Consul General of Israel to the Midwest

As war unfolds in the Middle East, Governor Reynolds and President Biden have made clear their strong support for Israel. We'll visit with the Consul General of Israel to the Midwest on this edition of Iowa Press.

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For decades, Iowa Press has brought you political leaders and newsmakers from across Iowa and beyond. Celebrating 50 years of broadcast excellence on statewide Iowa PBS, this is the Friday, October 27th edition of Iowa Press. Here is Kay Henderson.

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Henderson: Our guest today is the Consul General of Israel to the Midwest. Yinam Cohen has spent the past 16 years as a diplomat with stints in Columbia, Spain, Germany and at the United Nations. He was a Senior Policy Advisor to Israel's Foreign Minister before he was assigned to the Consulate in Chicago. He's here to discuss what is going on in the Middle East. Mr. Cohen, welcome to Iowa Press.

Cohen: Thank you for having me. Thank you.

Henderson: Also joining our conversation, Clay Masters of Iowa Public Radio and Erin Murphy of the Gazette in Cedar Rapids.

Murphy: So, Mr. Cohen, it's Thursday morning as we tape this episode, and as we understand you met with our Governor Kim Reynolds this morning during your visit to Iowa. How did that meeting go?

Cohen: It was great. It was very important for me to arrive to Iowa to personally thank the Governor for her ongoing support in the state of Israel and the Israelis. I had the pleasure of accompanying here in Israel just last June and it really means a lot her standing behind Israel during this very complicated time for us.

Masters: There's a lot of people that are watching this show that would have no idea what your job entails, what you do in your role. Can you kind of explain to our audience what your position is?

Cohen: Absolutely. I am the official representative of the state of Israel to the Midwest here in America. So, we're based in Chicago and from Chicago we cover nine Midwestern states, Iowa is one of them. I'm not sure if you're going to air it, but this is my favorite state. I'm not saying it because I'm in Iowa, but because I feel that there's a lot of love and support and friendship for Israel in this state. What we're trying to do is really to enhance the partnership between Israel and Midwestern states in terms of economy, in terms of business, in terms of community outreach. So, we try to travel all across the Midwest and enhance these friendships.

Masters: How much traveling are you doing? Is this a job that requires a lot of travel throughout the Midwest?

Cohen: I try to travel as much as I can. I try to visit every state at least once a year. Some of them I visit more often, like Iowa.

Henderson: Let's turn to a sobering subject, the Israel Hamas war. As you know, President Biden this week has said that a priority should be extracting American hostages. In your view, how is that accomplished?

Cohen: I want to first say that President Biden really showed a lot of leadership since the beginning of the violence in our region, since the heinous attack that cost the lives of more than 1,400 Israelis. He has really been a moral compass, not just only here in America, but also to the world and his leadership and setting the goal for really eliminating Hamas and this is very important. At the same time, as you mentioned, we have a major issue of more than 200 hostages in the hands of Hamas in the Gaza Strip. 30 of them, by the way, are babies and kids under 18 years old held now by the hands of the terrorist groups in the Gaza Strip. Many of them are Israelis, others are also American and from other nationalities. And there's a lot of conversations going on right now, not directly between Israel and Hamas, but mainly through Qatar, who is a country in the Middle East that has both good relations with Hamas but also with the Western world, with the United States and we hope to hear good news very soon on this regard.

Murphy: Beyond the hostages there's also, based on estimates, roughly 500 to 600 American citizens in Gaza right now and with the blockade that can make it difficult to get people in and out of that area. Does Israel have a role in helping get any Americans who want to evacuate that area right now?

Cohen: We're absolutely coordinating and talking very, on a daily basis, with the American administration on every humanitarian issue, this one included, and I hope we'll find a solution very soon.

Masters: I want to go to something that President Joe Biden said on Wednesday, and I'm going to read the quote. "Israel should be incredibly careful to ensure they are going after the folks propagating this war." How do you interpret that message from the U.S. President? And how does that align with Israel?

Cohen: You know, I think the President is very correct because what we do right now is that we have declared war on Hamas. Hamas is a terrorist organization that is inspired, financed and trained by Iran. Their only aim is not to advance Palestinian well-being or the two-state solution or whatever that would be. Their declared goal is to destroy the one and only true state, the state of Israel, and to kill as many Jews as they can. So, we have declared war and our goal is to eradicate the leadership and the terrorist capabilities of Hamas in the Gaza Strip. At the same time, we're well aware to the fact that there's a lot of civil population in this area and we really try to distinct between Hamas and the civil population.

Murphy: Mr. Cohen, I wanted to back out and also talk about this at a personal level. Americans who were alive at the time remember 9/11 so vividly. This was, in some ways, similar. Just if you could describe for our viewers, for you personally when this happened on October 7th, what was that like for you and the people of Israel? Just kind of describe the emotions that you've been going through.

