Friday, December 16, 2016

Trump Names "Far Rightist On The Israeli Political Map" His Ambassador to Israel


This is not going to make the Muslim world happy.

President-elect Donald Trump will nominate David Friedman as U.S. ambassador to Israel.

Chemi Shalev writes at Haaretz :
David Friedman, Trump's Radical-right Ambassador, Makes Netanyahu Look Like a J Street Lefty.
It’s good thing ambassador-designate David Friedman will have diplomatic immunity; otherwise he might get arrested for incitement.
 Judy Maltz writes at Haaretz:
Based on statements he has issued and columns he has penned, Friedman is positioned on the far right of the Israeli political map – more hardline in his views than Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu...
Friedman has challenged the widespread view that Israeli settlement activity is illegal and opposes a ban on construction activity in the West Bank and East Jerusalem – particularly those places that would be part of a future agreement involving land swaps.
Friedman has been a columnist for two Israeli right-wing English-language media outlets: Arutz Sheva and The Jerusalem Post. He also serves as president of American Friends of Bet El Institutions, which financially supports the settlement enterprise...
Lara Friedman, the director of Americans for Peace Now, tweeted: "Jews who truly care about Israel's security, democracy & place in the world are outraged."...
On the right-wing side, Zionist Organization of America President Morton Klein congratulated Friedman, saying that he has "the potential to be the greatest U.S. ambassador to Israel ever," adding that no previous ambassador appreciated the "rights of the Jews to Judea, Samaria, and Jerusalem like David."
Calling Friedman "my friend," Klein said in a statement that he "thoroughly understands the detailed tragic reality of the Arab/Islamic war against Israel. He has a powerful grasp of Israel’s defense needs, the dangers they face, and the danger now of a Hamas/PA State."
Friedman has already issued this provocative statement indicating that the U.S. embassy in Israel will be moved to Jerusalem
 Israelis and Palestinians both claim Jerusalem as their capital.

From Wikipedia:
While the international community regards East Jerusalem, including the entire Old City, as part of the occupied Palestinian territories, neither part, West or East Jerusalem, is recognized as part of the territory of Israel or the State of Palestine. Under the United Nations Partition Plan for Palestine adopted by the General Assembly of the United Nations in 1947, Jerusalem was envisaged to become a corpus separatum administered by the United Nations. In the war of 1948, the western part of the city was occupied by forces of the nascent state of Israel, while the eastern part was occupied by Jordan. The international community largely considers the legal status of Jerusalem to derive from the partition plan, and correspondingly refuses to recognize Israeli sovereignty over the city.
The U.S. embassy in Israel is now located in Tel Aviv. This apparently will change under Trump for no damn good reason other than to rile up the entire Muslim population.

From The New York Times:
Daniel Levy, a left-leaning former Israeli peace negotiator, said that in naming an ambassador with the hard-line views of Mr. Friedman, Mr. Trump could end up undercutting the security of Israel and the United States and condemn “the Palestinians to further disenfranchisement and dispossession.”
“If an American ambassador stakes out positions that further embolden an already triumphalist settler elite, then that is likely to cause headaches for American national security interests across the region and even for Israel’s own security establishment,” Mr. Levy said. “Especially an ambassador committed to the ill-advised relocation of the U.S. embassy to Jerusalem.”

 -RW


7 comments:

  1. Bob, are you saying that Muslims should dictate American policy?

    Your historical perspective is extremely narrow. Regarding Muslims in particular, the West has fought against them for centuries. The Reconquista alone took over 700 years. Then there are the Gates of Vienna.

    Israel is just one piece of a much larger war. For example, I wonder what you propose Europe do with the hostile Muslims in their midst, who openly espouse a supremacist ideology and are agitating for same? Deport them? Why, you seem aghast at the thought! Let them dominate the people who have lived there for millennia (or centuries, at least) and built it and welcomed these ingrates in? Ain't gonna happen. The only other alternative is ovens (or war). Make a choice Bob.

    When the hostile ones and those who sympathize (a great many, I suppose) with them are kicked out of the West, they can rile up all they want in their own countries. The peaceful ones are welcome to stay.

    Certainly you are familiar with Moshe Feiglin. He says no different, and more and more people (in Israel and everywhere in the West) are increasingly sympathetic to that stance for Israel and their own nations.

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    1. Another Trump fanboy, cherry picking history for self serving purposes. Yes, Muslims have done a ton of terrible shit and continue to do so. So has the West, and of course many people like you still have no problem dropping bombs and killing as many of them as possible, as has been advocated by numerous politicians and their supporters, and carried out to some degree. So save the self serving outrage. Muslims, Christians, Jews, secular humanists are all largely doing shitty things of all different kinds all over the world.

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    2. Dexter, you don't know what I think. I was against the US war in Iraq. I am against the US meddling in Syria. I do have problems with such, and have called out leftists I know for being perfectly okay with both, as long as one of their beloved leftists is in control. None of this explains why the West should welcome in Muslims with open arms, who then agitate to take over and dominate, in every land they are welcome into.

      You are the one who is saying that, well, the West has done some nasty things, so therefore, the West should not be allowed to stand up for itself (so to speak).

      You are an idiot.

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  2. What do you propose to do about it? Jews are powerful in America and Trump needs to throw them a bone because he is defanging their domestic US agenda in exchange for a free reign in Israel (with the possibility of a final push to expel the remaining Palestianians).

    No point in complaining about this unless you have an idea to get rid of the 5th column.

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  3. Besides claiming to be "anti-war" Trumpitarians claimed that Trump was going to keep the U.S. out of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. This nominee suggests that such a claim is B.s. It also shows that of our tax money (aka welfare) will continue (possibly increased) to go to Israel.

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  4. Property rights as a principle mean nothing to Trump; the Palestinians have none in Israeli occupied Palestine. He’s trying to reward the bankruptcy attorney who helped saved his but from 2004-2009. It’s both crony capitalism and crony government with Trump.

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    1. Jack, like Dexter, you are an idiot. Of course Palestinians have property rights. They arguably have superior property rights to Jews. Amona, among many countless examples, proves my point.

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