Ep. 170: Oil's surprising role behind Oct. 7 and the Abraham Accords
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So one of the things people don't realize is that energy actually played a huge role in the Israel-Hamas war right now. Israel, again, had its own natural gas findings. The role American energy dominance played in helping create and facilitate the Abraham Accords, the maritime deal with Lebanon, the India-Middle East-Europe corridor. This corridor was going to diametrically change the Middle East and box out Iran as we know it. This is why Hamas, a.k.a. Iran, acted now.

This episode of Think Twice is sponsored by the Jewish Future Promise, ensuring a vibrant and thriving future for Jews and Israel. Hello, and welcome to Think Twice.

This week, we have an important conversation for you with Jennifer Sutton of the Council for a Secure America about the role that energy issues play in both the Middle East and the U.S.-Israel alliance. But before we start today's program, I want to remind you, as always, to like this video and podcast, subscribe to JNS, and click on the bell for notifications. Also, you still don't have to wait a full week for more of our content.

There is a Jonathan Tobin Daily podcast where I share more news and analysis with you about the most significant issues we're facing today. You can find The Daily Show under Jonathan Tobin Daily on the JNS channel, wherever you get your podcasts. Also, JNS's inaugural International Policy Summit will be held this April in Jerusalem. Click the link in the description below to request registration in order to attend. And now to today's program.

If you've been raised to believe that fossil fuels are not just melting the planet, but fundamentally evil, you're less likely to care about stability in the Middle East or that America can be energy independent. Were this sort of thinking limited to radicals like those affiliated with groups like Extinction Rebellion or Just Stop Oil, who attack artistic masterpieces as part of a campaign to draw attention to their mad cause, this wouldn't be a problem.

But in recent years, environmentalist extremism, of the sort popularized by Swedish activist Retter Thunberg, has gone mainstream, and a great many Americans, and much of Europe, has been indoctrinated into thinking that way. The Green New Deal, promoted by liberal Democrats, as well as the efforts of the World Economic Forum in Davos, reflected these ideas.

They were embraced by the Biden administration, and the result was a set of decisions that discarded America's hard-won energy independence that it had achieved during the first Donald Trump presidency. But as bad as that was, how does it affect Israel and the Middle East? The answer is more than you think. Getting back to a position of energy independence strengthens the United States and gives it the ability to influence global security for the better.

It also motivates Middle East oil-producing nations into thinking about a future where they need to modernize and make peace within Israel that offers them both a first-world economy to trade with and a strategic ally against the real threat to the region that comes from Iran and its terrorist proxies.

While the oil industry was in general traditionally hostile to the Jewish state due to its connections in the Arab world, the realities of 21st century geopolitics and culture have been changing that. The deeper you dig into the issue of energy and the need to resist the ideology of Marxist forces that are more interested in overturning capitalism than saving the planet,

the more you understand how important it is to strengthen the u s israel relationship as well as expand the abraham accords and its promise of a middle east peace in which peace between the jewish state and its arab neighbors will lift the prospects of the entire region

One group that is devoted to thinking a great deal about these issues is the Council for a Secure America, and we're fortunate to have with us today its Executive Director, Jennifer Sutton, to discuss how the future of the energy issue impacts Israel-Middle East peace, as well as the strategic interests of the United States. Since 2014, Jennifer Sutton has served as the first Executive Director of the Council for a Secure America, an organization dedicated to promoting U.S. energy independence and

Prior to that, she worked for Ambassador Michael Oren at the Embassy of Israel in Washington. Jennifer Sutton, welcome to Think Twice. Hello. Nice to see you, Jonathan. Thank you so much for taking the time. Really excited to talk to our friends at JNS today. Well, Jennifer, thank you for taking the time to join us today.

I want to start by asking you to explain why you think Americans in general and supporters of Israel in particular should be thinking more about how issues related to energy independence are having an impact on war and peace in the Middle East and America's own security.

Perfect. So with that, let me take a step back and give you a couple words about CSA and explain how energy has played a major role in the Israel-Hamas war. So CSA is a nonpartisan nonprofit. We really focus on the national security implications of U.S. foreign policy, specifically pertaining to the U.S.-Israel relationship, the advancement of the Abraham Accords, and the critical role that energy dominance plays in fortifying U.S. national security.

