All posts tagged "israel"

This secret greedy deal proves Trump's summit is a cynical farce

This is what happens when cynical, greedy, amoral billionaires and psychopaths run a country.

The Times of London (Murdoch-owned) is reporting that billionaire Steve Witkoff, billionaire Donald Trump, and billionaire Vladimir Putin have worked out a model behind the scenes to solve the Ukraine problem: just make it like Gaza.

They’re planning, according to this reporting, to fully respect the borders of Ukraine and the country’s sovereignty, but with one catch. Just like Israel did with Gaza, Ukraine can “self-govern” but all political and economic decisions will be made or approved by Moscow, all funds flowing through Moscow, just like the governments of Gaza and the West Bank are subservient to the whims of Netanyahu and the Israeli Knesset.

It's essentially a plan to return Ukraine to the subordinate status it had when it was part of the old Soviet Union, which Putin appears committed to reestablishing, country by country.

Trump’s Senior Director for Counterterrorism, former Sinclair Broadcasting commentator Sebastian Gorka, went all “peace for our time” Neville Chamberlain with his apparent endorsement of the idea:

“We recognize the reality on the ground and we have one priority above all else, whether it’s the Middle East or whether it’s Ukraine. It’s to stop the bloodshed. Everything else comes after the bloodshed has been halted.”

Meanwhile, NBC News reports that Netanyahu is now moving to Stage Two of his apparent Gaza plan: shipping the citizens of Gaza, who’ve lived there for millennia, to the hellhole of South Sudan.

I say “hellhole” from personal experience. I was working in South Sudan about a decade ago with an international relief organization, 15 miles from the Darfur border, distributing food, medicine, and tents to refugees fleeing the Janjaweed murderers.

We could see the villages burning on the horizon as desperate people — nearly all women, children and the elderly, as the military-age men had all been killed — flooded into the region. Here’s an excerpt from the diary I kept during that trip:

“The land here in South Sudan is vast and flat. The 45,000 people around me share one single hand-pumped well (drilled a decade ago by the United Nations), and no other infrastructure beyond that. No buildings, no roads, no septic or sewage, no schools, no clinics or hospitals, no stores or even storehouses, nothing. Most live on a patch of hard-packed reddish dirt about ten feet square with a few of their possessions marking the perimeters of their ‘home,’ sleeping on the dirt, or on a ragged piece of cloth or, the lucky few, a piece of salvaged tarp from some previous relief mission. Stick-thin women and children with bellies swollen by malnutrition outnumber the men, whose peers were murdered by the Janjaweed or taken as slaves to the north.

“The air is so hot and dry that even smells of body odor vanish. My nose is encrusted with dust. The land is barren of any vegetation at all other than the occasional large tree with roots deep enough to reach into the water table thirty or so feet below us. Dust devils blow up and around, tiny cyclones that seem to erupt from nowhere amidst air that is so hot and dry it feels as if we’ve been wrapped in glass wool insulation and tossed into a furnace’s heating duct.

“One relief worker I met on the way here, who was leaving the Darfur area via Juba (the capital city with only three short paved streets) on the same small plane that brought us in, said, ‘If there is a hell, it is much like South Sudan.’

“This being a refugee community, it is thick with disease, as refugees not only bring diseases with them but are among the most vulnerable of all populations to disease. There’s Buruli ulcer, a flesh-eating and incurable (other than by surgery) disease caused by a bacteria related to leprosy: I saw a case of it yesterday in a little girl who had just arrived from Darfur. She had a hole in the side of her shin that was about four inches long, two inches wide, and three-quarters of an inch deep, nearly down to the bone.

“Ebola was first discovered here and in nearby Zaire. Eighty percent of the world’s cases of Guinea Worm disease are here in Southern Sudan: the microscopic eggs are in the guts of tiny, almost invisible sand fleas that infest food and water, and about three months after eating one, the worms hatch. Over the course of the next year they grow throughout the body, often boring out through the skin causing an ulcer that can take months before the worm fully emerges, causing dreadful and incapacitating pain. There is no cure.

“In South Sudan sleeping sickness — caused by a parasite named trypanosoma that’s transmitted by the bite of local flies — kills more people than AIDS. This is also the world epicenter of onchocerciasis — another worm that grows more than 1 1/2 feet long inside the body and spreads thousands of eggs to all the organs — soon to become more worms — over the decade or so it takes to kill a person. Sometimes the smaller worms work their way into the cornea, causing blindness which gives this parasite its common name: ‘River Blindness.’

“There’s also visceral leishmaniasis, tuberculosis, leprosy, yellow fever, dengue fever, various bacteria and mycoplasma that cause severe and deadly forms of pneumonia, and many, many of the people in this village are infected with malaria (a particularly nasty, drug-resistant, and usually fatal form, P. falciparum, is the most common here in Southern Sudan).”

