Documentary Review: The Trump-Kushner UAE HASBARAH Scam, Without Trump and Kushner and HASBARAH!
David Shasha
Documentary Review: The Trump-Kushner UAE HASBARAH Scam, Without Trump and Kushner and HASBARAH!
“Amen-Amen-Amen: The Story of Our Times” (Tom Gallagher, 2021)
Back in 2017, I wrote an article critical of master NYU marketer Rabbi Yehuda Sarna and his White Jewish Supremacy Interfaith Dialogue triumph in the 2014 documentary “Of Many”:
https://docs.google.com/document/d/11sSx4wSIdNx_lk5XELDL2EI6PL-XpLJESlpX7yHWSxQ/edit
The complete article follows this note.
Last August, I prepared that article for a special newsletter, with a bunch of additional articles on the Trump-Kushner HASBARAH Scam, in which UAE Chief Rabbi Sarna is a major player:
https://docs.google.com/document/d/1iAZ1KWsN_Kf_Rx7wFdypgvJo7FCcQUfPZerYFypH-bw/edit
PBS just screened a documentary – better, an Infomercial – that did a bunch of very interesting things that not only confirmed the things I have said about the Sarna, Interfaith Dialogue, and the UAE HASBARAH mess, but intensified them; as it added some new details that further established the basic parameters of the situation, as I originally presented it.
Here is the official website for the documentary, “Amen-Amen-Amen: A Story of Our Times”:
And here is an article that provides some further context:
The movie can be viewed on-line at the PBS website:
https://www.pbs.org/video/amen-amen-amen-bqirbk/
When I say “Infomercial,” I mean that it is, first and foremost, a marketing tool for the UAE and its famed leader MBZ:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mohamed_bin_Zayed_Al_Nahyan
In the wake of Israeli PM Naftali Bennett’s visit to the UAE, we have learned that MBZ will be reciprocating, in true Abraham Accords HASBARAH fashion:
“Amen-Amen-Amen” is framed by the writing and donation of a special Sefer Torah awarded by the UAE Jewish community, led by Sarna, to MBZ in honor of his father Sheikh Zayed, the Emiratis’ founder:
https://apnews.com/28a2a78701bb40019b126d33a361c530
As we can see, in building the UAE, the idea of religious pluralism was a central value.
As we can also see in the very limited history of the UAE, and from “Amen-Amen-Amen,” the primary idea suffusing the Emiratis is Newness: a country without a history, without any real relationship to the Jews of the Middle East and our illustrious culture and history.
In this sense, the documentary also acts as an Infomercial for NYU Abu Dhabi and one of its primary drivers, John Sexton:
Professor Sexton continues to teach a course of Government and Religious there:
https://nyuad.nyu.edu/en/academics/divisions/arts-and-humanities/faculty/john-sexton.html
Tellingly, one person who also does not appear in “Amen” is serial adulterer Rabbi Marc Schneier:
https://docs.google.com/document/d/123mT8-HFoyC8F7znJBdi9TMbbyWFNgMzuS4FGVPvylI/edit
In this context it is critical to understand the strictly subservient role of Rabbi Elie Abadie, whose presence in the documentary is limited to the Torah scroll and the gifting ceremony.
This point, as I have previously noted, is critical because the leaders of the UAE Jewish community, Eli Epstein and Ross Kriel, and the vast majority of its members, are almost all Ashkenazim.
While the Torah presented to MBZ in honor of his father was physically written and crafted in Israel by Iraqi Jews, the documentary presents the UAE Jewish community as fully and utterly Ashkenazi in liturgy and manner.
The idea being, as Sarna snidely asserts, that the UAE “miracle” is a watershed moment in the history of Judaism in the Middle East; a watershed moment that essentially erases the Sephardim, and articulates a Judaism that is blandly generic, but is actually deeply Ashkenazi in letter and spirit, as “Amen” unwittingly shows.
And, again as I have previously said, Abadie fades into the background. Even his bizarre Israeli-style pronunciation of Hebrew and lack of Arabic language-speaking in the documentary is a way to set aside the rich history of Arab Jews and our literary-intellectual culture. That cultural history, as we will shortly see, is given over to an Ashkenazi academic, not named Sarna.
And, of course, that makes perfect sense because the UAE has no extended history which would connect it to native Middle Eastern Jews. The national officials involved in what is happening now, know nothing about Judaism. And that was not the case in places like Palestine, Syria, Turkey, and Iraq for so many centuries, despite whatever tensions existed in those places.
