Trump, Haley, Kerry on Israel and the Palestinians

William Bennett, among others, disputes the report that John Kerry told a representative of the Palestinian Authority that they should hang tough on Jerusalem because Trump’s days were numbered. Yet, Kerry was not alone in saying that Trump would not complete his term. George Soros, formerly with the Gestapo, said so also at Davos yesterday.

Perhaps Bennett is correct. If so, we will soon be hearing John Kerry's full throated denial. As of now, we merely have the sound of silence.

We note that certain Jewish members of the Obama administration are especially sensitive to charges that their favorite president sold out Israel. One of them, former ambassador Dan Shapiro, chose not to leave Israel after his tenure ended. Some have suggested that he remains in order to counterbalance the good that the Trump administration might do.

Anyway, yesterday President Trump met with Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu. As is his wont, he struck back against the Mahmoud Abbas’s temper tantrum over Vice President Pence’s visit to Israel. As you recall, Abbas refused to meet with Pence… as a protest over Trump’s recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital.

To which Trump responded, via the Wall Street Journal:

President Donald Trump on Thursday said the Palestinians must return to peace talks with Israel to continue receiving U.S. aid, in comments to reporters as he met with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

Mr. Trump, in Davos for two days for the World Economic Forum gathering, said he was hopeful for a peace deal between Israel and the Palestinians, but said the Palestinians had “disrespected” the U.S. by refusing to meet with Vice President Mike Pence on his trip to the Middle East earlier this week.

“If you look back at various peace proposals…I said, did you ever talk about the vast amounts of funds, money, that we give to the Palestinians?” Mr. Trump said as he met with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. “We give hundreds of millions of dollars. They said, we never talked about it. Well, we do talk about it.”

“That money is on the table,” Mr. Trump added, “and that money’s not going to them unless they sit down and negotiate peace.”

Good for him. It’s about time that someone called out the juvenile antics of the Palestinian terrorist contingent.

At the same time, U. N. Ambassador Nikki Haley, another strong Trump administration voice for Israel, said this at the United Nations yesterday:

U. S Ambassador Nikki Haley launched a broadside yesterday at Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas, accusing him of indulging in “outrageous” conspiracy theories about Israel and lacking what is needed to secure peace in the region.

Haley made the remarks at a meeting of the U.N. Security Council on the Middle East. She pointedly contrasted Abbas with leaders like the late Egyptian President Anwar Sadat, whom she cited as a leader “willing to step forward, acknowledge hard truths, and make compromises.” 

“Where is the Palestinian Anwar Sadat?” she asked….

“He rejected any American role in peace talks. He insulted the American president. He called for suspending recognition of Israel,” Haley said. “He invoked an ugly and fictional past, reaching back to the 17th century to paint Israel as a colonialist project engineered by European powers.”

“A speech that indulges in outrageous and discredited conspiracy theories is not the speech of a person with the courage and will to seek real peace,” she added.

She said that while the U.S. was “eager” to pursue peace, “we will not chase after a Palestinian leadership that lacks what’s needed to achieve peace.”

We note that Haley is now being attacked by Abigail Tracy of Vanity Fair for being too pro-Israeli. For reasons that defy reason the left mobilizes against anyone who strongly defends Israel.

We recall that the Obama administration thought that Israeli intransigence was the problem, not Palestinian terrorism. It reserved its contempt for the prime minister of Israel.

Naturally, the Obamaphile left is not taking all of this lying down. It is accusing Trump of being a stealth anti-Semite. Why? Because he did not honor Holocaust Remembrance Day last year.

From today’s New York Times editorial:

Saturday is International Holocaust Remembrance Day. For President Trump, it is a shot at redemption.

He failed a moral test on the same occasion a year ago when he issued a message that strangely left out any specific reference to the six million Jews murdered in the Nazis’ industrialized genocide. The White House cast the omission as somehow an “inclusive” approach because, it said, Roma, gays, the disabled and others were also victims. But Jews were unique targets. Failing to mention them was as bizarre as it would be to write a history of slavery and ignore the ordeal of Africans brought to America in chains.

It was an example of Mr. Trump’s complex, at times disturbing, instincts in regard to Jews.

Anything to keep New York’s Jewish voters in line.