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What the Midterms Could Mean for Israel

  • Joel Rubin

    Joel Rubin

    Former Deputy Assistant Secretary of State (Obama administration); former Executive Director, American Jewish Congress

  • Joel Rayburn

    Joel Rayburn

    Former US Special Envoy for Syria (Trump administration); Senior Fellow, Hudson Institute

The talk

Israel votes on 27 October. Americans vote on 3 November. On the 28th, a Democrat and a Republican talk with each other about what is at stake for Israel whichever way the House and Senate go.

  1. Aid and security cooperation

    What Democrats and Republicans each want to keep, and what could change, in the help America gives Israel.

  2. Iran

    How a new Congress could shape American policy on Iran.

  3. Bipartisan support

    How solid the support for Israel is in Congress, and where they agree.

  4. Pro-Israel voters who feel pushed out

    What each party is getting wrong with them, antisemitism in its own ranks included, and what it would take to win them back.

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Speakers

  • Joel Rubin

    Joel Rubin

    Former Deputy Assistant Secretary of State (Obama administration); former Executive Director, American Jewish Congress

    Joel Rubin is a foreign policy expert, Democratic strategist, and Jewish political activist. A former Deputy Assistant Secretary of State in the Obama Administration, Joel has worked in a variety of progressive foreign policy and Jewish organizations, including J Street and Ploughshares Fund, and was the Jewish Outreach Director for the Bernie Sanders 2020 presidential campaign. He was the Executive Director of the American Jewish Congress. Joel is the author of a leading foreign policy Substack, The Briefing Book, appears regularly on national television, and wrote a book about how Democrats should engage politically on foreign policy entitled Saving Democratic Foreign Policy. He recently wrote a seminal opinion piece for The Free Press entitled “I worked for Bernie Sanders. The Democratic Party is Turning Against the Jews.” He began his career as a Peace Corps Volunteer and lives in Maryland.

    Photo: Mithra Ratne, CC BY-SA 4.0 (cropped; our crop is CC BY-SA 4.0)

  • Joel Rayburn

    Joel Rayburn

    Former US Special Envoy for Syria (Trump administration); Senior Fellow, Hudson Institute

    Joel Rayburn is a senior fellow in Hudson Institute’s Center for Peace and Security in the Middle East. A historian of the Middle East and a former diplomat and military officer, he was the United States special envoy for Syria from July 2018 to January 2021, and from November 2020 US chief of mission for Syria. He was also deputy assistant secretary for Levant affairs, responsible for US policy on Syria, Jordan, and Lebanon, and in 2021 spent six months as special advisor for Middle East affairs to Sen. Bill Hagerty. Before the State Department, Rayburn spent 26 years as a US Army officer, commissioned from West Point in 1992, and finished as senior director for Iran, Iraq, Syria, and Lebanon on the National Security Council staff. He taught history at West Point and directed the Army’s Operation Iraqi Freedom Study Group, and he is coauthor and editor of The US Army in the Iraq War, a two-volume study published in 2018.

    Photo: Hudson Institute

Joel Rubin is a Democrat. Joel Rayburn is a Republican. Uri Zehavi moderates a conversation between them, and they will be talking with each other.

Neither of them is a candidate. We put the same questions to both, and each gets the same time. The questions are about Israel: aid and security cooperation, Iran, the state of bipartisan support, and what each party is getting wrong with pro-Israel voters who feel pushed out. We are not talking about races or candidates.

AIC does not endorse or oppose any candidate or party. Our guests speak for themselves.

It runs one hour, 7:30 to 8:30 PM ET, with time for your questions.

Free for everyone. Register, and we email you the Microsoft Teams link to join. A gift is optional and fully tax-deductible.

The conversation will be recorded.

On a computer you join in Chrome or Microsoft Edge, no account needed. On a phone or tablet you need the free Teams app.

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