigate. Centred in the Vatican. And it was this ideology and drive (against communism essentially and also associating the “Jews” with communism, which was at the centre of the conspiracy theorizing of the Nazis and of Franco)
The thing is I do not know. And nobody seems to know because they have not been able to investigate on this line. I know that alcoholism is partly genetic but this gene can be triggered also. I would imagine MacCormack as being a very conflicted man in this period. I do not just say it is a possibility but a certainty what your father and uncle experience in 1939 was the result of a very complex background that nobody has thought about.
I think I would spoil all of this if I had to explain why it is important today for the Ireland of today in relation to Israel.
@ yamit82:
xoxoxoxoxo
@ honeybee:
Haaaaaaaaaaaa Well said !!
@ Felix Quigley:
Disagree and stop quoting stupid dishonest Commie talking points. I provided you several clips all very short and some of them describe antisemitism under the Commies….
https://www.israpundit.org/will-netanyahu-go-to-riyadh/#comment-63356000202242
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xkQCQvMTFiY
Felix Quigley Said:
And then they instituted their own Communist inspired programs. Please do not piss down my leg and tell me it’s raining.
Yamit82 and Adam…You agree or disagree. If you disagree state your case.
@ Edgar G.:
Edgar G. Said:
I have my Dear. My Father had a collection of 78’s of John McCormack.
Edgar more on Gerald Moore. Wikipedia has a good piece. I learned he had a Rubinstein connection.
Interestingly there is not one mention of MacCormack.
“In his memoirs Moore wrote that his services were not needed at Benjamin Britten’s Aldeburgh Festival, “as the presiding genius there is the greatest accompanist in the world.” In 1967, the chief music critic of The Times, William Mann held that the preeminence was Moore’s: “the greatest accompanist of his day, and perhaps of all time.”[18] In 2006 Gramophone magazine invited eminent present-day accompanists to name their “professional’s professional”, the joint winners were Britten and Moore.[19] ”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gerald_Moore
So another 13 years or so in 1927 and it is his wonderful “I hear You Calling Me”.
What can I say about this Edgar. It is absolutely wonderful. I am no great expert but this must be MacCormack at the very top of his game.
It is important that we make the time to find out more about this man.
And of course it does not matter where you are living to hear MacCormack reaching for that note of “Mary” near the end of “the Rose of Tralee” about 1930 is very moving. I am back again at this 1930 period.
Edgar
What interesting posts you have just made about John MacCormack!
The reason it is my number one is that it is by Bach. Even more though is the piano playing with his voice by Gerald Moore. It is the combination by these two.
I have always found this repetitive litany type singing very soothing. Bob Dylan has mastered this as well. Sometimes Van Morrison who was influenced much by jazz as a youth in Belfast goes into this mode too, and he has a great voice.
Of course there was the side to MacCormack that he was used by the Irish Hierarchy but I do not know if the poor man understood that. In any case it is wise to separate music from politics.
What is interesting is that this work I have noted above with Gerald Moore was one of his last, and it is a possibility that Moore held it together. But he is faultless in diction and pitch.
And it was only another 20 years or so that the Beatles made their records from the same studio.
I will really treasure that experience of you and your family with MacCormack. How wonderful!
@ honeybee:
Yes Monserrat Cabelle..also petty hefty.@ Felix Quigley:
As for Callas, for many years she was pretty hefty, and then decided to change her image because she was moving in different circles. She went on a very stringent diet, and it is regarded as having contributed to her damaging her control, range, and indeed shortened her career. That period was when there were lots of criticisms about the uneven quality of her voice. I recall them although I hadn’t known of her before she became a “society glamour girl”…I think I read first about her in Time Magazine.
Obviously the critics were comparing what she had become, to what she used to be.
@ honeybee:
But you really haven’t heard it until you hear McCormack singing it. Personally I don’t recall hearing it…I’m enough of a bigot that the title would have “put me off”….
It brings back memories of my days in Dublin, passing Church doors,seeing that little red light and tasseled dark red velvet, and smelling paraffin…. reminding me of the fires of the Inquisition..I kid you not. That’s all burnt right into my psyche.
@ yamit82:
When are you getting out of Elementary School Yamit? You’ve been in the same grade for 11 years…. a school record I believe… Hurry up or she’ll have grown past you. (maybe that should have been “groan”)
@ Felix Quigley:
I love John McCormack’s singing more than any other I believe. Have you heard his “I hear you calling me”..a most wonderful example of head voice like I’ve never heard before. Like a finely tempered bell, fading away, with no faltering or even slight break as he comes down from the heights, signifying wonderful breath control…all from that diaphragm I was talking about earlier. And “Rose of Tralee” “Colleen Bawn”, and so many others. Poor man he ruined himself through drink; a raging alcoholic through all of the last half of his life, and perhaps even when younger. I knew him….at least I met him when I was a kid..
