Our goal is to have intelligent discussion of the topics of the day. We realize everyone has their opinion and they should be allowed to express it in a discussion forum without calling each other names. We learn from discussion and not from name calling or argument.We use cookies to personalise content and ads, to provide social media features and to analyse our traffic. We also share information about your use of our site with our social media, advertising and analytics partners. See details
US President Donald J. Trump’s Special Envoy Jared Kushner meets with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu at the Prime Minister’s Office in Jerusalem, June 21, 2017. (Matty Stern/U.S. Embassy Tel Aviv)
US Special Counsel Robert Mueller is investigating Jared Kushner’s contacts with Israeli officials last year over joint efforts to stop the passage of the anti-settlement United Nations Security Council Resolution 2334, ultimately passed when sitting-duck President Barack Obama did not use the US’s veto to halt it.
The notorious anti-Israel resolution slamming Israeli activity in Judea and Samaria came up for a vote in December 2016, after Donald Trump was elected president but before he had taken office. While the US’s standing practice is to support Israel at the UN, outgoing Obama, whose relations with Israel were cool at best, decided to abstain from the vote, allowing it to pass in what many critics saw as a last-minute betrayal of the Jewish State.
The failure was bitter for Israel, which had thrown its diplomatic weight into an attempt to shoot down the resolution. According to media reports, senior officials had contacted members of the Trump transition team, including Trump son-in-law and advisor Jared Kushner and senior advisor Stephen Bannon, to enlist the president-elect’s support in efforts to stop the resolution or delay the vote.
According to the Wall Street Journal, following his contact with the Israelis, Kushner quietly approached foreign leaders in order to sway their votes at the UN, as his father-in-law publicly called for a veto.
Neither effort was ultimately successful, and the measure passed, leading to Trump assuring Israel things would be different during his tenure.
Jared Kushner is already under investigation by Mueller for his contacts with Russian officials during the election.
Read more at https://www.breakingisraelnews.com/98248/jared-kushner-hot-water-2016-efforts-help-israel-block-un-anti-settlement-act/#53JWujldZXwXTcfg.99
“O ye that love Hashem, hate evil; He preserveth the souls of His saints; He delivered them out of the hand of the wicked.” Psalms 97:10 (The Israel Bible™)
Ivanka Trump, Jared Kushner and their three children in Washington D.C.’s Blair House. (Twitter @IvankaTrump)
Jared Kushner, the Jewish son-in-law of President Donald Trump, who also serves as his advisor, has become the target of an “explosive” online campaign of anti-Semitism over the past week, the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) said in a report Monday.
According to the ADL, the campaign of anti-Semitism “has been driven by white supremacists and anti-Semites and has all the hallmarks of classic Jewish conspiracy theories” which includes “accusations that Jews in the Trump Administration are trying to start a war to advance the interests of Israel.”
The social media campaign, which began on April 5, features hashtags on Twitter such as #kushneratwar, #kushnerswar as well as #firekushner.
“#FireKushner, No one voted for Kushner. Indeed, many of us voted against people like Kushner having power,” tweeted Richard Spencer, a white supremacist who heads the National Policy Institute, a white nationalist think tank.
The growing online attacks against Kushner come amid the recent bombing of Syria by Trump in response to the chemical weapons attack there as well as reports of tensions between Kushner and White House chief strategist Stephen Bannon, who was removed from the National Security Council last week.
“The response to Kushner and the Trump Administration from white supremacists comes at a time where some have expressed disappointment at Trump, who they previously viewed as a champion of their cause,” the ADL said in its report.
The report also noted Kushner has been the target of anti-Semites outside of Twitter, primarily on neo-Nazi websites such as The Daily Stormer and Infostomer.
Erik Striker, a writer for The Daily Stormer, a neo-Nazi alt-right website, referred to Kushner as “President Kushner” and said that his “vital interest as a Chabad Lubavitcher [a Jewish Hasidic sect] in foreign policy is to advance Israel at the expense of America,” according to the ADL.
Read more at https://www.breakingisraelnews.com/86492/adl-jared-kushner-target-explosive-online-anti-semitic-attacks/#0wFdrCAtMYAmZeYY.99
Trump Removes Stephen Bannon From National Security Council Post
Photo
Stephen K. Bannon, President Trump's chief strategist, at the White House on Monday.CreditStephen Crowley/The New York Times
WASHINGTON — For the first 10 weeks of President Trump’s administration, no adviser loomed larger in the public imagination than Stephen K. Bannon, the raw and rumpled former chairman of Breitbart News who considers himself a “virulently anti-establishment” revolutionary out to destroy the “administrative state.”
But behind the scenes, White House officials said, the ideologist who enjoyed the president’s confidence became increasingly embattled as other advisers, including Mr. Trump’s daughter and son-in-law, complained about setbacks on health care and immigration. Lately, Mr. Bannon has been conspicuously absent from some meetings. And now he has lost his seat at the national security table.
In a move that was widely seen as a sign of changing fortunes, Mr. Trump removed Mr. Bannon, his chief strategist, from the National Security Council’s cabinet-level “principals committee” on Wednesday. The shift was orchestrated by Lt. Gen. H. R. McMaster, Mr. Trump’s national security adviser, who insisted on purging a political adviser from the Situation Room where decisions about war and peace are made.
Mr. Bannon resisted the move, even threatening at one point to quit if it went forward, according to a White House official who, like others, insisted on anonymity to discuss internal deliberations. Mr. Bannon’s camp denied that he had threatened to resign and spent the day spreading the word that the shift was a natural evolution, not a signal of any diminution of his outsize influence.
