Friday, July 24, 2020

HOW DEMOCRATIC USA LEADERSHIP VIEWS ISRAEL FOR UPCOMING ELECTION

Nadene Goldfoot
                                                          

We know Trump's position with Israel as he has been acting under the guidance of his son in law, Jared Kushner,  for the past 4 years who is Jewish and is a friend of Prime Minister Netanyahu.  Now is the time to see how Joe Biden feels about Israel and what his past 4 years have shown us.  This is Biden's 3rd try at the presidency.  

“I’m going to reverse Trump’s administration steps [that] I think significantly undercut the prospects of peace and restore diplomatic relationships with the Palestinian Authority and assistance to support the Israeli Palestinian security cooperation and economic, humanitarian aid for Palestinian people.”

"Biden has known Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu for years and has a warmer relationship with him than Obama had. One cause of tension was Netanyahu’s decision to address a joint session of Congress to oppose the Iran deal. Like most Democrats, Biden did not attend the speech. 


The Democrats all walked out when Netanyahu made that speech.  He had flown here purposely to address the USA and warn them of what Mossad and others had found out about Iran and their goal of using the uranium for purposes of attacking Israel and the USA.  They were able to continue their work without the people knowing about it who were keeping tabs on Iran, the inspectors,  being honest.


Update: David Albright, who heads Institute for Science and International Security, said the president Obama’s language “is a bit over the top.” He took particular exception to the latter part of the president’s statement — that the inspections “help the world verify every day that Iran is not building a bomb.”
“That’s not true,” he said. “We do not have inspections that are good enough to determine if they have a secret centrifuge plant.” He said the ability to determine whether Iran can make a bomb, such as learning how much raw material Iran has used or how many centrifuge rotors have been made, is yet to be negotiated. The current inspections, he said, only help determine whether Iran is not breaking out to make a bomb at these particular declared sites.
(A report by Albright was quoted in a June 15, 2008 article in the Washington Post. He stated in a leaked copy of a draft report (to be released in full the week of June 15, 2008) that a nuclear weapons smuggling ring—which sold bomb-related parts to LibyaNorth Korea, and Iran—possessed plans to an advanced nuclear device, compact enough to fit on a ballistic missile used by Iran and a dozen other developing countries. It was unknown if these plans had been shared with any regime; and the plans had recently been destroyed.)

The Netanyahu government also embarrassed Biden by announcing 1,600 new homes for Jews in East Jerusalem in the middle of the then-vice president’s 2010 trip to Israel, which Biden condemned as “precisely the kind of step that undermines the trust we need right now.”
                                                        

Biden knows how to be friendly with people.  Nevertheless, Uzi Arad, one of Netanyahu’s advisors, said that when the prime minister came to meet with the president in 2010, Biden threw his arm around Arad and said with a smile, “Just remember that I am your best fucking friend here.”  This meant that the other Democrats weren't.  

In 2012, Biden said Netanyahu has been his friend for more than 30 years. “Bibi, I don’t agree with a damn thing you say, but I love you,” Biden said at the time.

This could be Biden's Freudian slip.  Biden does not see the dangers that Netanyahu does about Israel.  He didn't even listen to Netanyahu's explanation at the UN but walked out with all his fellow Democrats.  This is what his term as president could be like; reacting like Obama did and Hillary would have being she was in step with Obama as well.  Democrats seem to be of one mind.


“I do not support annexation,” he said. “Israel needs to stop the threats of annexation and stop settlement activity because it will choke off any hope of peace.”

Biden said annexation would not get a “green light” or recognition from his administration.
Biden is for the 2-state solution  thinking it will bring peace.  
                       Towns and cities established in areas A,B,C 
                  Those spoken of to be ceded are on the east and in white.
                  Nablus, Ramallah, Bethlehem and Hebron are Arab 
               towns.  
                                  

He said Israel should stop settlement activity, but “we also shouldn’t let the Palestinians off the hook” for issues like incitement and support for terrorism.
Biden assigned blame for the stalled peace process to Palestinian and Israeli leadership which are unwilling to take political risks through direct talks.
                                                        
Israelis build town and cities, not settlements.  We do not use that term.  It has political connotations of being temporary to it which he is using.  These towns and cities are a few miles from Jerusalem in our ancient land of Judea and Samaria.  I'm afraid Biden has no idea of what Israelis need in the line of homes and where they are needed.   

