{Originally posted to the author’s blogsite, The Lid}
President-Elect Trump is making it clear that he will be the first Pro-Israel U.S. President in eight years and the liberals are short circuiting. Not only did he appoint a Zionist activist as ambassador to Israel, but all indications from the Trump camp is that his promise to move the U.S, Embassy to Jerusalem is more than an empty campaign pledge.
Liberals of all faiths, but especially Jewish liberals are very upset at the prospect of a pro-Israel Trump administration, is it because they are afraid of losing their standing in the generally anti-Israel Democratic Party, or are they afraid that Trump’s actions might put the Jewish vote in play in future elections.
The anger about the move to Jerusalem is really crazy. What many suspect will happen is that the U.S. consulate in Jerusalem will become the new embassy, and the present embassy will become the U.S. consulate in Tel Aviv. Should this happen the new U.S. embassy would be within the 1949 armistice lines, not on disputed territory–in other words there should be no beef.
With the announcement of Trump’s selection of David M. Friedman, as the next US ambassador to Israel the left piled on, “he has no experience as an ambassador,” “he doesn’t support the two-state solution,” and my personal favorite, “he’s called J-Street a bunch of kapos (the Jews who aided the Nazis in the Holocaust). Actually, he said they were worse than kapos:
“Are J Street supporters really as bad as kapos? The answer, actually, is no. They are far worse than kapos – Jews who turned in their fellow Jews in the Nazi death camps. The kapos faced extraordinary cruelty and who knows what any of us would have done under those circumstances to save a loved one? But J Street? They are just smug advocates of Israel’s destruction delivered from the comfort of their secure American sofas – it’s hard to imagine anyone worse.”
As regular readers know I am not a big fan of using Nazi terminology inappropriately, and Friedman’s use of kapo is inappropriate, however his sentiments about the group is very appropriate and accurate.
J Street, founded in 2008 with money from progressive sugar daddy George Soros, markets itself as kind of left-wing AIPAC. From the very beginning the group went out of its way to emphasize its motto of“pro-Israel, pro-peace.” But as fellow progressive Alan Dershowitz said about the group, “J Street is neither pro-Israel or pro peace.” The group has little legitimacy in the Jewish Community, but was promoted by Barack Obama as an important organization.
During the 2008 Israeli action against Hamas, when the IDF was protecting the country after it suffered tens of thousands of rockets from Gaza, J Street called Israel’s “escalation in Gaza counterproductive” and was “disproportionate.” It also made a moral equivalency argument between the policies of Israel and Hamas, stating that they found difficulty in distinguishing “between who is right and who is wrong” and “picking a side.” The group has also advocated that the US negotiate with Hamas. J-Street lobbied in Congress to accept the discredited anti-Israel Goldstone Report which accused Israel of war crimes during that action against Hamas.
In 2011, J Street urged the Administration to support a UN Security Council resolution falsely condemning Jewish communities in Judea and Samaria as “illegal.” Successive US administrations have refused to describe Jewish communities in Judea and Samaria as “illegal.” In fact, even President Obama vetoed a 2011 Arab-sponsored UN Security Council resolution calling them “illegal” and has described them only as “illegitimate.”
In 2012, J Street hosted the book launch of Peter Beinart who had just published an op-ed in the New York Times calling for a “Zionist BDS” campaign that would seek to economically suffocate all Israeli Jews who live beyond the 1949 armistice lines. Also, addressing this conference was Mustafa Barghouti, a leading figure in the BDS (Boycott, Sanctions, Divestment) campaign, who claimed the Oslo peace process was a piece of Israeli “deceit,” asserted that “what we are witnessing today is a creation, or a consolidation to be precise, of a system of segregation and Bantustans,” and declared that Palestinians “actually live” under an “apartheid” regime.’
J Street fought against sanctions which were levied against Iran, and supported the disastrous Iran nuclear deal. J Street has a long history of supporting the Iran regime’s interests over those of America and Israel. For instance, J Street lobbied Congresspersons to simply “believe in Iran” – despite the Iranian regime’s responsibility for murdering hundreds of Americans, Israelis and others, and history of undeclared sites for carrying on its nuclear weapons program. Former Congressman Allen West, who noted that J-Street was a “Pro-Palestinian Jewish organization,” related that J Street told him that he should just “believe in Iran.”
