Hope? Yes; Millennial Dreams? No. What Can We Reasonably Expect From President Trump?: Frederick Krantz, CIJR, Jan. 20, 2017 — Donald J. Trump has taken the oath of office, as the 45th President of the United States, on the Capitol steps today.
The Trump Era Begins: Fred Barnes, Weekly Standard, Jan., 2017 — Ronald Reagan loved Washington but disliked the government.
The Recipe for Foreign-Policy Greatness Starts With FDR: Benny Avni, New York Post, Jan. 19, 2017— Will President Trump’s foreign policy look more like the outgoing president’s, or that of Obama’s hero, Franklin Roosevelt?
Trump’s Jews and Obama’s Jews: Daniel Greenfield, Frontpage, Jan. 13, 2017 — Seen from above, the 2016 electoral map of New York City is blue with dots of red. Trump’s home district is blue, but across the water a red wedge slices into Brooklyn.
Trump: I Haven't Forgotten My Promise About Jerusalem: Boaz Bismuth, Israel Hayom, Jan. 19, 2017
Will Trump Bow to Arab Intimidation on Jerusalem?: Mitchell Bard, Algemeiner, Jan. 17, 2017
A Conservative on the Eve of Trump's Presidency: Daniel Pipes, Philadelphia Inquirer, Jan. 17, 2017
The Trump Cabinet's Good Opening Week: Peggy Noonan, Patriot Post, Jan. 14, 2016
HOPE? YES; MILLENNIAL DREAMS? NO.
WHAT CAN WE REASONABLY EXPECT FROM PRESIDENT TRUMP?
Frederick Krantz
CIJR, Jan. 20, 2017
Donald J. Trump has taken the oath of office, as the 45th President of the United States, on the Capitol steps today. What can we now reasonably expect of his Administration insofar as Israel and the Middle East are concerned?
We are, given his campaign promises, entitled to hope for substantive changes, yet we must also guard against millennial dreams. Even as we realistically expect substantive changes in his policy, we must remain aware both of the role of Realpolitik in diplomacy and of the usual gap between electoral proclamations and actual policy.
Most generally, there has already been a sea-change in attitude. The key reality of the Obama Administration—expressed in Obama’s 2009 Cairo speech and symbolized by the disastrous Iran nuclear deal–was a conscious “opening” to the Muslim (and above all Shiite) world. The reverse side of this shift was a marked cooling of relations with the Jewish state. Obama’s dislike of Bibi Netanyahu was not only openly personal, but also reflected policy. While Israel as a military-political “ally” would continue to receive support, Obama’s pro-Arab (and pro-Palestinian) shift de-emphasized Israel’s role as a key democratic partner in the Middle East.
Beyond Trump’s palpable shift in attitude, there are clear indications of a deeper change. Trump’s immediate family has several Jewish connections through marriage, not least an Orthodox Jewish (by conversion) daughter and Jewish grandchildren. And he is a longtime and enthusiastic supporter, politically and financially, of the Jewish State. He has a longstanding friendship with Bibi Netanyahu, pro-Israel Orthodox political advisors (above all, his son-in-law and now deputized chief advisor, Jared Kushner), has headed up the annual Israel Day parade in New York City, and so on.
His statement before AIPAC during the Presidential campaign (including rejection of Obama’s Iran nuclear deal, and a pledge to move the US embassy to Jerusalem, now repeated by his designated ambassador to Israel, David Friedman) was clear and wide-ranging. And he has already nominated a series of pro-Israel and anti-Iranian figures, many of whom are Jewish, to high positions in his impending Cabinet.
(He also, reportedly, warned Obama–before the American’s abstention on UN Security Council Resolution 2334 and John Kerry’s “two-state solution” speech–against sealing his “legacy” by selling Israel out through a unilateral UN Security Council declaration of a Palestinian state.)
Hence the expectation that his Israel and M.E. policies will be decidedly more favorable than those of Obama (and, had she won, Hillary Clinton’s [Obama’s former Secretary of State]), is rational and understandable. However, as the Italians say, Chi vivrà, vedrà, Who lives, will see (how things turn out).
