The pro-Israeli Zionist “brain trust” Donald Trump has named to be his guiding force on Middle Eastern policy, plunged Trump into one crisis, the Saudi/United Arab Emirates blockade of Qatar, and almost into another, Trump’s moronic criticism of Lebanese Hezbollah, while standing next to the Lebanese prime minister who owes his job to the Shi’a organization. Trump takes his Middle East advice from principally his son-in-law Jared Kushner, a contributor to and member of the board of the “Friends of the IDF,” an American non-profit that raises funds for the Israeli armed forces.
Kushner was named by Trump as a “special envoy” to the Middle East, while Jason Greenblatt, a former attorney with the Trump Organization, was named as special envoy in charge of the Israeli-Palestinian peace process. Although the two positions appear to overlap, Kushner and Greenblatt, both Orthodox Jews who have little time for Palestinians, are on the same page when it comes to advancing the West Bank land grabbing policies of the Binyamin Netanyahu government in Israel.
Trump thoroughly Zionized his administration’s Middle East policy with the appointment of another Israel supporter, David M. Friedman, as U.S. ambassador to Israel. Friedman had been a bankruptcy lawyer with the Trump Organization’s primary law firm, Kasowitz, Benson, Torres & Friedman. The firm is headed by Trump’s personal attorney Marc Kasowitz, who formerly represented Trump in the investigation being conducted of the White House by Justice Department Special Counsel Robert Mueller.
Although National Security Adviser Lt. Gen. H. R. McMaster managed to finally have National Security Council staffer Ezra Cohen-Watnick, another rabid Israel supporter, canned from the White House staff, the move had negative consequences for McMaster. The national security adviser has been subjected to a vicious campaign by Israel supporters, notably Breitbart News, founded by the late Andrew Breitbart, a noted Jewish supporter of Netanyahu, and Texas-based Islamophobe and conspiracy monger Alex Jones, an unabashed promoter of Israeli military action against the Palestinians. Trump’s pro-Israel base began calling McMaster “anti-Semitic,” a worn-out canard that is the last crutch for Israeli political puppets. Moreover, the far-right accused McMaster of establishing a “pro-Iran order” in Lebanon and Syria.
Trump’s Middle Eastern policy is also heavily influenced by Stephen Miller, the Zionist who counts white supremacist and neo-Nazi Richard Spencer among his friends. Miller writes many of Trump’s speeches and Trump’s remarks, alongside Lebanese prime minister Saad Hariri, bore the watermark of Miller. Trump told Hariri and the media that “Lebanon is on the front lines in the fight against ISIS, al Qaeda, and Hezbollah.” While Lebanon has been fighting ISIS and Al Qaeda, it has done so with the military assistance of Hezbollah forces, upon whose political support Hariri’s coalition rests.
It has never been in Israel’s interests to see a politically-united Lebanon, but that is presently the case with Hariri, a one-time pro-Saudi Sunni, sharing political power with the Lebanese Christian president, Michel Aoun, an ally of Hezbollah, and Lebanon’s pro-Syrian Shi’as, represented by Hezbollah. Acting as a dupe for Netanyahu’s agents-of-influence inside his White House, Trump’s remarks about Hezbollah were intended to cause a political crisis in Lebanon, leading to a fracture in the present Sunni-Shi’a-Christian political arrangement.
Fortunately, for Lebanon, neither Hariri or Hezbollah leader Nasrallah swallowed Trump’s gefilte fish bait. After the press conference with Trump, Hariri remarked, “We fight ISIS and al-Qaida. Hezbollah is in the government and part of parliament and we have an understanding with it.” Back in Beirut, Nasrallah took the diplomatic path and had no comment on Trump’s asinine comments about Hezbollah.