We believe that if not for the strong relationship with Israel and our own domestic supply chain in the U.S., we never would have had the Abraham Accords.

So one of the things people don't realize is that energy actually played a huge role in the Israel-Hamas war right now and also plays a role in making America stronger. So happy to extrapolate on that. But oftentimes I think energy gets overlooked in the conversation and it's such an important part of where we stand as American citizens. Yeah, I think it is very important. Let's get back to the war in just a moment. But I want to start with sort of a generalized question about this whole issue of energy. I think a generation of Americans...

has been raised to think a certain way about fossil fuels and the future of the planet that has been deeply influenced by Marxists and extremists like Greta Thunberg, for example. And that has influenced policy and politics across the board. Why is it important that they not think of energy consumption as inherently evil?

It's a great question. So first off, as an organization, we really stand for all forms of American energy. So that can be fossil fuels to biofuels to ethanol to renewables. We really encompass what are all forms of American energy that make us safer.

I think that ultimately, even if you are reticent to talk about energy on the fossil fuels side, you need to look at the long-term implications right now of saying, okay, we're going to disavow ourselves of energy. Let's go green immediately. I don't need to go back to, but everyone knows about the Russia-Ukraine war, right? Germany was all green initially and said, all right, we want to transition immediately. And they ended up in a situation where they were reliant on Russia immediately.

during the war because again they had no way of keeping warm in the winter. And still are. No, exactly, but that's again an implication right now of saying we're going to take this sharp pivot and say we're all in on one thing. Again, long-term transition is a real conversation and saying all or nothing is not beneficial. And I'd add also if you look at right now America's situation and you say, oh, it's safer to frack in Venezuela or let's talk about Chinese solar panels in the United States.

Neither of those things benefit U.S. national security. So something to keep in the back of mind when we're having this conversation. Yeah, I think that's very true. I think for sort of environmental extremists and sort of globalist economics, energy independence for America doesn't matter or is even a bad thing.

But it is very important for the United States, as you've just explained, but also for the prospects of Middle East peace. How does that work? Absolutely. Let's go back to the 1973 Yom Kippur War. America was in a really, really hard juncture where they were deciding that

Do we support our closest Democratic ally in the region as they were being attacked from all fronts? Or do we worry about our energy oil supply chain from the Middle East? America never has to make that decision again. Because of American energy dominance right now, we have our own supply chain that allows us to broker things like the Abraham Accords, not be reliant to non-state actors or adversaries or

kerfuffles in the Straits of Hormuz, right? Thanks to our friends in North Dakota and Wyoming, we're in a position where we don't have to have those conversations and those tough choices ever again. Well, I think that's very important. Now, one element of the discussion about how

the United States energy independence and the whole issue of energy plays into the Middle East is that I think a lot of supporters of Israel have always thought of the oil and gas industry as, on the whole, more likely to be hostile to the Jewish state.

because of their connections and business in the Arab world. How has that changed in recent years? So it's interesting, actually. One of the fundamental principles when CSA was founded was working with the domestic producers in the U.S. They anticipated these conversations where people had business interests in the Middle East. Again, things have since evolved since the Abraham Accords. But I'm taking us back to the 80s, right? Invariably, by working with the domestic producers in the U.S., who we work really closely with,

These, I liken them to the modern day kibbutzniks, right? They were fracking the Bakken, you know, arm in arm, and they changed America. They changed our foreign policy as we know it. And CSA was really on the forefront of building those relationships long term. And we can fast forward and talk about post-October 7th. These were the people standing in our corner. These were the people who said, let's talk. How can we help? What can we do? And having spent so many years in the Israel space, Jonathan,

I gander to say they were the ones front and center with us on our darkest day in history and the days thereafter, more than any other constituency I can speak to. That's a really interesting insight. I think it's not what most people would think.

But, you know, again, it's stereotypes that often govern how people's attitudes work, aren't they? A hundred percent. And look, if I can speak anecdotally about my own October 7th experience, I think this really speaks volumes about the constituency that we're working with at CSA and the friendships that we've cultivated over the last decade plus that I've been involved in this organization.

I was in Istanbul on October 7th, Jonathan. Not a place you want to be. My first phone calls were from all of our oil and gas friends, from our state legislative officials in those states, from high-level people you read about in the news. Hey, Jen, what can we do? How can we help? You can only imagine how well my husband took it, that we're sitting in Salamanat, Afghanistan.

