T. Belman. Author claims Trump and his father were antisemites. I don’t believe it. There is a lot in this article that I disagree with but it is worth reading nevertheless. Remember, Bannon isn’t calling the shots. Bannon may have said “Let Jordan take the West Bank”. I say “Let Jordan take the West Bank Arabs and let Israel take the west Bank.”
Book creates context in which Trump’s recent moves on Jerusalem mesh with plot to snuff out Palestinian nationalism
From an Israeli point of view, the most intriguing revelation in Michael Wolff’s book “Fire and Fury,” which has sparked both, is a blast from the past of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. According to Wolff, former White House firebrand and strongman Steve Bannon expounded on the Trump administration’s formula for solving the conflict. “Let Jordan take the West Bank, let Egypt take Gaza,” says Bannon. “Let them deal with it. Or sink trying.”
The discovery that the White House was contemplating a formula that negates Palestinian nationhood and advocates a return to the days when “territorial compromise” with Jordan, Egypt (and Syria) was the main motto of Middle East peacemaking would be more sensational if it was less ambiguous. Bannon is quoted as saying that Sheldon Adelson and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu are “all in” on the plan, but it’s not completely clear whether their supposed acquiescence only applies to “moving the Embassy to Jerusalem on day one,” which precedes the “all in” assertion, or whether it also encompasses the hairbrained scheme for the Gaza Strip and the West Bank, which follows it. Judging by context, the latter is true.
But whether or not the plan – which no serious student of the current Middle East would deem realistic – was worked out in advance between Adelson, Netanyahu and Bannon or whether it was simply the arrogant boast of an ignoramus on Middle East affairs, the proposed Jordan-Egypt solution highlights the extreme right-wing axis that has dominated U.S. President Donald Trump’s Middle East policies during his first year in office. It is an alliance that Netanyahu appears to have cultivated, with the assistance, or at the direction, of his Las Vegas benefactor, Adelson. All three operate under the premise ascribed to Bannon that “the further right you were, the more correct you were on Israel.”
Trump admired Adelson as “the toughest of tough Jews,” the likes of which he had come to admire and appreciate during his years in the New York real estate market, in which Jews played a prominent role. Trump repeatedly told his son-in-law Jared Kushner to “strategize with Adelson,” who had already “partnered with Bannon.” According to Wolff, Adelson “regularly disparaged Kushner’s abilities and motives” but told Trump that “the only person he trusted was Bannon.” Adelson was also involved in Bannon’s failed smear campaign against National Security Adviser H.R. McMaster, which included the accusation that he was “soft on Israel.” When you add to this mix Wolff’s report that Netanyahu had “actively sought out” Bannon when he came to the U.S. before Trump’s inauguration, one can at least deduce the existence of an ultra-right Netanyahu-Adelson-Bannon triumvirate that influenced – or perhaps dictated – Trump’s Middle East policies.
True to vain form, Trump came to the conclusion that his predecessors, especially Barack Obama, had gotten the Middle East all wrong. His conclusion was that he should do the exact opposite. According to Trump, there are only four Middle East powers that need to be taken into account: Iran, Saudi Arabia, Egypt and Israel. The latter three could be guided to form an anti-Tehran alliance, and everything else was negligible.
This presumably includes the Palestinian drive for self-determination, which was doubly derided because it had figured so high on Obama’s agenda. In this context, perhaps, a plan to snuff out Palestinian nationalism and demand for independence could be advanced by alluding to the possibility that Jordan and Egypt could contemplate a return to their pre-1967 roles, though Trump apologists could claim that it was meant to increase pressure on the Palestinians to lower their demands and meekly accept what Trump would deign to offer them.
This puts Trump’s recent recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, his unexplained assertion that the city was no longer on the negotiating table and his threats to strangle the Palestinians by cutting off aid to UNRWA and to the Palestinian Authority in a more sinister light. A Los Angeles Times editorial on Sunday asserted that Trump had “bungled” his own plans to achieve “the ultimate deal” between Israelis and Palestinians, but there is an alternative explanation: that it was all premeditated. That Trump’s “ultimate deal” was one that would not try to meet Palestinian aspirations, but to bury them. That is certainly an objective that Adelson and Netanyahu would be happy to sign on to.
