Jason Greenblatt: Mitzvah Observance Helped Me Understand Middle East Conflict

Jason Greenblatt, former White House Envoy to the Middle East, recently spoke with Arutz Sheva about himself and the situation in the Middle East.

He began by saying he “would encourage observant Jewish people to continue to seek these [governmental] roles.” Greenblatt thought that the “historical moment” of having a group of observant Jews working in the White House might well happen again.

“It’s the only way we can have a voice,” he said, adding that his mitzvah observance “enabled me to understand the [Mideast] conflict even more deeply” since “it permitted me to speak the same ‘language’ as the Arabs” who are “religious people by nature.”

“I worked for Donald Trump for 20 years, and he was amazingly respectful of me being an observant Jew,” he recalled.

“[Trump is] very personable,” Greenblatt said. “First of all, he’s actually quite funny. Very warm. When my kids used to fly on his plane with him to Florida, he would walk up and down the aisles offering them snacks. He’d read the back of the package to determine whether or not it was kosher. He was always respectful to me, my wife and my kids,” Greenblatt said.

“In 23 years, we got into just one disagreement,” he said. “So all the nonsense that you’re hearing from the various books that are out there to attack him and how some in the news media portray him — that was not my experience.”

Greenblatt felt that while “until very recently,” the current administration was mistaken to be “so dead set on trying to re-enter the [Iran nuclear deal],” Biden’s people are finally becoming “a little more realistic” on the Iranian front.

{Matzav.com Israel}