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The Intercept reports: “Trump’s Transition Team Colluded With Israel. Why Isn’t That News?”

On Dec. 23, 2016, Al Jazeera reported: “Trump convinced Sisi to withdraw U.N. resolution.”

AARON MATÉ, aaronmate at therealnews.com, @aaronjmate

Maté is a host/producer for The Real News. He just wrote the piece “The Trump Team Definitely Colluded with a Foreign Power — Just Not the One You Think“, for The Nation.

He writes: “Friday’s indictment of former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn has confirmed that Donald Trump’s inner circle colluded with a foreign power before entering the White House — just not the foreign power that has been the subject of our national fixation for the past year. To be sure, the jury is still out on Russia, though there are new grounds for questioning the case for a plot tying the Kremlin to Trump Tower. But with Flynn’s plea, we can now say for certain that the Trump team did collude — with Israel. …

“There are no editorials or opinion pieces denouncing Israel’s ‘Plot Against America,’ or ‘War on America,’ or warnings that ‘Odds Are, Israel Owns Trump,’ or explorations of ‘What Israel Did to Control the American Mind.’ … In fact it is more than likely that going forward, the media will give Israelgate the same treatment as cable’s top Russiagate sleuth, MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow, gave during her exhaustive Flynn coverage so far, which is to not even mention it.”

STEPHEN ZUNES, zunes at usfca.edu, @szunes
Professor of politics and coordinator of Middle Eastern Studies at the University of San Francisco, Zunes just wrote the piece: “Why Democrats Don’t Want to Talk about Flynn’s First Meeting with the Russians,” for The Progressive, which states: “Democrats have been reluctant to call attention to another meeting held one week earlier, in which Flynn encouraged the Russians to postpone a scheduled vote at the United Nations until Trump came to office. Having a top advisor of a president-elect clandestinely meet with a representative of a foreign power to undermine the policies of a sitting administration is highly problematic, if not illegal. While this might have otherwise given the Democrats a welcome political opportunity to underscore the perfidy of the Trump team, they are hindered by the fact that the majority of Congressional Democrats opposed Obama and supported Trump’s position on the vote. …

“Less than two weeks later, in the first foreign policy vote of the newly convened 115th Congress, a majority of House Democrats joined virtually every Republican in voting for a resolution that criticized the U.S. refusal to veto. It declared U.N. opposition to Israel’s illegal colonization efforts as being ‘anti-Israel.’

“In the Senate, 30 out of 46 Democrats signed on as co-sponsors of a similar bill.

“The decision by the majority of Congressional Democrats to side with Trump over a sitting Democratic president is striking, particularly since moderate pro-Israel groups including J Street and Americans for Peace Now supported Obama’s decision not to use U.S. veto power.”

 

Al Jazeera reports Tuesday: “Trump tells Abbas he will move U.S. embassy to Jerusalem.”

Journalist Aaron Maté tweeted Tuesday: “Compare Russian policy victories under Trump to Israel: before inauguration, Trump tried to subvert a UNSC vote on Israel’s behalf; is using coercion to force Palestinians to accept Israel’s bantustan ‘peace’ plan; and is now reportedly moving U.S. embassy to Jerusalem. #Israelgate” See Maté’s recent segment on The Real News: “Flynn Plea Shows Collusion With … Israel?”

ALI ABUNIMAH, director at electronicintifada.net, @AliAbunimah
Abunimah is co-founder of the Electronic Intifada website. His books include The Battle for Justice in Palestine.

He recently wrote the piece “Israel lobby billionaire praises Kushner for collusion with Netanyahu,” which states: “President Donald Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner received public praise on Sunday from a billionaire Israel lobby financier for his possibly illegal attempts to derail a UN Security Council vote condemning Israel’s settlements a year ago.

“This came as news broke that Kushner failed to disclose in government ethics filings his role as director of a family foundation that funded Israeli settlements.

“Kushner, a senior adviser to Trump, is in charge of efforts to revive the so-called peace process.

“New details of Kushner’s Saudi-backed plan reported Sunday confirm that it would require nothing less than a complete capitulation by the Palestinians to Israel’s demands, leaving them with a state in name only.”