The book also showcases Bannon’s “winking suggestion of anti-Semitism,” as Wolff puts it. His campaign to belittle Kushner included repeated needling of Kushner and his ilk for their supposed “globalist, cosmopolitan, Davos-centric, liberal” views. If Bannon wasn’t an anti-Semite in the classic sense of hating all Jews because they were Jews, he certainly expressed arguably anti-Semitic sentiments toward Jews who did not share his ultra-conservative views.
Adelson, whose views are often described as “right of Attila the Hun,” shares Bannon’s antipathy to leftist and liberal Jews, as does Netanyahu. When trying to assess Netanyahu’s decision to renege on the deal he had signed with progressive American Jews on egalitarian prayer at the Western Wall, as well as his apathy to repairing the rupture it caused, one should bear in mind that his view of liberal American Jews may be no different than Adelson’s and Bannon’s.
Trump’s father, Wolff writes, was an out-and-out anti-Semite. Trump was influenced by his views, but learned to respect the tough New York real estate titans who either collaborated with him or bested him. Nonetheless, he seems to share some of Bannon’s disdain for his own son-in-law’s abilities. In fact, Wolff writes, Kushner’s appointment as overseer of Middle East peace efforts was tinged with anti-Semitism itself. Trump picked him not so much because of family ties but because he is Jewish. Let the Jew deal with Israel, Trump seemed to think.
The book has been lambasted by the White House and top Republicans as “fake news” full of misleading and erroneous reports. Trump has responded to his unflattering portrayal in the book by asserting that he is a “stable genius.” The book describes Trump as temperamental, superficial, misogynistic and mostly ignorant about the most basic elements of policymaking and of his own presidency, including the U.S. Constitution itself. From this point of view, there is nothing really new in “Fire and Fury”: It simply corroborates the traits that most people ascribe to Trump anyway, with the exception of his loyal base.
But as far as Trump’s attitudes on Israel and the Palestinians, the separate details in Wolff’s book form a picture of an extreme right-wing cabal, one that could find its place on the right fringes of the Likud, that has been guiding if not running Trump’s Middle East policies. It remains to be seen whether this was simply a function of Bannon’s now-disgraced presence and now-denied influence in the White House or a fundamental and immutable element of Trump’s presidency. The second option will surely delight right-wing zealots but will most likely make things much worse for Israelis and Palestinians before they get any better.
Edgar G. Said:
plise is that what you do in the toilet? does not nikki haley wish to reign over the u n s c? mr edgar g you need a English – american dictionary then wot yu sey is rite, in the meantime cum in from otta the rain
@ yeshol:
So, you would replace the two state solution with the 8 state solution? Oy. The problem with all these utopian schemes is that they avoid the basic problem which is that these people are motivated by eliminationist anti-semitism even though it means cutting off their noses to spite their faces.
They don’t mostly care about a better life for themselves and their children. Palestinian mothers are like the mothers of Sparta who looked forward to carrying their son’s bodies home on their shields so they could feel proud.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GP_wDVyZWJU
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sCfp5HBXSg8
@ yeshol:
I am aware of Kedar’s plan but do not believe it is viable.
@ Sebastien Zorn:
OK. So, now you know what I meant. I told you, communication is a dodgy business. Most people don’t know an antichrist from 666 from a Kohler toilet. Kushner is unmistakably identified with the number “666”, in a BIG way. When he bought that place, which he described as being at the “center of the world”, he paid the highest price ever for any piece of property, anywhere. He went deeply into hock to do it, too; and he had plans to make it grandiose. These are the actions of someone wanting to rule the world, not of a lowly real estate dealer. That’s why I keep my eye on him and his other half.
Concerning Hitler, Yeshol compared Bannon to him; and I noted that Bannon’s penance to Pope Donald made him different from Hitler. Then I learned that Hitler, too, had “gone to Canossa”. It was for Yeshol’s eyes, not yours. Sorry.
@ Michael S:
Whoopie. Who cares if Hitler ever did “penance.” He murdered 6 million Jews!
You said:
“This accords with 666Kushner666 being the antichrist ”
https://www.israpundit.org/kushner-moves-center-stage/
on May 23 of last year.
@ Michael S:
The feeling is mutual. Talk about the pot and the kettle.
@ Michael S:
Oops correction:
I attributed to Paul, the writings of John (who, by the way, was the only one to ever use the word “antichrist” in the Bible). John probably died around 100 CE.
Another correction: I said that Hitler never did public penance. He actually did, early in his career, to Bavarian Minister President Heinrich Held in order to have the ban on the Nazi Party lifted.