Following Netanyahu’s advice, Trump is also negotiating with South Sudan to take in America’s “illegals” in exchange for cash. They’ve already taken in eight people — none of them even Africans — who Trump shipped over there last month.

Nice guys, those two leaders of Israel and America. Along with Putin, “the three caballeros” show what happens when countries are run by entirely self-interested and morbidly rich sociopaths.

Forget about commitments, duty, or loyalty: Trump has never, in his entire life, been big on keeping a promise; just ask his three wives or the thousands of small businesses, workers, and customers he’s screwed.

So, it makes perfect sense that he and his billionaire land developer buddy Witkoff, who’s now negotiating with Putin and Netanyahu even though he has zero diplomatic experience, would go along with Putin’s Great New Idea to Gaza-ize Ukraine.

In fact, in 1994 the US, Ukraine, Great Britain, and Russia signed the Budapest Accord, an agreement that promised America and Britain would defend Ukraine’s borders in exchange for them giving up to Russia what was then the third-largest nuclear weapons arsenal in the world, left over from the old Soviet Union. Putin violated it when he took Ukraine’s Crimea region, and Obama doubled down on the betrayal by largely ignoring the annexation. Biden only reluctantly gave Ukraine aid, and Trump has blocked US military aid for eight months now.

Thus, for the first time since Germany invaded Poland and kicked off World War II in 1939, one European nation has invaded another, seized territory, and claimed it as their own.

This violation of international law and national sovereignty clearly doesn’t bother Trump or his Republican toadies; just look at his talk about annexing Greenland or making Canada the 51st state in a dime-store imitation of Hitler and Putin.

Neither Trump nor the GOP that enables him have any moral compass or core values beyond reestablishing white supremacy, enriching the morbidly rich, and moving women, racial and religious minorities, and the queer community into second-class status subordinate to white “Christian” men.

How else could you explain their behavior?

I get it that Trump’s former lawyer just this week acknowledged that Katie Johnson had alleged Trump raped her when she was only 13 years old, and he helped deep-six the case. As an adult, she gave sworn testimony in multiple court cases, one transcript published by Politico:

“Defendant Trump initiated sexual contact with Plaintiff at four different parties. On the fourth and final sexual encounter with Defendant Trump, Defendant Trump tied Plaintiff to a bed, exposed himself to Plaintiff, and then proceeded to forcibly rape Plaintiff. During the course of this savage sexual attack, Plaintiff loudly pleaded with Defendant Trump to stop but with no effect. Defendant Trump responded to Plaintiff’s pleas by violently striking Plaintiff in the face with his open hand and screaming that he would do whatever he wanted.

“Immediately following this rape, Defendant Trump threatened Plaintiff that, were she ever to reveal any of the details of the sexual and physical abuse of her by Defendant Trump, Plaintiff and her family would be physically harmed if not killed.”

(After her testimony, Johnson received a series of death threats from Trump supporters and has since vanished.)

But will sabotaging Ukraine with a Gaza-like deal (and possible eventual resettlement to South Sudan) be enough to get us to stop talking about the possibility that the current President of the United States is a child rapist? Or is Trump just selling out Ukraine to get another billion-dollar real estate deal, this time one in Moscow and St. Petersburg?

With this administration and the entire Republican Party having lost any semblance of a moral core, commitment to democracy, or respect for the rule of law, the responsibility for the preservation of American values falls to us and the Democratic Party.

Join your local Democrats to shift the Party toward activism, join Indivisible, and any other groups dedicated to restoring democracy to the United States and defending our allies, including Ukraine.

Get out in the streets this Saturday.

And let your elected officials know where you stand (the Congressional switchboard number is 202-224-3121).

Tag, you’re it!

'Clearly that's his opinion': Mike Johnson swatted down by Trump admin

House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) did not receive resounding support from the Trump administration over this week's comments regarding Israel and Gaza.

During Tuesday's Pentagon news briefing, a reporter asked, "Today, Speaker Johnson was in the West Bank, which he referred to as 'Judea and Samaria,' and said that it rightfully belongs to the Jewish people. Is that official U.S. policy, and if it's not, what is U.S. policy toward the West Bank?"

Johnson visited a settlement in the occupied West Bank as part of a private visit to Israel, according to Axios. He traveled with other Republican members of the Friends of Judea and Samaria caucus in Congress, "which supports Israeli settlements and advocates for annexation of the West Bank," according to the report.

State Department spokeswoman Tammy Bruce replied, "Uh, well, I've said this about other diplomats who've spoken their minds, including Ambassador Huckabee. Certainly that's not — if there's a policy in that regard, you would hear it from me. So, I think I can say that. I'm not going to speak for him or characterize his words in any ways, but clearly that is his opinion."