Abunimah also recently wrote the piece “Trump aide Flynn pleads guilty to lying about effort to help Israel.”

Also, see from the Guardian: “Were other Trump aides lobbying for Israel illicitly alongside Michael Flynn?”

The New York Times recently reported: “Mr. Mueller’s investigators have learned through witnesses and documents that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel asked the Trump transition team to lobby other countries to help Israel, according to two people briefed on the inquiry. Investigators have learned that Mr. Flynn and Mr. Kushner took the lead in those efforts.”

There’s evidence the Trump team’s efforts on behalf of Israel appear to have paid off. On December 27, 2016, the Times of Israel wrote: “Russia: We had doubts about UN draft, tried to delay vote.” In April, the Times of Israel stated: “In an unexpected, unprecedented and curious move, Moscow on Thursday said it considers West Jerusalem to be Israel’s capital, making Russia the first country in the world to extend such a recognition to any part of the city.”

RICHARD SILVERSTEIN, richards1052 at comcast.net, @richards1052
Silverstein writes on security and other issues for a number of outlets and blogs at Tikun Olam. He recently wrote the piece “Flynn Pleads Guilty to Lying About Trump Sabotage of Security Council Resolution Against Israel Settlements.”

 

AARON MATÉ, aaronmate at gmail.com, @aaronjmate
For over two years, Maté has written a series of pieces for The Nation questioning the prevailing orthodoxy on “Russiagate” including: “A Skeptic’s Guide to the Russiagate Fixation,” “New Studies Show Pundits Are Wrong About Russian Social-Media Involvement in U.S. Politics,” “Don’t Let Russophobia Warp the Facts on Russiagate,” “Don’t Count on Russiagate to Bring Trump Down,” and from Feb. 2017: “Stop With the Conspiracy Theories — Trump Is Bad Enough.”

He was also featured on numerous Institute for Public Accuracy news releases on the subject, including: “Behind MSNBC’s Russia Obsession,” “From Cohen to Venezuela: Hollowness of ‘Russiagate,’” “Is Flynn/Kushner Actually Israelgate?” and “Why is Israelgate Being Downplayed?”

He said today: “Robert Mueller’s findings should put to rest the Trump-Russia collusion theory that has dominated U.S. media and political culture for more than two years. They also should come as no surprise to anyone who closely followed the available evidence in the case to date. The narrative of a Trump-Russia conspiracy was not grounded in fact. Unfortunately, prominent media and political voices ignored the countervailing evidence to blow it far out of proportion and mislead millions of people into expecting that Mueller would uncover a Trump-Russia plot.”

Maté also blamed the “intelligence agencies that relied on dubious evidence, namely the Steele dossier, to target a major presidential campaign — setting up a dangerous precedent, no matter one’s party affiliation.

“The collapse of Russiagate need not be a defeat for the anti-Trump resistance that got behind it. The Trump-Russia fixation has sidelined attention on Trump’s actual policies, and channelled liberal energy into unrealistic expectations. With Mueller no longer able to fill that fantasy role, those who oppose Trump have the opportunity to build a real resistance to his administration, and confront the serious issues that Russiagate has helped us avoid. The task will not be easy: as some of us progressive skeptics of Russiagate warned, the incessant faith in a conspiracy theory did not take into account that it not only overlooked Trump’s actual policies, but also stood to benefit Trump should it collapse. With Mueller’s probe wrapping up with no finding of a conspiracy, those who led their audiences to expect the opposite have just handed Trump a massive gift for his re-election campaign.”

 

ALI ABUNIMAH, director at electronicintifada.net, @AliAbunimah
Abunimah wrote the piece “Ilhan Omar under attack for telling truth about Israel lobby.” He is co-founder of the Electronic Intifada, which recently released the documentary “The Lobby,” a four-part undercover investigation into Israel’s covert influence campaign in the United States. The documentary was produced by Al Jazeera, but it was censored after Qatar, the gas-rich Gulf emirate that funds Al Jazeera, came under intense Israel lobby pressure not to air the film. See “Watch the film the Israel lobby didn’t want you to see.”

