Trump throws media, Israel into badly needed disarray
President Donald Trump is unpredictable and that might actually benefit two important goals. The first is to thwart the stranglehold Israel has on American foreign policy, blocking peace with the Palestinians. The second is more important, to confront the mainstream news media which fuels the flames of racism and hate to “sell newspapers”
By Ray Hanania
All the naysayers claimed that Donald Trump would sell Palestine down the river, like it wasn’t already sold down the river by all of his presidential predecessors.
They warned that under Trump, the Middle East would turn into an Israeli occupied backyard and that Palestine would vanish, as if it its existence wasn’t already put in jeopardy by a series of Presidential subsequence to Israel’s political power.
The advocates of these anti-Trump Middle East fear mongering sit in privileged ivory towers in the Americas mainstream news media, claiming on one hand that they fear for the rights of minorities, civil rights, and peace, and yet on the other hand churn out vicious one-sided editorials and slanted “news reporting” that promotes its causes at the expense of truth.
For the mainstream American news media, hate and racism sell and that’s how they make money. They, like the extremist fanatics on both sides of the Middle East — Jews and Arabs — strive to keep the conflict alive. They need it. They need to to generate revenues and create a reason for their existence.
Egyptian President Anwar Sadat and Israeli Prime Minister Menachem Begin acknowledge applause during a Joint Session of Congress in which President Jimmy Carter announced the results of the Camp David Accords. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
If there were ever peace in the Middle East, the news media and the Middle East fanatics that the media exploits and promotes would all be out of jobs. They would be in the unemployment line of tragedy. They hope for bloodied violence, tragedy and suffering because that is what excites their minds.
President Trump knows this. He dealt with the news media for years, understanding the media corruption that afflicts American journalism.
Trump also is very familiar with the suffering of the Palestinians and he was close to several prominent American Palestinians before plunging successfully into the cesspool of American politics.
in the Middle East, Trump has sent shivers down the spines of the observant who pine for continued hostilities and conflict. They are shocked that President Trump is different than Candidate Trump.
Trump vowed to move the U.S. Embassy from Tel Aviv to the occupied city of Jerusalem as a candidate, but quickly did what every American president has done, set that incendiary issue to the sidelines knowing how destructive it would be to Middle East relations.
Trump, who has wrapped himself tightly around the pro-Israel movement as one ofIsrael’s righteous champions, fits the stereotype that many once argued about the far rightwing former Israeli terrorist Menachem Begin.
Have you forgotten what was said when Jimmy Carter was president and he helped usher in a thwarted peace plan between Begin and Egyptian Dictator Anwar al-Sadat?
They said that true peace between Palestinians and Israelis would not come from an Israeli leader who was liberal, forgiving and compassionate but from someone who was tough, hardlined and able to standup to the extremism that poisons the Arab and Muslim worlds.
Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and President Donald J. Trump begin meetings at the White House to find a path to restart the peace process April 3, 2017. Photo courtesy of the White House
That was Begin. He was “tough” enough to make the tough deal.
Of course, Begin tricked everyone, lying to Sadat who was drawn into the fantasy world of American led accolades and praise into believing that he was someone kind of beneficent Pharaoh. Sadat was lured into stupidity by the mountains of praise and shallow fawning from admirers in America and Israel who laughed at his stupidity. Sadat gave up Arab rights for a plot of sand in the desert he couldn’t even control. His peace accord with Israel was a sham. Although Sadat believed it would lead to a final peace with the Palestinians, Begin was much shrewder and negotiated the process away from Palestinian justice.
Trump has squeezed Israel with his political love so hard, it is hard for even a hardliner like fanatic Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to see the truth that Trump is going to trip his extremism up. Trump has Israel in such a tight squeeze, only Trump can stand next to Netanyahu at a press conference and declare with an honesty that is rare in American and Israeli public discussion on Middle East peace that he could just as easily support a “One State” solution as he could support a “Two State” solution.
Imagine, the term that brings more fright to Israeli fanatics, “One State” thrown out at a press conference with the slayer of the Two-State Solution, Benjamin Netanyahu, the extremist. I thought Netanyahu was going to fall over in anaphylactic shock upon hearing an American President utter the words of the stake int he heart of the vampire, “One State” and at a meeting with an Israeli leader.
And then this week, Trump’s administration has made it clear that the West Bank is not Israeli land. It’s the price of peace.
True, Trump has to navigate between the vicious attacks from the Democratic leadership, which long ago sold the Palestinian cause down the tubes with sugary words devoid of meaning or intent, and the Republican leadership which has thrived by cozying up to the monied pro-Israel lobby and vowing to defend the Jewish people from the Arab barbarians, even when those barbarians include the origins of Christianity, Middle East Christians.
The hypocrisy that was ignored by so-called peace makers like Jimmy Carter, Bill Clinton and Barack Obama in order to score major political public relations points and popularity was huge. But not with Trump.
Trump may not succeed but not because he isn’t trying. He may not succeed because the nature of the Middle East is to give the small coven of anti-Peace fanatics among the Arab activists — who would lose their livelihood if peace ever came — which is to fight for everything and accept nothing. No compromise is their mandate, raised on the rejectionist slogan “No, No, No.” No Peace. No compromise. No recognition.
They have demanded “all or nothing” and the Arab and Palestinian rejectionists have gotten what they demanded, “nothing” allowing through their failure and stupidity giving “all” to Israel.
But there is a better chance for peace under Trump’s uncertainty and unpredictability than there ever was in the best moments of the Carter, Clinton or Obama administrations when their sugared-up rhetoric had everyone believing in the lie that peace was at hand.
I’ll take my chances with Donald Trump, because so far all of the past efforts of the haters, the rejectionists, the fanatics, the extremists and the American presidents have proven to be far worse.
Just look at Palestine today as a consequence of the results of all that failure. It doesn’t exist, because the people claiming to be fighting for Palestine have do nothing accepted nothing and offer nothing.
The Arab era of demanding “All or Nothing” is over. It’s time to demand something, be smart and see through the happy talk lies.
rayhanania
Ray Hanania is an award winning political and humor columnist who analyzes American and Middle East politics, and life in general. He is an author of several books.
Hanania covered Chicago Politics and Chicago City Hall from 1976 through 1992. He began writing in 1975 publishing The Middle Eastern Voice newspaper in Chicago (1975-1977). He later published “The National Arab American Times” newspaper (2004-2007).
Hanania writes weekly columns on Middle East and American Arab issues as Special US Correspondent for the Arab News ArabNews.com, at TheArabDailyNews.com, and at SuburbanChicagoland.com. He has published weekly columns in the Jerusalem Post newspaper, YNetNews.com, Newsday, the Orlando Sentinel, Houston Chronical, and Arlington Heights Daily Herald.
Hanania is the recipient of four (4) Chicago Headline Club “Peter Lisagor Awards” for Column writing. In November 2006, he was named “Best Ethnic American Columnist” by the New American Media. In 2009, Hanania received the prestigious Sigma Delta Chi Award for Writing from the Society of Professional Journalists. He is the recipient of the MT Mehdi Courage in Journalism Award. He was honored for his writing skills with two (2) Chicago Stick-o-Type awards from the Chicago Newspaper Guild. In 1990, Hanania was nominated by the Chicago Sun-Times editors for a Pulitzer Prize for his four-part series on the Palestinian Intifada.
His writings have also been honored by two national Awards from ADC for his writing, and from the National Arab American Journalists Association.
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