The reporter then asked, "But it's not the opinion of the U.S. government?"

"Well, I'm not going to speak about opinion of the government, and if there's a status in any region of the world, certainly in the Middle East, I would wait to hear it from Secretary Rubio and President Trump."

Watch the clip below via the U.S. State Department.

Trump is going to need a cellmate. I've got just the man

Israel has become a global pariah — “increasingly isolated,” the New York Times recently reported. Polls in the U.S. and around the world reveal growing opposition to Israel’s actions in Gaza, particularly since Israel has no obvious plan to end its war.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has himself, and his right-wing government partners, to blame. He doesn't give a damn about Palestinian lives or the Israeli hostages taken by Hamas. He primarily cares about expanding his power and staying out of prison on corruption charges. He thinks that extending the war in Gaza will help him do that. Sound familiar?

I'm proud to be Jewish. I'm proud of the fact that Jews have disproportionately been involved in all the major American progressive movements since the 1800s. I believe in the core Jewish value of tikkun olam — repairing the world and ending human suffering.

I support Israel's right to exist. I've been to Israel three times — the first time in 1965 and most recently in 2015. I have family members there. But I am 100% opposed to Netanyahu's government, its war crimes in Gaza, its support for Jewish settlements on the West Bank, its racism, its attacks on the country’s progressive organizations (which I wrote about in 2016), and its efforts to undermine what’s left of Israeli democracy.

I support Palestinians' right to a sovereign homeland, but not one run by Hamas, a theocratic, fascist, anti-woman, anti-gay terrorist organization.

I'm pleased that most American Jews, and a small but growing number of American Jewish organizations — including, most recently, the Union of Reform Judaism, the largest and most liberal of all Jewish religious movements — oppose Israel's atrocities in Gaza, including thwarting food, water, medical, and other aid from reaching those who need it. (Yes, Hamas stole some of the aid that was sent there, but not much of it. That's Netanyahu's lame excuse for blocking all humanitarian aid. That's an outrage).

I believe, along with a majority of Democrats in the Senate, that the U.S. should end military aid to Israel until there is a ceasefire and ultimately a peace agreement.

I know there's been an upsurge of antisemitism and hate crimes against Jews in the United States. And yes, some of those incidents have occurred on a handful of college campuses. But the overall number is quite small — not close to the level that the Anti-Defamation League wants you to believe, which they falsely quantify by equating criticism of Israel with antisemitism.

A few anti-Israel protesters use rhetoric that can be described antisemitic and that understandably makes some Jews feel uncomfortable. But college campuses are not hotbeds of Jew hatred. That's a big lie that Trump and the ADL and groups like Mothers Against College Anti-Semitism use for their own overlapping purposes.

In fact, most people protesting Israel's actions are not antisemites. They just want the killing and suffering in Gaza to end. I've protested Israel's atrocities and I'm not an antisemite.

If colleges want to address antisemitism, limiting protest and free speech (and caving in to Trump's demands over curriculum, admissions, and DEI programs) is not the way to do it. Instead, colleges should do more to educate students, faculty and staff about the history and current reality of antisemitism — and how it is similar to and different from other kinds of bigotry, including racism, sexism, nativism, Islamophobia, and homophobia.

More courses, more speakers, more dialogue, and more opportunities for Jewish, Muslim, and Christian students to work together on regular academic, extracurricular, community-oriented, and social justice projects to build and foster connections and trust.

The biggest threat to American Jews are not on college campus. They are the right-wing hate groups who Trump has encouraged, emboldened, and pardoned.

These are the "Jews will not replace us" Nazis who marched in Charlottesville.
These are the insurrectionists who wore "Camp Auschwitz" sweatshirts on January 6, as they invaded the Capitol building in Washington, D.C. to try to overturn the 2020 election.
These are the Trump supporters who shoot Jews in synagogues (in Pittsburgh and elsewhere), at public parades (like the one in Highland Park, Illinois), and at the Jewish museum in D.C.
These are the conspiracy theorists who spout antisemitic stereotypes about an alleged international Jewish cabal run by George Soros and others.

It is no accident that the upsurge of right-wing antisemitism began soon after Trump announced his first campaign for president in 2015. That Trump is himself a long time anti-semite is well-documented. He traffics in antisemitic stereotypes and he cultivates and encourages hate groups, including neo-Nazi groups. He has long admired Hitler.

Trump mainly cares about appealing to his base. Only 26% of Jews voted for Trump last year and few Jews support his policies or actions. A huge part of his base, however, are white evangelical Christians. About 80% of them voted for Trump in 2016, 2020, and 2024, accounting for almost half of his total vote.

The extreme wing of the evangelical movement are the Christian nationalists (like Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and several other high-level Trump appointees), who now account for almost 30% of all Americans.