He said today: “Rep. Ilhan Omar apologized under pressure for supposedly using ‘anti-Semitic tropes’ to criticize the powerful Israel lobby group AIPAC. But the apology was entirely unnecessary. Omar said nothing anti-Semitic, yet the new member of Congress was unable to stand alone against the racist, Islamophobic smear campaign targeting her, not just from the usual quarters — the Republicans and the far right — but from her own party leadership, starting with Speaker Nancy Pelosi. Despite that ‘apology,’ Omar is standing by her call for a public discussion of the role of AIPAC in U.S. politics, a taboo subject the bipartisan establishment is desperate to avoid.” Abunimah’s books include One Country and The Battle for Justice in Palestine.

[See Twitter thread from Lara Friedman: “Over 15+ yrs working the Hill on Israel-related issues from a non-AIPAC point of view, members/staff (both parties) told me over & over that they agreed with me but didn’t dare say so publicly for fear of repercussions from AIPAC et al. …”]

ABBA SOLOMON, abbasolomon at gmail.com, @Abba_A_Solomon
Solomon is author of The Speech, and Its Context: Jacob Blaustein’s Speech “The Meaning of Palestine Partition to American Jews.” Solomon said today: “When ‘anti-Semitic tropes’ match with facts, there is a dilemma. Is it possible that it is anti-Semitic to tell the facts of the case of Israeli and Zionist co-option of United States legislators and executive branch? The annual AIPAC Policy Conference has featured astounding numbers of American legislators and cabinet members making obeisance to Israel. The charitable interpretation is that principle drives this behavior. The human Palestinian experience has a difficult time being heard in the halls of the U.S. government in these circumstances, when reward and punishment is well-organized to enforce Israeli ends. The upcoming AIPAC extravaganza is scheduled March 24-26 this year at Walter E. Washington Convention Center in Washington, D.C.”

SAM HUSSEINI, sam at accuracy.org, @samhusseini
Senior analyst with the Institute for Public Accuracy, Husseini said: “I can see the case for Rep. Omar offering an apology, but a very different one than what she did. It’s shallow to simply reduce U.S. government support for Israel to money to members of Congress or AIPAC, but it’s ridiculous to pretend it’s not a major factor. As Grant Smith has noted, the U.S. government could have effectively marginalized AIPAC by declaring it a foreign agent at any point since it was a project of the American Zionist Council in the 1960s. It didn’t and Israel’s influence on the U.S. now far exceeds that of Russia, despite the current obsessions of many. The U.S. government’s backing of Israel more than anything has to do with geopolitics, most obviously Israel effectively crushing Arab nationalism in 1967, preventing the development of the region along lines remotely responsive to the people of the region. Noam Chomsky has argued that ultimately the tie is based on the settler colonial nature of the two states. Some ask why we can talk about the influence of the NRA and not AIPAC and it’s a good question, but also ironic since talking about the NRA, Roxanne Dunbar-Ortiz has argued, similarly distracts from the settler origins of the Second Amendment.”

 

ALI ABUNIMAH, aliabunimah at me.com, @AliAbunimah
Available for a limited number of interviews, Abunimah is founder of the Electronic Intifada, which reports Friday in “Watch the Film the Israel Lobby Didn’t Want You to See” that it “has obtained a complete copy of The Lobby — USA, a four-part undercover investigation by Al Jazeera into Israel’s covert influence campaign in the United States.

The Electronic Intifada “is today publishing the first two episodes. … The film was made by Al Jazeera during 2016 and was completed in October 2017.

“But it was censored after Qatar, the gas-rich Gulf emirate that funds Al Jazeera, came under intense Israel lobby pressure not to air the film,” which “exposes the efforts of Israel and its lobbyists to spy on, smear and intimidate U.S. citizens who support Palestinian human rights, especially BDS – the boycott, divestment and sanctions movement.”

Abunimah said today: “The influence of the Israel lobby is pervasive and detrimental to the cause of peace and democracy. Israel has also provided a proving ground for heinous policies, like shooting children who may throw stones. Quite predictably, Trump is proposing adopting this practice now along the U.S.-Mexican border. This highlights the authoritarian alliance between Netanyahu and Trump, but it builds on support that liberals have given Israel for decades. Standing against all this are activists. The film we’re releasing today documents some of the Israeli government’s efforts at silencing them.”

