ON WEDNESDAY, a U.N. agency published a report noting that “Israel has established an apartheid regime that dominates the Palestinian people as a whole.” Yesterday, the author of that report, who has served as executive secretary of the United Nations Economic and Social Commission for Western Asia (UNESCWA) since 2010, Rima Khalef, resigned after the Trump administration, working in conjunction with Israel, pressured the U.N. secretary-general to demand that she withdraw the report.
Khalef, a Jordanian national who has served in multiple high government positions, refused the demand to repudiate her own report, instead choosing to resign. The report — which was co-authored by the Jewish American Princeton professor and former U.N. official Richard Falk, a longtime critic of Israeli occupation — has now been removed from the UNESCWA website.
What makes this event most remarkable is how unremarkable the report’s conclusion is: It’s a point that a former Israeli prime minister — as well as Trump’s own defense secretary — has made unequivocally. Back in 2010, Ehud Barak, Israel’s former prime minister and its most decorated soldier, explicitly warned that Israel was on a path to what he called a permanent “apartheid” state. As he put it: “As long as in this territory west of the Jordan river there is only one political entity called Israel it is going to be either non-Jewish, or non-democratic. If this bloc of millions of Palestinians cannot vote, that will be an apartheid state.”
Seven years later, Israel is indisputably committed to exactly that outcome. Many of its key ministers do not even support a two-state solution. Israeli expansion of illegal settlements continues unabated. Palestinians are further away than ever from full political rights, or even enjoying the right of democratic self-determination. As Barak himself pointed out, this is the very definition of apartheid.
Yet now, thanks to the Trump administration’s self-destructive devotion to Israeli interests — an odd posture for a president who ran on a platform of “Putting America First” — it is impermissible for U.N. officials to note this reality lest Israel be offended. In its report on the ouster of Khalef, CNN was surprisingly blunt about what this all means:
Memo to critics of Israel inside the U.N. system: Prepare to pay a price. … The U.S. under Trump has made it quite clear it will defend Israel perhaps more than all other countries at the U.N.
Early on his campaign, Trump issued controversial positions about Israel, including his statement that the U.S. should be “neutral” in the Israel-Palestine conflict and his proclaiming his immunity to AIPAC influence. But, as I noted last July, once he secured the nomination, he quickly switched to the standard pro-Israel line, beginning with his Jared Kushner-written AIPAC speech, and then went even beyond U.S. orthodoxy on Israel by explicitly endorsing expansion of Israeli settlements.
Since his inauguration, all signs indicate Trump will be an inflammatory fanatic when it comes to U.S. support for Israeli aggression, even at the expense of U.S. interests. He nominated a pro-settlement extremist to be his ambassador to Israel. He has repeatedly suggested that his son-in-law Kushner, whose family has long supported extremist settlements, will be his key envoy in the region. And he even appeared to abandon the long-standing U.S. rhetorical commitment to a two-state solution (a commitment it long ago abandoned in action), before his administration re-affirmed it.
What makes all of this most extraordinary is that Trump’s own Pentagon chief has previously warned that exactly this kind of mentality — defending Israeli aggression and expansion — is directly harmful to the U.S. At the Aspen Security Forum in 2013, Gen. James Mattis said:
I paid a military security price every day as the commander of CentCom because the Americans were seen as biased in support of Israel, and that moderates all the moderate Arabs who want to be with us, because they can’t come out publicly in support of people who don’t show respect for the Arab Palestinians.
Indeed, people charged with anti-U.S. terrorism frequently cite U.S. support for Israeli aggression as a key grievance. Moreover, Mattis “called the current situation in Israel ‘unsustainable’ and blamed the settlements for harming prospects for peace.” Most ironically of all, Mattis “called it a choice between giving up the idea of a Jewish state or becoming an apartheid state” — exactly the point the Trump administration is now trying to make unutterable at the U.N.
Trump convinced millions of people to vote for him by promising to prioritize American interests over those of other nations. Yet what Trump is doing at the U.N., and in the Middle East more broadly, is exactly the opposite. He is empowering exactly the ideologues who have long venerated a defense of the Israeli government over all other considerations — not just the human and political rights of Palestinians but also the concrete security interests of the U.S.
One of the reason’s we know the trumpster is a fraud is, he said 100% support for the criminal state of Israel. Also putting goldman sack jews in his cabinet. He will repay all the jews that got him appointed to the office. He is a jew loving zionist.
Is that why Trump just gave 250 million to the PLO? Because he is a “Jew loving Zionist”? And met with Abbas saying he supports a Palestinian state that shares Samaria and Jerusalem.
This article’s assertion that “Since his inauguration, all signs indicate Trump will be an inflammatory fanatic when it comes to U.S. support for Israeli aggression, even at the expense of U.S. interests. He nominated a pro-settlement extremist to be his ambassador to Israel. He has repeatedly suggested that his son-in-law Kushner, whose family has long supported extremist settlements, will be his key envoy in the region. And he even appeared to abandon the long-standing U.S. rhetorical commitment to a two-state solution (a commitment it long ago abandoned in action), before his administration re-affirmed it.” Is made null and void by his recent overtures toward legitimizing a Palestinian state.
It seems in many ways he is following in the footsteps of his predecessors.
Blessings:-}
regardless the tweet, you’ll know them by their fruit.
Thanks flash. One of the best and most accurate quotes of our time.
Blessings:-}
Trump Administration Ousts Islamic Sympathizing Jewphobes From U.N.
You’re a good little bitch.
South Africa wishes they had been that smart.
Get the US out of the mid east.You feel strongly for isreal,the idf is hiring/same with the palestinians/hamas/what have you,just get our troops the fuck out of the sand box.Folks cannot play well there,leave em to their own devices and stop giving em reasons to hate the west even more,gets rid of the excuse for attacking us as we no longer attack them.We then defend the West by ridding all muslims that will not live and let live,may have to send all of em to islamic utopia countries in the mid east.
I totally agree with you James except for one thing. We have been fucking with them in their sandbox for so long now, that I think even if we did get the fuck out, some of them would still want to fuck with us. People over there have long memories.
Agreed,but tis a start,as I said,get rid of any muslims in the west that want to keep their nonsense up.Send em to the mid east or a african muslim utopia,their choice.We have made a lot of mistakes,time to end them,and,that includes letting in millions of the enemy into the west.
Let us go back to riding our horses,they their camels,and,well,whatever the hell Canadians ride,moose?
IMO this lady did the only thing she could, and she’s right as rain. Anyone who denies that Israel has acted with Apartheid against the Palistinians is not seeing the situation for what it is. The Israeli’s want the Palestinians to DIE! So they can steal the rest of their land.
Israel did not steal it – they conquered it. Hold it and it is yours. That is how it works. Victors get the spoils. The conquered get the ashes. Always has been the way, always will be.
Anyway, who in their right mind wants Muslim citizens, or to allow them to vote? How is that working out around the globe?
They’re holding america pretty good and you don’t seem to have any problems with it. Fucking zionazis hold you in bondage and all you can do is bitch about muslims. That, my friend, is called brainwashing.
The Florida Judiciary Committee was blowing through public comments on dozens of proposed bills Friday and some guy took the podium on almost every bill about how Israel felt about it. I would have told him to shut the heck up; Israel’s opinion has no standing here!