Cohen: Yes. I think you made a very appropriate comparison because this is our 9/11. Just like every American citizen will always remember when they first heard about the 9/11 attacks, same applies to Israel. I personally just came, it was in Chicago, it was nighttime here, morning time in Israel. We came back from Shabbat dinner of friends celebrating the Jewish sacred day of Shabbat. I checked the news in Israel before I went to bed and then I started to understand that something very bad is going on. Of course, I couldn't go to sleep. I followed the news until 2 or 3 a.m. here, which was already morning time in Israel, and we definitely understood that this is something that is unprecedented in the scope and the scale of what we've seen before.

Murphy: Did you lose any friends of family in those attacks?

Cohen: You know, thank God my family is okay, my friends are physically okay, but I have to say that every Israeli family is affected by what happened because we're a small country, everybody knows everybody, we're talking about 1,400 casualties, 200 hostages, more than 5,000 Israelis who were wounded. So, everybody basically knows everybody. So, this is something that really affected the whole country.

Murphy: And what is it like even now, weeks later, and now we're into the ongoing military conflict. What are emotions, what are spirits like, especially when you talk to people you know back in Israel? How are people doing?

Cohen: People in Israel are devastated, devastated. This is something, we spoke about 9/11, and this is the equivalent to 50,000 Americans, God forbid, casualties. So, this is for us not one or two or five, this is like 50 9/11s. This is tremendous. So, Israelis are devastated right now. But I think that after three weeks what I'm seeing right now is also the spirit of civil society that really our civil society really shines bright right now. The mutual help to -- we're talking about 200,000 Israelis who have been displaced from their homes in the southern border with Gaza and in the northern border with Lebanon. So, there's a lot of help, a lot of support. Hundreds of thousands of Israeli men and women have been enlisted, have been called to the reserve service in the Army, they have been deployed in the south and in the north. So, basically the whole country is now concentrated in what we see really as a fight to save our home and this is what we're focused on.

Masters: The three of us are political journalists in Iowa. That is where the presidential nomination starts for the republicans for 2024. A lot of these events that we go to, the presidential candidates are speaking in sound bites and the Israel Hamas war is one thing that is getting talked about a lot, again in sound bites. A very general understanding of what is going on is among the people who are attending these different events. When presidential candidates are jockeying for support and oversimplifying a conflict happening in Israel, what does that do the conflict itself?

Cohen: This is a good question because we're talking about a conflict that has been going on for years now. We're talking about I think the most basic truth about the conflict is that there are two nations that see the Holy Land as their homeland. Back in '47, since 1947 when the United Nations adopted a resolution calling for a two-state solution, Israel accepted that, unfortunately the Palestinian Arabs did not accept that so we have an independent Jewish state that is Israel but not a Palestinian state. And unfortunately, in the past decades, and especially in the Gaza Strip, what happened is a terrorist organization took over the civil population and are now ruling the Gaza Strip. So, it is a very complicated situation. But, at the same time, I have to say that when we speak about terrorist attacks it becomes very simple to me because when 1,400 Israelis are butchered, babies, mothers being raped and then entire families killed in their houses, set on fire, we're talking about barbarism that is Isis on steroids. It is really unprecedented. So, in this case, this is very simple for me because it is the good against the bad. It is as simple as that when we talk about terrorist attacks.

Masters: At the same time, the debate about American help for -- America's role in foreign policy, that is getting discussed a lot as candidates are running for president. How has that evolved? And what role do you see the United States playing in supporting places like Israel?

Cohen: We are following this debate in American politics. I have to say that I am very happy to see that not only the President but also the American Congress is very, I would say exceptionally united, because we know, all of us know that the American Congress hasn't been so united in recent years. But when it comes to Israel, I see a lot of unity and a lot of understanding about the need to support Israel because when you support Israel you support stability in the Middle East and you support stability in the world. And I think that this is both the message of President Biden, but also it is a bipartisan message that we hear in the American Congress.

Murphy: To Clay's point about the candidates, one of these people will be challenging President Biden next year in an election and could very theoretically win that race and be the next American President. Knowing that, is there something that you're kind of as you watch and hear those candidates, and especially when they talk about what is going on right now, is there something that you're listening for that you want to know what these folks are saying about what they would do in office?

Cohen: I think that America has a major role, not only internally, but also in the world. We want the world to be led by the values of freedom and democracy of America, not by other values that are promoted by other countries maybe in other sides of the world. We need the world to be led by America, we need the world to be led by the values of freedom and democracy. And this is why I think it is very important that American continues to play a major role in setting the right moral compass for the world.

Henderson: In reading through your biography, you spent time working at the United Nations. Could you share what your role was?