Trump remains, insofar as foreign affairs generally are concerned, largely an unknown. He has stressed an “America First” policy, focusing on revving up economic development and employment (see his recent China tweets) and voiced doubts about NATO (many of whose members are in arrears), and about failed “nation-building” in the Middle East (directed largely at American policy in Iraq and Afghanistan).
His seemingly positive view of Putin and of Russia, which seems to discount Moscow’s aggressive policy (in Crimea-Ukraine, Syria, and elsewhere), is concerning. This is reinforced by his appointment of several Cabinet heads with close links to the Kremlin (Lt. General Flynn, for the National Security Administration, and the Exxon chairman, Rex Tillerson, as Secretary of State). His appointee as Defense Secretary, General Mattis, has indicated support for the two-state solution, and has a history of lukewarm attitudes towards Israel.
What will be the litmus paper test of the new Administration insofar as Israel is concerned? Three issues: the pledged moving of the US embassy to Israel’s capitol, Jerusalem (something Presidential candidates have to date never followed through on); resisting on-going “two-state solution” pressures; and cancelling or, more probably, markedly amending, Obama’s Iran nuclear deal.
The two-state “solution”, the hallmark of failed US policy for over twenty years, now seems dead on arrival in any case, although it is concerning that Trump continues to refer–an old Presidential temptation–to wanting to broker an Israeli-Palestinian “deal of the century”.) And while finally recognizing Jerusalem would be nice, it is, however symbolic, not a politically decisive issue.
But clearly blocking Iran’s path to a nuclear weapon by rejecting or deeply amending the Iran agreement is, surely, the issue of most strategic importance for Trump to face, and the one on which his general Israel and M.E. policy will turn. Early action in this regard will indicate a real shift in Middle East policy.
Nevertheless, changing the US-Israel atmospherics from something neutral or even negative to something positive, is important, and will finally bring Administrative attitudes into line both with US popular and Congressional opinion.
But again, insofar as policy is concerned, that alone will be insufficient. If President Trump pursues a neo-isolationist foreign policy, allowing Russia to dominate an Iranian-backed and Hezbollah-supported Assad government (even if, as pledged, he ups the ante on the US-backed war against IS in Syria and Iraq), and if he doesn’t move quickly on the Jerusalem issue and/or backs off on amending the Iranian nuclear deal, the disappointment—in the American Jewish community and in Israel—will be palpable.
At this point, then, even as we are right to expect real and positive changes from Trump, an attitude of guarded optimism and watchful waiting is in order. Political prudence indicates we must keep the pressure on—better to be buoyed by major improvements when and if they come, than to be thrown into despair, despite better atmospherics, by the usual Realpolitik business, let alone by failed utopian dreams.
(Prof. Frederick Krantz, Director of the Canadian Institute for Jewish Research,
is Editor of the Isranet Daily Briefing)
Fred Barnes
Weekly Standard, Jan., 2017
Ronald Reagan loved Washington but disliked the government. George W. Bush hated Washington but liked the government. Donald Trump loathes both Washington and the government. This is why Trump won't make many accommodations in style or attitude as president. He dislikes Washington and nearly everything in it. His advisers have long since given up on persuading him to act "presidential." Newt Gingrich says the new president is bringing the whole Trump package we saw in the primaries and general election to the White House.
Gingrich actually calls it the full "Donald J. Trump." It consists of bludgeoning what he dislikes the most—political correctness, the left, and those who attack him. Those targets will get no relief. Nor will the bureaucracy, Washington's cast of busybodies who once worked in government and never left, and the press.
Trump will tweet. He will boast. He will speak candidly rather than communicate Washington-style through leaks, gossip, and insinuations. He will be paranoid, having written in Trump: The Art of the Comeback that the "slightly paranoid end up being the most successful." He will disappoint Republicans who believe they've tamed him. He will warm up to Democrats willing to do business with him, if there are any.
