* That the Republican establishment apparently cares more about the support of “several dozen GOP foreign policy insiders” than it does for 80 million Trump voters tells you everything about how they got to this point.
It’s a foreign policy that puts America first. What would American foreign policy look like if America actually cared about America? What would the world look like if America actually cared about itself?
* There’s a Hispanic Republican/Trump opponent on Twitter who raised the neutrality issue too, implying that it means Trump, former Grand Marshall of New York’s Israel Day Parade, and celebrity endorser of Israeli PM Netanyahu, sees a moral equivalence between Hamas and Israel. But a more likely interpretation is that Trump was pointing out the difficulty of negotiating a peace deal between Israel and the Palestinians while we are more committed to being a strong ally of Israel than being an honest broker.
Reading between the lines, it seems a President Trump wouldn’t waste energy on negotiating a final peace between Israel and the Palestinians. Instead, he’d have a policy of benign neglect toward the conflict, while focusing his energy on making America great again.
Perhaps, in the 7th year of a Trump administration, if we had full employment, 4% annual GDP growth, and everything was going great here — and the Israelis and the Palestinians had made progress toward a deal on their own and asked for his help with a final push — then maybe he’d apply his “Art of the Deal” to the problem. Otherwise, probably not.
* I wonder if all the neocons plus Jennifer Rubin plus William Kristol, et al. will be asked to “disavow” Avigdor Lieberman, the former foreign minister of Israel and demand that Benjamin Nentayahu do the same (or lose his long-standing reservations to address the U.S. Congress). Lieberman, of course, is a famous “separatist,” along the lines of David Duke and Louis Farrakan:
“Lieberman Plan[edit]
Main article: Lieberman Plan
According to Lieberman, “The peace process is based on three false basic assumptions; that Israeli-Palestinian conflict is the main cause of instability in the Middle East, that the conflict is territorial and not ideological, and that the establishment of a Palestinian state based on the 1967 borders will end the conflict.”[49]
In late May 2004, Lieberman proposed a plan in which the populations and territories of Israeli Jews and Arabs, including some Israeli Arabs, would be “separated”. According to the plan, also known as the “Populated-Area Exchange Plan”, Israeli Arab towns adjacent to Palestinian Authority areas would be transferred to Palestinian Authority, and only those Arab Israelis who migrated from the area to within Israel’s new borders and pledged loyalty to Israel would be allowed to remain Israeli citizens. On 30 May 2004, Prime Minister Ariel Sharon condemned Lieberman’s statements, stating “We regard Israeli Arabs as part of the State of Israel.”[50] On 4 June 2004, as the disputes over the up-coming disengagement plan grew more intense, Sharon dismissed Lieberman from the cabinet.[51][52]“