Cohen: Yes. I was responsible for overseeing what is happening in the Security Council with regards to Israel. The Security Council, if you wish to think of it, you could say that it is maybe the government or the security cabinet of the world. Unfortunately, speaking about the leadership role of America, there is other voices in the United Nations that are not necessarily adhered to the values of freedom and democracy. So, the United Nations is a very complicated arena, not only for Israel, but for many other countries including the United States. The moral clarity that we have and that most Americans have are not necessarily represented by all the countries in the United Nations. So, it is a tough game in many cases. And again, I'm very thankful to the fact that America takes a leadership role also in the United Nations.

Henderson: So, Clay read earlier a statement from President Biden. I'll just read a little bit of what the United Nations Chief said this week. He said, "the situation in Gaza grows more dire by the hour." If you were at the U.N. right now, and there was a debate in the Security Council earlier this week about the Israel Hamas war, what would you be doing? What would you be saying?

Cohen: What I think is very important to explain right now and to share is the context because what I heard from the Secretary General of the United Nations that was abhorrent for me was in a way trying to give context or give some understanding to this heinous terrorist attack. He then regretted saying that and trying to say something else. But, our ambassador in the United Nations called the Secretary General to leave his office because of what he said because we need to have world clarity also in the arena of the United Nations. And this way I would demand from every member of the United Nations, we do understand and my heart really goes out to the suffering of the Palestinian people in the Gaza Strip. They are not to blame for what Hamas does. And this is why it's important not only -- what Hamas does is they're actually perpetrating double war crime. First, they intentionally attack Israeli civilians. This is the first war crime. But secondly, they use the civils in Gaza, the civilian population in Gaza as human shields. And this is the second war crime. So, I think that both for the benefit of Israelis, but also for the people of Gaza, it is important to eradicate Hamas, to really crash this terrorist leadership of Hamas in the Gaza Strip for the benefit and for the future of both Israelis and Palestinians.

Henderson: So, when the head of the U.N. says it calls for a humanitarian cease fire, is that something that you find tenable?

Cohen: We are discussing, and the Americans are leading the efforts in the United Nations, not for a cease fire, because many countries, or some countries, not many, call for a cease fire. What does a cease fire mean? Cease fire means, all right, halt your operations, save Hamas. Right? Because if we're entering a cease fire that means that Hamas remains in power and that is very dangerous. At the same time, what the Americans are trying to do, and we support that, are humanitarian causes, which means let's pause for two, three, four, five hours, whatever is needed, to make sure that humanitarian supplies enter into the Gaza Strip from Egypt, for example. But we will have to continue to operate militarily in the Gaza Strip to make sure we eradicate Hamas while the civil population gets humanitarian needs.

Murphy: So, if Israel is successful in eradicating Hamas, as is the goal, what comes next?

Cohen: This is the most important question and when we think of the military goal, fully eradicating Hamas’s capability of perpetrating terror attacks, we should also think of the day after the war. How should the Gaza Strip be ruled and managed? You know, I think that the most important thing on the day after is to make sure that both the international community but also our Arab friends and allies in the region, and Israel has a lot of Arab allies in the region because of the -- and because of the peace agreements that we have had in the past years to make sure that other Arab countries take responsibility on this region, on the Gaza Strip, to make sure that the day after Hamas, they are able, the Palestinian population there, to set a road map and future for the civilian population there for a better life, better infrastructure, better education, eradicating the radicalism that is so deeply rooted right now among the population. This is our goal and it is not something for months, it is a plan, a road map for the next years. And we need the whole international community and the Arab allies to do that.

Murphy: I was going to ask, what will it take to get there? Is that coalition that you're describing, what is the key to finding that --

Cohen: I think we need a coalition, we will need a coalition that is composed by the United States, of course, by the European Union and by the major moderate Arab countries in our region. We're talking about Egypt and Jordan, we're talking about the United Arab Emirates, Morocco, Bahrain, maybe even Saudi Arabia because we're hoping right after the war to resume the normalization talk with Saudi Arabia. We want and the Saudis want to be on the right side of history, that is with the United States, and not with Iran and other evil forces in our region.

Masters: Let's talk about some of the implications that this war has led to other parts of the world. We've seen a rise in anti-Semitism since October 7th when you look at some of the things that have come out of France, the interior minister saying that recently 102 people have been arrested in relation to anti-Semitic acts. Here in the country, the Anti-Defamation League has shown just an explosion in the amount of anti-Semitism acts that have gone forward. What are you seeing in the Midwest in the conversations that you're having throughout Iowa and other states?