Istanbul, and I'm getting phone calls from people in Israel and everywhere else. And our friends at CSA said, let's do, immediately, let's do a Zoom. We called up a colleague on the border of the Golan Heights. She did a Zoom for us from my hotel room in Istanbul. And why does this matter?

In the days after and the months after to as recently as an hour ago, right, all of these people have not only stood with us, they've offered us a platform to talk about the war, to talk about the critical importance this has played for Americans and how this is relevant to them.

Yeah, that's very interesting. Now let's, you know, we speak of the Abraham Accords and a general shift away from a belief in the Middle East, or at least in parts of the Middle East, a belief in endless war against Israel. That was produced by a complicated set of circumstances involving the threat from Iran, the Obama administration's appeasement of Tehran, and a realization in the Arab world that they needed to change. How does energy and energy independence play into that?

So that's a great question, Jonathan. So we have something called the Israel Hamas War Report that CSA put out. It's all open source. We presented it around the country. I was actually in Evansville, Indiana, a place I'm sure you've never visited, and Denver last week presenting the report to Trade Association and then to the Colorado State Capitol.

But to go back to this, one of the things that we highlight in this report, which is all open source for that matter, we have from Al Jazeera to the Jerusalem Post, we wanted this to be a groundbreaking open source document where the facts were not in dispute. We talk about the role energy played in the war. So the lead up to October 7th, how Israel, again, had its own natural gas findings. It was changing its own posture in the region. The role American energy dominance played in helping create and facilitate the Abraham Accords.

I can go down a rabbit hole, but the maritime deal with Lebanon, the Gaza Marine Shore gas field, the India-Middle East-Europe corridor, right? That was one of the linchpins of our report that we said this is why Hamas, a.k.a. Iran, acted now. And that was, again, corroborated last June that this corridor was going to diametrically change the Middle East and box out Iran as we know it. And one more anecdotal point.

One of the the linchpin themes of this report is that Iranian oil funded this war. 70 percent of Iranian government revenues come from their oil sales. And notably, China buys 90 percent of that oil. So when you think of the chaos going on in the region right now, Iranian oil has its fingerprints all over it. Oh, that's very true. Let's let me back up, back you up.

Explain to our audience how the Lebanon, the conflict and the ultimate deal that was signed between Israel and Lebanon over the natural gas fields, explain how that worked and what impact it had on the belief among Iran and its terrorist proxies that Israel was ripe for an attack. Sure. Well, let's go back to the deal in question and then we can go back to why Iran acted differently.

In the moment that it did, when it did. And there are a lot of variables to this, energy being one of many. Israel and Lebanon have been in a perpetual state of war since its founding. There's no dispute. My family is actually from Lebanon. We're Lebanese Jews. The likelihood I can go back to Beirut right now, just again as a singular U.S. citizen, is very difficult. Lebanon right now,

realized that there were natural gas fields that needed to be explored. Again, there was a maritime dispute between Israel and Lebanon. And the United States, under Special Envoy Amos Hochstein, helped broker that conversation.

America was in a position to have that conversation and energy statecraft usurped traditional diplomatic avenues. They realized, hey, there is something potentially very valuable in the waters, and we want to extract that potential value that would help Lebanon's economic situation. That usurped traditional, again, the ongoing warfare that Hezbollah was doing in Lebanon against the state of Israel.

Yeah, but didn't the fact that the United States pressured, and Amos Hochstein, whom you've just referenced, pressured Israel to sort of make concessions to Lebanon, which under those circumstances of that moment certainly seemed to mean concessions to Hezbollah, didn't that have an impact on the war that followed?

I think if you're going to look right now on the war that followed, where I would turn to is less about the United States' role in all this, but rather the notion that there was a Saudi normalization deal on the horizon. Iran was being boxed out. There were all these energy advances happening.

