The good news of Trump’s nomination of an extremist to be the US ambassador to Israel is that the American Jewish monolith in favor of Israel will shatter publicly and liberal Zionists will have to throw in the towel on the failed dream of partitioning the land so as to preserve a “Jewish democracy.”
Abba Solomon’s two nights in the U.S. with emissaries from Modi’in, Israel, urging Jews to immigrate there, and nearby Bil’in in occupied Palestine, describing beatings and land confiscation, convince him that the Nakba for Palestinians has never ended.
Since the election, one target of President-elect Donald Trump’s criticism of corporate America has been the Lockheed Martin F-35 stealth fighter program. Interestingly, Trump’s criticism coincided with the delivery of the first two out of 50 F-35 jets to Israel, the first foreign country to receive them. Donald Trump claims he wants “to make good deals for this country,” and if he is serious, he would reassess the horrible deal that currently exists between the U.S. and Israel.
“We are now witnessing in the Jordan Valley an accelerated process of what must, I fear, be called ethnic cleansing. It’s not a term I use lightly,” David Shulman, Israeli poet, Sanskrit scholar and member of Ta’ayush, writes in the New York Review of Books
Music education is not common in Gaza but now nearly 190 eager students are attending the Gaza Music School, which was established in 2008 as part of the Edward Said National Conservatory of Music. Many hope to use their instruments to escape from the turbulent situation in the besieged Gaza Strip.
Jewish peace activists who contributed to the volume, Beyond Tribal Loyalties, did not merely adopt a particular political point of view; rather, they rejected a whole way of life and consciousness. were labelled as ‘self-hating Jews’, ‘Nazis’, ‘Israel-haters’ and even ‘anti-Semites’.
Kingmakers Sheldon Adelson and Haim Saban are suddenly reduced to begging for crumbs from their respective political parties. This is the message of John Bolton’s failed candidacy for the State Department, Keith Ellison’s survival as frontrunner for the Democratic Party chair, and Trump’s elevation of extremist David Friedman as his ambassador to Israel. These are all signs of the new nationalism we are going to be seeing in the Trump administration: Jews can have Israel and Palestine, but America is for Americans.
Donald Trump has nominated 57-year-old Long Island native David Friedman to serve as U.S ambassador to Israel. Friedman served as Trump’s Israel adviser during the election campaign and has worked as Trump’s bankruptcy lawyer. He is a vociferous pro-settlement advocate who openly advocates for the annexation of the West Bank, and serves as president of American Friends of Bet El Institutions, a settlement advocacy group. Friedman will join an administration that has continually promised to recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel and has made clear its opposition to the two-state solution. In announcing the pick Trump called Friedman “a longtime friend and trusted adviser.”
Millions of Yemeni children are starving in large part because of the 20-month Saudi bombings, and US weapons makers General Dynamics, Raytheon, and Lockheed Martin are making a killing on sales. It is time to end arms sales to a repressive regime.