Trump’s intended “faux pas” on Lebanon followed his equally disastrous support of Saudi Arabia in a feud concocted by the Saudi and United Arab Emirates royal families. Trump’s siding with Saudi Arabia and the UAE in a sanctions showdown with Qatar, engineered by Abu Dhabi’s computer hacking of the Qatar News Agency, is a case in point. UAE hackers penetrated the Qatar News Agency and peppered its web site with bogus anti-Saudi and pro-Iranian comments ascribed to the Qatari emir. The entire Qatar episode appears to have been engineered by Kushner, who was miffed after Qatar rejected his request for a $500 million investment in the failing Kushner office building at 666 Fifth Avenue in Manhattan, and the UAE’s pro-Israel and anti-Qatar ambassador in Washington, Yousef Al Otaiba. Trump found it preferable to heed the advice of Kushner and the Saudis and Emiratis over that provided by McMaster and Secretary of State Rex Tillerson.
The latest gambit by Kushner, Greenblatt, and Miller to engineer a political crisis in Lebanon fell flat on its face this time. But Israel has shown it is always willing to carry out “false flag” attacks in Lebanon and elsewhere to advance its sordid agenda.
For years, the Israelis and Saudis have attempted to force a Sunni radical government on Lebanon. Both countries’ intelligence services had their fingerprints on the November 2005 car bombing assassination in Beirut of Hariri’s father, former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri. This was borne out by a United Nations panel headed by former Canadian prosecutor Daniel Bellemare, which concluded that Rafik Hariri was assassinated by a “criminal network,” not by Syrian intelligence or Hezbollah as proffered by the neoconservative propaganda mill operating out of Washington, DC, and Jerusalem.
In fact, Lebanese intelligence ascertained that the assassination of Hariri and twenty-two other persons was carried out by rogue Syrian, Druze, and Palestinian intelligence operatives in Lebanon who were in the pay of Israel’s Mossad intelligence service. The entire operation was designed to besmirch Hezbollah and Syria and their Lebanese Christian allies. The Israelis were fishing for a casus belli to justify a Western military attack on Syria.
With someone now in the White House who does not even possess a “Weekly Reader” knowledge of the Middle East, Israel is bolder than ever in using a U.S. administration to its own advantage.
Wayne Madsen is a Washington, DC-based investigative journalist and nationally-distributed columnist. He is the editor and publisher of the Wayne Madsen Report (subscription required).
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Getting the Middle East wrong: Trump taking advice from Kushner & Greenblatt
Posted on August 11, 2017 by Wayne Madsen
The pro-Israeli Zionist “brain trust” Donald Trump has named to be his guiding force on Middle Eastern policy, plunged Trump into one crisis, the Saudi/United Arab Emirates blockade of Qatar, and almost into another, Trump’s moronic criticism of Lebanese Hezbollah, while standing next to the Lebanese prime minister who owes his job to the Shi’a organization. Trump takes his Middle East advice from principally his son-in-law Jared Kushner, a contributor to and member of the board of the “Friends of the IDF,” an American non-profit that raises funds for the Israeli armed forces.
Kushner was named by Trump as a “special envoy” to the Middle East, while Jason Greenblatt, a former attorney with the Trump Organization, was named as special envoy in charge of the Israeli-Palestinian peace process. Although the two positions appear to overlap, Kushner and Greenblatt, both Orthodox Jews who have little time for Palestinians, are on the same page when it comes to advancing the West Bank land grabbing policies of the Binyamin Netanyahu government in Israel.
Trump thoroughly Zionized his administration’s Middle East policy with the appointment of another Israel supporter, David M. Friedman, as U.S. ambassador to Israel. Friedman had been a bankruptcy lawyer with the Trump Organization’s primary law firm, Kasowitz, Benson, Torres & Friedman. The firm is headed by Trump’s personal attorney Marc Kasowitz, who formerly represented Trump in the investigation being conducted of the White House by Justice Department Special Counsel Robert Mueller.
Although National Security Adviser Lt. Gen. H. R. McMaster managed to finally have National Security Council staffer Ezra Cohen-Watnick, another rabid Israel supporter, canned from the White House staff, the move had negative consequences for McMaster. The national security adviser has been subjected to a vicious campaign by Israel supporters, notably Breitbart News, founded by the late Andrew Breitbart, a noted Jewish supporter of Netanyahu, and Texas-based Islamophobe and conspiracy monger Alex Jones, an unabashed promoter of Israeli military action against the Palestinians. Trump’s pro-Israel base began calling McMaster “anti-Semitic,” a worn-out canard that is the last crutch for Israeli political puppets. Moreover, the far-right accused McMaster of establishing a “pro-Iran order” in Lebanon and Syria.