They advocate authoritarianism. They are white supremacists and anti-semites. They believe that the United States is and should be a Christian nation, governed by Biblical doctrine and not by the Constitution. In that scenario, Jews are, at best, second-class citizens.

Trump doesn't give a damn about protecting Jews from antisemitism. His attacks, and those of the Republicans in Congress (led by Rep. Elise Stefanik of New York), on universities for allegedly fostering antisemitism are really about intimidating a major bastion of liberalism and free speech. Trump is on a crusade against institutions he considers his enemies — unions, artists and performers (and institutions like the Kennedy Center), the courts, the media, and universities and colleges. He wants to intimidate and silence them. He is weaponizing antisemitism to gain more power and stifle his opponents.

And so is Netanyahu. But it is backfiring on both of them.

Israel has become a global pariah. And Trump is a laughing stock among world leaders for his authoritarian policies, his ignorance, his megalomania, and his pathological lies.

Trump’s declining support in the U.S. is likely to help the Democrats win a major of House seats next year, which would allow them to neutralize many of Trump’s policies, hold investigations and hearings to expose his corruption, and even put pressure on Israel by limiting or ending U.S. arms sales.

In my fantasy world of the not-too-distance future, Trump and Netanyahu share a prison cell. That would be equal justice under the law.

Peter Dreier is the E.P. Clapp distinguished professor of politics at Occidental College. He is the author of "The 100 Greatest Americans of the 20th Century: A Social Justice Hall of Fame" (2012), an editor (with Kate Aronoff and Michael Kazin) of "We Own the Future: Democratic Socialism, American Style", and co-author of "Baseball Rebels: The Players, People and Social Movements That Shook Up the Game and Changed America" (2022).

'No doubt!' Wolf Blitzer stunned as Israeli official calls CNN starvation pics propaganda

CNN's Wolf Blitzer continuously challenged Israel's Ambassador to the United States, Yechiel Leiter, for claiming the charges of Israeli-imposed starvation in Gaza were fabricated.

During a lengthy interview Tuesday, Blitzer confronted Leiter with a video of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu denying reports of wide-spread starvation, and another of U.S. President Donald Trump admitting, "That's real starvation stuff, I see it. And, you can't fake that."

"Nobody could avoid seeing the pictures we're seeing coming out of Gaza, although many of them are in the service of Hamas propaganda and some of them are are doctored in A.I., but there is definitely a crisis in Gaza," Leiter said.

He continued, "I think what the president was referring to was the pictures of hunger. There is no large-scale starvation. There certainly isn't a policy of starvation; I think there's a lot of confusion on that issue."

Leiter then ripped CNN for broadcasting "pictures of children who are suffering from cerebral palsy or cystic fibrosis, not from hunger, and yet, we're condemned for it."

Leiter added that there's "a long history of pointing the finger at the Jewish state, and really has to stop."

Blitzer interjected, "Yeah, but but you heard the president of the United States, President Trump, say, 'There's no doubt that there is starvation unfolding right now in Gaza."

He then confronted Leiter with claims of "genocide" made by two Israeli human rights groups.

"As you know, ambassador, that's a very, very sensitive word for Israel and for Jews worldwide because of the horrors of the Holocaust. How do you respond to that?"

"We absolutely condemn these reports, which are fallacious," Leiter shot back. "Anybody is welcome to come and see the amount of aid that we're pouring into Gaza."

Watch the clip below via CNN.

These critical stories are getting buried by Epsteingate

The public conversation has become so distorted by the moral squalor of Donald Trump and his lackeys that I fear we’re confusing what’s exciting for what’s important.

“Epsteingate” is exciting. The story excites because Trump seems unable to stop it from growing — and it therefore offers a bit of hope that it will undermine his support or even topple him.

Yet I worry that it’s crowding out other stories that Americans need to know and respond to, such as:

1. Hunger in Gaza has reached new and astonishing levels of desperation, with a third of the population not eating for multiple days in a row, according to the World Food Program.

The number of children dying of malnutrition has risen sharply in recent days. Many are literally starving.

According to Philippe Lazzarini, the Commissioner-General of the United Nations Relief and Works Agency:

“People in Gaza are neither dead nor alive, they are walking corpses … One in every five children is malnourished in Gaza City as cases increase every day. When child malnutrition surges, coping mechanisms fail, access to food & care disappears, famine silently begins to unfold. Most children our teams are seeing are emaciated, weak & at high risk of dying if they don’t get the treatment they urgently need … Parents are too hungry to care for their children. Those who reach UNRWA clinics don’t have the energy, food, or means to follow medical advice. Families are no longer coping, they are breaking down, unable to survive. Their existence is threatened.”

America is directly implicated in this humanitarian crisis.

Benjamin Netanyahu is a war criminal. More than 1,000 Palestinians have been killed by Israeli forces since May while trying to get food in the Gaza Strip, mostly near aid sites run by an American contractor.