Israel is working with Egypt and the EU, again, to export gas to Europe to supplant the role of Russian energy, right? All of these things are happening as early as June of 2022. The gas field, all of these moments. And invariably, Iran was getting boxed out of the region. The only moment I would say that we should have, as Americans, taken a pause and said something is not right here was in April of 2023, when the now deceased foreign minister of

Iran flew to Saudi Arabia and signed a deal with the Saudis that was brokered by the Chinese. Now, like you're familiar with the Shia-Sunni disputes that date way back before our lifetimes, right? Why would the Saudis sign a deal with the Iranians? And the answer was the Chinese were the ones brokering that deal. And after the

pull out from Afghanistan, I think many of our Arab partners in the region were saying, wait a minute, if America is not present, somebody else is going to fill that void and we need to hedge our bets and work with those countries in question. Yeah, they perceived not, you know, entirely wrongly that the Biden administration wasn't really interested in the Middle East.

or at least in defending our traditional allies. They came into office very hostile to the Saudis and sort of the moderate Arabs and had real issues with Israel at times. So that really impacted the willingness of, you know, of the Saudis to think, wait a minute, you know, maybe, you know, we've got to back the strong horse. That's the traditional idea in the Middle East.

And when America is the strong horse, things go much better for the world and for Israel. And when it isn't, and when Iran or China or some combination of that

are perceived as having much more leverage, then obviously Israel's partners in the Abraham Accords and potential partners are going to say, wait a minute, this isn't a good strategy for us. Absolutely. Actually, we're a 501c3, so we do not push legislation at all. But one of the key takeaways that we have from our war report is that America must maintain that military force posture in the Middle East.

Because if America is not there, Russia is there. China is there. Iran's there. You know, all of these proxy, you know, of Iran that are creating terror in the region. America needs to be there and it needs to be litigating and arbitrating and championing peace in the region, because if they're not, people who are harmful to America's interests and its allies are going to be there and take advantage of that weakness and that vacuum.

Let's talk about China and how that impacts energy issues. Obviously, you mentioned before about solar panels from China. Electric car batteries are made in China. What is the nexus between some of the energy debates we're having

And the potential threat from a China who is America's geopolitical, real geopolitical rival of the 21st century, how does that work? How should we be thinking about these issues knowing that China is so potentially hostile to the United States and our interests? I'm going to go back to the statistic that was in Politico that China's buying 90% of Iranian oil sales. I mean,

If that alone doesn't tell you what's going on while America's, you know, striving to sanction Iran and saying, look, Iran is using its funds for terror and for chaos. China is right on the forefront buying that oil, that first and foremost. Then, of course, we have the Belt and Road Initiative in the Middle East, right? China is taking advantage of, you know, Western absenteeism and American absenteeism and coming and filling those voids. And those loans are going to come due, which is going to work against American long-term interests.

and that, of course, of our allies. Yeah, well, China is looking to buy up the whole world lately. And, you know, that's a genuine strategic threat to the United States, I think, more than most people understand, although they sort of have a general, you know, sort of vague idea. But that really makes it concrete, the way that China uses its purchasing power to prop up Iran. Let's talk about the Abraham Accords more. I think...

When they were first signed in 2020, there was an expectation that they would soon be expanded. Obviously, the change in administrations meant in 2020 meant a change in orientation about that. The Biden administration didn't even want to say the words Abraham Accords for a while. Then they belatedly got interested in it.

How has the war, the post-October 7th war, impacted the ability of the Arab world, the energy-producing nations there, to be able to sort of think rationally about peace with Israel because there's been such a surge in anti-Semitism, such a surge in hatred for Israel due to a lot of the media bias and the false reporting about the war and just the

the general agitation that it has whipped up. What are the prospects now there? I mean, there's some people who are optimistic, but are they right?

It's a great question. So there are a couple of questions I want to unpack from this because there's a lot to say about the subject, Jonathan. So first and foremost. Go right ahead. Of course. So CSA recognized that no one was talking about the role that energy played in the lead up to the accords. We said, you know, this is an opportune moment to show our partners in the heartland that they played a role in the foreign policy and national security imperatives of the United States. And that had they not been involved,

producing energy and making America energy dominant, that the Abraham Accords wouldn't have happened. So this is something that we really underscore to them, which, again, is a moment where we view them as friends and partners in this long-term geopolitical conversation. So that's a first and foremost. Secondly, CSA was really working closely with places like the Kingdom of Bahrain. We were actually slated to go to Saudi Arabia in November of 2023.

