At The Forward Jacob Kornbluh reports on an amazing detail from Martin Baron’s Collision of Power: Trump, Bezos, and The Washington Post, which hit bookstores this week.
After meeting with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas during a June 2017 trip former President Donald Trump asked his team whether military aid to Israel could be conditioned in order to bring about a Middle East peace deal.
Trump later told journalists that he was informed there was no connection between the two things. In other words, Israel couldn’t be leveraged. “No connection?,” he responded, bewildered.
The campaign narrative about Trump being an outsider hellbent on “draining the swamp” was obviously a work a fiction, but sometimes his initial ignorance of Washington’s inner workings proved to be illuminating.
This feels like one of those instances. An outsider unfamiliar with how foreign policy functions might assume that the United States and Israel have spent decades legitimately pushing for peace. They’d probably also naturally reason that, since the United States gives Israel billions, threatening the assistance might push the country to the table.
Keep in mind that Trump loves deals. Big, fast deals that generate praise and press. He was briefly focused on a peace deal in Korea before realizing it was an uphill battle and he quickly lost interest. Peace between Israel and Palestine has long been framed as the ultimate deal. A knotty puzzle that the world’s most distinguished thinkers have been trying to crack for years.
Recall Barak Ravid’s book on Trump’s middle east policy, which was published in 2021. Trump told the Axios reporter that Abbas was “terrific” when he met with him. “I thought he wanted to make a deal more than Netanyahu,” Trump admitted directly.
Trump might have developed a better understanding of the region than he let on, but that certainly wasn’t reflected in his policy. He moved the embassy to Jerusalem, recognized the Golan Heights, and delivered the Abraham Accords. He was apoplectic when Netanyahu became one of the first foreign leaders to congratulate Biden on his election victory. ““F**k him,” he declared. He had given the Israeli leader so much, he expected some loyalty.
Netanyahu was careful when Trump’s frustration went public. “I highly appreciate President Trump’s big contribution to Israel and its security,” he told the media. “I also appreciate the importance of the strong alliance between Israel and the U.S. and therefore it was important for me to congratulate the incoming president.”
Trump has repeatedly made antisemitic comments suggesting that Jews who voted for Biden were disloyal Israel. “Just a quick reminder for liberal Jews who voted to destroy America & Israel because you believed in false narratives!” he declared on Truth Social last month, “Let’s hope you learned from your mistake & make better choices moving forward!”
For a great insight into the political mindset Trump lacked back in 2017 look no further than a recent Ravid piece on the potential normalization deal between Saudi Arabia and Israel. Biden and Netanyahu say they agree the deal should include “steps” towards a two-state solution, whatever that is supposed to mean nowadays. Check out this amazing sentence, italics mine: “The Israeli official and source briefed on the meeting said Netanyahu agreed with the concept of taking steps to keep the door open for a future peace agreement with the Palestinians open.”
Incredible.
A 2021 Chicago Council Survey found that 50% of Americans want the U.S. to restrict military aid to Israel.
CUNY caves to pro-Israel pressure
Back in May, graduating CUNY law student Fatima Mohammed gave a commencement speech about using legal tools to further the cause of human rights. Her comments included a direct criticism of Israel’s apartheid policies.
“Israel continues to indiscriminately rain bullets and bombs on worshippers, murdering the old, the young, attacking even funerals and graveyards as it encourages lynch mobs to target Palestinian homes and businesses, as it imprisons its children, as it continues its project of settler colonialism, expelling Palestinians from their homes, carrying the ongoing Nakba… our silence is no longer acceptable,” she told attendees. “Palestine can no longer be the exception to our pursuit of justice.”
This caused a firestorm among pro-Israel organizations, lawmakers, and websites.
“Imagine being so crazed by hatred for Israel as a Jewish State that you make it the subject of your commencement speech at a law school graduation,” tweeted Rep. Ritchie Torres (D-NY). “Anti-Israel derangement syndrome at work.”
“City University of New York class day speaker slanders Israel and enthusiastically celebrates antisemitism,” wrote Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX) “Cheers on open borders & releasing violent criminals from jail. And decries the ‘fascist NYPD.’ This is a LAW school. Paid for with tax dollars.”
“Graduations should be a place for all — not a time to denigrate students’ identities,” said the local chapter of the Anti-Defamation League (ADL).
According to a new piece from Beth Harpaz, the school was also inundated with death threats and hate mail. Donors threatened to withhold support. Harpaz also reports that the pressure has worked. CUNY has apparently caved, and student speakers will be barred from the next commencement.
“Caving to demands for the suppression of free speech critical of Israel/Zionism, CUNY Law School sacrifices students’ free speech on everything,” tweets Foundation for Middle East Peace president Lara Friedman. “Yet another wake-up call for people who prefer to ignore the assault on Palestinian rights advocacy.”
Odds & Ends
???? ‘Nathan Thrall has written a masterpiece about Israel’s occupation’
???? Watch our newest video, ‘The Oslo Accords: Failure or Betrayal?’:
On September 13, 1993, Israeli Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin and Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO) Negotiator Mahmoud Abbas signed the Declaration of Principles on Interim Self-Government Arrangements, more commonly known as the first Oslo Accords. Following the signing of the agreement, Rabin and PLO Chairman Yasser Arafat shook hands in front of an elated U.S. President Bill Clinton, creating one of the most well-known photo ops of the past century.
But behind the photo op, a much more sinister picture was playing out on the ground. On paper, the Oslo Accords were meant to kick off a five-year “peace process” and culminate with an end to the so-called “Israeli-Palestinian conflict.” In reality, the accords led to more division, fragmentation, and loss for the Palestinians while giving Israel even more control over the people, land, and resources.
