13 Reasons Why Palestinians Should take Trump off the Table

January 7, 2018 Articles, Commentary
Donald Trump. (Photo: Michael Vadon, Wikimedia Commons)

By Ahmad Amr

As we enter the second century of the insidious ongoing ethnic cleansing of the Palestinian people, Donald Trump tweeted that Jerusalem was now off the table. Well I don’t tweet – so you’ll have to do with an article explaining why the Palestinians have every legal right to take Trump off the table.

1. Trump is an embattled president who is mentally unbalanced and susceptible to the last suggestion he heard from his inner circle and his inner circle is dominated by the Zionist Organization of America and his Vice President who is an Evangelical Christian who could write all he knows about the history of Palestine on a postcard.

2. Trump assigned Kushner the task of sorting things out between the Palestinians and the Israelis. Kushner and his family are longtime supporters of the illegal settlements in the West Bank and Jerusalem. As an Orthodox Jew and with long standing family ties to both Netanyahu and the Zionist Organization of America (ZOA), Jared Kushner has injected an unmistakably sectarian agenda into American foreign policy. He has put together a “Dream Team” of negotiators who were recruited from the ranks of the ZOA. The destiny of the Palestinian people is not a Kushner family affair. Aside from anything else, the Kushner’s don’t have a reputation of being a law-abiding family. Papa didn’t go to jail for nothing and there may be reasons to have another Kushner do time.

3. The ZOA has a century of well-documented intervention in the making of American foreign policy. Long before the Palestine Mandate, they had their eyes set on establishing a sectarian Jewish state on the eastern shores of the Mediterranean. You will see their imprint on the very map of Mandate Palestine. They were very much the midwife of the Palestinian Nakba and the creation of the sectarian State of Israel.

4. The ZOA wears their anti-Palestinian bias proudly. Like all Likudniks, they dismiss the Palestinians as an “invented people” engaged in the “the ongoing and relentless Arab/Islamic war against Israel.” If you want to read some real fake news – go to their website. These guys are unapologetic Likudniks and one of them just happens to be Trump’s bankruptcy lawyer and you know that can’t be good. Trump thought that the lawyer who helped him stiff creditors and suppliers would be the perfect man to send as an emissary to the Palestinians. When you find yourself around a corporate bankruptcy lawyer, keep your hands on your wallet. They’re white collar criminals with law degrees. A sleazy corrupt bankruptcy lawyer with a history of anti-Palestinian rants is not going to determine the fate of the Palestinian people.

5. The Palestinians have a right to expect neutrality from the Americans and America is anything but neutral. Whether you go by surveys or read their vehemently sectarian screeds on the internet, most Americans are indifferent at best to the fate of the Palestinians and many are downright hostile to Palestinians and Arabs. Throw in a plague of islamophobia and residual Holocaust guilt and you have a very hostile environment for a fair hearing of the Palestinian narrative.

6. One thing that is refreshing about Trump is he is stupid enough to go on the record and give you his reasoning for taking Jerusalem off the table. He said he was just making good on a campaign promise to his base. Pray tell, what historic rights do Evangelicals have in Palestine that they should be accorded any say in the matter.

7. Israel remains the third rail of American politics even among the ranks of the so-called “resistance.” The ZOA has both parties covered. The ZOA takes whatever number of seats they want to take when they appear before Congress. Every Congressman and Senator knows the exact protocol to follow in their dealings with the ZOA. Briefly – You listen – You cough up as much as you can in American aid to Israel and sing her praises as America’s “only reliable ally.”

8. Sharon himself said that Israel controls America and Netanyahu proved it by snapping his finger and calling a joint session of Congress to hear his irrational Likudnik ranting. And all Obama could do was sulk away into a safe place and take it like a good Democrat and cough up another $38 billion in aid and do it with a smile.

