At 30 years old, Joe Biden told Israeli PM Golda Meir “there is no debate in the Senate about the ME [Middle East] because the Senators are ‘afraid’ to say things that Jewish voters will dislike,” according to an Israeli document. The report shows Biden twice angrily took on Israeli prime ministers over illegal settlements, when he was young. Though his surrogates have sought to deny this.
The “biggest thing you did for Israel” was breaking the Iran deal, Sheldon Adelson reportedly told Donald Trump, but the media can’t even mention Adelson’s interest in reporting his and his Israeli wife’s $75 million gift to a Trump super PAC in September.
Friedman has written 19 opinion pieces in the New York Times since June, but only two about the Mideast, where he made his reputation, and then ruined it by enthusiastically supporting Iraq war. So he has avoided the pressing issues of Israel’s annexation and Trump/Pompeo’s threats to goad Iran into a conflict in the middle of the presidential race.
The Netanyahu government has advanced plans for 4,948 new settlement units in the West Bank, signalling an end to the pretense that Israel halted its annexation plans in exchange for normalization with Arab countries. Analysts suggest the slate of approvals are part of a larger effort to take advantage of US support while Donald Trump is still in power.
Nearly 70 percent of Palestinians say US policy will be the same or worse under a President Biden, and just 21 percent think he will improve matters. A new survey shows widespread rejection of Israel’s normalization deals, 90 percent calling the Gulf States’ recognition “betrayal,” “abandonment,” “insult” or “sadness,” while only 1 percent used words like “joy.”
The international community forgets the Palestinians: The Trump peace plan left out that there was an illegal Israeli occupation, and the UAE/Bahrain normalization agreement leaves it an Israeli domestic issue.
As part of COVID-19 series in Palestine, Yumna Patel traveled to the Jordan Valley to see what life is like for Palestinians there as they fight two battles: one against the coronavirus, and one against annexation. “In this area, the occupation is even worse for us than the coronavirus pandemic. The occupation has taken advantage of the coronavirus pandemic to take over more land in the Jordan Valley,” Motaz Bisharat, a Palestinian activist based in the northern Jordan Valley tells Mondoweiss.
Read Rep. Betty McCollum speech upon accepting the Champion of Palestinian Rights Award from American Muslims for Palestine: “Why would congress, or any American, ever want to fund the abuse of a child?”
Trump’s Bahrain-Israel pact is a power politics move and has been embraced by Israel lobby groups, Democratic reps, and the NYT, all of which bash Palestinians. But in fact it only advances the one-state struggle for democracy inside Israel and Palestine.
Once the hope of liberal Zionists, Benny Gantz is now siding with settlers against Netanyahu for political advantage. Angered by the move, dedicated Zionist Michael Koplow urges U.S. Jewish community to open discourse to include a one-state outcome.