My dear late father and an uncle combined to buy the Theatre Royal in Wexford. refurbished it, and the “Opening Night” featured John McCormack, who although long a backnumber -EXCEPT in Ireland-, appeared on our stage. Poor man he was so drunk that our theatre manager, a very inventive man from a generations-old English stage family named-oddly enough-Weechie…. put a sort of pulpit in centre stage and he was led on before the curtain rose, and leaning on this, he sang……”Rose of Tralee and |Machushla” maybe “Mountains of Mourne”…….then he nearly fell down down, and the curtain hid the debacle.
This was about 1939. and very strangely although I’ve contacted the Wexford XTZ Society which is supposed to know everything about the history of the Theatre, had no record of this. The accompanying movie was “The Sign of The Cross”… with Frederic March and Elissa Landi. They had a record of this…..
I remember it all as if it were yesterday.
So do yourself a favour Felix, and listen to him singing “I Hear You Calling Me” and then tell me what you think..??
@ Michael S:
Yes I know it was a joke …or meant to be…..You now that some jokes are not seen that way unless the teller explains.. Jackie Mason had a lot to sat about that in a monologue.
@ yamit82:
honeybee Said:
True dat
@ yamit82:
You wicked child.
Felix Quigley Said:
Love the song, sang it in Girls Glee.
honeybee Said:
Trotskyite and Trotskyist
Felix Quigley Said:
Monserrate ?
Felix Quigley Said:
Yawl is asking way to much from a Texas gal. What is the equivalent of bitch when referring to a man?
adamdalgliesh Said:
haaaaaaaaaaa
@ Edgar G.:
Yamit is way to young for me. It would unethical to rob the cradle.
@ adamdalgliesh:
BB ia a cowardly POS and belongs in prison.
@ Felix Quigley:
The History of a Nationality
Felix Quigley Said:
The History Of A Nationality
@ Felix Quigley:
Trotskys and Bronsteins
Anti-Semitism in Ukraine Today
The Rus-Holme Syndrome
Uncle Ivan Doesn’t Want Jew
This from today’s Jeruslem Post:
If Netanyahu is serious about improving relations with Saudi Arabia, he must break with Qatar, which is an ally of Iran and nHamas, and an enemy of both Israel and Saudi Arabia. Netanyahu’s decision to permit Qatar to pay the salaries of Hamas officials was probably his worst decision as Prime Minister.
Felix Quigley Said:
Are you comparing Communism with Judaism? Haaaaaa
@ Edgar G.:
Edgar I had never really thought of it like that. Interesting comment. None of these guys were small men. I am thinking of the Spanish lady singer who died recently. Was Callas an exception? And then there was John McCormack not a small man.
For what its worth Edgar sometimes when I am really down and filled with despair I listen to “Jesu Joy of Mans desiring” with Gerald Moore at the piano. I have many favourite songs but that one by McCormack is nearly unearthly. It is on youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=44nIy49X2wI
@ adamdalgliesh:
Why do you think communism is a terrible ideology? Give some examples of what you are referring to.
You have uttered language like this now many times over recent weeks.
Now put your pen where your mouth is so that I can really understand what you are talking about.
@ honeybee:
What a cruel minded bitxh you are. And extremely insulting.
You know you are Jewish and you have never seen me insulting Judaism on this site, or anywhere.
So how about some fairness if not decent manners
@ adamdalgliesh:
“Also, we must remember that his hold on power in the U.S. is very tenuous, and he may not be in office much longer. Impeachment, resignation forced by the special prosecutor, assassination, and death or disability caused by illness could all happen to him at any time. He is overweight, rarely exercises, and is under tremendous stress. His successor is unlikely to be as friendly to Israel as he is.”
But what is your conclusion from this. Is it to actively defend President Trump? Or are you feeling yourself above it all? And why would you be?
@ Edgar G.:
Edgar, don’t be a snob. I know the difference between “breath” and “breadth”. Do I have to spell out everything to you? It was a joke.
@ Michael S:
Enormous was the word used not breath. Pavarotti was enormous of stomach too…not because he was fat but because of his breathing properly, down to his diaphragm, which develops the stomach muscles, thus allowing him to produce those high sustained notes. Breadth is what you really meant only you didn’t know it….or probably you did… He was wide all the way down from hs shoulders to his hips.
@ yamit82:
Yamit, is Honeydew right? Are you really great of breath? Luciano Pavarotti… Now, THERE’S a man who was great of breath!
https://i2-prod.mirror.co.uk/incoming/article8384457.ece/ALTERNATES/s615b/Luciano-Pavarotti.jpg
adamdalgliesh Said:
Wow… and here I thought my comments to Felix were quite temperate and balanced compared with other comments I have made to and about him over the years (12 years) LOL.