More recently J Street has advocated that the U.S. negotiate with Hamas, and during a meeting with Obama at the White House on tax day last year they asked the President to go around Israel and have the UN impose a Palestinian State on Israel.
Friedman is correct, J Street is an anti-Israel group which was only given legitimacy by the most anti-Israel president in history, Barack Obama. If you need more evidence that J Street is anti-Israel just look at the post below by the Assistant Director, Middle Eastern Affairs of the “progressives come first” ADL:
‘s nominee for Israel amb should issue long-overdue apology to @jstreetdotorg for his despicable comments about them https://t.co/ViuU4MEUPb
— Shaya Lerner (@shayalerner) December 16, 2016
Per the Economist, Friedman believes that Barack Obama is not only anti-Israel but anti-Semitic, A view that any independent thinker might find reasonable. It is a view I strongly agree with.
Liberal sources contend that Friedman has questioned the need for a two-state solution, but that’s not really true, he has questioned the Arabs support of a two-state solution:
There has never been a “two-state solution” – only a “two-state narrative.” The former never existed because a “solution” to the Israel-Palestinian dispute would have required, as a threshold matter, that Palestinians accept Israel as a Jewish state, renounce terrorism, discontinue anti-Israel incitement in their schools and abandon their desire to flood Israel with so-called “refugees” from other countries who never spent a day of their lives in Israel.
Notwithstanding “agreements” reached at Camp David, Oslo, Wye Plantation and elsewhere, neither Yasser Arafat nor Mahmoud Abbas ever had any intentions to observe the minimal conditions required of a two-state solution. And not necessarily because of ideological differences, but rather because the creation of a democratic Palestinian state would have abruptly caused the end of the villainous Arafat/Abbas regime and its corrupt stranglehold on the blood money extracted for years from the US and other western nations.
When his nomination was announced, Friedman said in a statement frightening to the left, that he would work “tirelessly to strengthen the unbreakable bond between our two countries . . . and look forward to doing this from the U.S. embassy in Israel’s eternal capital, Jerusalem.”
Understand, the liberals are having a mass freak-out not simply because Friedman/Trump’s positions on Israel go against the positions of a Democratic Party that has been trying to put distance between itself and Israel for a decade. But also, because it might attract more Jews to vote for Republicans.
In 2008 the Democrats knowingly elected an anti-Israel (and IMHO anti-Semitic) president. In 2012 they not only re-elected Obama but removed 4 pro-Israel planks from its platform; Israel’s capital is Jerusalem, no negotiations with Hamas until it renounces terror and recognizes Israel, no return to the 1949 armistice lines, and Palestinian refugees will be resettled in a future Palestinian state. The only plank put back was the one about Jerusalem.
During his second term Obama continued to ostracize Israel, pushed through a dangerous Iran deal and spent U.S. taxpayer dollars to try to unseat Israel’s prime minister. Despite his anti-Israel policies and anti-Semitic tendencies, and similar positions held by Ms. Clinton when It came to election time, Donald Trump received only about quarter of the Jewish vote. Trump’s attraction to Jews in America was diminished by the Mainstream Media & liberal pundit’s false claims that Trump was anti-Semitic. For Trump to be anti-Semitic he would have to hate his daughter Ivanka who is a Shabbos- observant Jew, his son-in-law Jared Kushner (both of whom are counted amongst his closest advisors), their three children, and his son Eric’s wife Lara Yunaskav, all of them are Jewish.
With the move of the Embassy to Jerusalem, and the appointment of a Pro-Israel ambassador to Israel, Donald Trump may very well put the 2020 Election Jewish vote in play. Especially if the Democrats make the anti-Semitic, anti-Israel Keith Ellison as their party chairman.
Trump’s latest Israel moves really frighten liberal Americans. Not because of the policies themselves, but because they are afraid of losing the Jewish vote. Jews tend to have a very high turnout in elections and tend to live in important battleground states such as Ohio, Nevada, Pennsylvania, and Florida.
If the Trump’s economic program is successful, and he continues his outreach to minorities, Trump’s pro-Israel policies may very well move much of the Jewish vote from the “D” Column to the “R” column, that’s something that hasn’t happened since Ronald Reagan ran against Jimmy Carter.