The New York Times reports on “How Trump-Fed Conspiracy Theories About Migrant Caravan Intersect With Deadly Hatred” — citing “the baseless claims that George Soros is financing the migrants as they trek north.” Meanwhile, influence of pro-Netanyahu casino billionaire Sheldon Adelson has received minimal scrutiny. See IPA news release: “Billionaires Fueling Trump on Iran Deal, Jerusalem Move.”

The New York Times reports: “When President Trump arrived Tuesday at the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh to pay his respects to the 11 victims of a mass shooting three days earlier, the only public official standing there to greet him was Israel’s ambassador to the United States, Ron Dermer.” Dermer took the occasion of the killing of Jews by a white supremacist to smear critics of Israel, including British Labor leader Jeremy Corbyn. The Electronic Intifada has reported extensively on efforts by the Israeli government to undermine Corbyn’s articulation of rights of Palestinians.

Meanwhile, after two years of establishment Democrats focusing on Russiagate, Aaron Mate notes in The Nation: “With Just Days to the Midterms, Russiagate Is MIA.” See past IPA news releases on Israeli influence.

 

Over the weekend, The New York Times reported “Trump Jr. and Other Aides Met With Gulf Emissary Offering Help to Win Election” and The Wall Street Journal followed up with: “Mueller Probe Expands to Israeli Entrepreneur With U.A.E. Ties.”

In response, Trump tweeted: “The Witch Hunt finds no Collusion with Russia — so now they’re looking at the rest of the World. Oh’ great!”

In fact, Israeli government collusion has been a central — and seriously undercovered — aspect of Trump’s scandals since the beginning of his administration.

The journalist Richard Silverstein highlighted in “Flynn Pleads Guilty to Lying About Trump Sabotage of Security Council Resolution Against Israel Settlements,” that: “Michael Flynn plead guilty to lying to the FBI about his efforts with Jared Kushner to torpedo a United Nations Security Council resolution criticizing Israeli settlements. These included lobbying the Russian ambassador to help in this campaign by delaying or cancelling a vote on the matter.”

Media coverage has focused on the pressure Flynn exerted on the Russian government — not the actual source of the pressure: the Israeli government of Benjamin Netanyahu.

RICHARD SILVERSTEIN, richards1052 at comcast.net, @richards1052, Skype: richards1052
    Silverstein writes on security and other issues for a number of outlets. He was among the very first to highlight the role of Israel in connection to scandals around the Trump administration and will continue updating at his blog Tikun Olam. His pieces there include “Trump, Kushner and Mueller: the Smoking Gun and the Bullet.”

    See related Institute for Public Accuracy news releases including “Why is Israelgate Being Downplayed?” and “Trump Team Hired Israeli Spy Firm Used by Harvey Weinstein to Attack Obama Officials on Iran Deal.”

 

Ronan Farrow reports in The New Yorker: “Israeli Operatives Who Aided Harvey Weinstein Collected Information on Former Obama Administration Officials.”

Mark Townsend and Julian Borger broke the story in the Observer this weekend: “Revealed: Trump team hired spy firm for ‘dirty ops’ on Iran arms deal,” which states: “Aides to Donald Trump, the U.S. president, hired an Israeli private intelligence agency to orchestrate a ‘dirty ops’ campaign against key individuals from the Obama administration who helped negotiate the Iran nuclear deal, the Observer can reveal.

“People in the Trump camp contacted private investigators in May last year to ‘get dirt’ on Ben Rhodes, who had been one of Barack Obama’s top national security advisers, and Colin Kahl, deputy assistant to Obama, as part of an elaborate attempt to discredit the deal.

“The extraordinary revelations come days before Trump’s 12 May deadline to either scrap or continue to abide by the international deal limiting Iran’s nuclear [program].”

RICHARD SILVERSTEIN, richards1052 at comcast.net, @richards1052, Skype: richards1052
Silverstein writes on security and other issues for a number of outlets. He was among the very first to highlight the role of Israel in connection to scandals around the Trump administration and will continue updating at his blog Tikun Olam.