@ adamdalgliesh:
Speak for yourself……How do you know…for instance…that I am a “decent person”…. I I’m beginning to suspect that you are looking for a donation for your favourite charity …..my paranoia is awakening……..???
@ honeybee:
I think there’s some sort of love affair going on between you and Yamit. is this the only means of communication you both have…???? There are better ways………..
@ Felix Quigley:
You should speak about dogma!!!!!!! You have been chasing Trotsky’s long dead ass all over the Pundit.
@ yamit82: Yamit, I think we should all avoid personal attacks on each other and moderate our rhetoric about other posters on the site. We are all decent people here, although we have many disagreements about policies and ideology. I admit that I have been as much at fault as anyone else here when it comes to losing my temper. I am also trying to keep my temper under control, and to be patient and tolerant when I disagree with other posters.
So much for my lecture. On the substantive issue, I agree with Yamit that communism is a terrible ideology, that communist regimes have committed appalling human rights violations and havenot delivered peace, prosperity, and freedom to the people over whom they rule, and that communism has been bad for us Jews.
Felix Quigley Said:
Yamit 82 mind is unbelievably subtle. Enormous in breath and knowledge. .
@ yamit82:First rule of politics: trust no one. In several of the psalms, we are warned not to put our faith in any human rulers or other “benefactors,” since when they die, all their plans and schemes die with them. In the end, God is the only person that we Jews can trust to protect us.
I believe Trmp is telling the truth when he says he wants to help Israel. However, his ability to help us is limited, and U.S. homeland security and the safety of American soldiers are higher priorities for him than Israeli security. Also, we must remember that his hold on power in the U.S. is very tenuous, and he may not be in office much longer. Impeachment, resignation forced by the special prosecutor, assassination, and death or disability caused by illness could all happen to him at any time. He is overweight, rarely exercises, and is under tremendous stress. His successor is unlikely to be as friendly to Israel as he is.
Felix Quigley Said:
Haaaaaaaaaaaa
I believe the only dogmatist on this site is you …Trotsky…Communism… the popular revolution of the proletariat …Support for every dictator no matter how vile…Total ignorance of history before 1917…Totoal ignrance of Jewish history and what makes Jews tick, Narrow myopic understanding of Israel and what are the political nuances in our society and body politic.
Postulates A- Principles precede movements B– The burden of proof for accepting the new over the old is on the proponents advocating the new…. Any new ideology or idea must survive the test of time….The old meets the standard the new doesn’t and is open to questions, criticism and attack.
C- Not only Communism, socialism and any of their sub ism’s have failed and you cannot point to even one success in the past 140 years proving that its advocates of your vile stupid insane beliefs will only lead to abject misery and death to the masses.
You never allow facts to guide your beliefs and worldview which is the classic definition of dogmatism…. So you seem always to be projecting onto to others like me your own faults, failures and hardcore dumb dogmatism.
@ yamit82:
I believe that Ted is right on this, at least far more right than Yamit, because everything Yamit says on politics follows a kind of dogma, whereas Ted is following the LIVING REALITY..I prefer the green grass of living reality rather than the cold dogma of the corpse which is Yamit.
The thing about the dogmatist is that they can never be wrong but they are also useless.
In actual fact this dogma becomes very like conspiracy theory. Really dead and becomes a bore. A bore because nothing is ever new. And condescending too..As if Ted is not aware of the limitations…I know for a fact he is very aware.
@ Ted Belman:
I think you are affording Trump too much power and credit vis a vis the Saudis and other Arab states. Reproachment with the Saudis and others in the ME have been in effect long before Trump came into office. Unlike you I trust NO ARAB and especially no Arab monarch or dictator….. Not sure how much I trust Trump either for that matter.
@ adamdalgliesh:
Not in Trump’s world. He is forcing the Arabs to embrace Israel and to embrace Syria. MBS is so weakened by the murder, he is putty in his hands. He has become a yes man.
Unfortunately, I think this is unrealistic. The Saudis have been brainwashed to hate Israel by their own government and by the Muslim ulema (clergy) for too many generations to accept any open recognition of the Jewish state. MBS would probably be assissinated if he openly embraced Israel, and so he won’t.But Saudi Arabia will continue to cooperate informally and semi-secretly with Israel concerning mutual security interests (the kind of secrecy that everyone knows about, but doesn’t involve public recognition or photo ops).
I do think that MBN is not personally an antisemite, unlike most Saudis, and I think that he has respect for Israel and its achievements. But he must keep his cooperation with Israel low-keyed and inconspicuous if he is to survive.