Trump’s Middle Eastern policy is also heavily influenced by Stephen Miller, the Zionist who counts white supremacist and neo-Nazi Richard Spencer among his friends. Miller writes many of Trump’s speeches and Trump’s remarks, alongside Lebanese prime minister Saad Hariri, bore the watermark of Miller. Trump told Hariri and the media that “Lebanon is on the front lines in the fight against ISIS, al Qaeda, and Hezbollah.” While Lebanon has been fighting ISIS and Al Qaeda, it has done so with the military assistance of Hezbollah forces, upon whose political support Hariri’s coalition rests.
It has never been in Israel’s interests to see a politically-united Lebanon, but that is presently the case with Hariri, a one-time pro-Saudi Sunni, sharing political power with the Lebanese Christian president, Michel Aoun, an ally of Hezbollah, and Lebanon’s pro-Syrian Shi’as, represented by Hezbollah. Acting as a dupe for Netanyahu’s agents-of-influence inside his White House, Trump’s remarks about Hezbollah were intended to cause a political crisis in Lebanon, leading to a fracture in the present Sunni-Shi’a-Christian political arrangement.
Fortunately, for Lebanon, neither Hariri or Hezbollah leader Nasrallah swallowed Trump’s gefilte fish bait. After the press conference with Trump, Hariri remarked, “We fight ISIS and al-Qaida. Hezbollah is in the government and part of parliament and we have an understanding with it.” Back in Beirut, Nasrallah took the diplomatic path and had no comment on Trump’s asinine comments about Hezbollah.
Trump’s intended “faux pas” on Lebanon followed his equally disastrous support of Saudi Arabia in a feud concocted by the Saudi and United Arab Emirates royal families. Trump’s siding with Saudi Arabia and the UAE in a sanctions showdown with Qatar, engineered by Abu Dhabi’s computer hacking of the Qatar News Agency, is a case in point. UAE hackers penetrated the Qatar News Agency and peppered its web site with bogus anti-Saudi and pro-Iranian comments ascribed to the Qatari emir. The entire Qatar episode appears to have been engineered by Kushner, who was miffed after Qatar rejected his request for a $500 million investment in the failing Kushner office building at 666 Fifth Avenue in Manhattan, and the UAE’s pro-Israel and anti-Qatar ambassador in Washington, Yousef Al Otaiba. Trump found it preferable to heed the advice of Kushner and the Saudis and Emiratis over that provided by McMaster and Secretary of State Rex Tillerson.
The latest gambit by Kushner, Greenblatt, and Miller to engineer a political crisis in Lebanon fell flat on its face this time. But Israel has shown it is always willing to carry out “false flag” attacks in Lebanon and elsewhere to advance its sordid agenda.
For years, the Israelis and Saudis have attempted to force a Sunni radical government on Lebanon. Both countries’ intelligence services had their fingerprints on the November 2005 car bombing assassination in Beirut of Hariri’s father, former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri. This was borne out by a United Nations panel headed by former Canadian prosecutor Daniel Bellemare, which concluded that Rafik Hariri was assassinated by a “criminal network,” not by Syrian intelligence or Hezbollah as proffered by the neoconservative propaganda mill operating out of Washington, DC, and Jerusalem.
In fact, Lebanese intelligence ascertained that the assassination of Hariri and twenty-two other persons was carried out by rogue Syrian, Druze, and Palestinian intelligence operatives in Lebanon who were in the pay of Israel’s Mossad intelligence service. The entire operation was designed to besmirch Hezbollah and Syria and their Lebanese Christian allies. The Israelis were fishing for a casus belli to justify a Western military attack on Syria.
With someone now in the White House who does not even possess a “Weekly Reader” knowledge of the Middle East, Israel is bolder than ever in using a U.S. administration to its own advantage.
Previously published in the Wayne Madsen Report.
Copyright © 2017 WayneMadenReport.com
Wayne Madsen is a Washington, DC-based investigative journalist and nationally-distributed columnist. He is the editor and publisher of the Wayne Madsen Report (subscription required).