Horror in London: Trump actually intends to move US embassy to Jerusalem
Greetings from Boston where I celebrated the end of the Clinton dynasty last night by staying up way too long.
Al-Guardian is quoting Donald Trump adviser David Friedman (pictured, left) as saying that President Trump really does intend to
move the US embassy in Israel to Jerusalem.
Israeli government ministers and political figures are pushing the US
president-elect, Donald Trump, to quickly fulfill his campaign promise
to overturn decades of US foreign policy and recognise Jerusalem as Israel’s capital and to move the US embassy from Tel Aviv.
Their calls came as one of Trump advisers on Israel and the Middle East, David Friedman, told the Jerusalem Post that Trump would follow through on his promise.
‘It was a campaign promise and there is every intention to keep it,”
Friedman said. ‘We are going to see a very different relationship
between America and Israel in a positive way.”
Trump has also promised to 'tear up' the nuclear deal with Iran (which I cannot quite see him doing, although I do see him reimposing sanctions if there continues to be evidence that Iran is developing ballistic missiles and nuclear weapons), and has invited Prime Minister Netanyahu to the White House, calling Israel a close friend.
Netanyahu has reciprocated.
Trump’s election was quickly welcomed by Netanyahu who,
but the Israeli president steered clear of controversial issues, only
congratulating Trump and calling him a “true friend” of Israel while
pledging to work with him on security and peace in the region.
Netanyahu
later released a video on YouTube welcoming Trump’s appointment.
“President-elect Trump is a true friend of the state of Israel,” said
Netanyahu in a statement. “We will work together to advance the
security, stability and peace in our region. The strong connection
between the United States and Israel is based on shared values, shared
interests and a shared destiny.
“I’m certain that President-elect Trump and I will continue to
strengthen the unique alliance between Israel and the United States, and
bring it to new heights,” he added.
Indeed, there are many reasons for Israelis to be pleased by Trump's election.
A Trump administration will be far more favourable to the Jewish
state, another of the president-elect’s advisers on Israel has said.
Shmuel Rosner, a senior fellow at the Jewish People Policy Institute,
said a Trump administration is likely to be “much more understanding if
Israel has to use force in order to tamp down Palestinian violence”.
He also said he felt the Israeli-Palestinian conflict would be “much
less of a priority, and when it’s not a priority, this means that Israel
in some ways gets off the hook”.
Palestinian president Mahmud Abbas congratulated Trump and said he
hoped peace could be achieved during his term based on the two-state
solution.
“We are ready to deal with the elected president on the basis of a
two-state solution and to establish a Palestinian state on the 1967
borders,” spokesman Nabil Abu Rudeina told AFP, referring to the year
when Israel seized the West Bank.
I didn't know that Rosner was advising Trump. That's interesting in itself.
In any event, given how little the Arab world cares for the 'Palestinians,' their position definitely does not improve by Trump's election.
Heh.
Labels: Binyamin Netanyahu, David Friedman, Donald Trump, Jerusalem Embassy Act, Jerusalem is the capital of Israel, Palestinian state, Shmuel Rosner
Jodi Rudoren tones down her Twitter account
After being taken to task by
Jeffrey Goldberg and
Shmuel Rosner - and presumably by her bosses at the
Times - newly named
New York Times Jerusalem Bureau Chief Jodi Rudoren has toned down her Twitter account. There were a total of five tweets yesterday, four of which had no obvious connection to the Middle East. The other one thanked people for their advice and reading suggestions.
Rudoren also went for an
interview with Politico's Dylan Byers.
What is your response to the suggestion that you’re showing anti-Zionist bias?
It’s wildly premature to assess my biases. I have written nothing, other than a few tweets. It is certainly possible, as some have suggested, that I was not careful enough in what I wrote in some tweets, and what exactly I tweeted. But I hardly think that the half-a-dozen or dozen tweets that I’ve sent out in the last 24 hours add up to anything. This is a fleeting medium, in which you react to what you see. So some of the retweets that I’ve done happened to be what I was reading at that moment. It was not a comprehensive review.