@ Sebastien Zorn:
Ah, so! I’m glad I (accidentally) got the “Valley Girl” thing right, and didn’t offend you. I couldn’t make heads nor tails of what you were saying, but I thought that somehow you were being cute.
I know why I didn’t “get” the reference to Korea — you’re completely wrong. Korea has not “backed off” from anything: It is going full steam ahead at becoming a nuclear weapon state, with the ability to strike the US at will. Kim Jong Un has managed to get an “Olympic truce” with that idiot Moon; but as soon as the Olympics are over, at the end of March, he will be well beyond square one. Trump, if he has any sense, which I think he does, agreed because we need the time to repair the four ships we managed to smash up, to get the Defense Department funded, and to assemble some ability to make war. He hasn’t “won” anything: North Korea has become a clear and present danger to the US, under Trump’s watch, and the ball is in his court to do something about it.
I may have said, once upon a time, that Kushner MAY be the one people CALL the “Antichrist”; but I cerntainly have never and will never call him “The Antichrist”. There is no “Antichrist” in the Book of Revelation — look it up yourself. Paul said there were already “many Antichrists” already, before he died in the time of Nero. Here:
John.4
[3] And every spirit that confesseth not that Jesus Christ is come in the flesh is not of God: and this is that spirit of antichrist, whereof ye have heard that it should come; and even now already is it in the world.
Paul says “antichrist” is someone who says, essentially, that Jesus is a god — the way the Muslims and most Christians now do. Antichrist is a spirit, a false doctrine incarnate in people; it is not a person.
Concerning Kushner, I’ve already explained to Yeshol what I think about him. I don’t follow superstitions; I follow Torah — unlike you, who take the scriptures lightly but follow Hopi oral legends (and Groucho Marx to boot, it seems).
“…Calls a Jew the Anti-Christ?” I’ve already answered that. And let’s not call each other “out of our heads”, or we’ll start sounding like Donald Trump.
For future reference, please don’t try to be subtle with me. Communications is a difficult business, as Edgar attests to in correcting people’s spelling. We have enough trouble keeping on the same page with one another, without having to do code-breaking.
May Adonai bless you and keep you. May He cause His face to shine upon you. May He lift up His countenance upon you, and give you peace — even though you’re often a jerk 🙂
@ Michael S:
I believe he was being sarcastic.
@ Michael S:
I was saying in a jocular way(Valley Girl, exactly, which spread all over the USA) , since you referred to social fads, that your fears were unjustified, Trump’s counter-threats led predictably to China and N. Korea backing off. Obama got the opposite results, predictably, with his appeasement.
I wasn’t quoting you on Kushner and Bannon, I was saying that I won’t answer you on that subject because you have called Kushner the anti-Christ based on your highly unique interpretation of biblical scriptures written thousands of years ago, because there is no rational answer to prejudice and superstition.
Though I will say, equally subjectively, that when a Christian — Jewish or not– calls a Jew the anti-Christ, all the warning bells go off in my head.
Is anyone else reading this reacting like that?
@ yeshol:
Yeshol,
You said, “conspiracy theories are always interesting”.
I wasn’t aware that I had mentioned any conspiracy theories. Are you talking about Jarvanka Kushtrump? I would hardly call a husband-wife team a “conspiracy”. Chemi Chalev did talk about a conspiracy among Bannon, Adelson and Netanyahu. I wasn’t the one who brought that one up, so I’m a little puzzled why you addressed your comment to me.
Concerning Kushner, Sebastien seems to connect him with superstition and prejudice. He loses me there, so I’ll let that one lie. Here is are my thoughts on the matter:
1. Kushner has a flat-out WEIRD connection with the Book of Revelation, choosing a property that used to sport “666”, in giant letters, as his flagship property. If an ordinary real-estate guy had done that, one could dismiss it; but for the one that did it to go on to marry the daughter of the next President of the World, one begins to wonder. Added to that, we have “the Kush”‘s own statement that he viewed the property as the “Center of The World”, and I begin to sense that this young man has great ambitions. Would you agree?
2. I just read the following tripe about the “First Kids”:
“White House: Ivanka, Kushner ‘sacrificing’ for the nation”
http://thehill.com/homenews/administration/367985-white-house-jared-ivanka-sacrificing-for-the-nation
Coming right on the heels of Pope Donald’s scathing denunciation (yeah, excommunication!) of Steve Bannon for allegedly having said something which could have been construed as being ungracious towards one of the Trump children, my eyes were greeted with,
“When you go after somebody’s family in the manner in which he did — two of the president’s children who are serving this nation, sacrificing in their service — it is repugnant, it is grotesque,”
Give me a break! My incredulity meter just blew a fuse. That quote is from White House spokesman Kevin Gridley. Gridley might have done well to notice that US presidents don’t normally have their kids sitting in on cabinet and national security meetings, nor of taking on the diplomatic portfolios of our dealings with the most sensitive areas in the world.
