Marjorie Taylor Greene recently announced that she’s resigning from Congress. The surprising move comes amid public disagreements with President Donald Trump.
The issue of releasing the Jeffrey Epstein files seems like the major sticking point between the two individuals, but MTG did publicly criticize the administration’s support for Israel on numerous occasions.
Obviously the two issues are connected in some capacity, as MTG also brought up Epstein’s connections on Israel.
“We saw Jeffrey Epstein with ties to Ehud Barak,” she told CNN. “We saw him making business deals with them, also business deals that involved the Israeli government, and seems to have led into their intel agencies.”
Greene was seemingly referencing reporting from Drop Site’s Murtaza Hussain and Ryan Grim, two of the only reporters to cover the issue.
“Jeffrey Epstein and Ehud Barak were specialists in war profiteering,” the journalists explain. “At the end of his tenure as Israel’s defense minister and after his supposed “retirement,” Barak embraced a role as a salesman of Israeli security services to embattled governments, opening the door for Israeli intelligence leaders to shape the security apparatuses of several African nations, including the country of Côte d’Ivoire.”
In Congress, Greene didn’t do much on Palestine, and, up until very recently, she was an adamant BDS critic. However, MTG (along with Rep. Thomas Massie, popular conservative pundit Tucker Carlson) seemingly gave voice to a growing opposition to Israel within the GOP.
It’s probably a mistake to view MTG’s departure as a major setback for that movement, as she will likely pivot to a job in right-wing media and continue to espouse the same beliefs, potentially reaching even more people in the process.
The leaders of the Republican Party can not stop the shift.
Take a look at a new survey from BIG DATA POLL, which finds that young conservatives sympathize more with Palestinians than Israelis. The only group that remains dedicated to the “Special Relationship” is older Republicans.
“The only notable demographic that remains majority sympathetic to Israel is the Republican voter above 50 years old,” said BIG DATA POLL Director Rich Baris in a statement. “Even among this subgroup, only those 65 years and older continued to report levels of sympathy roughly as high as they have in the past.”
“The Republican Party is identifying more and more with America First, a trend also driven by younger voters who consume news in different ways, and they do not support what they have seen in Gaza,” he continued.
American Conservative senior editor Andrew Day recently spoke with Mondoweiss about this generational divide and why the pro-Israel is worried.
“It’s very dangerous for their faction because Israel has already lost the left,” he explained. “During the Obama administration, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu really banked on the Republicans. He put his bet on them, and now he seems to be losing all of the Republicans except for the Boomers.”
“That’s very dangerous for Israel supporters, and I think it’s brought a new degree of intensity to the conversation around Israel on the Republican side,” he continued. “The Israel Lobby really doesn’t want to lose Republicans. Maybe at some point, Israel will be willing to wean off of American security assistance, but they’re clearly not there yet. They don’t want to go cold turkey.”
Israel Bonds
Investing in Israel Bonds has traditionally been one concrete way that individuals, institutions, and governments have shown their material support for the country. Now as support for Israel plummets they are becoming a target for activists wanting to challenge this complicity.
The most recent example — Michigan activists say that the state has dropped Israel Bonds from its pension for the first time in 30 years.
The move comes in response to a Michigan Divest campaign that has lasted for over a year. It included nearly 60 organizations and thousands of residents.
“Michigan came together for Palestine,” said the group in a statement. “We commend the Michigan Treasury for dropping Israel Bonds and will continue to monitor the State of Michigan Retirement System investment portfolio to ensure that Michigan public employees, retirees, and teachers’ retirements are never invested in Israel Bonds. We will continue to organize in pursuit of divestment of Michigan taxpayer funds in Israel’s ongoing genocide, occupation and apartheid.”
But others are doubling down.
This week, Florida Atlantic University (FAU) announced that it will invest another $5 million in Israel Bonds, making the school the largest Israeli bondholder in the world among universities. FAU is located in Florida’s Palm Beach county, which coincidentally, or not, is the world’s largest local government investor in Israel Bonds.
The school issued a press release announcing the news.
“This is a sound financial decision — but equally important, it is a statement of solidarity that reflects our vision for the future,” said FAU president Adam Hasner. “As a leading university and a member of the South Florida community, we cannot ignore what is happening to Jewish students across the country, and we are proud of the steps we are taking to become the safest and most welcoming university for Jewish life in America.”
“The FAU Foundation’s longstanding investment in Israel Bonds has generated secure and reliable revenue to support the university for many years,” said David Kian, interim chief executive officer, Florida Atlantic University Foundation, Inc. “The bonds have proven to be an important and durable component of our diversified portfolio.”
Odds & Ends
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⚖️ Mahmoud Khalil sues the Trump administration
🚫 Counterpunch: Trump Adds Censorship to the Campaign Against Arms Control and Disarmament
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📝 JNS: Trump directs Treasury, State to consider Muslim Brotherhood terror designation
💰 Middle East Eye: For supporting Trump’s Gaza plan, Arab states cash in as Palestinians pay the price
🇵🇸 Drop Site News: Weapons of Willpower: Hamas and Islamic Jihad on Trump’s Gaza Plan
📈 Big Data Poll: Sympathy for Israel Falls to Historic Low Among U.S. Voters
I doubt that Marge’s views on Israel-Palestine figure much in her worldview (unless those Jewish space lasers ever turn out to be a real thing). Even her support for the victims of Jeffrey Epstein and Grisly Maxwell was half-hearted. Whatever happened to her threat to read the abusers’ names out in the House?
Like Sarah Palin, she’s had her fifteen minutes of fame.
I don’t understand why actually MTG resigned.
Let’s say that she had a falling out with Trump and was upset with US.-Isr. policies.
I don’t see how her resignation helps her position on either of those two issues.
If she were working in the Trump administration or more broadly the Executive branch, it would make sense that she would resign so that she didn’t have to implement his policies or decisions. But if she is in the legislature, she is in a separate branch of government where she can criticize policies that she disagrees with or at least avoid facilitating those policies. The same is true about US.-Isr. relations. If she is in Congress, she isn’t forced to follow that political line just as Rep. Massie and some others have an independent stance on the issue.