Posted on 05/03/2016 4:02:54 AM PDT by SJackson
Republican presidential hopeful Donald Trump told a rally in Indiana on Sunday that “a lot of [his] Jewish friends” tell him he “will never be able” to broker peace between Israel and the Palestinians, the Jewish Insider reported.
During a speech to more than 2,000 supporters at the Indiana Theater in Terre Haute ahead of Tuesday’s primary race, Trump first attacked the United Nations for not “going in and making [such] a deal,” which he called “probably the all-time hard deal to make,” and then criticized the Palestinians:
You know, they grow up as young children hating, hating, hating Israel. I think the deal can be made. But we got to be smart and we got to use our best people; gotta use me, but we got to use our best people. And I know the best people. Now, with that being said, some of the smartest people I know from Israel say ‘We’d love to make the deal.’ — you know, I’ve never met a person from Israel that didn’t want to make the deal. But it is just a very hard deal to make because it’s years of — of whatever. But I’d love to be able to make that deal.
These remarks came in the wake of Trump’s first major foreign policy speech, which he delivered on Wednesday in Washington, DC. During that address, which – as when he spoke at the AIPAC policy conference in March – he read from a script on a teleprompter, the real estate mogul and reality TV star did not talk about Israel.
He did, however, discuss the threat of radical Islam. Containing its spread, he said, “must be a major foreign policy goal of the United States and indeed the world.”
According to a report in the UK’s Independent on Sunday, Jewish and Israeli attitudes towards Trump are mixed, with concern on both sides of the political divide.
Israeli left-wing academic and among the founders of the Peace Now movement, Galia Golan, was quoted in the piece as saying, “I would expect [Trump] to be very anti-Arab, not because he’s trying to please the Jewish lobby, but rather because he’s bigoted. He will probably look on Arabs as inferior. I suspect he would be a strong supporter of Israel out of disdain for Arabs as a people. Israel could expect the continuation of all the military aid it gets and support at the UN.”
Also quoted was Middle East expert Prof. Shmuel Sandler, whose conservative views, too, are at odds with Trump — for example, where his pronouncements of “America First” and attacks on consecutive US governments for their involvement in foreign affairs are concerned.
“[He] is an unknown,” Sandler told the Independent. “I think he himself doesn’t know what he would do, but the worrying thing is that he is speaking the language of isolationism. The US has been disengaging in the region under [President Barack] Obama and we want this to stop. Israel greatly needs the US in the region. Isolationism would leave the door open for Iran and Russia.”
Then there is Dr. Walid Phares.
Phares, who has served as a Middle East and terrorism expert on Fox News for the past nine years, was recently named as a Trump foreign policy adviser. According to the Independent, Phares tried to allay both concerns in an interview with the London-based Arabic-language daily al-Hayat.
“There is no evidence [of his being a racist]… indeed, the opposite is the case. His companies have a large number of employees of various ethnicities and Muslims, and women have a central role in his companies. An important share of his investors are from the Arab and Muslim worlds and he has Arab and Muslim partners,” Phares said.
In addition, Phares said, Trump will “be a fair mediator. He has good relations with the Jewish community and credit with the Israelis; he’s the only one capable of making a balanced peace that achieves the interests of both sides. He knows solving the Palestinian issue is a guarantee for achieving stability in the region.”
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I thought his Jewish lawyers were his advisors on the middle east. Maybe that's who he means by friends.
The arabs and Jews have one fundamental disagreement and that’s it: The arabs want all the Jews to die, and the Jews don’t.
Other than that, everything is fine
Yeah, here’s the deal:
Israel, you are God’s chosen people, and this land is yours.
Pali’s, go eff yourselves. Show your face around here again and that’ll be the last thing you do.
And that is why no one will ever broker a peace between Israel and the Palestinians. Until Palestinian children are not taught to hate as soon as they learn to talk, peace is impossible.
Donald Trump’s excitement about negotiating a peace between Israel and the PA is the only issue that gives me concern about him. I hope that his advisors, who seem to understand the issue, will help him to understand that the Arabs don’t want a compromise on land, they want to kill or deport all of the Jews and pretend that Israel never happened.
It is nice to hear a candidate say that. Those words never came out of Obama’s or Bush’s mouth nor the administration’s in the context of policy. Nor Clinton’s, nor Bush the elder’s. Could keep going.
What would the deal look like?
“...Until Palestinian children are taught not to hate...”
So true. Trump’s statement shows that he is aware of this as well and the problem needs to be solved by a deal that takes this into account.
Stating the problem correctly is the first step towards solving it! That’s what’s wrong with those libs- they even refuse to call out the issue correctly. (never saying the word terrorist for example)
Go Trump!!
It’s not clear to me his advisors understand the issue, neither of his Mideast advisors have said anything, nor do either have any track record to look at in the context of foreign affairs. They’re corporate/real estate attorneys. Pretty much the same thing goes for his foreign affairs advisors. Just have to keep your fingers crossed.
IMO, stop funding incitement, pressure our allies in Europe to stop funding incitement, once it stops wait a generation. Until then, stuck with the status quo. Hope one of his advisors has told him when he negotiates his "deal", he'll have his choice of negotiating with a designated terror group, Hamas, or Abbas, now in the 11th year of his 4 year term. Nothing anyone negotiates under those circumstances is legitimate, which serves Arab interests.
They’re bugs Wyatt....there ain’t no livin’ with bugs....
I watch cautiously when anyone tries to make a peace deal over there.
A peace deal will come when the phony Palestinian people return to their historical homeland in Jordan.
Bmk
The only “deal” possible is that the “Palestinian” wing of terrorists leave Israel in peace, and if they don’t, an alliance will form against THEM, and finish them off for years.
But that's not a deal, which is what Trump claims he can work out in record time. That's just putting a lid on it and hoping the fire goes out.
????? His stance has been that we're wasting our time by trying to "negotiate a peace deal" because the Palis will never allow peace and Israel keeps getting hurt in our meddling.
He has the most common sense approach to it I have heard from anyone yet - don't handcuff Israel with such crap but keep supporting Her as our ally.
Trump never said he'd work out a deal in 'record time', thats BS.
It's how you get to one. The alternative is putting the screws to Israel and establishing a terror state with an illegitimate government. That's the Obama approach, he just hasn't been tough enough on Israel to get his deal
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