The United States must stop all military assistance to Israel unless Netanyahu and the Israeli government allow relief organizations to bring immediate humanitarian assistance to Gaza.

2. Federal judges accuse the Trump regime of deliberately defying court orders by being slow to respond, misrepresenting facts in filings, and refusing to take action as ordered by the courts.

In an analysis of 165 court orders filed against the Trump regime, the Washington Post found that federal judges accused it of resisting court orders in at least 57 of those cases — approximately 34 percent.

This story needs far more attention. It’s the clearest evidence yet of the regime’s disregard for the U.S. Constitution.

It should form the basis for impeachment of Trump and his lackeys, and for criminal action against them once they’re out of office.

3. 56,816 people are now being detained by ICE, both in the United States and in El Salvador and other countries where there’s little or no control over the conditions in which they’re being detained.

Over 70 percent have not been convicted of any crime.

Many were abducted by ICE agents in plain clothes and wearing masks to prevent identification, from their places of work, court houses, or their homes and apartments. Families have been broken up and family members “disappeared.”

We have no way of ensuring that they are being held in humanitarian conditions. Venezuela’s Attorney General has announced that Venezuelan migrants held in El Salvador recently returned to Venezuela suffered torture and abuse while imprisoned in CECOT.

Because there’s been no due process — no independent verification of who these people are or even that they have been in the United States illegally — it is entirely possible that some detainees are American citizens.

This story continues to worsen. And it, too, hasn’t received the attention it deserves.

***

The question of whether Trump had sex with one or more of Jeffrey Epstein’s underage sex-trafficked girls is not unimportant, but I worry that its sensationalism is burying some of these other stories that deserve our attention and action.

We have little or no chance of rectifying the most serious wrongs if we’re captivated by the most exciting.

Robert Reich is a professor emeritus of public policy at Berkeley and former secretary of labor. His writings can be found at https://robertreich.substack.com

Trump dumps renowned international organization for being 'at odds' with 'America First'

State Department spokeswoman Tammy Bruce explained Tuesday that the United States has withdrawn from the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization, or UNESCO, because it's not "aligned with" President Donald Trump's "America first" values.

By definition, UNESCO "promotes cooperation in education, science, culture and communication to foster peace worldwide," not strictly to meet American objectives.

Nonetheless, Bruce explained that the decision came as the result of an "executive order that the president issued...to have a review of the international organizations that we're involved in to make sure, just like with foreign aid -- are these organizations aligned with the values of the America First framework?"

She claimed that "UNESCO's decision to admit the, quote, 'state of Palestine,' unquote, as a member state is highly problematic."

Therefore, she said, "Continued involvement in UNESCO is not in the continued national interest of the United States. UNESCO works to advance divisive cultural and social causes and maintains an outsized focus on the UN's sustainable development goals, a global, ideological agenda for international development at odds with our America First foreign policy."

The Trump administration previously pulled out of UNESCO in 2017 due to "anti-Israel bias." After a five-year hiatus, President Joe Biden re-entered the organization.

Watch the clip below via X.

‘Imaginations go wild’: MAGA Epstein fury fuels antisemitic rants

The MAGA base may be tearing itself apart over the Trump administration’s attempt to close the book on the Jeffrey Epstein case, but some of the president’s conspiracy-minded supporters are still pouring gasoline on an ugly antisemitic trope long associated with the deceased financier and sex offender.

Following Epstein’s death in a Manhattan jail in 2019, Trump and his allies fed supporters’ beliefs that the case would unlock secrets about a cabal of global elites who would finally be brought to justice. The power of the saga over the collective imagination is that there are unanswered questions about how Epstein made his money and who else might be implicated in his crimes.

“It’s provided a launchpad for people’s imaginations to go wild,” Jared Holt, an extremism researcher and co-host of the Posting Through It podcast, told Raw Story.

“I think a lot of the antisemitic stuff is based on pure speculation. Someone came up with this idea, and people have taken it to the extreme.”

The undercurrent of antisemitism in the case rests on the unfounded assertion that Epstein was connected to Israeli intelligence and running a blackmail operation against world leaders.

Those who make the claim cite the facts that Epstein met with former Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak dozens of times, and Robert Maxwell, the late media baron father of jailed Epstein associate Ghislaine Maxwell, forged close ties with Israeli leaders.

“I think for a lot of people who are mad at Trump for abandoning the Epstein case, it plays into a larger conspiracy theory about Jews running the world,” Will Sommer, a reporter at The Bulwark, told Raw Story.

The evidence that Epstein was involved with intelligence in Israel or anywhere else is circumstantial at best.

