In a hearing in New York City on Wednesday, Mahmoud Khalil’s attorney’s said they have not been allowed to have contact with him since his detention. Meanwhile, the Trump administration’s rationale for detaining Khalil continues to change.
In a stark escalation in the Trump administration’s campaign against Palestine activism, on Saturday night, ICE agents raided the home of Mahmoud Khalil and detained the activist who had been among the leaders of Gaza protests at Columbia University.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio’s first trip to the Middle East made clear that Donald Trump is driving U.S. policy and largely adopting Israel’s belligerent stance in Gaza and Iran. The question remains whether the rest of the region can stop them.
Marco Rubio is a perfect reflection of the neoconservative foreign policy establishment in Washington. For that reason, he poses a serious threat to Palestine as Donald Trump’s choice for Secretary of State.
There seems to be a contingent of Trump supporters who still believe that he is focused on taking the United States in a different foreign policy direction. His choices for his incoming cabinet should put that to rest.
Donald Trump is filling his incoming administration with pro-Israel war hawks. The moves indicate he will embrace a hawkish foreign policy in the Middle East and advance attacks against organizations aiming to help Palestinians.
A new Trump book by Maggie Haberman of the New York Times is frank about a story the paper was afraid to tell, Trump sold his policy on Israel to his biggest donor the late Sheldon Adelson, whose only concern was Israel. Trump moved the embassy and ended the Iran deal “for Israel,” as Adelson put it, but that corruption was never a scandal for the mainstream press.
Progressive adversary Joe Manchin teams up with Marco Rubio in another attempt to attack the boycott, divestment, and sanctions movement.
Fresh off the House resolution condemning boycotts of Israel that passed by 398-17, Republicans call on Democrats to put real teeth in the measure by enabling state laws that forbid contracts with BDS supporters.
The Senate bill punishing support for BDS against Israel failed again yesterday. Israel has never been so openly politicized before, and many Democratic supporters are expressing the fear that the issue is going to divide the party leading up to the 2020 election.