The Deep Map

On November 1st, Israelis headed to the polls for the fifth time in the last four years to elect the members of its 25th Knesset. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his far-right coalition emerged victorious. In the lead up to Israel’s 75th birthday, it’s a good time to ask: is Israel changing, and if so, how? How will these elections affect the U.S.-Israel relationship, Arab Israelis, Palestinians, and, most importantly, the future of Israel itself? This month, Robert is sitting down with Israelis from all walks of life to answer these questions and to use these elections as a cipher to better understand Israel, the Near East, and the early 21st century world writ large.

Robert’s first guest is Philos Senior Research Fellow Dr. Faydra Shapiro, Founder and Executive Director of the Israel Center for Jewish-Christian Relations and Research Fellow at the Center for the Study of Religions at Tel Hai College in northern Israel. She has published and presented extensively on the topic of Christian relations with Israel and resides in the Galilee with her family. Canadian-born, Dr. Shapiro made Aliyah to Israel 14 years ago. She identifies as a religious Zionist and feels a deep passion for the survival of the world’s only Jewish state, while always trying to see the country empathetically without giving up the principles she believes are vital to the fulfillment of its divine mission.

In this bonus episode, Robert wraps up the Abraham Accords series. Each guest Robert spoke with had a different approach to these landmark peace deals, and Robert spends this episode trying to make sense of the information he tracked down.

Do the four peace deals signed between Israel and Arab countries in late 2020 carry any religious significance? So far, all of Robert's guests this month have said: not much. But this week, Jason Guberman, executive director of the American Sephardi Federation, goes against the grain, arguing that the Abraham Accords signify a return to classical Middle Eastern values and a much older "Judeo-Islamic tradition" that was lost in 1948.

Sudan is the largest, yet least talked about, Arab state to join the Abraham Accords, and certainly the least expected, having been on America's state sponsor of terrorism list until the night before. Part of the reason for the silence is the coup that rocked the country in late 2021, throwing its political future into question. Another is the general ignorance that surrounds this ancient seat of culture on the Nile, which bridges the Arab world and black Africa. What role does this country of 45 million people, half of which are under the age of 20, play in the Islamic world? What role does it play in the Abrahamic conversation? How has the coup changed all that, and what's it really about? Robert brings his questions to Ambassador Alberto Fernandez, a career Cuban-American foreign service officer and fluent Arabic speaker who spent years on the ground in Sudan, including in some of the country's toughest conflicts in the 21st century. 

Alberto Fernandez

Alberto M. Fernandez (@AlbertoMiguelF5) is Vice President of the Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI), a position he held from 2015 to 2017. He previously served as President of Middle East Broadcasting Networks (MBN), a U.S.-funded Arabic-language news organization, from 2017 to 2020.  Prior to joining MEMRI, Ambassador Fernandez was a Foreign Service Officer from 1983 to 2015 and served as the State Department’s Coordinator for the Center for Strategic Counterterrorism Communications from 2012 to 2015. He also served as U.S. Ambassador to Equatorial Guinea and U.S. Charge d’Affaires to Sudan. He held senior public diplomacy positions at the U.S. embassies in Afghanistan, Jordan, Syria, Guatemala, Kuwait, and in the Department’s Near East Affairs (NEA) Bureau. He speaks fluent Spanish and Arabic in addition to English.

In late 2020, an unexpected series of peace deals between Israel and four Arab countries shocked the world and seemed to inaugurate a happy new chapter in international politics. Robert Nicholson is a fan. But critics say the "Abraham Accords" are flawed at best, oppressive at worst, and will actually make the Near East more volatile in the long run by empowering autocrats and suppressing the will of the people.

One such critic is Shadi Hamid, who joins Robert in studio to make the case against the Abraham Accords and explain why the Islamic world needs to make peace with Israel on its own terms -- or, quite possibly, not at all.

Shadi Hamid is a Senior Fellow at Brookings Institution, a Research Professor at Fuller Seminary, and a contributing author at The Atlantic. He is also the author of Islamic Exceptionalism, a book about how Islam’s “exceptionalism” influences politics and the future of the Middle East. His new book, The Problem of Democracy, is being released on October 15th.

The Deep Map is a weekly podcast that explores the hidden religious and cultural forces driving headlines in the Near East and around the world. Your host, Robert Nicholson, founder and president of The Philos Project, takes on a new topic each month, peeling back the layers of world events in dialogue with a wide range of guests, looking for answers and challenging his own beliefs along the way.