His past pieces include “Flynn Pleads Guilty to Lying About Trump Sabotage of Security Council Resolution Against Israel Settlements,” which notes that: “Michael Flynn plead guilty to lying to the FBI about his efforts with Jared Kushner to torpedo a United Nations Security Council resolution criticizing Israeli settlements. These included lobbying the Russian ambassador to help in this campaign by delaying or cancelling a vote on the matter.” See also, “Trump, Kushner and Mueller: the Smoking Gun and the Bullet.”

See related Institute for Public Accuracy news releases including “Why is Israelgate Being Downplayed?“

 

 

Wall Street Journal reported on Friday: “Inside the Trump Team’s Push on Israel Vote That Mike Flynn Lied About,” which stated: “Transition team’s bid to scuttle U.N. vote criticizing Israel was intense. Jared Kushner, Mike Flynn and Nikki Haley all made calls.”

The New York Times reported Sunday: “Kushner’s Financial Ties to Israel Deepen Even With Mideast Diplomatic Role,” which states: “The deal, which was not made public, pumped significant new equity into 10 Maryland apartment complexes controlled by Mr. Kushner’s firm.”

ALI ABUNIMAH, director at electronicintifada.net, @AliAbunimah
Abunimah is co-founder of the Electronic Intifada website and just wrote the piece “What Michael Wolff’s Fire and Fury says about Trump’s collusion with Israel,” which states: “Since Donald Trump excommunicated Steve Bannon over comments he made in Michael Wolff’s new book Fire and Fury: Inside the Trump White House, American media have spoken of little else.

“The president declared that his former strategist and the boss of far-right Breitbart News had ‘lost his mind’ for saying that a meeting Donald Trump Jr. and presidential son-in-law Jared Kushner held with a Russian lawyer during the 2016 election campaign was ‘treasonous.’

“The row has given new life to the dubious, unproven and often spectacularly false media-driven claims of ‘hacking’ and ‘collusion’ between Russia and Trump to steal the election from Hillary Clinton.

“Yet hollow as it has turned out to be, ‘Russiagate’ remains the central narrative of the self-styled Democratic and liberal ‘resistance.’

“However, the special counsel probe by Robert Mueller has indeed uncovered some collusion between the Trump team and a foreign power: Israel.

“In a plea agreement last month for making false statements to the FBI, Trump’s former national security adviser Michael Flynn admitted that he had contacted foreign governments during the final weeks of the Obama administration to try to derail a U.N. vote condemning Israeli settlements.

“This possibly illegal effort to undermine the policy of the sitting administration was done at the direction of Kushner and at the request of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

“Yet mainstream pundits have shown little concern, just as they have shown little interest in any further revelations about what we might well call Israelgate coming out of the Wolff book.

“It turns out that Fire and Fury contains evidence that Trump’s policy is not so much America First as it is Israel First.

“Wolff recounts an early January 2017 dinner in New York where Bannon and disgraced former Fox News boss Roger Ailes discussed cabinet picks.

“Bannon observed that they did not have a ‘deep bench,’ but both men agreed the extremely pro-Israel neocon John Bolton would be a good pick for national security adviser. ‘He’s a bomb thrower,’ Ailes said of Bolton, ‘and a strange little fucker. But you need him. Who else is good on Israel?’

“’Day one we’re moving the U.S. embassy to Jerusalem. Netanyahu’s all in,’ Bannon said, adding that anti-Palestinian casino billionaire Sheldon Adelson was on board too.

“’Let Jordan take the West Bank, let Egypt take Gaza. Let them deal with it. Or sink trying,’ Bannon proposed. ‘The Saudis are on the brink, Egyptians are on brink, all scared to death of Persia.’

“Asked by Ailes, ‘Does Donald know’ the plan, Bannon reportedly just smiled.

“Bannon’s idea reflected ‘the new Trump thinking’ about the Middle East: ‘There are basically four players,’ writes Wolff, ‘Israel, Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Iran. The first three can be united against the fourth.’ Egypt and Saudi Arabia would be ‘given what they want’ in respect to Iran, and in return would ‘pressure the Palestinians to make a deal.’” Abunimah’s books include The Battle for Justice in Palestine.