von Ludwig Watzal

If President Trump doesn’t watch out, he is going to be Netanyahu’s chump, says Thomas L. Friedman from the New York Times. Trump’s statements about the abstention of the latest UNSC-vote by the US and his appointments for the ambassadorship to David Friedman or his son-in-law Kushner in the White House are causing serious fears. He seems ideologically so close to Netanyahu as only the right-wing Israel settlers can be, and they are very critical of Netanyahu.

Indeed, Obama, Kerry, not to forget Joe Biden, were Israel’s best friends in Washington, not to speak of AIPAC. Obama was ridiculed time and again by Netanyahu and took it stoically. Just one month before leaving office, he showed this political bully the red-card, and Netanyahu freaked out. Obama should have done it right after he took office eight years ago. The US would have been politically better off and their ruined reputation in the Arab and Muslim world would have improved after they went on a rampage across the Middle East and ravaged several countries. 

How come that Thomas L. Friedman’s only criticism is because Netanyahu lacks political imagination and doesn’t want to build a workable alternative such as „radical and economic autonomy for Palestinians in the majority of the West Bank“? Friedman knows that this won’t be a state but a Bantustan controlled totally by Israel. He should also know that Netanyahu is an ardent Zionist revisionist who presumably promised his 102-year-old father at the death-bed that he would never allow the creation of a Palestinian state in „Judea and Samaria“.  Friedman should remember Yitzhak Shamir, the then time Premier Minister of Israel, saying after the so-called peace process broke out that Israel would have negotiated in Washington for another 25 years without reaching anything! Netanyahu’s father, Benzion, was the secretary of Zeev Jabotinsky, the ideologue of the revisionist Zionist movement, a forerunner of the Likud Party. To expect any vision from Netanyahu is just politically naive.

And moderate critics of Israel such as Obama who say that Israel becomes more isolated internationally and less democratic are slandered by Netanyahu as an „enemy of Israel“. To be an „enemy of Israel“ can be equated with being an „anti-Semite“. That the Zionist cheerleaders from AIPAC and other pro-Israel lobby groups are going along with Netanyahu’s impudence and sass finds Friedman just „sad“ not more.

Already in the first paragraph, Friedman makes, perhaps accidentally, a lapsus linguae, writing that he never met „two U.S. leaders more committed to Israel as a Jewish democracy“. Both, Obama and Kerry, always spoke about Israel as a „Jewish and democratic state“. Already such a combination is a political no-go. A „Jewish democracy“ is a contradiction in terms. At least liberal Israelis such as Avraham Burg, Gideon Levy, Amira Hass and many others have the term „Jewish democracy“ rejected as an oxymoron! Why is Friedman introducing this terminology into the political debate again? He should know that Israel is not a democracy but already an ethnocracy!

Friedman would not be Friedman if he did not have two strings to his bow in order to push Trump on the Obama line. It’s a kind of a sleazy argument. According to Friedman, Trump has not the faintest idea of Iran’s real intentions when it comes to Israel: Iran wants that Israel never leaves the West Bank and implants its colonies everywhere. That would not only keep the conflict ablaze in Palestine and on US campuses but also, what seems even more horrifying for Friedman, that Iran and ISIS could present themselves as guardians of Jerusalem. Ergo, the West Bank would become a permanent „recruitment tool“ for ISIS and Iran. Friedman has probably forgotten that ISIS is a creation of the US intelligence, Israel, and the Saudi Arabian regime, just to name a few.

Trump doesn’t need to discover to be Netanyahu’s chump one day. If he would stick to his own slogan „To make America great again“ he should not get too close to the Zionist occupation regime because it will only an already discredited the US Middle Eastern policy even further.

First published here, here and here.

Trump’s nationalistic inauguration speech.