Cohen: Thank you for addressing that because this is a major concern for me. As you said, we're seeing an explosion in anti-Semitic expressions, attacks. One of the major things, or I would say one of the major arenas of anti-Semitism just recently in the past weeks is university campuses, including here in the Midwest. What we're seeing is that Jewish students and pro-Israeli students are being intimidated against, they are afraid to show their Jewish identity, pro-Israel identity, they are being intimidated by I would say pro-Hamas students because they're going out publicly celebrating the massacre of 1,400 Israelis saying this is resistance. So, the legitimacy of those attacks now among many students is something that is of great concern for me. I think that we need to hear university administrations speak out much more strongly about that. We need to see leadership from elected officials against that because this is America. It is impossible that Jews would be intimidated in this country because of their Jewish identity.

Henderson: There are perhaps a very small percentage of Iowans who have traveled to Israel and many of all of us who watch the news hear about the Iron Dome. What is the importance of it? And when does it need to be restocked?

Cohen: Thank you. The Iron Dome has saved so many lives, both in Israel, by the way, but also Palestinian lives because it really helps us, this is cutting edge technology, an American and Israeli joint venture that truly helps intercept the missiles and the rockets that are shot from Gaza or from Lebanon in the sky and by that saves a lot of lives in Israel but also Palestinian lives. Now, unfortunately the Iron Dome system was in extreme use during the past weeks because of the fact that so many missiles have been shot towards Israel from the Gaza Strip. We will definitely need to restock the Iron Dome. I know that both the American administration, but also the American Congress, is very supportive of this. So, I'm sure that that will happen very soon.

Henderson: As Clay mentioned, the three of us cover the campaign trail a lot and there was a great bit of discussion about moving the U.S. Embassy to Jerusalem. Can you describe for us how important that may have been for Israel?

Cohen: It was highly important.

Henderson: Why?

Cohen: Why? Because Jerusalem has been not only the capital of Israel -- each country gets to choose its capital -- Iowa gets to choose where its capital is, every other sovereign country, France, China, Canada gets to choose where their capital is. In the case of Israel, we said, Jerusalem is our capital. This is our historic capital for 3,000 years when Jews were in the -- for 2,000 years they have been praying towards Jerusalem, really praying to go back to Zion to Jerusalem. But only in the case of Israel, only in the case of the Jewish state do many countries say no, we do not recognize Jerusalem as your capital, we place our -- in Tel Aviv. This is ridiculous. And I'm very happy many American Presidents have spoken about the need to move the American Embassy to Jerusalem and there was one President who did it four years ago and who has to be recognized for that. So, it's not only symbolic, it also sends a very strong message to every other country that the leader of the world that is the United States recognized Jerusalem as the capital of Israel.

Henderson: You were a part of a key advisor to the foreign minister of Israel as the administration changed, as President Biden took office. What was that onboarding like?

Cohen: It is a natural process that happens every four or eight years in America. We invested a lot of efforts during this transition because we had wonderful relations with the previous administrations and we wanted to build the relations with the new administration. And I think the first two or three months were dedicated just to establish contacts and relations and I think that we have very intimate dialogue with the administration right now, which is very important.

Murphy: We have just a little more than a minute left, Mr. Cohen. Under better circumstances we might have had more time to talk about some of your other duties that you talked about at the top when you described your job. Maybe, if you could, just tell us a little bit in our last minute here. You talked about establishing business and economic relations throughout the region. What does that kind of work normally look like?

Cohen: Let's take Iowa, for example. Israel is very strong. We're a small country. We are the -- Lake Michigan is three times bigger than Israel, just to give some proportions. At the same time, we're almost 10 million people in this small territory. Israel is a very small market, but also a very innovative market. There is a lot of technology and innovation going on, including in the fields of agriculture and water technology. And we know that this is something that is very relevant for Iowans. So, what we're trying to do is to connect Israeli business people and Iowa business people to create more synergy and more partnerships on agriculture, water technologies, just for example.

Henderson: What about artificial intelligence?

Cohen: That is a major issue. We try to be on the front line of AI in Israel and this is something that will probably dominate our lives in the next decade. So, we have to be very on the front line, but also to make sure that we use this technology in the right way.

Henderson: Well, I'm looking at our clock and we are out of time today for this conversation. Thank you for joining us.

Cohen: Thank you. Thank you for having me. It's a pleasure.

Henderson: You may watch every episode of Iowa Press online at iowapbs.org. For everyone here at Iowa PBS, thanks for watching today.

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Funding for Iowa Press was provided by Friends, the Iowa PBS Foundation.

The Associated General Contractors of Iowa, the public's partner in building Iowa's highway, bridge and municipal utility infrastructure.

Elite Casino Resorts is rooted in Iowa. Elite's 1,600 employees are our company's greatest asset. A family-run business, Elite supports volunteerism, encourages promotions from within and shares profits with our employees.

Across Iowa, hundreds of neighborhood banks strive to serve their communities, provide jobs and help local businesses. Iowa Banks are proud to back the life you build. Learn more at iowabankers.com.