One of the talking heads who appears in the documentary is someone named Marcelle Wahba, an Egyptian Jew who I had never heard of before:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marcelle_Wahba
https://agsiw.org/associates/ambassador-marcelle-m-wahba/
She was a career US diplomat, appointed by Bush 43 as ambassador to the UAE in 2001:
https://gulfnews.com/uae/bush-names-new-envoys-to-uae-qatar-syria-1.416934
Wahba herself knows little about Sephardim, except for her nostalgic memories of growing up in Egypt.
Another talking head Arab Jew in the documentary is Sharon Eder, an Iraqi Jew married to an Ashkenazi:
https://ae.linkedin.com/in/sharon-zekaria-eder-8a68b910
Like so many of the figures in the documentary, Eder is deeply involved in the UAE business world, and presents a form of Judaism that has little if anything to do with the Sephardic past and our cultural monuments. In fact, the main idea she presents, as is the case with Wahba, is the “expulsion” of Arab Jews from their countries of birth after 1948, in a way that is designed to contrast with the current UAE initiative. The Arab Jewish Refugee HASBARAH acts as a background presence haunting the documentary.
In other words, what we see is a wiping clean of the slate and the creatio ex nihilo of a completely new era in Jewish-Arab relations taking place right in front of our very eyes.
It is thus noteworthy that, even though the documentary takes place in the Trump-Kushner era, not only are those men totally absent from the film, but the Abraham Accords and the Gulf union with Israel are never mentioned once.
While he is missing from the documentary, Kushner remains inextricably tied to the region, as he continues to monetize his White House role, immersed in a nepotistic corruption which remains utterly breathtaking in its brazenness, as he continues to seek out criminally treasonous “emoluments” deals with the major Gulf players in his new “business” venture:
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/11/26/us/politics/kushner-investment-middle-east.html
Perhaps it was smart to leave out Trump and Kushner!
Though we do meet someone named Pastor Bob Roberts:
Roberts has a very impressive international profile, as he seeks to spread the Baptist Gospel world-wide:
https://bobrobertsjr.com/about/?_ga=2.22207097.311981669.1639462455-2065618209.1639462455
The choice of Roberts by the UAE is an interesting one, as it seems to reflect a political concern with Evangelical Christianity in the American manner.
The Emiratis went a big Christian step further by having Pope Francis come to the country, where he appeared on Interfaith panels, and delivered Mass in a stadium with some 180,000 parishioners of many different ethnic and national backgrounds:
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-47106204
The BBC article also highlights DC Reform Rabbi Bruce Lustig, another prominent Interfaith Dialogue Ashkenazi:
https://www.whctemple.org/clergy/m-bruce-lustig/
But what most struck me in “Amen” was the prominent scholarly voice of JTS Rabbi Burton Visotzky, assuredly not a Sephardi, who was tasked with presenting the historical-cultural picture – including a full-throated defense of Convivencia – as part of the larger framework in which the UAE pluralism functions:
https://www.amenthefilm.com/testimonials
With the only Sephardic UAE rabbi, admittedly one who certainly knows his subservient place and the sensitivities of his Ashkenazi masters, effectively sidelined from the Adult Jewish Table substantive discussions in “Amen,” what we end up seeing is a very HASBARAH-oriented Jewish presentation that is clever enough never to raise the issue of Trump or Zionism in any way.
That the presentation is utterly bereft of Sephardic intellectual-religious history and our illustrious culture is something that is directly tied to the Sarna hegemony, which is tied to the natural need of the local Jewish community to have “one of their own” leading them in the most basic religio-cultural sense.
I have not been privy to the inner workings of the community since Abadie moved to the UAE, so I cannot say with any assurance what his precise role is in the larger scheme of things there.
But from the evidence presented in “Amen” it is clear that the Chief Rabbi is in full control, and that Abadie represents some functionalist Orientalist “spice,” which is certainly abetted by the fact that his own Judaism is rooted in Washington Heights Modern Orthodoxy, rather than in the tradition of Andalusian Jewish Humanism:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elie_Abadie
The ever-ambitious social climber Abadie has kicked around the New York SY community for many years, flitting from job to job in a desperate, but ultimately failed, quest to garner that SY money and power. And this professional instability has made his position in the UAE critical to his rabbinical future. Any missteps could be fatal for him.
It is clear from watching his timid mien in the documentary that he knows who the boss is, and exactly where he fits in the UAE Jewish hierarchy.
Having known him for many years, and having been on the receiving end of his Zionist bullying during much of that time, I can attest to his antagonism towards the classical Sephardic heritage presented in the SHU, and his disdain for activist figures like the late Rabbi Jose Faur. It is all part and parcel of how the White Jewish Supremacy world works today, and how so many Sephardim expeditiously go along with it.