To say that Israel has not taken political risks is ludicrous. How about flying to the US to speak to Congress about danger from Iran, the speech Biden didn't sit through at all?  It's risky just to live in Israel, let alone be a political risk.  Israel is made up of people of the left and the right.  Whatever he says is a political risk.  Luckily, the majority go along with his thinking.  

I'm seeing this with the many Jews who belong to J Street who are also Democrats, and do not speak for Israel's position but their own Democratic viewpoint which is predisposed to fit the majority US position of  Democrats. They all say they care for Israel but speak from their own position by not backing Israel's position.  Take this position of the announcement of 1600 new homes for Jews.  


"Israel has authorised the construction of 1,600 flats in disputed East Jerusalem and will approve 2,700 more in the next few days, officials have said, detailing a plan that could complicate diplomatic efforts to dissuade Palestinians from declaring statehood at the UN.


The announcement drew immediate criticism from the Palestinians, and from Israel's leading anti-settlement group, which accused the government of seizing on mass protests over housing costs to give economic justification to building in the city. Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu's office knew the construction plans were moving ahead, said an interior ministry spokesman Roi Lachmanovich. An earlier approval for the 1,600-flat project embarrassed Netanyahu and caused a diplomatic rift with the US because it coincided with a visit to Israel by Joe Biden, the US vice-president."
 In August 2013, I wrote about Israel building in East Jerusalem after 10 months of waiting for Abbas to come to the table which he didn't.  "In order to appease the Arabs, Netanyahu went for 10 months without building a thing, and since the result was nothing, has decided not to ever do that again, which of course angers the Arabs who want to maintain that nothingness on the part of the Jews."  The Arabs complain when Israel builds anyplace.  

Israel is such a teeny country, and has had to build apartments/flats for their people, not individual homes like the USA.  It's more like a section of New York in this housing.  I had no choice.  I lived in an apartment building both in Haifa and Safed.  When children grow up and marry and have children, they need their own apartment.  Netanyahu is trying to appease the citizens by giving them the housing they clamor for which Europe and the USA  seem to ignore.  The land may be arguementable in the UN, but not to the Jews who live on it.  Where there has been land available, it is cruel not to have been able to use it. 

 Israel made Jerusalem a whole city, undivided after it had been divided by barbed wire in Jordan's hands from 1948 to 1967.  Israel captured East Jerusalem from Jordan in the 1967 Middle East war and annexed it. In 1980 the Israeli parliament passed a law declaring the “complete and united” city of Jerusalem to be the capital of Israel onMay 7, 2018. Remember, Israel did not start the 1967 war.  They were attacked 
by Syria, Egypt, Jordan, Iraq, with Russia being an instigator.  

The United Nations regards East Jerusalem as occupied, and the city’s status as disputed until resolved by negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians.
This, for the city of David, established by King David, a Jewish king for a Jewish country established over 3,000 years ago.  

A Biden Administration would:

“Ensure that support for the U.S.-Israel alliance remains bipartisan, reversing Trump’s exploitation of U.S. support for Israel as a political football, which harms both countries’ interests.”
 I take umbrage to this remark in that supporting Israel helps both countries physically and in their shared interests, like security and health.  In defense of Trump, the US Democrat and Republican presidents had sworn each year to take the steps Trump did of moving the US embassy to Jerusalem, but they would back out each time.  Trump said he would do it and did it. Either he saw the window of opportunity when preceding presidents didn't or he took a political risk, and I think it was the latter, something others wouldn't do.  


Reference:
https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/views-on-israel-of-u-s-presidential-candidates-2020-joe-biden
https://jewishfactsfromportland.blogspot.com/2013/08/abbas-really-pushing-envelope-over.html
  https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-israel-diplomacy-jerusalem-explai/why-is-the-u-s-moving-its-embassy-to-jerusalem-idUSKBN1I811N#:~:text=Israel%20captured%20East%20Jerusalem%20from,be%20the%20capital%20of%20Israel.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/fact-checker/wp/2014/02/06/president-obamas-claim-of-unprecedented-inspections-in-iran/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Albright
https://militarist-monitor.org/profile/david-albright/  very interesting

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