// essays //
Fall 2007
"Peace" in a Sea of Repression
Avi Herring
"This is one of those rare, bright moments of human history." With these words, Jimmy Carter introduced the peace deal that would become the Israel-Egypt Peace Treaty of 1979.
Unfortunately, Carter was wrong.
The past thirty years of supposed peace between Israel and Egypt have brought one disappointment after another, and the news seems to be getting worse.
As part of Israel's disengagement from the Gaza Strip in 2005, Egypt promised to patrol its border with Gaza to prevent Palestinian smuggling of weapons. Instead it has since allowed twenty tons of standard explosives to reach Israel in addition to thousands of rocket-propelled grenade launchers and large quantities of rifles, pistols, and grenades.i
More recently, political difficulties have rivaled the military ones. In February, Israel began work on a permanent bridge connecting the Western Wall Plaza with the Temple Mount, the site of Islam's third-holiest shrine, the Al-Aqsa mosque. According to Israeli law, before any construction can begin, authorities must first conduct an archeological dig to ensure that there are no ancient ruins on the site. Arab leaders claimed that this routine procedure was actually an attempt to destabilize Al-Aqsa's foundations and began urging their followers to protest the Israeli action.
The protests did not just come from Israel's sworn enemies like Iran and Syria. Several members of Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak's National Democratic Party (NDP), which officially supports Egypt's peace treaty with Israel, made explicit belligerent threats. One claimed that "[t]he war with Israel is still ongoing," and still another demanded that "we trample over all the agreements we signed [with Israel]."ii
Egyptian hostility erupted again in March, when Israeli television aired a documentary claiming that in June 1967, Israeli soldiers executed Egyptian prisoners of war after the fighting in the Six Day War had ended. Regardless of the documentary's accuracy (its director said his work was misunderstood, and that he suggested the Israelis killed Palestinian Fedayeen guerillas, not Egyptian soldiers), Egyptian leaders again took the opportunity to lash out at Israel. This time the criticism was particularly poignant, as NDP parliament member Anwar Esmat Sadat, a cousin of the former president who signed the peace agreement with Israel in 1979, said the peace deal is not " ‘a Quran,' and everything is open to being amended for the benefit of future generations."iii
Egypt's mystifying definition of peace with Israel somehow excludes military and political cooperation, and economic ties between the two countries are meager at best. Even Israel's foreign ministry, a part of the government that may be expected to paint as rosy a picture as possible, offers a surprisingly blunt assessment. Its website says: "The peace between Israel and Egypt is not a warm peace. There are certainly a number of areas in which relations can be improved, whether in regard to the ties between the peoples, trade ties and relations between the political leaders of both countries."
Beyond inspiring sadness, this situation demands a closer look. Why does Egypt continue to harbor such ill will toward Israel, and what do the answers to that question suggest about Israel's future peacemaking strategy?
Egyptians have made two of their attitudes extremely clear during the past several years: they hate Israel and they hate their own leader, Hosni Mubarak. Together, these attitudes make real peace between Israel and Egypt hard to achieve.
In a recent poll, 92% of Egyptians said they viewed Israel as an "enemy nation."iv To be fair, the poll was taken during the Second Lebanon War, when Arab passions were inflamed against Israel to an even greater degree than usual. But it's still a fairly shocking figure, and it's hard to rationalize such universal hatred. A closer look at Egypt's government provides a clue.
Egypt is often called one of the Middle East's most stable governments. Yet Egyptian regime is deeply unpopular because of a decades-long history of oppression and corruption. Freedom House, a non-partisan organization that ranks countries according to their degree of freedom on a scale of one to seven (seven being the least free), calls Egypt "not free" and gives it a six for political rights and a five for civil liberties. As a result of the repression, Mubarak is feeling the heat from his opposition. In response to serious political pressure from the international community and reform groups inside Egypt, in 2005 Mubarak allowed for the first multi-party elections in almost a quarter century.
In two separate elections, voters decided on both a president and a parliament. The Muslim Brotherhood, Egypt's biggest opposition movement and an advocate of a return to Muslim religious law, took control of one fifth of the parliament (even though its members are officially banned from running for office—those who run do so under an independent label). The group's strong showing was a protest vote against Mubarak's corrupt and authoritarian regime.