And that leads us right back to Sarna, “Of Many,” and his outsize ambition in the Jewish world and beyond.
Some years ago, I actually met Sarna very briefly at the SY Union Square Synagogue in Manhattan, where I was trying to start up a lecture program with academic speakers presenting talks on Sephardic themes – which ultimately failed, as would be expected. Sarna expressed no interest in the program, or in meeting with me to discuss it.
And while I am definitely not the most objective witness in this context, Sarna struck me as utterly oblivious to the Sephardic heritage, as his “ministry” visit to the shul was largely connected to the NYU SY cash cow, keeping the young college students Jewishly content, living outside Brooklyn in Greenwich Village – and in their place, as has been the case with Abadie.
But more than this, I was taken by Sarna’s steely imperiousness and hauteur, as Ashkenazi identity is for him determinative. It is an attitude that permeates “Of Many” and “Amen”; showing him as a “visionary” authority who is boldly shepherding this “miracle in the desert” as a fully transformational event.
As I watched “Amen” I thought of my own extensive readings in the history and literature of the Sephardic tradition, as well as my grandmother’s rapturous memories of Aleppo and Beirut, which have served me – in their modest way – as an existential control mechanism against the brutal wave of HASBARAH anti-Arab hatred that so permeates the Jewish world today.
Indeed, in closing, it is important for me to note the myriad iterations of this hatred presented by the local UAE Jews, as well as by Sarna, that permeate the documentary; as they repeat many of the usual canards about the Arab world and its Jewish history. Though Zionism is never formally discussed, it is perfectly clear where the Jewish participants stand on that front.
It is thus critical to state that the UAE experiment is not simply an Ashkenazi displacement of Sephardic history, but, more precisely, it is a means to fully turn the page on the Arab Jewish past, and begin to write a brand-new narrative; a narrative where Sephardim are barely-seen marginal players on a larger field that is lived out, as the documentary’s soundtrack insists, to the dulcet tones of Eastern European Klezmer music.
Indeed, there is a memorable scene in the documentary which shows the New York celebration for the MBZ Torah before it is shipped to the UAE, replete with the usual Eastern European Jewish dancing that has migrated from Hasidic shtiebls to many Orthodox events.
Again, it is all about the NIGGEN:
https://docs.google.com/document/d/11Rp2kwRQcny_KeF1X24JQav3-an2edAl7lySF8nwv6w/edit
It is yet one more example of how Sephardim and Sephardic civilization have been removed from the contemporary Jewish discourse; a discourse taking place at the Adult Jewish Table where we are most emphatically not welcome, and where only Ashkenazim can speak intelligibly about the Jewish past – including the Sephardic past itself!
Even in today’s Arab world, we have no actual standing, and are relegated to the proverbial shadows.
And you can be sure that what is happening in the UAE has little to do with Andalusian Convivencia and Religious Humanism.
It is certain that the White Jewish Supremacy will make sure of that.
David Shasha
Killing Convivencia: The White Jewish Pitfalls of Interfaith Dialogue in the Documentary “Of Many” (2014)
On the morning following the horrific terrorist attack on London Bridge I woke up shortly after 5:00 and found the following program on the local New York ABC affiliate:
The 2014 documentary “Of Many” on the Interfaith Dialogue group at NYU led by Rabbi Yehuda Sarna and Imam Khalid Latif was executive produced by power player Chelsea Clinton and is a perfect example of the Ashkenazi orientation of that religious movement:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/03/12/chelsea-clinton-of-many-_n_4942499.html
Reading The Huffington Post article on the film reminded of my own very brief tenure at the website in 2010:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/author/david-shasha
Sadly, my own time writing about Sephardic Jewish culture and Religious Humanism at the site was limited to a few brief months as there was a general housecleaning when it came to Jewish writers who took a critical stand against the general Zionist status quo and White Jewish Supremacy.