Naftali Bennett, another former Israeli prime minister, refuted the claim on X on Monday, writing: “The accusation that Jeffrey Epstein somehow worked for Israel or the Mossad running a blackmail ring is categorically and totally false.”

Of course, for those who are inclined to believe antisemitic conspiracy theories, the word of a former Israeli prime minister is unlikely to move the needle.

Joe Biggs, a Proud Boys leader whose seditious conspiracy sentence for his role in the Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol was commuted by President Donald Trump, mocked Bennett, posting: “Hey everybody! This guy says they didn’t have anything to do with it. Guess we can just stop talking about it now and relax. It wasn’t the joos [sic] this time ok!!”

Holt told Raw Story the “subsection of the Trump base” that is hostile towards Israel “is a lot larger than people give credit for.”

The Epstein controversy dominated last weekend’s Turning Point USA Student Action Summit, where speakers included administration officials and Trump allies.

Tucker Carlson, the influential former Fox News host who helped mainstream the white supremacist Great Replacement theory and campaigned for Trump last year, was among those who took direct aim at Israel.

“It’s extremely obvious to anyone who watches that this guy had direct access to a foreign government,” Carlson said.

“Now, no one’s allowed to say that that foreign government’s Israel, because we have been somehow cowed into thinking that that’s naughty,” he added, to cheers from the MAGA crowd.

On social media, Nick Fuentes, a Holocaust denier who attended the deadly Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, in 2017, and who dined with Trump at Mar-a-Lago in 2022, hailed the response to Carlson’s message as “directionally positive,” while asserting that Carlson was not a full ally.

“They are feeding something that they don’t yet understand,” Fuentes wrote on Telegram, a social media platform that serves as a haven for Nazis and other extremists.

“And it’s short sighted, which is why many are urging people like Tucker to pump the brakes. It’s like when those crime bosses hired the Joker to kill Batman.

“So, we can strategically accept that Tucker’s advocacy is good for us, but he isn’t us,” Fuentes added. “We have to take and take and keep coming back for more. Always audacity.”

'Palpable hostility'

The uproar among Trump’s supporters over Epstein comes at a particularly fragile time for American Jews, following the shooting deaths of two Israeli embassy workers outside a Jewish museum in Washington, D.C. in May, and the lethal firebombing attack on peaceful Jewish marchers calling for the release of Israeli hostages in Colorado in June.

Meanwhile, the Trump administration has deployed an “antisemitism task force” against universities while moving to deport foreign students for speaking out against Israel and in support of Palestinian autonomy.

“There’s a palpable hostility towards Israel as the war against Hamas has dragged on and as civilian casualties continue to mount,” Holt said.

“It is the perfect window for influencers who hold not just criticism against Israel but genuinely antisemitic views such as questioning the loyalty of dual citizens and equating the state of Israel with the Jewish people — it’s an opportunity for them to drop in and wedge their own views into the discussion.”

On July 11, Stew Peters, an openly antisemitic podcaster, made an argument that echoed a white power talking point dating back to the 1980s: asserting that the U.S. government is controlled by an external Jewish foe.

“Whether you want to admit it or not, if you’re being bare-naked honest, you know why this is being covered up, and it’s because the pedophiles that are on the Epstein client list and the Epstein tapes and on the Epstein flight logs are active members of this fake occupied government, including active members of this White House,” Peters said.

White supremacists often talk of the “Zionist Occupied Government,” or “ZOG,” a body through which Jewish elites supposedly control U.S. life and use puppets to destroy the white race.

Peters also called members of the Trump administration “liars” while deploying an anti-Hindu slur against FBI Director Kash Patel, who appeared as on Peters’ podcast eight times to assail former President Joe Biden but has now found himself on difficult ground, seeking to quash Epstein conspiracy theories he previously eagerly promoted.

Holt said it was reasonable to ask questions about Epstein’s finances and associations. But he said that anyone who went to court and promised to prove that Epstein was linked to Israeli intelligence would likely find themselves sanctioned.

“Sure, there’s enough there to wonder, but that’s all we can do,” Holt said.

“These people making these bold assertions and digging their heels in, I think they’re in a different category because they’ve assumed the evidence and are using it to agitate in a completely different direction.”

This gangster move is just Trump's latest disgrace

At least no one can accuse Donald Trump of hiding his agenda.

When Mike Huckabee, his ambassador to Israel, showed up Wednesday at Prime Minister Benjamin (Bibi) Netanyahu’s corruption trial in Tel Aviv, he hadn’t come to schmooze or testify. He wasn’t distributing evangelical offers of salvation to Jews.

Huckabee came to glower.

And, with his very presence, to deliver a stark reminder to Israelis, and in particular the three judges who would decide Bibi’s fate: The Boss says this whole trial is a witch hunt. You know how much the Boss hates witch hunts, don’t you?