Mubarak did not respond with concessions after the elections. Instead, he tightened his grip on power, pushing constitutional amendments through parliament that Amnesty International calls "the greatest erosion of rights in 26 years." The amendments remove all independent oversight from the electoral process and give even more power to Egypt's brutal security forces.
The back-and-forth implies that Mubarak does not feel confident in his hold on power.
Here again Israel again enters the picture. In his book The Case for Democracy, Natan Sharansky explains that non-democratic regimes like Egypt, which he calls "fear societies," must manufacture external enemies to maintain control over a restive population. He writes, "By tapping into the strong national, religious, ethnic, or other sentiments that an ‘enemy' arouses, regimes in fear societies rally their people to their side and divert attention away from their subjects' miserable living conditions and the regime's failure to improve them." In Egypt's case, Israel is external enemy number one.
The most explicit example of the Mubarak government's incitement against Israel can be found in Egypt's state-controlled media. Government-run newspapers constantly publish articles and editorial cartoons that spew classic anti-Semitic vitriol. To take a random sampling from 2006: one political cartoon shows a stereotypically "Jewish" Israeli drinking Palestinian blood; another equates the Jewish Star with a swastika. One article claims that "[t]he war which Hitler led against the Jews was an excuse through which the Zionists justified their colonizing of Palestine..."v
New York Times front page on March 27, 1979, the day after the signing of the Israel-Egypt peace deal.
In the Egyptian government's incitement campaign, Israel is more than a simple scapegoat. In a 2006 Foreign Affairs article, strategist Robert Haas warned that "[Mubarak's] regime might take on the colors of its Islamist opponents [namely, the Brotherhood] in an effort to co-opt their appeal." This is exactly what has happened. In light of the Brotherhood's major gains in the last election, Mubarak's incitement seems like an attempt to sound more like the Brotherhood, which is opposed to the 1979 peace deal and even to Israel's existence. In this context, the strangely antagonistic declarations from members of Mubarak's party make sense. According to Mubarak's calculations, if his government sounds more like the Brotherhood, it can minimize popular anger at the regime and retain a stronger hold on power.
As a result, Egypt is left with a leader who cynically antagonizes his population against Israel in an effort to save his own hide. Given the high risk that comes with imparting trust to autocrats, this dangerous and frustrating situation could have been much worse for Israel. After Sadat's assassination in 1981, there was no guarantee that Mubarak would honor the peace treaty with Israel. Even worse, Mubarak could have been overthrown by the Brotherhood, a possibility that still remains to this day. And when Mubarak dies, there is no guarantee that power will shift to a successor who will honor—or even pretend to honor—the 1979 treaty.
All of these "what-if?" scenarios point to the problem of negotiating with authoritarian leaders: making peace with a person, instead of a people, is a dangerous game. In countries where the rule of law is respected, laws and treaties continue to exist long after their signatories leave positions of power. There is no such safety net in countries where people, not laws, rule.
When Anwar Sadat and Menachem Begin shook hands in 1979, Begin had to turn to the Israeli Knesset, its elected Parliament, for approval. When Knesset members approved the deal, they did so on behalf of the Israeli people. Of course, no such thing happened in Egypt, where Sadat ruled dictatorially and imposed the peace deal on his population. It is no surprise that today, in contrast to the 92% of Egyptians who consider Israel an enemy, 85% of Israelis still support the peace deal.vi
It is an open question whether Israel was right to gamble in the hope that Sadat could impose his sentiments on Egypt's citizens. After all, sometimes dictators can effect changes in national sentiment. This has not happened in Egypt. The lessons of Egypt's repressive regime and the peace treaty's failure are valuable for future Israeli leaders considering engagement with unelected leaders in the Arab world.
Today, Israel is considering exactly that. Might making peace with Syria's Bashar Assad end similarly, with nominal peace but simmering hatred and quiet warfare?
While the history of the Egyptian treaty suggests that Israel move with caution, Israel's peace treaty with Jordan tells a different story. In 1994, Israel signed an agreement with Jordan that normalized relations between the two countries and resolved disputes over land and water. Thirteen years later, cooperation between the two countries is strong and increasing. Unlike the bluntly pessimistic assessment of its relations with Egypt, Israel's foreign ministry is upbeat about its ties with Jordan. "Israel views Jordan as an island of stability in the region and a significant partner in the efforts to achieve peace with its Middle East neighbors," the ministry's website reads.
