Trump tore up the Iran deal for Sheldon Adelson and moved the embassy to Jerusalem. But the megadonor’s millions in the midterm elections had none of the magic they did in 2016, as even Republicans in his home state of Nevada were crushed. And the transactional president is expressing his displeasure by taking some key moves against Israel’s interests.
In 1991 the late George H.W. Bush took on Israel and its lobby over settlement construction, famously saying “I’m one lonely little guy” against 1000 lobbyists. Some say the stance made him a one-term president, and paved the way for his son to out-Israel his father, with disastrous results.
Rashida Tlaib likens the Israeli occupation to the Jim Crow south. Both Jimmy Carter and Condoleezza Rice made the same analogy, to the south of their youths, and both suffered politically for it.
Pro-Palestine and free speech activists who have been mobilizing against the Israel Anti-Boycott Act are sounding an alarm about rumors of a secret attempt this week to slip the legislation, which the ACLU has declared unconstitutional even in its revised form, into the must-pass House spending bill before the blue wave comes into power.
Robert Herbst responds to CNN’s firing of Marc Lamont Hill: “Hill’s provocative call for freedom for Palestinians in the whole of historic Palestine (or Greater Israel), in a single state guaranteeing rights for both peoples, did not mention Jews or Israelis, leaving him vulnerable to the false attack that he was advocating eliminating Jews from the Holy Land.”
CNN fires commentator Marc Lamont Hill for saying Palestine should be free “from river to sea,” but it allowed Israeli official Michael Oren to tell former AIPAC aide Wolf Blitzer to say that Palestinians fabricated video that children were killed by Israeli soldiers, even as an executive at CNN’s parent company was writing speeches for Benjamin Netanyahu, no problem.
After Beto O’Rourke said yesterday he wouldn’t rule out a presidential run in 2020, many progressives revived his pro-Israel, pro-AIPAC tweet of September and announced they’re out of love with the rising Democratic star.
Donald Trump sought to defuse criticism of the Khashoggi murder by saying that Israel has an interest in the US and Saudi Arabia remaining friends, and Russia will be hurt. If Russia and Sheldon Adelson both bought Trump in 2016, Adelson came away with the prize. Not that the U.S. media is noticing.
Eight Democratic women of color newly elected to Congress appear to epitomize the progressive base’s ambivalence on Israel. Deb Haaland of New Mexico condemned the “murder” of Palestinians last March. Ayanna Pressley in Massachusetts backs a bill to withdraw US funds from Israeli detention of children.
Jewish spaces in New York host one discussion after another this week featuring Jews arguing about the Jewish and Israeli future, and all these panels are segregated; because the Jewish leadership is terrified of actually hearing Palestinians speaking on their own terms.