Former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak loved Donald Trump’s warning that in a one-state solution, the Israeli Prime Minister would be named Mohammed. It goes to show that liberal Zionists are just as racist when it comes to Palestinian rights as rightwing Zionists are.
Two leading figures on the American left, Rob Malley and Chris Hayes, cannot openly discuss the role of Israel in foreign policy-making, specifically Sheldon Adelson’s influence over Donald Trump’s historic and tragic decision to scrap the Iran deal, a landmark of international diplomacy.
Today is unfolding as a horrifying and tragic day in Palestine. The Israeli military has opened fire on Gaza protesters as the U.S. and Israeli governments prepare to mark the move of the U.S. embassy to Jerusalem.
The upside of Trump’s destruction of the Iran deal is that he has isolated the United States and Israel in world opinion, and made it clear to Democrats that if they are going to avenge this foreign policy outrage, they must take on Israel’s influence in our politics. Because that influence was so transparent.
In a talk yesterday at the Middle East Institute, Palestinian Ambassador Husam Zomlot accused Donald Trump of “backstabbing” Mahmoud Abbas, deepening a dispute over who is to blame for the failure of a peace deal with Israel. While earlier in the day Trump said Palestinian leaders had abandoned pre-talk discussions, Zomlot presented an altogether different narrative: the Palestinians were bystanders to internal divisions within the Trump administration that prevented peace talks from starting months ago.
If you think Trump’s “shithole countries” statement is bad, consider that such statements are routine in Israel, whose leaders have likened Palestinians to “cancer” and snakes and cockroaches, said that disloyal Palestinians should be decapitated with an “axe” or drowned, and have actually had a Muslim ban since the country was established.
“Jerusalem is the eternal capital of the state of Palestine and it is not for sale for gold or billions,” Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas says after Donald Trump says he took Jerusalem “off the table” and will now strip Palestinians of 100s of millions in U.S. aid for refusing to negotiate.
The Israeli military said Sunday it has opened an investigation into the fatal shooting of Ibrahim Abu Thraya, a paraplegic Palestinian man who was shot in the head during a demonstration along Gaza’s border with Israel. Abu Thraya is being hailed as a hero and his death has emerged as a rallying cry among Palestinians against Trump’s dramatic declaration, which they largely saw as siding with Israel. “We were telling him not to go (to the border), but he would not listen to us. He said ‘this is Jerusalem; if I don’t go to defend it, who will?’” said Raed al-Komi, Abu Thraya’s half-brother
American UN Ambassador Nikki Haley says that recognition of Jerusalem is about ‘not picking sides’. Yes, she and Trump are behaving recklessly. But they are continuing a policy of pandering to Israel that has been going on for many decades, under the mask of ‘peace talks’ and a supposed ‘honest broker’, the US.
Whilst condemnation is coming from around the world concerning Trump’s move to recognize Jerusalem as Israel’s capital and move the embassy there, Ehud Barak thinks it’s a non-issue. This is powerful evidence of the fact that Jewish Israeli society is fully behind the Zionist project of expansion and Palestinian removal, in violation of international law.