In the days before his inauguration, he delivered a demonstration of some of what's to come. He boasted at a posh D.C. dinner that 147 diplomats and ambassadors were in attendance. "Never been done before," he said. When he criticized Democratic congressman John Lewis, Democrats, politically correct Republicans, and the media were appalled. Lewis was identified as a "civil rights icon." Though he was elected to the House in 1986 and has voted a straight party line ever since, his civil rights background has generally made him off-limits to attacks. But not with Trump. When Lewis said Trump was illegitimate as president, Trump unloaded on him in tweets. Lewis said he would boycott the inauguration. He had said the same about George W. Bush after the 2000 election and skipped that inauguration too. The episodes looked similar, except I don't recall a response by Bush to Lewis.
On the matter of Trump's business interests, he ignored the advice of two "ethics" experts—former lawyers for Presidents Bush and Obama—who insisted he must put his holdings in a blind trust or something equivalent. They might think so, but the law says otherwise, and Trump prefers to have sons Eric and Donald run the Trump Organization while he's president. The ethics duo "have been exploiting the situation to drag out their 15 minutes of fame unconscionably," Holman Jenkins wrote in the Wall Street Journal.
The press anointed them arbiters of what Trump should do, though he is free to do what he wants, legally speaking. Jenkins referred to them as aphids, "sap-sucking insects [and] unfortunately the aphid side of life is the side Washington specializes in." They were too small for Trump to acknowledge. Polls, even bad ones, are too big for Trump to ignore. His approval numbers are historically low for an incoming president. He has two lines of attack. The polls are "rigged" by the same people "who did the phony election polls," he tweeted three days before his inauguration. Or Democrats were over-polled, driving down his approval rating. He's closer to being right on the second.
Given the political division in the country and the media's obsession with finding fault with Trump, he'd be smart to pay little attention to polls. Gingrich has a better idea. Trump isn't in the same situation as Reagan in 1981. He's more like Margaret Thatcher in her first two years as British prime minister. He should learn from her. Her poll numbers were dreadful. The press was so critical of her, she stopped reading newspapers. She was called illegitimate. Her agenda—for instance, crushing a coal miners' strike and closing unprofitable mines—seemed unachievable. But she was tougher than her enemies and defeated them.
Is Trump capable of doing what Thatcher did? I suspect he thinks so. He's a believer in suppressing thoughts of failure. As a young man, he listened to sermons by Norman Vincent Peale, the author of The Power of Positive Thinking. He regards Peale as the greatest speaker he ever heard. Trump believes in himself. And why not? He defeated a gang of 16 for the GOP nomination and whipped Hillary Clinton, once seen as a candidate for coronation. He did it largely without help from consultants, pollsters, and strategists.
I think Trump is tougher and smarter than his adversaries. That could lead as easily to blunders as to successes. But unlike Obama, he's willing to compromise. In that, he's more like Reagan, whose legacy is permanent. Obama's won't be.
Democrats and progressives may be too blindly anti-Trump to cooperate. But it's not Trump's policies they revile. What progressives detest about Trump "has mainly to do with appearance, attitude, style, and language," Barton Swaim wrote in the Washington Post. If progressives were smart, they would recognize the possibility of dealing more productively with Trump than with a principled conservative. "But I'm not sure they're smart," wrote Swaim. I'm not either. And that will leave Trump with the job of draining the swamp full-time.
THE RECIPE FOR FOREIGN-POLICY GREATNESS STARTS WITH FDR
Benny Avni
New York Post, Jan. 19, 2017
Will President Trump’s foreign policy look more like the outgoing president’s, or that of Obama’s hero, Franklin Roosevelt? In 1945, the World War II winners — Josef Stalin, Winston Churchill and FDR — met in Yalta, Crimea, to shape the fate of postwar Europe. US-led victory made America the world’s top player, and its wealthiest. We became a global force for good.
A stark contrast with what will be on display next week, when Russian, Iranian and Turkish officials will meet in Astana, Kazakhstan. They’ll try to end the civil war in Syria, which has led to the deaths of half a million and empowered the region’s extremists, and in the process reshaped the Mideast. President Obama talked a lot about the five-year Syrian war. Russia, Turkey and Iran acted. Which is why they convened the Astana summit, and are calling the shots. That’s bad for us, the Mideast — and the world.