My exit from the website was prompted by the relentless drumbeat of criticism from Right Wing Zionists that is presented in the following post from World Net Daily’s Aaron Klein, which ultimately had a decisive impact on the website after it was sold to AOL in 2011:
http://www.wnd.com/2009/06/101131/
Rather than publishing items on what I have called “The Levantine Option,” a construct rooted in the cultural values of Andalusian Convivencia, in the face of the relentless HASBARAH attacks the website began to publish strident establishment screeds like the following offensive piece from the American Jewish Committee’s president David Harris which has the temerity to falsely speak in the voice of an Arab Jew while acting as a HASBARAH intervention on the matter of what has been called “The Forgotten Refugees”:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/david-harris/in-honor-of-jewish-refuge_b_13305628.html
The very first piece I published at The Huffington Post was on the subject of Convivencia, which is based not on the usual religious binary as is standard in the Ashkenazi-controlled Interfaith Dialogue movement we see in “Of Many,” but seeks to promote the historic cultural ties between Arabs of the three monotheistic religious faiths:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/david-shasha/a-jewish-voice-left-silen_b_487586.html
I followed that piece up with one on the 1961 epic movie “El Cid” and its place in the Convivencia tradition:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/david-shasha/charlton-hestons-el-cid-a_b_679711.html
In an article published in Tikkun magazine in 2009 I highlighted the Convivencia theme in a discussion of the music of the great Arab artist Simon Shaheen and how that music has played such a central role in the Middle Eastern Jewish community:
http://www.tikkun.org/article.php/may_jun_09_shasha/print
In 2014 I reiterated my integrative approach to the matter of Interfaith Dialogue and the myriad ways in which Sephardim have been locked out of the system:
Indeed, the seminal scholarship and enthusiastic advocacy of the late Yale Professor Maria Rosa Menocal promoting Convivencia has been absent from the frustratingly bland Interfaith Dialogue discussions such as those we see in the movie.
I published a tribute newsletter to Menocal which highlights the many contributions she made to the discussion of Jews, Muslims, and Christians in Iberian history and their implications for current concerns:
By contrast, “Of Many” is the usual rose-colored glasses “let’s just get along” happy-face banal Interfaith Dialogue presentation that is deeply rooted in the standard Jewish-Muslim religious binary that strongly reflects the detritus of the Israel-Palestine conflict.
As one of the NYU Jewish students forthrightly states during the course of the documentary, discussion of the Middle East is fraught with danger, and it is the job of Interfaith Dialogue to bring human beings into contact in the implacable face of hatred and opposition.
This attitude towards Interfaith Dialogue is widespread but has had no appreciable impact on the many problems we now face in an increasingly dangerous world.
Never once does the movie engage the matter of cultural Convivencia which presents the reality of Middle Eastern history and its cultural pluralism and religious tolerance.
We have seen how the very concept of Convivencia has been relentlessly undermined by White Jewish Supremacy:
The attack is being actively promoted in academic circles as well:
The Interfaith Dialogue that is being promoted at elite institutions like NYU is thoroughly grounded in Ashkenazi Jewish domination.
More than this, NYU’s Jewish Studies department is currently free of Sephardim and does not offer courses on the classic literary-poetic heritage of Jewish Andalusia.
In the final assessment, we have seen a plethora of well-funded Interfaith Dialogue programs in religious institutions and universities that have done little to assuage the ongoing tensions between the religious traditions as violence and hatred continue to mark our ever-contentious world.
It is quite telling that in these Interfaith Dialogue discussions we do not see Sephardic Jews presenting their historical and cultural experiences.
Indeed, as we recently saw in the case of a young member of the Brooklyn Syrian Jewish community, Sephardim themselves have largely abandoned their rich heritage and have adopted Ashkenazi ways:
https://groups.google.com/forum/#!topic/davidshasha/RKDNQ4UW2dk
As we see in “Of Many,” many of the Jewish NYU students reflect the religious values of Rabbi Sarna’s Modern Orthodoxy and its staunch Religious Zionism which has become the standard of the Brooklyn Sephardic Jewish community.
This integration of Sephardim into the majority Ashkenazi system has led to a perilous erosion of our traditional intellectual and religious values which has led to what I have called the “New Convivencia”:
Sephardim have not been active in Interfaith Dialogue as Ashkenazim continue to dominate the discourse. More than this, Sephardim have forgotten their own role in the historical relationship to the Arab-Muslim world, taking their cue from the Ashkenazim themselves.
A recent article on religious tolerance by University of Washington Professor Devin Naar shows how far Sephardic Jews have strayed from their traditional culture and the historical place of Convivencia in Ottoman and Arab civilization:
https://groups.google.com/forum/#!searchin/davidshasha/naar/davidshasha/hTIHtWaM3xw/YHjH2FOyDgAJ
This is the new and quite dispiriting Sephardic reality that we now face.
It is a sad fact that the very cultural elements that might be able to break the stranglehold of White Jewish Supremacy and its nefarious impact on the Interfaith Dialogue movement are now left in abeyance. Sephardim have been silenced and not given a place in this religious discussion.
David Shasha
From SHU 797, July 5, 2017