This optimism is based on solid facts. Trade between the two countries has increased dramatically since the peace treaty, and subsequent agreements have given Jordan much greater access to the American market as well. Israeli and Jordanian scientists work together on environmental problems, including an attempt to save the Dead Sea from erosion. The two countries have even established a joint center for life science research on their southern border.viiJordan's King Abdullah II, meanwhile, has publicly and consistently affirmed his support for peace with Israel and has worked hard to promote stability in the region, most recently trying to broker a ceasefire between Israel and Hezbollah during the Second Lebanon War in 2006.viii
Why have the 1979 and 1994 treaties produced such different results? The answer may lie in the different ruling styles of Abdullah and Mubarak. To be clear at the outset, Jordan is in no way the quintessence of democracy and freedom; there is certainly a degree of repression over both individuals and the press, and Abdullah is not an elected leader. In its assessment, Freedom House calls Jordan "partly free," and gives it a five for political rights and a four for civil liberties (seven being the worst). But relative to its Arab neighbors, Jordan is a strong example of moderation.
Jordan is a constitutional monarchy, with power vested in the king and parliament. Parliamentary elections have occurred consistently, the last in 2003 and the next in November. While parliament certainly does not have the type of independence expected in a functioning democracy, it has more clout than Egypt's legislature. Abdullah has also liberalized Jordan's economy since his accession to the throne in 1999.
Even more importantly, the Jordanian government and the Brotherhood cooperate in a way unheard of in Egypt. In an analysis of the relationship between Islamists and the government in Jordan, a prominent political science professor writes in Arab Studies Quarterly that:
[T]he regime benefits from Muslim Brotherhood success because as a moderate reform movement it checks other more confrontational social movements and channels Islamic activism into a non-violent agenda. The Muslim Brotherhood, on its part, benefits from organizational opportunities produced by the incumbent regime... [The Brotherhood] continues to act through the institutions of the political system without challenging the raison d'etre of state or Hashemite [Abdullah's] power.ix
In his book, Sharansky claims that the more democratic a country is, the more likely it is to pursue peace. In his view, Jordan's freer society would explain the relative success of the Israeli-Jordanian treaty. Because Abdullah's regime is less repressive, he has more political capital to spend on peace with Israel. By extension, Sharansky's theory would advise Israel to push Middle East dictators for more freedom in their societies. Instead of negotiating with Syria's Assad, then, why not mobilize the international community to demand more freedom for the Syrian people?
Sharansky's vision is compelling, but it runs up against a powerful counter-argument: when countries in the Middle East have held free elections, citizens of those countries have elected Islamist governments that have a history of supporting terrorism. The best example is in the Palestinian Authority, where Palestinians elected Hamas, a spin-off the Muslim Brotherhood that is responsible for twenty years of cross-border terrorism. Famously, elections have also not brought peace and stability to Iraq since the American invasion began in 2003.
Yet underlying this counter-argument are two flawed assumptions. The first is that elections are the most accurate marker of democracy. As Sharansky writes, elections are part of the democratic process, but true democracies "respect the rule of law, protect individual rights, cherish human life, and dedicate themselves to improving the well-being of their citizens." And, Sharansky adds, elections do not transform a political culture overnight; elections should be a late, if not final, step in the democratizing process.
The second incorrect assumption is that absent elections, Hamas, Hizbullah, and their Islamist brethren would have remained without political power. This assumption ignores the possibility of Islamists gaining power anyway, if not through elections, then through force of coup or revolution.
Given the 1979 Iranian Islamic Revolution and the likelihood that the Muslim Brotherhood would supplant the regimes in Egypt, Syria, and Jordan if they fell, encouraging democratic reform seems wiser than propping up dictators and hoping that they squash the strengthening Islamists. Pushing for reforms might even help moderate those Islamists. As the Washington Post editorialized, "Democratic participation...is more likely than exclusion and suppression to moderate [the Islamists'] political aims."
If Israel took Sharansky's proposed course in dealing with its neighbors, it would be hoping for long-term stability despite likely short-term chaos. This would be trying, for it is always tough to stick to principles despite short-term difficulties; there is a reason why so many see virtue in "pragmatism."
But long-term stability has eluded Israel for its entire sixty-year history, and trying a new approach entrenched in the inherent power of freedom is worth the time, blood, and treasure.