We aren’t dealing with an ordinary situation here. I likened Donald Trump elsewhere, as analogous to Pope Gregory VII, who forced German King Henry IV to do penance by walking barefoot in the snow. The difference between the two, is that Pope Gregory didn’t have heirs, but Trump does; and anyone with any dealings with this Pope-King needs to handle them like ertrogs.
I don’t know what rod Sebastien has up his butt about these things, but I keep a wary eye on Jarvanka. They keep coming up, like bad burps; and I’m almost certain we haven’t seen the last of them.
@ Roberto Edery:
FREE “REIN”…. not reign. Plise, a little English as she is spoke. As for everything else in your post I agree completely.
@ Sebastien Zorn:
Sebastien,
I can’t make out anything coherent in what you said. First of all, you “quote” me as saying things like, “I won’t get into you and Kushner..” I never said that. Nor can I make any sense out of sentence fragments like “uhhh, yeah?” and “LIke, ever?” What the hell are you, a Valley Girl? Speak English, and learn how to use quotes.
@ Michael S:
North and South Korea prepare for talks, 2 hrs ago
As Korea Agree to Talks, China Ups Pressure on North 3 days ago
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/north-korea-talks-south-olympics-china-sanctions-trade-restrictions-kim-jong-un/
https://www.wsj.com/articles/north-and-south-korea-prepare-for-talks-1515417528
Michael S Said:
“An article worth reading”? I have to dissent. This is leftist garbage, typical of Haaretz, that is on the same line with Wolf’s book. The references to Bannon’s “anti-semitism” are ludicrous, same for Trump. The ever present hate for Netanyahu permeates the article, including the ridiculous assertion that he’s “RUNNING Trump’s Middle East policies”, and that Donald Trump is just an ignorant nobody… that somehow got to become the President of the United States! Just looking at Trump’s record in less than a year, he’s been way better than the three previous american presidents. And he has done more for Israel than all the others combined. Just putting Nikki Haley in the UN, with free reign, was a complete game changer for Israel. He’s deleting the awful Obama legacy in giant steps, and has improved the economy in a way never seen before. If that’s what an “ignorant” can do, I only wish we had such a leader!
How quickly they forget.
Bear Klein – see http://www.palestinianemirates.com/
Conspiracy theories are alway interesting. Thank you, Michael S.
In the eyes of Ted and others here, Israel seems to be the focal point of Trump’s policies. To me, it seems that Donald Trump’s focus, like that of most monarchs, is on himself — with a wary eye on those close to him.The US president has shown himself to be first and foremost, a vain, explosive personality. Policy flows from there; and for the most part, it has been policy beneficial, at least in the short run, to the US government and citizens.
In itself, that does not leave me with an easy feeling — not in the Middle East, not in Korea, not in China, Russia, Europe or anywhere. We seem to be ever at the mercy of the caprice of Donald Trump. It seems we have been translated from the Twenty-first Century to the Fifteenth, with its beheadings and burnings at the stake. It is true, that heads have not literally rolled in Washington, and this seems good. But is it a sign of some real progress? Or is it just the latest social fad not to execute political enemies?
In all of this intrigue, one thing stands out: Jared Kushner has quietly risen higher and higher, as his enemies like Flynn, Priebus and Bannon bite the dust. I am more concerned about him, than I am about all the Democrats.
Palestine Mandate was first split in 1922 Arabs get Trans-Jordan (75%) of the Land and the Jews got the rest. The land west of the Jordan River. So this two state concept has been tried various times for almost 100 years and does not work. The Arabs do not accept a Jewish State on a permanent basis no matter the size or borders.
Democracy is not supposed to be a suicide pact. What to do with the Arabs is being kicked around and whatever will be tried will be an experiment as their are no perfect solutions to this 100 year old conflict. I have a proposal that is a mix of Bennett’s idea and Sherman’s idea. Bibi is starting to warm using Bennett’s idea as a starting base, which I think is a good idea. I will post below in a comment my conceptual idea from time to time. This idea relies on Israel alone.