Obama fans in Washington, Oslo or at the United Nations still believe he regained the world’s respect after Bush’s America lost it. That’s not how it’s seen in Aleppo, and that’s not what our allies believe. So how can Trump turn it around? Though he took a liking to the phrase “America first” during the campaign, he’ll have to avoid slipping into the isolationist baggage the slogan comes with. Trump’s national-security team is certainly starting on the right track by pushing to beef up the military budgets Obama has depleted. Let’s hope it succeeds.
Projecting military power is one way to avoid war. And a revamped military will be crucial to reclaiming America’s rightful place on the world stage. Take China. As its military expanded in the last decade, ours shrank. President Xi Jinping became increasingly aggressive, threatening neighbors, annexing territory and dominating the seas around him. Obama’s “pivot to Asia” turned out to be an empty slogan, giving Chinese adventurism a (mostly) green light to make mischief. China is a competitor that could quickly become a formidable foe, and Trump seems to get this. Taking a post-election phone call from Taiwan President Tsai Ing-wen shocked the buttoned-up diplomats at Foggy Bottom, but it also signaled to Xi that he can no longer do as he pleases in the region. That there’s a new sheriff in town.
As for our allies: Trump will need to leave his campaign attacks on Japan, America’s strongest and most reliable friend in the region, behind. Hopefully, his Trump Tower meeting with Prime Minister Shinzo Abe shortly after the election will, as quickly as possible, be followed up by a bilateral US-Japanese trade agreement to replace Obama’s ill-fated multinational Asian trade pact. A Japan agreement will seal our alliance, and reassure supporters of trade. “Multinational trade pacts don’t work,” a European diplomat told me recently. Trump agrees — he was making that argument from the beginning, in fact. Which is why he’s promising a bilateral pact with Britain’s Theresa May, who announced she was moving her country full speed ahead toward its break with the European Union last week. Such agreements could reshape world trade.
Closer to home, Trump would do well to bury the hatchet with another friend, Mexico, assuring it doesn’t turn into a foe. Trump, as his Twitter account will attest, smiles at friends and hard-hits dissers. It’s not a bad mode of statecraft, were he to expand it: He should communicate quite clearly who are our allies and who aren’t. Which one is Putin’s Russia? As an astute Muscovite observes, the Kremlin adored Presidents Bush and Obama when they were elected, only to hate them by the time they left office. The love affair with Trump “is already beginning to fade,” he said, predicting an ugly breakup soon.
Trump indicated on the campaign trail that (like Obama) he’d farm out to Russia some of our fights around the world. He’ll soon realize, likely, that Moscow’s animosity toward America is too deep for meaningful cooperation. A self-proclaimed artist of the deal, Trump is fond of saying that unpredictability is strength. So it’s hard to predict whether our future summits will look more like Astana or Yalta. Only the latter will make America great again.
Daniel Greenfield
Frontpage, Jan. 13, 2017
Seen from above, the 2016 electoral map of New York City is blue with dots of red. Trump’s home district is blue, but across the water a red wedge slices into Brooklyn. Around that red wedge are districts where Hillary won 90 percent of the vote and Trump was lucky to get 5 percent. Inside it, he beat her in district after district. The voters who handed him that victory are the Chassidic Jews of Williamsburg who dress in fur hats and black caftans. Their districts, crammed in by hipsters and minorities, are a world away from the progressive activist temples whose clergy went into mourning at Hillary’s loss.
East of Prospect Park, in a vast sea of blue, is what looks like a red sofa. Trump won here with the Chabad Chassidim of Crown Heights. He won in the more mainstream Orthodox Jewish communities of Flatbush. He won by huge margins among the Russian Jewish immigrants of Brighton Beach who listen to a man dubbed the “Russian Rush Limbaugh.” As the left-wing Forward put it, “Nearly every election district that Trump won in Brooklyn was in a Jewish neighborhood.” But it was a certain type of Jewish neighborhood. The wrong type. “You can compare them to Rust Belt voters,” a Forward source states. “They are hardworking people, not college educated.”