Let’s take the two things that people have criticized most in succession:
The first was what I wrote to Ali Abuminah [the editor of Electronic Intifada]. I meant to write him a Direct Message and I instead hit reply. That isn’t an excuse -- I don’t mind that people saw it -- but it wasn’t intended to be for the public, it was intended to be for him.
But yes, of course I will talk to him. And I will talk to extremists on both sides. And I will talk to moderates. I will talk to lots and lots of people from all sides of this conflict... I will not apologize for reaching out to Ali Abuminah; he seems to be an important person to me. Anyone who thinks that I shouldn’t talk to him doesn’t understand how we do our jobs.
But anyone who thinks I shouldn’t talk to him -- I want to talk to them, too. Adam Kredo [a reporter at Washington Free Beacon] said I didn’t respond to him, but I never heard from Adam. So I emailed him back, but I haven’t heard from him. But I would be eager to talk to him about anything.
In terms of Peter Beinart’s book, I will absolutely not apologize for thinking that this is a good book. Peter is someone I’ve known for 20 years, he’s a journalist, he’s written a really interesting book. I don’t agree with everything in the book, I don’t even have an opinion about the arguments in the book, but it’s really well written, it’s really provocative, there’s tons of reporting in it with things people don’t know. I think people should read it. I think hard-right Zionists should read it and Palestinian activists should read it. And young American Jews, who are really the audience for the book, should read it.
Read the whole thing.
So far Rudoren appears to be following
Rosner's prescription:
Yesterday, Jeffrey Goldberg wrote and tweeted about Rudoren’s mistake. She has to stop acting as if she were a J Street official, he wrote, but later tweeted that she “can un-tag herself as a J Street-proxy pretty quickly by doing a good job reporting”.
No, she can’t.
She can write from Jerusalem of course, as I expect she might still do. She can write fine stories from Jerusalem, she can have sources and can gain more knowledge and can even break some news. What she will not be able to do is to pretend to be unbiased. What she will not be able to do is to have good sources at the very top – at the offices of government in which people are already quite suspicious of the Times and will now be even more suspicious. Wouldn’t you be? With these people she’s probably toast, and without them she can’t be as good as a NYT Jerusalem reporter could be.
So here’s what’s going to happen: Rudoren will be told by her superiors to lay low and restart her period of Israel education. The decision to send her to Israel will not be reversed – a matter of journalistic independence and pride. The watchdogs of such matters will be alerted, they will constantly heckle her, every word interpreted, every nuance parsed. Letters to the editor will be sent. Complaints will be filed. No one will ever give her any benefit of the doubt. If her stories are critical of Israel, it will be a sign that she really is biased. If her stories are more positive, people will start whispering that she’s pandering to win back the confidence of official Israel.
All this is probably unfair to Rudoren. She doesn’t seem like the archenemy of all things Israel, she doesn’t seem like someone deserving of all the animosity and the acrimony and resentment. She made one foolish mistake, and can’t take it back since people already know what she really thinks, how she really feels. And she will not be easily forgiven for being honest about it.
If she were to ask my advice (which I do not expect to happen even if she ever reads this post) I wouldn’t know what to tell her. Not to go? To go and do her best under these miserable circumstances? Once in a while a writer would like to be proven wrong – and this is one such case for me. I wish I could write again about Rudoren a year from now, and I hope I’d be able to apologize and take back my prediction about her.
I think a lot of us feel that way. I know that I do.
Labels: anti-Israel media bias, Jodi Rudoren, New York Times, Shmuel Rosner
Soccer Dad's Middle East Media Sampler
Here's Soccer Dad's Middle East Media Sampler for Friday, December 30.
1) What peace process?
Shmuel Rosner writes in Peace? Process? in the New York Times:
One can see this change as a sign that Israelis have gotten too used to the current — and supposedly unsustainable — situation with the Palestinians, and now foolishly believe the status quo can last forever. Or perhaps it’s a sign that they see little point in debating a topic about which they generally agree: a decent peace deal for most of the occupied land (with many devils in the details). Or maybe they’re just tired of rehashing what has become a very boring issue with no new angles to discover and no new arguments to chew on.
