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More Trump diplomatic disfunction
Topic Started: Dec 20 2016, 06:43 AM (53 Views)
Stoned
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Fire & Ice Senior Diplomat
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A joke making the rounds in the days after Ben Carson’s nomination to head the Department of Housing and Urban Development held that Donald Trump had seen the word “urban” and then given the job to the first black man he could think of. Maybe a similar thought process led the president-elect to nominate his Jewish bankruptcy attorney, David Friedman, to be the next U.S. ambassador to Israel.

Let us be absolutely clear: Friedman has no business in this job, which is one of our nation’s most sensitive diplomatic posts. He is a career bankruptcy lawyer whose list of notable professional highlights consists of representing a variety of corporations in Chapter 7 and Chapter 11 proceedings. He has no experience in the foreign service or the diplomatic corps or government at any level, aside from presumably knowing how to get to the U.S. trustee branch office in New York.

What Friedman has is a portfolio of hysterical columns on right-wing Israeli news sites, a street-fighter-level view of conflict and deep loyalty to Donald Trump. His us-versus-them mentality on Israel and the occupied territories is that Israel has the right to appropriate whatever land it wants from Palestinians, including annexing the entire West Bank if it so chooses.

Friedman also advocates moving the U.S. embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, a long-standing goal of conservatives. Several U.S. presidential administrations have resisted this move, insisting that Jerusalem’s status must be resolved through negotiations between Israelis and Palestinians. In announcing Friedman’s appointment, the Trump administration also heralded its intention to move the embassy anyway — because sure, why not: Israel is about due for the Third Intifada anyway.

Friedman’s nomination signals a new and hard-line approach to Israel that ensures the already intractable conflict between the Jewish state and the Palestinians will not be resolved for decades. This has dismayed peace activists on both sides of the divide, to say nothing about those who see the continuing struggle as a threat to Israel’s future viability as a nation. It is a signal to the right-wing government of Benjamin Netanyahu that the United States, Israel’s longtime defender and protector, is about to grant the nation permission to resolve the issue of the final disposition of the West Bank and Gaza however it wants.


http://www.salon.com/2016/12/19/donald-trump-is-sending-a-right-wing-bankruptcy-lawyer-to-israel-what-could-go-wrong/
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Fire & Ice Senior Diplomat
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Does Salon have plenty of butt hurt salve?
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