In his new book, Bob Woodward says that Donald Trump’s efforts to undermine NATO and NAFTA and agreements with South Korea were threats to American national security and Trump was heroically foiled by his own aides. But when it comes to Trump’s destruction of the Iran deal, Woodward all but approves it, portraying Iran as a “malign” threat to world order and an “existential threat to the Jewish state.”
If the Oslo peace process between Israel and Palestine had succeeded, Donald Trump would not have been elected, says the eminent Israeli journalist Akiva Eldar. He surely imagines a scenario in which neoconservatives did not push the Iraq war, which helped Trump defeat Clinton in 2016.
NY State Democratic Party mailer smearing Gov. Cuomo’s challenger Cynthia Nixon as an antisemite cites a real difference between the two, Nixon has backed boycott of a West Bank settlement, while Cuomo has been outspoken against the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions, BDS campaign.
Andrew Gillum, the progressive star who is running to be Florida governor, supports McCarthyite legislation to restrict BDS. Ayanna Pressley, a MA progressive running for congress, also disappoints. But there’s good news too: the New York Times and NPR have both run stories with positive references to the movement for equal rights.
Everything that Trump is doing in Israel/Palestine, from moving the embassy to telling Palestinians to accept Jordanian sovereignty, is in line with the agenda of his biggest backer, billionaire Sheldon Adelson, who thinks Palestinians don’t exist and they should never have a state. The pattern is clear. But the press ignores the story.
Support for the Israeli government no matter what still defines the official American Jewish community. Just look at this long list of rabbis celebrating AIPAC, the Israel lobby group, from their altars, despite AIPAC’s support for the Iraq war and fierce opposition to the Iran deal. AIPAC might as well be a Jewish holiday!
After taking the Jerusalem issue off the table, Trump wants to do the same with Palestinian refugees by denying their right to return. The fiat is not only dangerous and reckless, James Zogby writes, it is cruel and insensitive, and violates international law and covenants.
A long New Yorker profile of Paul Singer, Trump’s big donor, plays down the fact that Singer’s major political interest is Israel, and leaves out the word “neoconservative,” though Singer has funded countless thinktanks that favor regime change in the Middle East and pushed that policy in Iraq.
The official Jewish community has stated that all Jews are welcome, but not if you support Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) against Israel. A group of 15 synagogues nationally is resisting this policy by opening their doors to all regardless of their political beliefs for the High Holydays, in September. Rabbi Michael Davis of one of those synagogues, Makom Shalom in Chicago, explains.
After history teachers Joel Doerfler and Shawn Redden condemned the Gaza slaughter this spring, they were soon both gone from the Riverdale Country School. A HuffPo investigation documents that school officials deferred to a small group of Zionist donors, who held a meeting with the pro-Israel group the American Jewish Committee and smeared the teachers as anti-Semitic.