Unfortunately, Carter was wrong.
The past thirty years of supposed peace between Israel and Egypt have brought one disappointment after another, and the news seems to be getting worse.
As part of Israel's disengagement from the Gaza Strip in 2005, Egypt promised to patrol its border with Gaza to prevent Palestinian smuggling of weapons. Instead it has since allowed twenty tons of standard explosives to reach Israel in addition to thousands of rocket-propelled grenade launchers and large quantities of rifles, pistols, and grenades.i
More recently, political difficulties have rivaled the military ones. In February, Israel began work on a permanent bridge connecting the Western Wall Plaza with the Temple Mount, the site of Islam's third-holiest shrine, the Al-Aqsa mosque. According to Israeli law, before any construction can begin, authorities must first conduct an archeological dig to ensure that there are no ancient ruins on the site. Arab leaders claimed that this routine procedure was actually an attempt to destabilize Al-Aqsa's foundations and began urging their followers to protest the Israeli action.
The protests did not just come from Israel's sworn enemies like Iran and Syria. Several members of Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak's National Democratic Party (NDP), which officially supports Egypt's peace treaty with Israel, made explicit belligerent threats. One claimed that "[t]he war with Israel is still ongoing," and still another demanded that "we trample over all the agreements we signed [with Israel]."ii
Egyptian hostility erupted again in March, when Israeli television aired a documentary claiming that in June 1967, Israeli soldiers executed Egyptian prisoners of war after the fighting in the Six Day War had ended. Regardless of the documentary's accuracy (its director said his work was misunderstood, and that he suggested the Israelis killed Palestinian Fedayeen guerillas, not Egyptian soldiers), Egyptian leaders again took the opportunity to lash out at Israel. This time the criticism was particularly poignant, as NDP parliament member Anwar Esmat Sadat, a cousin of the former president who signed the peace agreement with Israel in 1979, said the peace deal is not " ‘a Quran,' and everything is open to being amended for the benefit of future generations."iii
Egypt's mystifying definition of peace with Israel somehow excludes military and political cooperation, and economic ties between the two countries are meager at best. Even Israel's foreign ministry, a part of the government that may be expected to paint as rosy a picture as possible, offers a surprisingly blunt assessment. Its website says: "The peace between Israel and Egypt is not a warm peace. There are certainly a number of areas in which relations can be improved, whether in regard to the ties between the peoples, trade ties and relations between the political leaders of both countries."
Beyond inspiring sadness, this situation demands a closer look. Why does Egypt continue to harbor such ill will toward Israel, and what do the answers to that question suggest about Israel's future peacemaking strategy?
Egyptians have made two of their attitudes extremely clear during the past several years: they hate Israel and they hate their own leader, Hosni Mubarak. Together, these attitudes make real peace between Israel and Egypt hard to achieve.
In a recent poll, 92% of Egyptians said they viewed Israel as an "enemy nation."iv To be fair, the poll was taken during the Second Lebanon War, when Arab passions were inflamed against Israel to an even greater degree than usual. But it's still a fairly shocking figure, and it's hard to rationalize such universal hatred. A closer look at Egypt's government provides a clue.
Egypt is often called one of the Middle East's most stable governments. Yet Egyptian regime is deeply unpopular because of a decades-long history of oppression and corruption. Freedom House, a non-partisan organization that ranks countries according to their degree of freedom on a scale of one to seven (seven being the least free), calls Egypt "not free" and gives it a six for political rights and a five for civil liberties. As a result of the repression, Mubarak is feeling the heat from his opposition. In response to serious political pressure from the international community and reform groups inside Egypt, in 2005 Mubarak allowed for the first multi-party elections in almost a quarter century.
In two separate elections, voters decided on both a president and a parliament. The Muslim Brotherhood, Egypt's biggest opposition movement and an advocate of a return to Muslim religious law, took control of one fifth of the parliament (even though its members are officially banned from running for office—those who run do so under an independent label). The group's strong showing was a protest vote against Mubarak's corrupt and authoritarian regime.
Mubarak did not respond with concessions after the elections. Instead, he tightened his grip on power, pushing constitutional amendments through parliament that Amnesty International calls "the greatest erosion of rights in 26 years." The amendments remove all independent oversight from the electoral process and give even more power to Egypt's brutal security forces.