I look at this shift in conversation through a more positive lens: Maybe Israelis have realized that they need to sort some things out among themselves pending the big breakthrough in their relations with Palestinians and other Arabs. Maybe they have realized that having a more robust and more cohesive Israel will make this peace more achievable when the day for it finally comes.
Or maybe, unlike those pundits who hyperventilate that something must be done, Israelis simply don't see that any breakthrough is possible at this time. The sorting that Rosner mentions, may not be a cause of Israeli disinterest as much as its effect.
2) Collateral damage
The Jerusalem Post reports, Civilian Casualty Rate in Gaza at Record Low (via Daily Alert):
During the past year along the Gaza border, the IDF says 100 Palestinian combatants were killed in military operations, as well as 9 civilians. This is nearly a 1:10 civilian-to-combatant ratio that is unprecedented in any other conflict in the world. The UN estimates an average 3:1 ratio of civilian-to-combatant deaths in conflicts worldwide. That is three civilians for every combatant killed.
Note that the average casualty rate is 3 civilians for every combatant.
During Cast Lead three years ago, Israel was vilified for its "brutal" assault on Gaza, resulting in the Goldstone commission. After the fighting was over, Hamas acknowledged that six to seven hundred of those killed - out of an estimated 1400 - were its fighters. (Even now news reports mention that 1400 were killed as if that fact alone condemns Israel.) In other words, Hamas admitted, against its interests that Israel managed to keep its ratio of civilians to combatants down to roughly 1:1, a collateral damage rate well below average. It shows that the complaints against Israel were motivated by something other than sincere concern.
By the way, Turkish airstrikes just killed 36 smugglers, who were apparently non-combatants. The final paragraph exposes Turkey's hypocrisy towards Israel:
Mr. Celik, the ruling party spokesman, acknowledged that the airstrikes were a “mistake” but said the accidental killings would not deter the Turkish military from further missions against the P.K.K., which the United States and the European Union list as a terrorist organization. “Turkey has to struggle against terror,” he said.
Labels: civilian casualties, Middle East Media Sampler, Middle East peace process, Shmuel Rosner, Soccer Dad
The Israel Factor 2012
Shmuel Rosner is back with his first Israel Factor survey of the 2012 campaign and it grades Republican candidates. Among the declared candidates,
Mitt Romney is the current leader.
Here’s how the panel ranks the Republican field (more names and numbers in the Complete Statistics page):
Giuliani (not a candidate): 7.67
Romney (first among real candidates): 7.4
Gingrich (declining): 6.83
DeMint (not yet a candidate): 6.5
Perry (will he or won’t he?): 5.8
Santorum (will he drop out before or right after Iowa?): 5.6
Huntsman, Bachmann: 5.5
Bolton, Christie, Pawlenty: 5.4
Johnson: 5.33
Ryan: 4.75
Palin: 3.67
Paul (what can you expect?): 3.17
Three things worth noting:
1. Obama receives a 5.5 in this survey. This means that 6 Republican candidates have better scores than he does on “good for Israel.” This doesn’t mean though that the panel prefers the Republican nominee – it means that those wanting Republicans have stronger feelings regarding the candidates’ approach to Israel.
2. While Obama is the most polarizing candidate – the panelists scored him from 1 to 8 – Romney is the boring one. 7 or 8 are the scores he got from almost all panelists.
3. In fact, there’s one candidate even more polarizing than Obama: If you wonder why John Bolton ranks fairly low – that’s the reason. Some panelists really like him, but others find him totally unfit for the job. Bottom line: In most cases, controversy doesn’t’ work with The Israel Factor.
Note that Rosner's
panel is mostly Israelis (I believe Dore Gold is the only American-born panelist) and much further left than most Americans who live here. We voted overwhelmingly for John McCain in 2008.
Labels: Campaign 2012, Mitt Romney, Shmuel Rosner
