The president’s 45-minute self-laudatory speech to IAC had two glaring omissions: Right-wing anti-Semitic violence and one Benjamin Netanyahu
By Chemi Shalev
Dec 09, 2019
Love or loathe him, Donald Trump gave Israelis of all political stripes a poignant moment full of pride and naches on Sunday Night. Trump’s physical embrace with members of the special-needs Shalva band right after they sang God Bless America to his attentive ears was the one highlight of the Israeli American Council conference in Washington that will stir the hearts of all Israelis, right, left and center.
Not that the rest of Trump’s performance – as seen on a live stream – was boring or unremarkable. On the contrary, in the annals of relations between Israel and the United States, there’s probably been nothing like it. In between rambling and sometimes incomprehensible depictions of the minute details of his own foresight and courage, Trump gave settler-supporting, Palestinian-despising Israelis and Jews 45 minutes of pure heaven.
He blasted Iran, denigrated Palestinians and even pronounced that his May 2018 embassy move had miraculously made Jerusalem into the capital of Israel. He delighted the enthusiastic crowd by managing to insult Native Americans with his reference to Elizabeth Warren as “Pocahontas” while concurrently hurling a vaguely anti-Semitic slur at his business-minded, wealth-oriented Jewish audience, which, he said, would naturally resist Warren’s tax-taking policies.