Netanyahu faces charges of “bribery, fraud and breach of trust” for, allegedly, trading regulatory favors to a telecom giant in exchange for good media coverage and receiving as much as $210,000 in gifts after providing favors to well-heeled businessmen, among other counts. Netanyahu denies all the charges.

So does his ally in authoritarianism, Donald Trump.

Among what Trump spewed in a social-media post — repulsive even by his subterranean standards — was this warning:

“The United States of America spends Billions of Dollar a year, far more than on any other Nation, protecting and supporting Israel. We are not going to stand for this.”

And, of course, the obligatory all-caps closer: “LET BIBI GO, HE’S GOT A BIG JOB TO DO!”

“Nice little security package you’ve got there. Shame if something happened to it.”

Now, the phrase “Let my Bibi go” might somehow get set to Jewish music were it not for the fact that the guy who coined it also famously said, “the only kind of people I want counting my money are little short guys that wear yarmulkes every day.”

And who is a human trope machine when it comes to lecturing American Jews about “disloyalty” if they don’t vote Republican to protect “your country,” Israel. Hearing about dual loyalty brings back such great memories to us Jews.

But to be fair, Trump hasn’t launched a public anti-Semitic slur in a full two weeks, dating all the way back to July 3 — when he mused about some bankers being “shylocks.”

Trump, who grew up in Queens, claimed with a reportedly straight face that he’d never hear the “word” shylock for Jews. Now, we can all agree that Trump probably didn’t first learn the term from reading William Shakespeare’s Merchant of Venice.

But, Mr. President, you don’t remember hearing “shylock” as an antisemitic thing? We’ll take that as a “cognitive decline” defense.

The art of the extortion is where Trump is very much on his game. Dispatching Huckabee bared brazen disrespect for the Israeli judicial system — a passion of Bibi’s, too — and the message wasn’t lost on Haaretz, my choice as Israel’s most reliable source of news pertaining to the U.S.

Under the headline, “Mike Huckabee's Mafioso Move at Netanyahu's Trial Has Trump's Fingerprints All Over It,” Haaretz reported this:

“Huckabee's visit to the Tel Aviv District Court during Netanyahu's ongoing corruption trial was an American, Mafioso-like intimidation tactic on a democratic ally's independent justice system for the sake of protecting its political partner…

Beyond the hypocrisy, Trump and Huckabee's advocacy for Netanyahu to be freed from his legal burdens is not driven by a pursuit of justice. Rather, the trial strictly represents a nuisance to broader American policy initiatives: (that they) supposedly rely on Netanyahu's availability as prime minister.”

Trump’s insistence on propping up Netanyahu is hardly novel in the annals of dictator-propping by the U.S., but traditionally that nefarious pastime didn’t involve our allies with democratic forms of government. This situation strikes a personal nerve with Trump. And the convicted felon let the world know:

"Netanyahu is right now in the process of negotiating a deal with Hamas, which will include getting the hostages back. How is it possible that the prime minister of Israel can be forced to sit in a courtroom all day over nothing?"

So it came to pass that Trump dispatched Huckabee much the way that, in The Godfather, Vito Corleone sent his consigliere, Tom Hagen, to Hollywood to persuade studio head Jack Woltz to cast Johnny Fontane in a film. At first, Woltz said no. He would go on to change his mind.

I believe the Israelis watched that movie and surely they remember that scene depicting what happens when at first you don’t do what the boss says.

Something about waking up to your horse’s head.

Trump and Netanyahu are dishonest, duplicitous and worse

Meetings between US President Donald Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu are more akin to a master class in posturing and duplicity than in diplomacy. This month’s meetings were no exception.

Both men are master manipulators, products of our media age. They create illusions that they insist are real. They repeat a lie over and over, and with such force, that it becomes real for those who trust them. Those who do not believe in the illusion are threatened, belittled, or shunned.

Both leaders have utilized their craftiness to achieve personal success in domestic politics. They have developed strong constituent bases, followers who believe that their leadership must be supported and protected. At the same time, they are polarizing figures who have contributed to creating deep fissures within their countries.

Because the illusions they project are based on lies, there are limits to their successes. In the first place, reality invariably presents a strong check to illusions. And ignoring reality can result in social unrest and political chaos.

For example, President Trump promoted his signature budget plan — which he called the “Big Beautiful Bill” — promising that it would be fiscally sound and bring greater prosperity to more Americans. Instead, it appears that it will dramatically increase the nation’s deficit while potentially causing 17 million Americans to lose their healthcare.

For his part, Netanyahu has prolonged his war on Gaza (and Lebanon, Syria, and Iran) promising that it would lead to “total victory,” making Israel more respected and secure. Instead, it has led to his being indicted for war crimes and Israel seeing its international standing diminished because of its genocidal policy.