We knew that that Saudi normalization agreement was on the horizon. And it was one of the things that we really believed the peace through prosperity model was going to be a huge, huge game changer for the Middle East, something that was tremendous that had yet to happen. So let's bracket that. And the second half of your question is looking at the Abraham Accords as a whole, I think you're asking, has it worked? Has it slowed down throughout this war? Am I getting that right? Sure. Yeah.

Let's go back to the missile attack from Saudi against Israel. Who injured? This is in April of 2024, April, I believe, 14th launched by the missile attack from Iran. Yes. Being launched by Iran against Israel. Who's intercepting those missiles? Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan.

Would that have ever happened without the Abraham Accords and the U.S.-backed coalition? And remember, Saudi doesn't even have normalization agreement that's formalized with Israel to this day. But the fact that they were intercepting those missiles is a byproduct of the reconfiguration of the Middle East and the change in posture and friendship with Saudi Arabia that has evolved as a result of energy dominance in the U.S.,

Now, critics certainly of Trump administration policies and the Abraham Accords have said, well, these are sort of top-down agreements that, you know, certainly the King of Jordan, who sometimes says very nasty things about Israel, but whose policies are aligned with it, and the government of Saudi Arabia, they have views about Israel, but they're

the people in those countries don't share those views. These are, you know, these are countries that are not democracies. And, you know, people worry that at some point, you know, those governments will go away and,

And Israel will be left and the United States will be left with far more hostile nations because of the sort of groundswell of anti-Semitism within the Arab and Muslim world. Are those fears overplayed or what is the future for these countries? Sure. And we can talk at length about the Arab Spring and why America needs to be there and support our allies, even if we don't agree on every metric of their governing power.

But look, I think that going back to the Peace for Prosperity model, I think the premise of the accords that nobody talks about, and we've heard from some of our partners in the MENA region, is that they were expecting this sort of trickle-down economic effect to permeate their populations, right? And with the exception of a few of these MENA countries, again, if you're born in a Marathi country,

You're set for life, right? But in a lot of these places, that's not the norm. And there is a huge disparity between rich and poor in some of these places, specifically with these governments that are favorable to the West. I think that, again, if the Abraham Accords are going to work, the notion of investment, trade, commercial variables are going to play a huge role in that conversation.

I think they're waiting again for the swaths of U.S. companies to be powered by Abraham and come in and, again, play a role in kind of reshaping the region as we know it and offer those economic opportunities for their civilians. I think that that's how you're going to mitigate the anti-Semitism in some of these places. That's a really important point because these countries don't have first world economies.

The answer isn't just everybody make nice with each other. The answer is capitalism, you know, a modern economy. Exactly. I think, you know, you know, an economic freedom along with, you know, whether or not there is complete political freedom, which obviously we'd like to see everywhere without economic freedom. These sorts of toxic hatreds are much more likely to continue and grow.

Absolutely. Look, I think America got out of the democracy business a while ago. And I think that if we look at the Arab Spring, if that's an example that the democracy business did not work for U.S. foreign policy, I think that we saw that in Egypt and we saw the years of tumult following the fall of Hosni Mubarak in favor of Mohammed Morsi, who's again was a proactive member of the Muslim Brotherhood. Right. Mm hmm.

We're not going to agree with our Arab partners on everything. What we do need to agree on is that safety, security and prosperity are the linchpins of the conversation that's going to change and transform the Middle East. And then America is going to have to be a huge part of the one, again, negotiating those outcomes. And if I keep underscoring the Sean's, if America is not there, somebody else is going to fill that void and it's not going to end well for us.

Yeah, well, I think we've seen that. Wars happen because of perceptions of weakness. And you referenced the withdrawal from Afghanistan or the rout from Afghanistan. That certainly set in motion a lot of negative trends that have led to conflicts, not just, you know, not just in the Middle East, but elsewhere.

that strength is so necessary. Absolutely. And without it, we're really up a creek and Israel is left isolated as well. 100%. I think, look, everyone wants America there. If you speak to people in the MENA region, if you speak to people in Israel, it's, listen, having a strong America is good for their countries. It's good for their economies. It's good for the world order. And they do not want that vacuum to be filled by somebody who's nefarious.

Yeah, you referenced before the report that CSA came out with about the post-October 7th war, the Israel-Hamas war.