His allies said privately that Mr. Bannon had been put on the principals committee to keep an eye on Mr. Trump’s first national security adviser, Michael T. Flynn, a retired three-star general who lasted just 24 days before being forced out for misleading Vice President Mike Pence and other White House officials about what he had discussed with Russia’s ambassador. With Mr. Flynn gone, these allies said, there was no need for Mr. Bannon to remain, but they noted that he had kept his security clearance.
“Susan Rice operationalized the N.S.C. during the last administration,” Mr. Bannon said in a statement, referring to President Barack Obama’s last national security adviser. “I was put on the N.S.C. with General Flynn to ensure that it was de-operationalized. General McMaster has returned the N.S.C. to its proper function.”
Mr. Bannon did not explain what he meant by “operationalized” or how his presence on the committee had ensured it would not be.
Either way, it was one more drama in a White House consumed with palace intrigue, where officials jockey for the ear of the president, angle for authority and seek to place blame for political defeats. Even as Mr. Bannon lost a national security credential, Jared Kushner, the president’s son-in-law and senior adviser, seems to be acting as a shadow secretary of state, visiting Iraq and taking on China, Mexico and Middle East portfolios.
Mr. Bannon’s myriad enemies, both inside and outside the White House, celebrated what they saw as a defeat for his brand of firebrand politics.
“He didn’t belong on the principals committee to begin with — doesn’t really belong in the White House at all,” said Representative Adam B. Schiff of California, the ranking Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee. “I hope that this is a sign that McMaster is taking control of the National Security Council.”
Karl Rove — who, as senior adviser to President George W. Bush, was not allowed to join national security meetings — said Mr. Bannon’s removal was a move back to a better process. “It was wrong for him to be added in the first place, and it was right to take him off,” he said.
Even if Mr. Bannon really was removed only because there was no longer a need for someone to mind Mr. Flynn, Mr. Rove added, the end result was a victory for General McMaster. “It’s either a sign of McMaster’s strength, or the result is it strengthens McMaster,” he said.
Still, Mr. Bannon, who has been under attack from outside the administration since the early days of the transition, is a crafty survivor, and insiders warned that it would be a mistake to underestimate him. When General McMaster wanted to fire a staff member, Ezra Cohen-Watnick, Mr. Bannon intervened to save his job.
Mr. Cohen-Watnick had alerted colleagues that Mr. Trump’s associates had been caught up in surveillance of foreigners, information then shown by another White House official to Representative Devin Nunes, Republican of California and chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, which is investigating Russian meddling in last year’s election.
James Jeffrey, a deputy national security adviser to Mr. Bush, said General McMaster appeared to have “scored one on the presumably more powerful Bannon,” but cautioned against reading too much into what it meant for Mr. Bannon. “He seems to be very close to the president and, by most accounts, still wins many of his battles,” Mr. Jeffrey said.
From the start, General McMaster intended to revamp the National Security Council organization that he inherited from Mr. Flynn. The principals committee, which is led by the national security adviser and includes the vice president, secretary of state, defense secretary and others, is the primary policy-making body deciding questions that do not rise to the level of the president and framing those that do.
Get the Morning Briefing by Email
What you need to know to start your day, delivered to your inbox Monday through Friday.
The original organization approved by Mr. Trump not only gave Mr. Bannon formal membership on the committee, but also downgraded the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the director of national intelligence to occasional participants as issues demanded.
In addition to removing Mr. Bannon, the new order issued by Mr. Trump, dated Tuesday and made public on Wednesday, restored the Joint Chiefs chairman and intelligence director and added the energy secretary, C.I.A. director and United Nations ambassador. It also put the Homeland Security Council under General McMaster rather than making it a separate entity, as Mr. Trump’s original order had done.
Mr. Trump was angry over the fallout from his first order, feeling that he had not been properly warned about its implications. He briefly considered reversing it the same weekend it was announced, according to a person with direct knowledge, but decided against it for fear of creating more of a public storm.
For the first two months of Mr. Trump’s presidency, Mr. Bannon occupied an unassailable perch at the president’s side — ramming through key elements of his eclectic and hard-edge populist agenda, including two executive orders on freezing immigration from several predominantly Muslim countries. Mr. Trump viewed Mr. Bannon as a street-fighting kindred spirit who favored his own attack-when-attacked communications strategy.
But blunders by Mr. Bannon’s team — especially the first immigration order, which was rejected by multiple courts — have undermined his position. His take-no-prisoners style was not a winning strategy on Capitol Hill. More experienced politicians, including Mr. Pence and Mr. Trump’s budget director, Mick Mulvaney, stepped into more expansive roles as negotiations over the failed health care overhaul dragged on.
Mr. Trump initially supported Mr. Bannon’s take-it-or-leave-it final message to holdouts in the House Freedom Caucus. But, needing a win, he grew skeptical and authorized Mr. Pence to resume health care talks, with Mr. Bannon playing more of a supporting role, according to three people close to Mr. Trump.
Mr. Bannon has also been at odds with Gary Cohn, the president’s national economics adviser. Mr. Cohn is close with Mr. Kushner, who has said privately that he fears that Mr. Bannon plays to the president’s worst impulses, according to people with direct knowledge of such discussions.
Moreover, Mr. Bannon’s Svengali-style reputation has chafed on a president who sees himself as the West Wing’s only leading man. Several associates said the president had quietly expressed annoyance over the credit Mr. Bannon had received for setting the agenda — and Mr. Trump was not pleased by liberals’ considering him “President Bannon.”
Yet there is a risk for Mr. Trump in appearing to minimize Mr. Bannon, a hero to the nationalist, anti-immigration base that helped drive Mr. Trump to an Electoral College victory. With his approval ratings at historic lows for so early in a presidency, he is counting on the same people who see Mr. Bannon as their champion — just as Mr. Bannon is counting on Mr. Trump to retain his place in the White House inner circle.
