Bobby Rechnitz, a prominent Los Angeles-based real estate developer, philanthropist and founder and chairman of the Bomel Initiative, has been visiting the Gulf nations recently and will be returning this week to continue to advance relationships begun under the Abraham Accords.
He tells Israel National News that there is a danger that the Abraham Accords could end up like the cold peace between Israel and Egypt and Jordan unless work is done to create conditions for tangible relationships between Israelis and Arabs.
“I don't think the average citizen of the UAE and much less Bahrain, except for what they feel in terms of tourism, feels the financial connection. I don't think that they feel the mutual interest, the mutual trade,” Rechnitz says. “What you really want to do is you want to create a synergy between the peoples and when you go to these countries there's a wonderful reception that you get, there's a feeling of these are lovers of peace, these are countries where the children are not indoctrinated.”
According to him, it has to be much more than Israel having a booth at the UAE Expo.
“It’s nice for people talking about the Abraham Accords but it's not tangible,” he remarks.
“You need something that the people can say, ‘Yes, I have Israelis visiting. They come to my hotel. They come to my business. They come to my shop. I have a company that invested here from Israel and I'm investing in Israel.’ With that company you need some sort of mutual economic interest so that the citizens feel that they connect with the citizens [of Israel.] You can't keep it all up on the upper level.”
Rechnitz urges the new Israeli government to pursue such a vision.
“I think the incoming government of Israel should fill the vacuum the last government of Israel created, and the United States is an equal part of that vacuum. Nobody's done anything to further the Abraham Accords other than a title and something that shows diplomatic ties. The people need to feel it themselves. They need something tangible.”
While many people, especially in the media, are claiming that the Arab world is deterred by the new Israeli right-wing government, Rechnitz remains confident that the Gulf states view Netanyahu’s return as a positive development.
“When visiting the Gulf states what I feel on the ground is they very much wanted to see Benjamin Netanyahu come back into Power,” he explains.
He notes that Netanyahu represents to Sunni Arabs someone who can represent their interests in standing up to Iran, especially to the US government.
Commenting about the incoming government and the criticism it has received from outside Israel, he says: “I support any government that comes into Israel. I love and admire the fact that we have a Jewish country, we have a true democracy, the people have chosen. But as far as criticism coming from leaders in America, I think it's inexcusable. I think it's destructive."
He also denounces former Anti-Defamation League director Abe Foxman of making a defamatory statement against Israel and challenging it as a democracy, for recently saying in a Jerusalem Post interview: “If Israel ceases to be an open democracy, I won’t be able to support it. I never thought that I would reach that point where I would say that my support of Israel is conditional.”
“It seems to me that the voters voted. It was a democratic process and now there’s a new government coming in and his support is conditional. What message is that sending to people who claim to be Jewish leaders,” he says. “That sounds like BDS to me. BDS's support is conditional. We know that BDS is a mask for antisemitism.”
Rechnitz is calling on Foxman to retract his statement.
“I call on Abe Foxman immediately to retract that and clarify what you meant. Are you saying that you may not be supporting Israel? Israel is our country. Israel is a love. It's our family. We love our family unconditionally.”
He stresses that his issue is not with Foxman giving his critical opinion on Israeli politics but with him conditioning his support of Israel.
“You cannot condition your support. You can say this is my opinion, this is what I believe, and this is what I think you're doing wrong. You're going to condition your support of Israel so if you don’t like the policies in Israel, even though they follow the democratic process, you're now going to boycott Israel and you're not going to support them. That sounds like BDS to me.”
In terms of support for Israel in the United States under the Biden administration, he sees a problem with left-wing Democrats, such as the Squad members, trying to move the party from its more centrist traditional position.
"The Democratic Party hasn't done a good job standing up to them and there's a lot of cancel culture and there are a lot of woke liberals and that's the way the world is changing but I still believe that Israel and the United States have a very strong relationship,” he says.
But he believes there is a lot of work to do in the American Jewish community to spread the message about Israel and the Abraham Accords.
He adds that anti-Israel indoctrination on college campuses in the last two decades is a huge problem.
“You have 150 new members of Congress coming in right now. We have to assume that most of them are college educated. We can assume they had a college education within the last 20 or 25 years in the United States. That doesn't speak well for Israel given all the anti-Israel sentiment on campuses… I’m afraid the next generation is going to start shying further away and even resent Israel for being an issue between them and their fellow students.”
According to him, the solution is pro-Israel lobbying, such as what AIPAC and StandWithUs do.
“On campus, every individual should do it themselves. You don’t have to be part of an organization to do it yourselves. Go have a speaking engagement, bring people to synagogue. We have to bring people together and educate them. Bring trips to Israel with Birthright and March of the Living. We’re the ambassadors to guarantee our own future.”
He emphasizes that the support must be unconditional. “Unconditional love. The minute you put conditions on it, you’re no different than our enemies.”
He is also part of an initiative to lobby Congress to create a US coin with former Israeli Prime Minister Gold Meir on it.
He called the project a non-partisan way to expose Israel to the world in a way that many people may not be familiar with.
“When we talk about women who have accomplished so much in life, Golda Meir was one of the first female leaders in the entire world,” he says. “By exposing someone like Golda Meir and all her valiant efforts and everything she did and putting her on a coin as a woman leader of the world being minted by the United States, I think it's a testament as to who we are as a peoples and it shows so many of our common goals.”