Political analysts Mark Shields and E.J. Dionne say Trump decided to call Jerusalem Israel’s capital to sway evangelical voters in Alabama to vote for Roy Moore on Tuesday. Both leave out the name Sheldon Adelson. But there is endless evidence that Trump’s biggest donor pushed for the move. These reporters are dishonest about the role of the Israel lobby.
No one is pushing Trump to move the Embassy to Jerusalem, so he’s doing it so he can blame someone else — an Arab explosion — for the failure of his peace initiative in Israel and Palestine, says Shibley Telhami. But Telhami leaves out the fact that Trump’s biggest donor, Sheldon Adelson, wants the U.S. to recognize Jerusalem as Israel’s capital.
Former Trump national security adviser Michael Flynn pleads guilty to lying to the FBI about reaching out to the Russians in 2016. But he did so at the president’s urging on behalf of Israel, to quash a Security Council resolution against settlements the Obama administration was allowing to pass. The Russians ignored Flynn’s advice. And the Israel lobby is still the elephant in the room.
On Nov. 28, the New School in New York is to host a panel on the use of the anti-Semitism charge to protect Israel from criticism. It features two activists who support boycotting Israel, Linda Sarsour and Rebecca Vilkomerson of Jewish Voice for Peace. The New School is under attack from pro-Israel groups; some fear that the panel could be shut down, as the Anti Defamation League accuse Sarsour and Vilkomerson of fomenting anti-Semitism. Just what the panel is about!
New York Times columnist Bret Stephens says that Jewish Voice for Peace is as anti-Semitic as white nationalists like Richard Spencer because it undermines “Israel’s right to exist.” This is a clever feat of propaganda for Israel: Stephens is saying that Israel has a right to discriminate against Palestinians. People need to call it out as racist claptrap.
David Brooks does a limited confession of his mistake in supporting the Iraq war. He was naive. “People like me used to advocate for spreading democracy around the world. Sometimes we were naive. And Iraq was Iraq and it didn’t work out. But at least it was a belief in essential progress.”
Paul Singer, the megadonor hedge fund manager, funded the group that uncovered dirt on Trump in Russia, then turned around to help pay for Trump’s inauguration and visit the White House regularly. Why would Singer flipflop? His main issue is Israel, and he wants to influence the White House. And he already has, on the Iran Deal.
Retired Gen. Amnon Reshef told a NY synagogue that the two-state solution is a dream that is years away and the only way to sell it to Jewish Israelis is: “They support separation. They don’t want to be a part of one state. They want to be separated. It’s a Zionist dream. They don’t care about the Palestinians.” Isn’t that apartheid by another name?
Trump gave red meat to the neocons in his Iran speech, using the word “regime” 29 times in an evident threat to change the regime. He needs their support politically, and Netanyahu and the Israel lobby are very happy with the result.
Cartoonist Eli Valley lost his job at the Forward after editor in chief Jane Eisner said “she wasn’t comfortable with a Jewish newspaper criticizing Jewish leaders,” he discloses in his new book, Diaspora Boy. And the New York Times runs a puff piece on Eisner and ignores the paper’s crisis over Zionism.