“What he talked about was Israel, that’s all he wanted to talk about” — Donald Trump explains the motivation of the late Sheldon Adelson, the biggest donor to the Republican Party, and it goes unreported in the U.S. press. Like Kevin McCarthy fawning over Adelson’s widow Miriam, an Israeli citizen, for giving the Republicans a majority in the House. Imagine a Russian billionaire with that influence!
There’s a reason Joe Biden is running so far right on Israel. He fears Trump upping his share of Jewish vote in battleground states by citing his pro-Israel record and winning them. Matt Brooks of the RJC describes the strategy.
The Democratic Party has squelched the Palestinian issue. Yesterday, Kamala Harris had a conference call with 1800 Jewish Democratic donors and assured them a President Biden will never condition aid to Israel over its conduct and that Biden-Harris will show “unwavering support” for Israel. The party has shut down the left’s criticism of Israel saying it could damage the effort to make Donald Trump a one-termer.
Jared Kushner got a diplomatic coup today. But Israel remains committed to annexation of the West Bank, the Israeli press is reporting, notwithstanding the historic deal between the UAE and Israel to normalize relations.
Trump’s “Deal of the Century” ends the two-state paradigm by endorsing Israel’s “Nationality Law” of 2018 and longstanding Zionist and biblical assertions about Jewish claims to the land and the absence of national rights of the indigenous population: the Palestinians.
Israel and its rightwing supporters wanted an attack on Iran and they did not get it, this week anyway. Though of course the media did not identify the Israel lobby and Netanyahu as cheerleaders for war American people don’t want.
American liberal Zionists and rightwing Zionists wrote opposing letters to Trump this week over Netanyahu’s plans to annex West Bank settlements. The open squabbling is a result of Trump’s extreme support for Israel and also the 52-year-long occupation, which has at last brought a crisis to the Jewish establishment’s consensus, that to be Jewish means to support Israel.
Before Donald Trump recognized Jerusalem as Israel’s capital in 2017, he says he got calls from “presidents, dictators, prime minister, kings, queens– everybody” and didn’t take the calls. Similar pressure kept previous presidents from making the move, he told the Republican Jewish Coalition in Las Vegas yesterday, but moving the embassy made his biggest donors, Sheldon and Miriam Adelson, very happy.
(Photo: REUTERS/Vivek Prakash) Sheldon Adelson’s mark on the 2012 presidential election just got a little…