Ramzy Baroud argues the once relatively marginal impact of Christian Zionists in directly shaping U.S. foreign policy, has morphed over the years – particularly during the Trump presidency – to define the core values of the Republican Party.
What would Yemen policy look like if Biden is elected?
Mike Pompeo’s controversial RNC speech was partly a 2024 campaign appeal to win support from the right-wing of the pro-Israel lobby, which includes mega campaign donors like the billionaire gambling magnate, Sheldon Adelson. But our leading papers only mention Christian evangelicals as Pompeo’s target audience.
Wilson Dizard wraps up his time in Cleveland and says the 2016 Republican National Convention was a watershed moment for American politics. He says the city’s Public Square felt a bit like Tahrir Square in 2013 during the counter-revolution and shares a conversation between a white nationalist Trump supporter who chatted with the children of immigrants, one of whom asked whether he would want to be saved by them in a hurricane. “Perhaps,” he said. But we’re in that hurricane, and people need to show compassion.
When asked outside the Republican National Convention in Cleveland what message he has for the West Bank, Cornel West tells a Lebanese news channel: “I think our young our precious Palestinian brothers and sisters need to know that there are voices here in the United States of all colors, white and black and red and yellow and brown, some of them are young Jewish voices who are concerned not just about the plight of Palestinians, but know that the day will come when the vicious Israeli occupation will be lifted. Palestinians will be able to live lives of decency and dignity and live lives of self determination.”
Wilson Dizard reports from Day One of the Republican convention which has already featured new heights of bizarre offensiveness. He meets activists from the American southwest who came to Cleveland to protest Trump’s proposal for a wall, which sounds very similar to Israeli separation wall in the West Bank. Rebekah Hinojosa, 25, who lives in the Rio Grande valley in Texas , calls the current wall between the US and Mexico a “monument to racism.”
Wilson Dizard reports from Cleveland, OH where the Republican convention is about to get underway. He writes, “This election is a battle between two of the most corrupt political ideologies. And they have voters jumping through rationalization hoops to justify voting for two of the most unpopular candidates a primary season has ever produced.”