February 13, 2016
By Asher Schechter
While we were all distracted by Hillary Clinton’s health, (click here) the Trump campaign said something about Israel and the Palestinians that should have us all very worried....
...Leave it to Trump’s camp to endorse an incendiary, nonsensical piece of demagoguery, and then double down on it with shockingly farcical Nazi analogies.
...Leave it to Trump’s camp to endorse an incendiary, nonsensical piece of demagoguery, and then double down on it with shockingly farcical Nazi analogies.
This argument is, of course, ludicrous for many reasons, but let’s focus on two: First, it makes no sense. Flawed as it may be, the two-state solution at least has some logic to it. Friedman’s (and by assertion, the Trump campaign’s) vision does not. No one – certainly not Netanyahu and (probably) not Friedman – is suggesting that settlers become Palestinian citizens who pay taxes to Palestine and abide by its laws, as the Palestinians citizens of Israel do. Presumably, settlements should be allowed to function as Israeli enclaves within the hypothetical Palestinian state? How is that supposed to work?
Secondly, it’s preposterous to claim that Palestinian refugees, descendants of the hundreds of thousands of Palestinians expelled during Israel’s War of Independence (talk about ethnic cleansing) bear no connection to Israel (née Palestine), while at the same time standing up for the rights of American-born Jews who became settlers to live in their “ancestral homeland.”
But logic, reason, or factual accuracy matter very little to Trump and his people. The point of their support for Netanyahu’s latest statement wasn’t part of a coherent plan to resolve the Israeli-Palestinian issue, but a clear attempt at pandering to right-wing, pro-Israel voters (including the 60,000 eligible American voters who live in West Bank settlements and whose votes they seek).
In the last few weeks, Trump’s supporters in Israel have been working very hard to get the GOP nominee a majority of Israel’s 200,000-plus eligible American votes. In the last month alone the Israeli pro-Trump campaign opened four campaign offices across Israel, including one in a West Bank settlement – a first for a U.S. presidential nominee. Meanwhile, the Trump campaign and its Israeli supporters have been ramping up the pro-settlement rhetoric.
It’s classic Trump behavior: entice the far-right crowd by espousing the most incendiary rhetoric imaginable (“Judenrein” as Israel-Palestine’s “Mexicans are rapists”), and then present outlandish fringe ideas as if they were serious and well-thought-out policy plans....