The back-and-forth implies that Mubarak does not feel confident in his hold on power.
Here again Israel again enters the picture. In his book The Case for Democracy, Natan Sharansky explains that non-democratic regimes like Egypt, which he calls "fear societies," must manufacture external enemies to maintain control over a restive population. He writes, "By tapping into the strong national, religious, ethnic, or other sentiments that an ‘enemy' arouses, regimes in fear societies rally their people to their side and divert attention away from their subjects' miserable living conditions and the regime's failure to improve them." In Egypt's case, Israel is external enemy number one.
The most explicit example of the Mubarak government's incitement against Israel can be found in Egypt's state-controlled media. Government-run newspapers constantly publish articles and editorial cartoons that spew classic anti-Semitic vitriol. To take a random sampling from 2006: one political cartoon shows a stereotypically "Jewish" Israeli drinking Palestinian blood; another equates the Jewish Star with a swastika. One article claims that "[t]he war which Hitler led against the Jews was an excuse through which the Zionists justified their colonizing of Palestine..."v
New York Times front page on March 27, 1979, the day after the signing of the Israel-Egypt peace deal.
In the Egyptian government's incitement campaign, Israel is more than a simple scapegoat. In a 2006 Foreign Affairs article, strategist Robert Haas warned that "[Mubarak's] regime might take on the colors of its Islamist opponents [namely, the Brotherhood] in an effort to co-opt their appeal." This is exactly what has happened. In light of the Brotherhood's major gains in the last election, Mubarak's incitement seems like an attempt to sound more like the Brotherhood, which is opposed to the 1979 peace deal and even to Israel's existence. In this context, the strangely antagonistic declarations from members of Mubarak's party make sense. According to Mubarak's calculations, if his government sounds more like the Brotherhood, it can minimize popular anger at the regime and retain a stronger hold on power.
As a result, Egypt is left with a leader who cynically antagonizes his population against Israel in an effort to save his own hide. Given the high risk that comes with imparting trust to autocrats, this dangerous and frustrating situation could have been much worse for Israel. After Sadat's assassination in 1981, there was no guarantee that Mubarak would honor the peace treaty with Israel. Even worse, Mubarak could have been overthrown by the Brotherhood, a possibility that still remains to this day. And when Mubarak dies, there is no guarantee that power will shift to a successor who will honor—or even pretend to honor—the 1979 treaty.
All of these "what-if?" scenarios point to the problem of negotiating with authoritarian leaders: making peace with a person, instead of a people, is a dangerous game. In countries where the rule of law is respected, laws and treaties continue to exist long after their signatories leave positions of power. There is no such safety net in countries where people, not laws, rule.
When Anwar Sadat and Menachem Begin shook hands in 1979, Begin had to turn to the Israeli Knesset, its elected Parliament, for approval. When Knesset members approved the deal, they did so on behalf of the Israeli people. Of course, no such thing happened in Egypt, where Sadat ruled dictatorially and imposed the peace deal on his population. It is no surprise that today, in contrast to the 92% of Egyptians who consider Israel an enemy, 85% of Israelis still support the peace deal.vi
It is an open question whether Israel was right to gamble in the hope that Sadat could impose his sentiments on Egypt's citizens. After all, sometimes dictators can effect changes in national sentiment. This has not happened in Egypt. The lessons of Egypt's repressive regime and the peace treaty's failure are valuable for future Israeli leaders considering engagement with unelected leaders in the Arab world.
Today, Israel is considering exactly that. Might making peace with Syria's Bashar Assad end similarly, with nominal peace but simmering hatred and quiet warfare?
While the history of the Egyptian treaty suggests that Israel move with caution, Israel's peace treaty with Jordan tells a different story. In 1994, Israel signed an agreement with Jordan that normalized relations between the two countries and resolved disputes over land and water. Thirteen years later, cooperation between the two countries is strong and increasing. Unlike the bluntly pessimistic assessment of its relations with Egypt, Israel's foreign ministry is upbeat about its ties with Jordan. "Israel views Jordan as an island of stability in the region and a significant partner in the efforts to achieve peace with its Middle East neighbors," the ministry's website reads.
