The subject of Israel and Jews came up very early in last night’s debate on CNN of the eight candidates to be Democratic National Committee chairperson. The job is to be voted on by the DNC this weekend in Atlanta. During the debate one candidate after another denounced Trump on one issue after another, and put down the donor class of the Democratic Party too, in favor of the grassroots. But on the issue of Israel conservative bipartisanship is the only way, officially.
Liberal Zionism has never been under so much pressure as it is in the Trump era. For two reasons: Trump has rendered the death of the two-state solution a naked reality that is no longer deniable. And liberals who are vocally resisting Trump must affirm values that are inconsistent with Israel as it has turned out. Liberal Zionists and anti-Zionists must form a new coalition for progress, and liberal Zionists will have to give up their illusion of a Jewish, democratic state.
Racism gets a platform at the New York Times. The paper runs a hideous op-ed by an Israeli settler suggesting Palestinians leave Greater Israel.
The New York Times sounds like a newspaper opining about the Negro Problem in the 1950s, says Adam Shatz in the London Review of Books, in its pieties about Israeli choices re Palestinians. And Tom Friedman is even worse.
“I’m looking at two-state and one-state, and.. I’m very happy with the one that both parties like. I could live with either one,” Donald Trump says, changing US policy.
At their press conference today at the White House Donald Trump and Benjamin Netanyahu laid out a vision for a peace deal between Arab countries and Israel that supersedes the Israel-Palestine conflict. John Kerry dismissed this as a fantasy: “There will be no advance and separate peace with the Arab world without the Palestinian process and Palestinian peace. Everybody needs to understand that. That is a hard reality.”
Russia surely interfered in U.S. politics and may have affected last year’s election; and that scandal could bring Trump down. But Israel interferes in our politics all the time, with a negative effect; and it’s never a scandal.
The Republican Jewish Coalition and J Street are at odds over nomination of David Friedman as ambassador to Israel. With Senate hearing on Thursday, Holocaust scholars publish letter vehemently opposing Friedman’s use of the word “kapos” to describe liberal Zionists.
Netanyahu said that the relationship between the US and Israel is about to become “even stronger” when he meets Trump on Feb. 15, but Trump has already warned him about increasing settlements
For years Donald Trump’s pick for U.S. ambassador to Israel had funneled millions of tax-exempt American dollars into a hardline West Bank settlement through a U.S. charity. Now newly uncovered documents show his money will continue to pay for settlements in the future.