In this report, Mondoweiss sat down with former PLO Executive Committee member Dr. Hanan Ashrawi, Dr. Yara Hawari of Palestinian think tank Al-Shabaka, young activists in Ramallah and Nablus, and resistance fighters in Jenin. From the initial mistakes and flaws made within the agreements, to the disastrous affects on Palestine’s youth, the Palestinians we spoke to reflect on the past 30 years since the first Oslo Accords were signed and all the ways in which the agreement impacted their lives, pushing them even further away from achieving liberation and statehood.
???? ‘The New York Times, a cheerleader for Israel and its crimes’
???? American Friends Service Committee’s Jennifer Bing is in Electronic Intifada covering a local effort to push Senator Bernie Sanders further on Palestine:
After meeting with Bernie Sanders’ staff earlier this summer, we were challenged to get more Vermont residents to write to the senator, explaining in personal terms why they feel he should be a leader in the Senate and introduce a long-desired Senate bill about supporting Palestinian rights and ending US complicity in Israel’s ongoing human rights violations.
Thus the “Be Bold Bernie” old school letter-writing effort was born.
Vermont Quakers working with the American Friends Service Committee on the “Apartheid-free Communities” initiative decided that they would dedicate time starting in August to getting Vermonters to write to Senator Sanders.
???????? Jonathan Hoffman in Responsible Statecraft, ‘Biden’s Middle East deal is a disaster’:
The Abraham Accords have become the new “lodestar” of U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East. Through these series of normalization deals, the United States hopes to create a more formal coalition through which it believes it can best advance its interests, namely by maintaining its regional influence amid Russian and Chinese “encroachment” while also allocating more attention to other global theaters such as Eastern Europe and the Pacific.
However, regional actors are increasingly using the Accords as a mechanism to keep the United States entangled in the region as the continued guarantor of their security. The Arab states that joined the Abraham Accords were granted considerable policy concessions for doing so without any serious debate as to whether such tradeoffs served the interests of the United States. They interpret the Accords as a mechanism for maintaining the regional status quo – with more concrete and integrated U.S. security guarantees undergirding it.
???????? ‘Blinken Overrides GOP Block on Palestinian Food Aid at Last Minute Amid Looming Crisis’, Haaretz:
U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken overrode a Republican-issued hold on $75 million in food assistance for the Palestinian Territories, hours before the money was set to be forcibly redistributed elsewhere.
Blinken’s under-the-radar approval of the funds comes after months of pressure from Democratic lawmakers in both houses of Congress, as well as dozens of civil society organizations, all of whom warned abiding by the Republican hold on the previously appropriated funds would lead to 1.2 million Palestinians being without food and causing a humanitarian crisis.
Sen. Jim Risch — the top Republican on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee — had placed holds on the State Department from providing the funding, which is designated for food assistance for Palestinian in the West Bank and Gaza administered by the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA).
???? Exchange between Al Quds reporter Said Arikat and State Department spokesperson Vedant Patel from earlier this week:
Arikat: Both the former ambassador to Israel, Martin Indyk, and the former Jordanian ambassador to the UN, Ra’ad Zeid Al Hussein, wrote an article, lengthy article, in Foreign Affairs that says what a Saudi-Israeli deal could mean for the Palestinians. And they are warning you, saying that the real aim of the judicial reform and so on is it’s a ploy that they want to basically form – have an Israeli state from the river to the sea. That is the aim of the right wing. That’s what they’re saying, right wing government of Israeli currently.
And they’re suggesting to you that whatever you want on the Palestinian issue – they list the three components, which is the – whatever, defense-backed and the nuclear issue and so on. But on the Palestinian issue, that you must extract that before you go ahead with any kind of normalization effort. Do you have any comment on this? Do you feel that something must be sort of gotten from the Israelis, cast in concrete, before moving ahead with any normalization?
Patel: Said, a normalization agreement between Israel and Saudi Arabia will and should include a serious component dealing with the fundamental issues between Israelis and Palestinians. But as I said in answering Michel’s question, I don’t want to get ahead of the process or what that might look like. This is an effort that is ongoing. Again, as the Secretary said, we believe that reaching a normalization agreement between Israel and Saudi Arabia could be transformative for the region. But much work continues to lie ahead, work, as Matt says or points out, that we said is – will require discipline and rigor and a continued engagement of diplomacy. And so we’ll let that process play out.
❓ ‘As Arab-Israeli normalisation expands, where do Palestinians fit?’
✉️ Open letter from James Zogby to Biden on visa waiver:
We thought you understood and therefore were heartened by your 2020 campaign pledge to Arab Americans that , “A Biden-Harris administration will confront discriminatory policies that single out Arab Americans and cast entire communities under suspicion,” and your vow that, “Joe Biden will protect the Constitutional right of our citizens to free speech. He also does not support efforts by any democracy to criminalize free speech and expression which is why he spoke out against Israel’s decision to deny entry to American lawmakers because they favor boycotting Israel.”
Because Israel was allowed to redefine reciprocity, essentially writing their own terms for admission into the VWP, without including a non-discrimination provision that dealt with their treatment of Arab Americans at entry, exit, and checkpoints, or respect for freedom of expression—your administration has failed to meet the commitment you made to us. This is why I’m insulted, betrayed, and angry. I feel that Arab Americans who overwhelmingly supported you deserve better.
Stay safe out there,
Michael
