As we all brace for Donald Trump to say he will move the U.S. Embassy to Jerusalem, people are speculating why, and last night David Makovsky, a pro-Israel analyst who favors moving the embassy, said that Trump will play to his domestic “base” by moving the embassy.
Shibley Telhami of Brookings promptly debunked that claim, saying on the PBS News Hour that his polling shows that voters are not pushing for the move: 63 percent of Americans oppose moving the embassy to Jerusalem, including 44 percent of Republicans. “While 53 percent of Evangelicals support the move, 40 percent oppose it.”
Telhami offered his own theory: Trump will use the uproar over the (anticipated) move of the U.S. embassy to Jerusalem to cover for the failure of his vaunted “deal of the century” between Israelis and Palestinians:
Why do it? What’s driving the president to do it? There’s no pressure from the Israelis. There’s no pressure on him from the Arab world. It doesn’t advance America’s ends in the Middle East, so why is he doing it?… This issue plays into the hands of America’s enemies in the Middle East… I don’t see an upside, that’s why I’m led to a belief that maybe the administration has already given up on making peace and they think this will enable them to blame someone else.”
Telhami and Makovsky are both leaving out one person who is pushing for this: Just Trump’s biggest donor.
Eli Clifton notes that Sheldon Adelson– who along with his wife Miriam are Trump’s biggest donors at $35 million — has expressed impatience with the Trump administration’s failure to move the embassy, and expressed fury when Secretary of State Rex Tillerson said he was opposed to the move.
Adelson’s own newspaper in Nevada said that Adelson was nettled by Trump’s hesitancy to move the embassy, in October. While the Times of Israel said that Adelson was so pissed last spring, that he had shut off the “spigot” of cash to Trump.
Trump has a history of pleasing Adelson, which Clifton has documented:
Trump dramatically changed his message on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict in particular, saying that he would move the embassy to Jerusalem and wouldn’t call for a freeze on the construction of illegal settlements in the West Bank, as he closed in on the nomination and sought to secure Adelson’s support for his general election campaign.
The failure to talk about Sheldon Adelson’s influence is scandalous when you consider that Adelson did the same thing in the George W. Bush Administration, 18 years ago. Alarmed by the possible division of Jerusalem at Camp David in 2000, neoconservatives including Douglas Feith founded a group called One Jerusalem. Adelson gave money to that group. And at least tons of money to the Republican campaign for the White House, too. And lo and behold, Feith was installed at the Pentagon in a policy-making position. And the “peace process” was backburnered, till Condoleezza Rice demanded Annapolis, and Elliott Abrams fought her every step of the way…
When Adelson sought to stop Annapolis, George Bush tried to temporize with Adelson by saying (per Connie Bruck) “I can’t be more Catholic than the Pope.” (I.e., I’m not Netanyahu, give me some breathing room.)
Adelson has said that he wished he’d fought for the Israeli army, not the U.S. one, and he urged Obama to fire a nuclear weapon on Iran.
On this issue, no one’s allowed to recognize a pattern. (Though P.S. Trump tried to block the UN Security Council resolution against settlements a year ago, while he and Mike Flynn and Jared Kushner were civilians, and maybe just maybe that’s a problem.)
Adelson and Trump – two bald men lending each other a comb.
Maybe Trump can see the disarray in the Arab world and with MbS trying to force Abbas to agree with almost any US peace plan https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/03/world/middleeast/palestinian-saudi-peace-plan.html including Abu Dis as the putative capital of a non sovereign Palestinian entity. Trump is a chancer and maybe he thinks [not unreasonably] that Mbs will throw the Palestinians under the bus, we shall see.
Phil Weiss, “And P.S. Trump tried to block the UN Security Council resolution against settlements a year ago, while he and Mike Flynn and Jared Kushner were civilians, and maybe just maybe that’s a problem”. Sure is, Trumps team did collude with Egypt and Israel to subvert official US policy over UNSC Resolution 2334, that has not been denied. [‘collusion’.. agreement between people to act together secretly or illegally in order to deceive or cheat someone. Cambridge dictionary.] As far as we know Russia did not collude with anyone since they rejected US requests on that resolution. Professors Daniel Hemel and Eric Posner writing in the NYT say “Why the Trump team should fear the Logan Act”] here… https://www.nytimes.com/2017/12/04/opinion/trump-team-flynn-logan-act.html
Kushner and others should also have registered under the Foreign Agents Registration Act [FARA].
People like Adelson and Trump have enjoyed exercising power for so long that they confuse might for right. And of course, Israel’s Zionist leaders are in the same boat. Hope it springs a leak all around.
“The U.S. State Department issued a cable to all its diplomatic posts worldwide on Wednesday asking its officials to defer non-essential travel to Israel, Jerusalem and the West Bank until December 20, according to a copy of the cable seen by Reuters.
“Embassy Tel Aviv and Consulate General Jerusalem request that all non-essential visitors defer their travel to Israel, Jerusalem and the West Bank from December 4-December 20, 2017,” said the cable, which did not specify a reason for the request.
read more: https://www.haaretz.com/us-news/1.827295
Can`t be long before even the braindead right wing goons running the show in Zioland realise that visits of any kind to Muslim countries or countries with significant numbers of Muslims ( inc “essential” ones ) have become inherently dangerous.
I fear for the minority of moral and honest Israeli Jews who genuinely want (wanted now ) a reciprocal peace deal and whose lives and livelihoods will be compromised by this lunacy. I hope that they realise that the time to get out of this miserable little Fascist Apartheid state has come. As for the right wing adult Jewish Israeli majority they will deserve what they are going to get. I fear only for the children which they have brought into their warped Chosen People / Chosen Land fantasy world.
The ones ultimately responsible for this and the consequences are the AIPAC Elders and their bought and bent “supporters” in the US Congress and the US senate
Next Zioloony move will be on the Al Asqa mosque compound. When foreigners picture Jerusalem IMHO the immediate image conjured up is this Muslim image. The Zioloonies won`t rest until it is demolished and some sort of Disneyland Temple is put there in its place.
As for the UK. Theresa May has failed to condemn the move outright. Only mealy mouthed expressions of “concern” and continued support for the 2SS mirage. Still she is going to phone the idiot Donald and put her foot down (not).
http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/politics/theresa-fails-condemn-donald-trump-11649175
Tick tick
I was wondering why everyone who comments here is against the move.at least admit that the jerusalem is important to relegion.because it is.it has the potential to be a truly spiritual place.important to many relegions.needs a renovation.decent sewerage treatment.river needs to be sorted.cleaned up.greater jerusalem municipality needs to get the roads paved.the low cost housing could do with a abu dis and dat.it has great tourist potential too and the light rail has helped.
I hope the russians and chinese along with the usa and uk and the eu countries will move there embassies to.
Israel needs a chance to turn weapons into plough shares.so all its citizens prosper.
Next year in Jerusalem.see you there