The Little-Known Jewish Community within Muslim Indonesia

Feb. 16 2022

Last month, Rabbi Yaakov Baruch realized a long-held dream: opening a Holocaust museum in Indonesia, where he operates the country’s only synagogue. The unveiling was attended by more than 100 invitees, including the German ambassador and other foreign diplomats. But as Chris Barrett and Karuni Rompies point out, the move was not universally welcomed.

The Indonesia Ulema Council (MUI), a group of scholars that oversees Islamic affairs, has called for the museum to be shut. “I beg the local government; . . . this hurts the Palestinian people,” said Sudarnoto Abdul Hakim, the head of the MUI’s international-relations unit.

Hidayat Nur Wahid, a senior figure in the Islamist faith-based Prosperous Justice Party and the deputy speaker of Indonesia’s upper house, was also scathing. He said he believed the museum to be a ploy by Israel to try to normalize relations with Indonesia, which has long rejected diplomatic ties because of its support for the Palestinian cause.

It’s an issue that has been in the headlines lately after U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken raised the prospect of establishing formal relations between Indonesia and Israel during a visit to Jakarta in December. The controversy about the photo exhibition prompted reporters last week to pose questions again to Indonesia’s foreign ministry about where it stands on Israel.

Read more at Sydney Morning Herald

More about: Anti-Semitism, Holocaust Museums, Indonesian Jewry, Jewish-Muslim Relations

Egypt Is Trapped by the Gaza Dilemma It Helped to Create

Feb. 14 2025

Recent satellite imagery has shown a buildup of Egyptian tanks near the Israeli border, in violation of Egypt-Israel agreements going back to the 1970s. It’s possible Cairo wants to prevent Palestinians from entering the Sinai from Gaza, or perhaps it wants to send a message to the U.S. that it will take all measures necessary to keep that from happening. But there is also a chance, however small, that it could be preparing for something more dangerous. David Wurmser examines President Abdel Fatah el-Sisi’s predicament:

Egypt’s abysmal behavior in allowing its common border with Gaza to be used for the dangerous smuggling of weapons, money, and materiel to Hamas built the problem that exploded on October 7. Hamas could arm only to the level that Egypt enabled it. Once exposed, rather than help Israel fix the problem it enabled, Egypt manufactured tensions with Israel to divert attention from its own culpability.

Now that the Trump administration is threatening to remove the population of Gaza, President Sisi is reaping the consequences of a problem he and his predecessors helped to sow. That, writes Wurmser, leaves him with a dilemma:

On one hand, Egypt fears for its regime’s survival if it accepts Trump’s plan. It would position Cairo as a participant in a second disaster, or nakba. It knows from its own history; King Farouk was overthrown in 1952 in part for his failure to prevent the first nakba in 1948. Any leader who fails to stop a second nakba, let alone participates in it, risks losing legitimacy and being seen as weak. The perception of buckling on the Palestine issue also resulted in the Egyptian president Anwar Sadat’s assassination in 1981. President Sisi risks being seen by his own population as too weak to stand up to Israel or the United States, as not upholding his manliness.

In a worst-case scenario, Wurmser argues, Sisi might decide that he’d rather fight a disastrous war with Israel and blow up his relationship with Washington than display that kind of weakness.

Read more at The Editors

More about: Egypt, Gaza War 2023