And then in Far Rockaway where the housing projects by the beach give way to the red Orthodox Jewish communities that extend into Long Island. There’s a line that recurs again and again in the attacks on David Friedman; the man picked by President-elect Trump to serve as the ambassador to Israel. It’s not stated openly. It’s implied. “David Friedman, a bankruptcy lawyer from Long Island,” is the sneering summary. Remnick, the New Yorker’s left-wing editor, took the sneering to a new level, titling his smear as “Trump’s Daily Bankruptcy.” Jewish identity, he declares, has never been a matter of “bankruptcy law.”
To a certain class of elites, it is self-evidently absurd that a bankruptcy lawyer from Long Island be appointed to anything or be listened to about anything. David Remnick is a Washington Post man married to a New York Times woman who went on to inherit the editorship of the New Yorker and turn it into a left-wing echo chamber. He lives in a $3.25 million four-bedroom Manhattan apartment with a wood-burning fireplace. And David Friedman is the Orthodox son of a Rabbi from Woodmere who still lives there. His father was a Republican who hosted President Reagan. He might occasionally be allowed to read the New Yorker. And that’s about it. Yet it’s hard to think of anything that might recommend Friedman more to Trump.
Over at New York Magazine, Frank Rich and Fran Leibowitz famously chuckled over Trump being “a poor person’s idea of a rich person.” David Brooks, the token slightly right of the left voice at the New York Times, full of contempt for Trump, in an infamous moment, studied Obama’s “perfectly creased pant” and came to the conclusion that, “he’ll be a very good president.” “I divide people into people who talk like us and who don’t talk like us,” Brooks has said. Obama spoke like one of the collective “us”. Trump and Friedman don’t talk like “us”. Their voices are distinctly working class. Their New York values are those of a grittier and grimier country. Trump’s calling card was, “Make America Great Again”. Obama’s was a memoir about race and identity that was a hit on college campuses. Two cultures could hardly be further apart.
The internal war in America and among Jews over Trump is not just about politics, it’s also about class. Trump’s victory was the uprising of a cultural underclass. That is equally true among Jews. The same divide exists between the slick branding of J Street’s conferences stocked with self-appointed thought leaders who have never worked for a living and the hard-working Jewish communities who loathe the New York Times for its hostility to Israel. These are the Jews who have never been represented in national politics. Whom most of the left didn’t even know existed…
[To Read the Full Article Click the Following Link—Ed.]
CIJR Wishes All Our Friends & Supporters: Shabbat Shalom!
Trump: I Haven't Forgotten My Promise About Jerusalem: Boaz Bismuth, Israel Hayom, Jan. 19, 2017—At pre-inaugural event in Washington, President-elect Donald Trump tells Israel Hayom he will move the U.S. Embassy to Jerusalem, "and I'm not a person who breaks promises"
Will Trump Bow to Arab Intimidation on Jerusalem?: Mitchell Bard, Algemeiner, Jan. 17, 2017—President-elect Donald Trump has promised to move the US Embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. Predictably, cataclysmic warnings are coming from the Palestinians, Arab leaders and State Department Arabists.
A Conservative on the Eve of Trump's Presidency: Daniel Pipes, Philadelphia Inquirer, Jan. 17, 2017—Many conservatives who once found Donald Trump unpalatable have come around to accept him. Most famously, Mitt Romney once excoriated Trump as dishonest, "a phony, a fraud," and condemned his bullying, greed, showing off, and misogyny. After the presidential election, however, Romney praised Trump ("I look forward to the coming administration") and hoped to work for him.
The Trump Cabinet's Good Opening Week: Peggy Noonan, Patriot Post, Jan. 14, 2016—This week was hail and farewell. Thursday morning William Cohen, the former Republican senator who became Bill Clinton’s secretary of defense, introduced and endorsed Gen. James N. Mattis, Donald Trump’s nominee as defense chief, to the Senate Armed Services Committee. “He has the nickname of ‘Mad Dog’ — it’s a misnomer,” Mr. Cohen said.
