Eric Zuesse

Many news-reports indicate that President-Elect Donald Trump’s Israel policy is in accord with that of his Orthodox Jewish son-in-law Jared Kushner, who allegedly allies himself with Israel’s Jewish Home Party, which favors Israel's absorbing both the West Bank and the Gaza strip and imposing upon Palestinians the full rule by Israel’s government, regardless whether they accept it or not.

The Jewish Home Party was co-founded by Ayelet Shaked, Netanyahu’s Press Secretary, and by Naftali Bennett. Both Bennett and Shaked were elected to Israel’s Knesset or parliament in 2013. Bennett was Netanyahu’s Minister of Economy until 2015, when Netanyahu appointed him Minister of Education. During 2006-2008 Bennett had been Netanyahu’s Chief of Staff. On 14 May 2015, Shaked started her service, appointed by Benjamin Netanyahu, as Israel’s Minister of Justice, equivalent to America’s Attorney General, serving now in a different and much higher capacity than before, her former boss, Netanyahu.

On 1 July 2014, Shaked had approvingly posted to her facebook page a statement by Uri Elitzer, who had previously served as Netanyahu’s Press Secretary. Shaked said, in her facebook post, that his statement had been “written 12 years ago” but is “relevant today as it was then” (i.e., back in 2002). Elitzer’s statement urged extermination of all Palestinians.

Specifically (as shown at that link) it urged "what America did in Afghanistan, including bombs of populated localities, including the creation of refugees of hundreds of thousands of people who fled the fighting.” It urged that this be done in order to respond to “bombings” by Palestinians, and that, "All the enemy fighters and bleeding in the head. It’s also the mothers of the martyrs, that send them to hell with flowers and kisses. They need to follow them, there’s nothing in it. They need to go, and the physical house in which they raised the snake. Other small snakes grow more. … The two houses need to be bombed from the air, to destroy and to kill. And we have to explain that from now on, every home of a martyr. There is nothing right and probably not even that useful [in continuing those Palestinians]. Each bomber should have known he was taking with him both his parents and his home and neighbors. … The list cannot be focused. That’s war.”

In other words: Treat Palestinians like the residents of Dresden were treated by Churchill in World War II, and like the residents of Hiroshima and Nagazaki were treated by Truman to end WW II. “That’s war,” according to Elitzer, as approved by Shaked, who now is Israel’s Minister of Justice, and who also co-founded and co-leads the political Party that Trump (or at least his son -in-law) is alleged to favor. It’s war against not just some cites such as Dresden and Nagasaki had been, but wherever there is a bombing in Israel by a Palestinian.

The Israeli press as well as Western press such as Britain’s Reuters, are presenting the Jewish Home Party’s view as being the view that’s also supported by Trump: the press are alleging that under Trump there will be no more of the prior U.S. position favoring a ’two-state solution’ — a Jewish state beside a Palestinian state — but instead a final solution of the Palestinian problem for the Jewish state: a Jewish taking-over of all or most of the Palestinian areas. As Jonathan Cook put it, “Mr Trump’s advisers on the Israel-Palestine conflict are closer to settler leader Naftali Bennett, the education minister, than Mr Netanyahu. After Mr Trump’s victory, Mr Bennett crowed: ‘The era of a Palestinian state is over.’”

However, there has been no Trump statement yet regarding whether the U.S. policy will be to support Israel’s exterminating Palestinians if any of them “bomb” Israel — the position that at least formerly was praised by Israel’s Minister of Justice, and, before her, by Netanyahu’s Press Secretary Elitzer. Perhaps U.S. President Trump will not agree with Shaked’s expressed view that Elitzer’s statement is “relevant today as it was then” — nor even that it ever had been ‘relevant’, not even back in 2002. However, if not, then there might be considerable disappointment within Israel’s government, and especially within the political Party that is alleged to reflect most closely the Trump viewpoint.

One wonders whether any of the Trumps knows that Israel is an enemy nation? It’s perhaps not as much of an enemy to the U.S. as Saudi Arabia and some other ‘U.S. allies’, but nonetheless it’s an enemy to the U.S. This has nothing to do with anti-Semitism (nor with anti-Islamism); it’s just a historical fact about those particular nations. Are all of the Trumps ignorant of that history (history proving that such ‘allies’ perpetrated major and very bloody attacks upon the U.S., which still are covered-up and have never been acknowledged — much less been retributed)? If Donald Trump informs himself about it (such as by exploring the links presented here), will he fundamentally alter U.S. international relations accordingly?

According to the Jewish Telegraph Agency, Trump surrounds himself with conservative Zionist Jews. If that’s true, then it would be seem to be extremely unlikely that Trump will be open-minded to get beyond the myths that have been controlling U.S. foreign policies, especially about Israel. Or: can a person surround himself with such fantasists and yet also, somehow, expose himself to the ugly realities that contradict their fantasies? If not, then would it even be possible for Trump to become a good President?

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Investigative historian Eric Zuesse is the author, most recently, of They're Not Even Close: The Democratic vs. Republican Economic Records, 1910-2010 , and of CHRIST’S VENTRILOQUISTS: The Event that Created Christianity.nomic Records, 1910-2010, and of CHRIST’S VENTRILOQUISTS: The Event that Created Christianity.