Go back to it and tell us, you know, what are the main conclusions that you've drawn from the events of the last 17 months? And more importantly, what how should that be motivating American policy right now at a moment when, you know, we're speaking at a moment when it appears as if the ceasefire with Hamas is falling apart?

And America has, Israel has choices to make, but America has choices to make as well. What conclusion should we draw from what has already happened that we should be thinking about? Absolutely. And I encourage everyone to use the report and I'll tell you about our polling as well. We looked at Israeli and American public opinion polling. Our goal was, again, to be sort of a neutral arbiter of the lead up to October 7th and the aftermath thereafter.

We have, again, we are a 501c3, Jonathan, so we are not pushing any policy directives, but we really believe in maintain and force support, continuing to maintain American military force posture in the region, maintain American energy dominance, maintain the freedom of navigation for ships in the Red Sea. Can't believe I have to say this, but holding the Red Sea hostage is not good for America, not good for our allies, not good for the world.

Of course, continue to look. There are bipartisan sanctions against Iran that exist. We believe that those need to be enforced. And of course, continue to support Israel's right to defend itself and continue to support bringing those hostages home in a safe and expedient fashion. And of course, getting humanitarian aid to the people that do need it in the Gaza Strip. Well, I think part of the problem in our discussion of these issues is that this is a time of political polarization. Yes.

And much of our education system remains in the control. And we're dealing with these issues, you know, with respect to places like Columbia and other major universities. But it's also the whole education system is in the control of sort of woke leftist ideology.

How do we educate Americans, especially young Americans, to think more seriously about these issues, including the energy and the environment, in a way that doesn't... where we don't fall into the trap set for the myths propagated by the Greta Thunbergs of the world? 100%. So I certainly can't speak to the latter half of that demographic, but I can speak to our friends and partners in energy-producing states in the heartland. And we've always said...

It's important that we make this a long-term conversation that they remain a close partner in. They've made America safer. Nobody has acknowledged that. It's something that we want to amplify. You go to North Dakota, nobody talks about how important a role they played in making America stronger. We've been there. We know this. And we've seen, again, tremendous, tremendous politicians and policy from those states.

I would say, look, what we try and do is really link how this is relevant to them. Right. It's if you're sitting in Cheyenne, Wyoming, what what does the Red Sea have to do with you? What do the Houthis have to do with you? Well, if inflation and the price of goods connect with your everyday, you know, cost of bread and butter, that's an impact. If you have people proudly serving this country in Iraq.

And again, serving America with pride. And they're being shot at by an Iranian proxy like Khatib Hezbollah in Iraq. That's an American problem. And that pertains to what's going on in parts of the country where, again, the global conversation isn't being had on a regular basis. So I think, again, it's important to envelope people and educate them and make them part of that story arc.

It's something we really look at with the buy-in. We've worked with these people for 10, 12 years. These are friends. These are partners. And coming to parts of the country once every four, eight, six years with a policy directive is not a sufficient way to build coalitions and build friendships. You mentioned you're polling.

which is available on your website. Tell us what you learned about attitudes towards the Middle East, attitudes towards Israel from the research that you've done. Absolutely. So as you all probably followed, around the 250th day of the war, there was Palestinian polling that came out. I presented in a congressional caucus to members of Congress, and they were understandably very upset. And they said, OK, where do Israeli voters fall on these issues? Where do American voters fall on these issues?

So we commissioned Israeli Jewish public opinion polling in Israel to understand that beyond the INSS, you know, 65 percent of Israelis rejected two state solution. We wanted to understand what does that 65 percent mean? And I'll get to our U.S. polling momentarily. When you look at it just, you know, on a superficial level, it's like, OK, Israelis reject the idea of peace with their Palestinian neighbors.

It's not accurate. So we actually polled how do Israeli voters feel about the Abraham Accords? How do they feel about the Saudi normalization deal? How do they feel a potential Saudi normalization deal? How do they feel about the U.S. relationship and the economic and security impacts? And those numbers were overwhelmingly in favor of all those variables.

Israelis want to go back to where they were on October 4th, 5th, and 6th, where the region was changing, where economic opportunities were prospering, where they were flocking to holidays in Dubai and doing business deals in Riyadh and Morocco and what have you. The region was changing. And we see that reflected in that polling. They don't want to live next door to people who want to kill them. And we would not want that either in the United States of America. Yeah. What did the American polling tell you?