This optimism is based on solid facts. Trade between the two countries has increased dramatically since the peace treaty, and subsequent agreements have given Jordan much greater access to the American market as well. Israeli and Jordanian scientists work together on environmental problems, including an attempt to save the Dead Sea from erosion. The two countries have even established a joint center for life science research on their southern border.viiJordan's King Abdullah II, meanwhile, has publicly and consistently affirmed his support for peace with Israel and has worked hard to promote stability in the region, most recently trying to broker a ceasefire between Israel and Hezbollah during the Second Lebanon War in 2006.viii
Why have the 1979 and 1994 treaties produced such different results? The answer may lie in the different ruling styles of Abdullah and Mubarak. To be clear at the outset, Jordan is in no way the quintessence of democracy and freedom; there is certainly a degree of repression over both individuals and the press, and Abdullah is not an elected leader. In its assessment, Freedom House calls Jordan "partly free," and gives it a five for political rights and a four for civil liberties (seven being the worst). But relative to its Arab neighbors, Jordan is a strong example of moderation.
Jordan is a constitutional monarchy, with power vested in the king and parliament. Parliamentary elections have occurred consistently, the last in 2003 and the next in November. While parliament certainly does not have the type of independence expected in a functioning democracy, it has more clout than Egypt's legislature. Abdullah has also liberalized Jordan's economy since his accession to the throne in 1999.
Even more importantly, the Jordanian government and the Brotherhood cooperate in a way unheard of in Egypt. In an analysis of the relationship between Islamists and the government in Jordan, a prominent political science professor writes in Arab Studies Quarterly that:
[T]he regime benefits from Muslim Brotherhood success because as a moderate reform movement it checks other more confrontational social movements and channels Islamic activism into a non-violent agenda. The Muslim Brotherhood, on its part, benefits from organizational opportunities produced by the incumbent regime... [The Brotherhood] continues to act through the institutions of the political system without challenging the raison d'etre of state or Hashemite [Abdullah's] power.ix
In his book, Sharansky claims that the more democratic a country is, the more likely it is to pursue peace. In his view, Jordan's freer society would explain the relative success of the Israeli-Jordanian treaty. Because Abdullah's regime is less repressive, he has more political capital to spend on peace with Israel. By extension, Sharansky's theory would advise Israel to push Middle East dictators for more freedom in their societies. Instead of negotiating with Syria's Assad, then, why not mobilize the international community to demand more freedom for the Syrian people?
Sharansky's vision is compelling, but it runs up against a powerful counter-argument: when countries in the Middle East have held free elections, citizens of those countries have elected Islamist governments that have a history of supporting terrorism. The best example is in the Palestinian Authority, where Palestinians elected Hamas, a spin-off the Muslim Brotherhood that is responsible for twenty years of cross-border terrorism. Famously, elections have also not brought peace and stability to Iraq since the American invasion began in 2003.
Yet underlying this counter-argument are two flawed assumptions. The first is that elections are the most accurate marker of democracy. As Sharansky writes, elections are part of the democratic process, but true democracies "respect the rule of law, protect individual rights, cherish human life, and dedicate themselves to improving the well-being of their citizens." And, Sharansky adds, elections do not transform a political culture overnight; elections should be a late, if not final, step in the democratizing process.
The second incorrect assumption is that absent elections, Hamas, Hizbullah, and their Islamist brethren would have remained without political power. This assumption ignores the possibility of Islamists gaining power anyway, if not through elections, then through force of coup or revolution.
Given the 1979 Iranian Islamic Revolution and the likelihood that the Muslim Brotherhood would supplant the regimes in Egypt, Syria, and Jordan if they fell, encouraging democratic reform seems wiser than propping up dictators and hoping that they squash the strengthening Islamists. Pushing for reforms might even help moderate those Islamists. As the Washington Post editorialized, "Democratic participation...is more likely than exclusion and suppression to moderate [the Islamists'] political aims."
If Israel took Sharansky's proposed course in dealing with its neighbors, it would be hoping for long-term stability despite likely short-term chaos. This would be trying, for it is always tough to stick to principles despite short-term difficulties; there is a reason why so many see virtue in "pragmatism."
But long-term stability has eluded Israel for its entire sixty-year history, and trying a new approach entrenched in the inherent power of freedom is worth the time, blood, and treasure.
//Avi Herring is a sophomore in the joint program between the School of General Studies and the Jewish Theological Seminary. He is majoring in Middle East and Asian Languages and Cultures.