Next week, the all-powerful American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) meets for its annual gathering in Washington.
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin (“Bibi”) Netanyahu is seeking his fifth term, and he is in a close contest with his rival, Benny Gantz, a former Chief of Staff with the Israel Defense Forces. Netanhayu faces corruption charges, but his bromance with Donald Trump knows no limits — as evidenced by Trump’s declaration today that he recognizes Israeli sovereignty over the long-disputed Golan Heights. In 1967, Israel forces grabbed the Golan Heights from Syria, and Israel has occupied the Golan ever since, to international condemnation.
Trump’s action flies in the face of President Obama’s strenuous efforts to develop a path to real peace between Israel and its neighbors. United Nations resolutions proclaim that Israel has no right to the Golan Heights. Trump’s action today means that the possibility of any peace between the Arab nations, and the PLO, and Israel, is simply non-existent, as the Wilson Center’s Aaron David Miller explained to Judy Woodruff this evening on the PBS News Hour.
Bibi will be with Trump on Monday and Tuesday, and when Trump issued his proclamation about the Golan, he gushed that Trump is the greatest friend Israel has ever had (https://www.politico.com/story/2019/03/21/israel-anti-semitism-aipac-2020-1231570; https://www.cnn.com/2019/03/21/politics/trump-golan-heights-tweet/index.html.
Bibi obviously forgot that it was President Truman who made the fateful decision in 1948 to recognize the newly-created State of Israel. What could be more pro-Israel than what Democrat Harry Truman did?
Our Flame-Thrower-in-Chief is attacked on virtually all sides — from the Mueller investigation, to the condemnation he is receiving from Sen. Johnny Isakson (R-Georgia) for his relentless besmirching of the reputation of the late Sen. John McCain (R-Arizona), to his insistence on keeping former Boeing executive Patrick Shanahan as his Acting Defense Secretary, even as the Pentagon’s Inspector General is investigating Shanahan for doing favors for Boeing while at the Pentagon — to his brazen unilateralism in all things.
So it’s the job of Son-in-Law-in-Chief Jared Kushner to cheer up his father-in-law.
That’s why associate solitary reporter Johanna Jones was with Trump and Kushner as Jared said, “Sir, I just spoke with Bibi, who feels bad for all the crap that’s being thrown at you all the time. He said he’s all in favor of you adding Israel as the fifty-first State, and that until that happens, if you ever need a break from the Swamp you created in Washington, you can teleport yourself to his home in Jerusalem and stay there for as long as you like.”
“He also said that his home has even more Twitter capability than you have, so you’d be perfectly at home.”
Trump told Kushner to tell Acting Chief of Staff Mick Mulvaney to tell Shanahan to capture Nicolas Maduro and take him from Caracas to Gitmo.