Jewish American Heritage Month

Posted By admin on July 12, 2017

JTA Carmel Shama HaCohen, Israels ambassador to UNESCO, is second to none in his admiration for the Trump administrations United Nations envoy, Nikki Haley. In fact, hed like to clone her.

Shama HaCohen appreciated Haleys efforts in trying to head off last weeks vote by UNESCOs Heritage Committee naming Hebrons Old City an endangered heritage site. And he believes the joint U.S.-Israeli bid to kill a resolution Israel saw as one-sided might have succeeded had a U.S. official of Haleys caliber been onsite in Krakow, where the vote took place. (Haley conducted her efforts from New York.)

We didnt have the spirit that was strong enough, Shama HaCohen said in an interview.

Crystal Nix-Hines, the Obama administrations UNESCO envoy, left on Jan. 20. The Trump administrations failure to replace her is part of a broader slowdown in naming top State Department positions. According to reports, fewer than 10 of the approximately 200 State Department positions that require nomination and confirmation have been filled.

Shama HaCohen, a blunt-speaking former Likud member of Knesset, said the absence of Israels most important ally at UNESCO was having far-reaching effects on defending his country.

As soon as you have an ambassador, you have an ability to create a relationship with Washington, to advance an agenda, he said. The absence of envoys harms our efforts to defend Israel, he said. The United States is far from a capacity to bring her full complement to defend Israel.

Shama HaCohen is not the only official on the front lines of defending Israel concerned about under-staffing among the U.S. diplomatic corps.

The issue of staffing at the State Department is critical at UNESCO and in the myriad other areas where U.S. leadership is crucial, Jonathan Greenblatt, the Anti-Defamation Leagues CEO, told JTA. While there was a good-faith effort by Ambassador Nikki Haley and other members of the administration at UNESCO last week, the fact that there was no ambassador on the ground had an impact.

For months, a broad array of Jewish groups and lawmakers from both parties have decried the Trump administrations failure to fill another role: the State Departments anti-Semitism monitor.

We are also concerned by the Secretary of States seeming reluctance to appoint a special envoy to monitor and combat Anti-Semitism, which plays a critical role in raising awareness and action against anti-Semitism and anti-Israel actions globally, Greenblatt said. These positions should be filled as soon as possible.

The understaffing and how it affects Israel-related diplomacy has also caught the attention of Republicans in Congress.

We need more appointees in place, said Kevin Bishop, a spokesman for Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., one of the Jewish states most ardent defenders in the Senate, when asked about Israel-related diplomacy. He pointed to remarks by Graham on NBCs Meet the Press on Sunday: Secretary (Rex) Tillerson needs to staff up the State Department and use it wisely, Graham said, referring to a range of areas where he said it was AWOL. Im so worried about the State Department.

A State Department official told JTA that the Trump administration remained committed to defending Israel in every international forum.

We have been clear that the United States will oppose any effort to delegitimize or isolate Israel, wherever it occurs. We continue to do that, said the official. With respect to staffing, we continue to have a deep bench of experienced career professionals serving in key positions that are highly capable and able to help the Secretary lead the Department. We will continue the process of exploring and evaluating ways to improve organizational effectiveness and efficiency, including optimizing the impact of available resources.

The White House has blamed Senate Democrats for obstructing nominations, noting in a release this week that Trumps nominees are on average taking longer to clear the Senate than those of his predecessors. But Trump has also been slow to nominate: A June 29 count by the Washington Post showed that of the 200-plus State Department positions filled by nomination, Trump had formally nominated just 20 and that the Senate had confirmed eight.

Dan Shapiro, until January the Obama administrations envoy to Israel, said career professionals were no substitute for diplomats who had the confidence of the administration.

When in the past, during the Obama administration when we were fighting an anti-Israel resolution to recognize a Palestinian state, it was all hands on deck, he said. We would have ambassadors in capitals raising it, we would have senior officials, secretaries and under-secretaries weighing with counterparts.

Without the personal relationships diplomats cultivate with their counterparts in other countries, Shapiro said, you dont have the tools available, you cant get to the most senior officials in other governments to be engaged to rally other countries to stand with us.

Shapiro said the lack of appointees is hindering another issue Israel says is critical: Pressing the Palestinians to stop paying families of people jailed or killed while carrying out attacks on Israelis.

We should be engaging many other governments at senior levels to urge them to let the Palestinians know we think its unacceptable, he said.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahus government is generally pleased with the Trump administrations priorities, and appreciates that Trump himself raised the payments-to-prisoners issue in his meetings with Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas. Indeed, Shama HaCohen said that part of his frustration was that the career diplomats in the U.S. UNESCO office were carrying out Obama-era policies seen as friendlier to UNESCO not because they sought to undermine Trump, but because it was the only guidance they had in hand.

Malcolm Hoenlein, the executive vice president of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, said the UNESCO vote might have been an outlier: The Obama administration stopped paying dues in 2011 because UNESCO recognized Palestine as a state, and as a result the United States lost its capacity to vote, diminishing its influence at the body in any case.

We take the UNESCO issues very seriously and welcome the strong statements by Ambassador Haley, Hoenlein told JTA.

Daniel Mariaschin, the executive vice president of Bnai Brith International, said that the lack of staffing was a problem, but that Israels overall obstacle at the U.N. and its affiliated bodies was institutional bias.

Theres no question, having ambassadors with the worldview of Nikki Haley, building relationships, is important, he said. But automatic majorities, block voting which is built in the U.N. infrastructure. thats really where these problems lie.

See the original post here:
Under-staffed State Dept. Seen Hurting Israel - Jewish Week

Category: Jewish American Heritage Month
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