Truth wins out. And so, we can expect the day to come when Trump voters lose their health care plans and see their rural hospitals forced to close and realize that the illusion of the “Big Beautiful Bill” didn’t include them. Much the same will occur in Israel when Israelis realize that “total victory” is a farce — the conflict with Palestinians will continue as long as they are denied rights — and as tens of thousands of young Israeli soldiers return from having served multiple tours of duty in Gaza with PTSD, wreaking havoc at home and in their communities.

With this as a backdrop, it was both fascinating and deeply disturbing to see the two master manipulators at work with and on each other last week: a bizarre exercise in log-rolling flattery. As we say in colloquial English: “They laid it on thick.”

Netanyahu, the indicted war criminal, gave Trump the letter he sent to the Nobel Prize Committee nominating him for the peace prize. And Trump returned the faux compliment calling Netanyahu “the greatest man alive.”

All of this can be dismissed as buffoonery or maybe even harmless puffery — just two manipulators playing each other. But where the efforts of these two become truly dangerous is when they and their acolytes come to believe the deceit and attempt to extend their efforts to supplant reality with illusion through policies that impact others.

From what little we know of what transpired in the meetings between Trump and Netanyahu, what’s clear is that the ideas driving both are not reality based. Trump’s plan was to evacuate Palestinians from Gaza to a location outside of Palestine where housing will be provided so they can live productive lives, making way for Gaza to become a Riviera-style resort. This was trashed early on as being based on illegal ethnic-cleansing and blatant colonialism.

Netanyahu appears to have nothing better to offer than a slight modification of Trump’s idea. He wouldn’t expel all of Gaza’s Palestinians. But he would force as many to leave as possible to other countries that would take them. Those who remain would be “relocated” to what the Israelis are calling “a humanitarian relocation site” where Palestinians can be provided for and “deradicalized.”

Both plans share three elements. First, to sell their ideas, both Trump and Netanyahu clothe them in humanitarian language. Second, no matter how they try to dress them up, both plans are designed and offered without consideration for what Palestinians really want. And finally, therefore, both are delusional and destined not only to fail, but to exacerbate an already volatile situation.

Maybe the biggest illusion projected by both men is the notion that their “plans” will create the conditions for regional peace. Ignoring the reality that a root cause of tension in the Middle East is the Israeli dispossession of Palestinians, their proposals only add to that dispossession and the resistance it spawns in Gaza (all the while compounding the same dispossession in the West Bank and East Jerusalem).

As history has shown, it is perilous to ignore the humanity of Palestinians. It is also foolish for Trump and Netanyahu to assume that their projected illusions will be believed in the Arab world, making possible an “era of peace.” This fantasy only exists in their minds and in the minds of the sycophants who surround them.

As a great Republican president (may have) said 160 years ago, “You can fool some of the people all of the time, and all of the people some of the time, but you cannot fool all of the people all of the time.”

Dr. James J. Zogby is the author of Arab Voices (2010) and the founder and president of the Arab American Institute (AAI), a Washington, D.C.-based organization which serves as the political and policy research arm of the Arab American community.

Top ally displeased after 'zombie visit' with Trump: journalist

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu didn't quite get the warm reception from President Donald Trump that he hoped for following U.S. strikes on nuclear facilities in Iran, according to reporting on MSNBC.

Journalist Noga Tarnopolsky told host Katie Tur on Tuesday that Netanyahu "expected a lot more pomp and circumstance" to celebrate the bombing campaign during his White House visit and to boost his flagging popularity back in Israel.

"I think his goal, his stated goal, basically for this trip to Washington, which is his third since President Trump returned to office, was a victory lap," Tarnopolsky said. "And I think he really expected to meet the press on the White House lawn, to shake hands, to raise, you know, high fives, maybe from the White House balcony....and instead, President Trump did receive him, did eventually accede to inviting him, but really toned the visit down."

MAGA supporters have called Trump's airstrikes "hypocritical," because he campaigned on his ability to bring peace to the Middle East.

Tarnopolsky added that "from the point of view of the media, it's been virtually a zombie visit thus far."

The White House did agree to a one-on-one with Netanyahu, "but it's going to be held when it's after 11 p.m. Israel time," Tarnopolsky said, "and my understanding is that the discussion is going to be firm...and about Gaza."

Tarnopolsky called the visit "a discreet tussle between Prime Minister Netanyahu, who hoped for a victory lap without having to pay a price, and President Trump, who really wants to see a deliverable regarding Gaza."

At a dinner on Monday night, Netanyahu presented Trump with a nomination for the coveted Nobel Peace Prize, saying, "President Trump is 'forging peace as we speak, in one country and one region after the other. So, I want to present to you, Mr. President, the letter I sent to the Nobel Prize committee. It's nominating you for the Peace Prize, which is well-deserved.'"

Watch the clip below via MSNBC.