9. Americans are not stupid. They are just not paying attention. Even the ones that get it don’t want to pay attention because all they have to look back at is a trail of blood and tears that they unleashed on the people of Iraq. Some of them even took notice that Douglas Feith and Judith Miller were ZOA zealots who pedaled their WMD toxic theories under the “neo-con” label. These Zealots were all committed to “Securing the Realm” not to securing the borders of the United States. And when it all went to hell, Israel couldn’t lend a hand in the fight because our “only reliable ally” is considered a hostile pariah state by everybody in the region and Americans are seen as doing its bidding. In their infantile Zionist wet dreams, the ZOA cadres imagined that Iraq would emerge as an American vasal state. It now appears that Iraq will be in the Iranian sphere of influence for the foreseeable future. No worries. The realm is safe and Iraq is in tatters. The problem with dealing with the Americans is that they do not have the guts to act in their own national self-interest and their politicians have always put party before country unless that country is Israel.

10. America has serious legal liabilities arising out of their reckless wars in Iraq and their steadfast support of the ethnic cleansing of the Palestinians. America’s wars have set the region back decades and left emotional scars that will take a century to heal. The Palestinians and Iraqis have claims that could add up to hundreds of billions of dollars in restitution against the American government and American arms manufacturers. The United States and Great Britain have so far succeeded in denying basic access to justice for the victims of their war crimes. The scale of those liabilities will be tested when individual Palestinians and Iraqis start filing Victim of Crime Impact Statements in proper jurisdiction where they have access to justice in where they can get a fair hearing. The imperative for American and British policy makers to dodge those catastrophic liabilities must be taken into consideration when assessing whether they have any credibility as “negotiating parties” or “neutral facilitators.”

11. America only keeps the promises that are easy to keep. All the Americans can bring to the Palestinian table is 25 years of broken promises that they never intended to keep. Trump took the Kurds off the table too and he wouldn’t let the Syrian refugees on the table. He simply didn’t care how many drowned to death. And while he was at it, he took American reconstruction aid off the table and left the Syrians to the mercy of Assad and Putin. The bottom line is the Americans can’t be depended on to deliver unless the promise is made to Israel.

12. It’s time to give another group of responsible state actors a chance to put a stop to the ethnic cleansing of the Palestinian people. Let the people of the Mediterranean step up to the plate. They have no confusion about who the Palestinian people are and they are more empathetic to their trials and tribulations. They remember the Palestinians from the time they were Phoenician and Greek and Ottoman and they even remember the British and French Mandate. That’s a good start.

13. It’s time to give the United Nations of the Mediterranean a chance to heal the wounds inflicted by the United States of America and Great Britain. A lot of Americans would be happy to pack up and leave the region for now and forever. They know its not about American interests. American foreign policy in the region is a product of the way Americans finance their elections and the way they allow foreign governments to interfere in their elections. Where is all the screaming about Israel’s choke hold on our politicians? The Russians were just trying to play their own Hasbra games to rig the polls. You won’t hear the Russians say – why pick on us – what about the Israelis? You certainly won’t hear Trump saying – what about the Israeli influence on our elections? That’s how muzzled Americans are. If Americans can be muzzled in America – they should at least have the decency to keep their muzzles to themselves.

The Palestinians should remember what the Zionists did in 1947. After getting the British to clear the way for them, they demanded that the British be sidelined because they were biased and they demanded that the issue of the European Jewish Holocaust survivors factor into how the Palestine pie was sliced up and they demanded that the carving knife be given to the Americans. As a result, they got the United States Government to put a partition plan that actually included forced displacement of indigenous Palestinians to make room for Hitler’s victims. An ethnic cleansing solution to an ethnic cleansing problem. That is America’s legacy in the region and it is a legacy America continues to live up to every day.

It’s time to tell Trump and his son-in-law and bankruptcy lawyer to take a hike. It’s time to air out the grievances the Palestinians have against the American government and the Zionist Organization America. It is a legal imperative to make a record of these reservations with the United Nations General Assembly and the Security Council and to ask for a restraining order preventing the United States from subverting the fundamental and natural rights of the Palestinians to live in their ancestral homeland. Do it politely and diplomatically but do it and let the Kushner Klan find another real estate hobby.

– Ahmed Amr is an economist and the author of “How to Steal a Billion Dollars” and the ‘Sheep and the Guardians.’ He contributed this article to PalestineChronicl.com.

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