The American polling right now, and you mentioned college campuses. I live in New York City. I think there was a protest a few days ago in Central Park where we saw people wearing Hamas insignia, which is unbelievable and very scary, frankly. And actually, anecdotally, if I can point to a personal example of my experience with this war and anti-Semitism, I live on the Upper East Side in Manhattan, which is one of the most prosperous, safe Jewish communities in the world.

The week that they had the proverbial Kristallnacht and they were breaking Jewish-owned businesses and their windows, I was actually in Bismarck, North Dakota, presenting the war report on the front stage of a major energy conference with a few thousand people. And...

I had a woman come to me in tears and name me every single American hostage. And I said, how is it safer as an American Jew to be in North Dakota, in Bismarck, North Dakota, where there are 600 Jews in the whole state, very few of them in Bismarck, than it is to be on the Upper East Side of Manhattan? It was a really, it was a very formative moment for me. And it really affirmed kind of the relationships that we've built in other parts of the country where it became part of their story arc. And now a word about our sponsors.

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Yeah, I think that that conforms to what other polls have said. The majority of Americans still support Israel. But there is a demographic, there is a slice of American demography that is increasingly hostile. And that's a threat to the relationship between the United States and Israel. But it's also a threat to the whole idea of energy independence, isn't it? These issues are connected.

Absolutely. I mean, nobody's more aligned in the pro-Israel movement than the energy boys. So we all fall hand in hand on being vilified in this country. But look, I think the media has really amplified a lot of these rogue voices. I think that

Support for Israel remains very strong, and we will continue to see that support on a congressional level, from a bipartisan congressional level, and throughout the country. Again, I think that sometimes the hostile media likes to amplify these rogue voices and presume that that is the normative opinion around the country. I think that's true. You mentioned your own origins, your family were Jews who lived in Lebanon.

Tell me how that has impacted and how you view, you know, not merely the Abraham Accords, but the sort of struggle to maintain, you know, a forward momentum for a sort of more rational approach to the Middle East, rejecting, you know, this century-long war that the Palestinians and Islamist extremists have been waging against Israel and the Jewish presence.

How do you feel about it? How has it impacted you? The Abraham Accords are very personal to me. I look at this from, again, being a first-generation American who was born in this country and was afforded every opportunity. And my family actually comes from the Middle East, both Syria and Lebanon, and I've been

The idea of going back to the Abraham Accords and where they were supposed to go prior to October 7th is something that's personal to me. I would love to be able to go back to a place like Lebanon and Syria and see the history of my ancestors. But more importantly, see the region as a whole change where global jewelry plays a role, as it did for many centuries, in making the Middle East stronger and more successful. That's really how I look at the Abraham Accords as a whole. So it's very personal to me and really hopeful that we're going to return to that juncture in history.

Yeah, that's a very, very important point. I think we often in this country and elsewhere forget Jews from the Arab and Muslim world, how many there were, how many, you know, that whole population of refugees that is so often ignored. And it's an important issue and it should be brought up every time we're reminded about refugees in Gaza. A hundred percent. Look, I think that there are

some pretty terrible immigration stories from all parts of the world. And within one generation, I always talk about this with friends and family, American Jewry has prospered and has really found its place in society and again, worked hard to advance peace, advance business. And I'm hopeful again, that the Middle East will change in a way that the American Jewry and other parts of global Jewry will again, have a role in playing

towards business, peace, all of the other variables that the Abraham Accords had originally promised. Hmm.

Tell me about what projects the Council for Secure America are working on right now to enhance the prospects for both energy security and strengthening the U.S.-Israel alliance. What is your organization doing, and what should we know about it? Sure. So we focus on experiential education. So that means trips to the oil patch in the heartland, trips to Israel and to the Middle East, again, to understand these outposts.

What is going on in these places? How do they pertain to U.S. national security? And again, to certain that there's a convening body with decision makers and stakeholders to understand these issues and how it pertains to them, be it through our war reports or polling. We had a variety of virtual programs and in-person programs with decision makers from all sides of the spectrum, again, to understand these issues at length.

Well, that's important work. We wish you good luck with it, Jennifer. Thanks so much for sharing your insights with us today. You can find out more about the Council for a Secure America by going to their website at councilforasecureamerica.org.

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