December, 13 2016, 08:00am EDT
Trump's Dangerous Foreign Policy Team: Discrimination, Domination, and Destruction
With the announcement of Rex Tillerson as President-Elect Trump's choice for Secretary of State, Jewish Voice for Peace offers the following commentary on several foreign policy appointees who will impact our work towards a just peace for Palestinians and Israelis.
Secretary of State: Rex Tillerson
With the announcement of Rex Tillerson as President-Elect Trump's choice for Secretary of State, Jewish Voice for Peace offers the following commentary on several foreign policy appointees who will impact our work towards a just peace for Palestinians and Israelis.
Secretary of State: Rex Tillerson
The appointment of Rex Tillerson as Secretary of State is a sign that we are entering a new and disturbing era of corporate domination of diplomacy, where foreign relations will be governed by corporate bottom lines rather than norms of international law and human rights. While Tillerson's approach to Israel/Palestine is relatively unknown, it is clear that Tillerson's record indicates that he will be extremely destructive to the future of the planet and to human rights around the world.
Tillerson's approach to the world is fundamentally at odds with ours. His priority is cozying up to dictators in order to get access to oil, rather than holding political leaders and corporations accountable for human rights abuses. He views sanctions as an impediment to business, rather than as a diplomatic tactic. With Tillerson at the helm of the State Department, corporate accountability campaigns, including the tactics of the boycott, divestment and sanctions movement will be more important than ever.
Deputy Secretary of State: John Bolton
It has been reported that President-elect Trump is strongly considering John Bolton for the role of second-in-command at the State Department. John Bolton, a former United Nations ambassador and State Department official under the Bush administration, is a pro-war hawk whose record is actively hostile to the idea of diplomacy itself. As a top State Department official, Bolton played an important role in pushing towards war in Iraq, promoting false claims about weapons of mass destruction. Bolton has also been a loud voice calling for war with Iran, writing in the New York Times to encourage bombing Iran as recently as August 2015.
With regards to Israel/Palestine, Bolton thinks the two-state solution is a dead end. Instead, he recently told the Jewish Insider his solution is a "three-state solution" giving Gaza to Egypt and the West Bank to Jordan with no regard at all for Palestinian political and civil rights. Bolton opposes any action at the United Nations to put pressure on Israel, and has even encouraged defunding the UN over support for Palestinian rights. He has also encouraged Israel to pursue preemptive strikes against Iran.
The Senate blocked Bolton's confirmation as United Nations Ambassador previously out of concern over his antagonism towards the United Nations and lack of respect for human rights. With his record as a neoconservative war hawk, Bolton is the last person who should be in charge of US diplomacy.
National Security Adviser: Ret. Gen. Michael Flynn
Dozens of anti-war organizations have come out in opposition to the appointment of Ret. Gen. Michael Flynn, who is expected to take hard line towards U.S. security at the expense of human and civil rights, as National Security Adviser. Flynn is known for promoting extremely harmful anti-Islam rhetoric and anti-Muslim conspiracy theories. He has written that "fear of Muslims is rational" and said that "Islam is a political ideology" and "a cancer" that "hides behind being a religion," and promotes false and bigoted fears of "Shariah law" spreading in the United States.
Flynn opposes putting any effort into the Israel/Palestine peace process, and places all blame for the conflict on Palestinian violence rather than Israeli occupation, displacement and discrimination. Flynn's anti-Muslim bigotry and his disregard for Palestinian rights go hand in hand, and make him an extremely dangerous choice for national security adviser for those who care about the safety and security of all peoples, in the U.S. and in Israel/Palestine.
Defense Secretary: Ret. Gen. James Mattis
While Defense Secretary pick Ret. Gen James Mattis has been candid about the reality in Israel/Palestine, he also has a reputation of being candidly racist, misogynistic and Islamophobic. Mattis has warned accurately that without ending the occupation and continuing to deny rights for Palestinians, Israel risks becoming an apartheid state. Another Iran hawk, the choice of Mattis as Defense Secretary is another indication that the Trump administration will seek to undermine diplomacy.
In short, the foreign policy team taking shape for the Trump Administration is one that will wreak havoc around the world, including in Israel/Palestine. We call on the U.S. Senate to reject these dangerous appointments.
Jewish Voice for Peace is a national, grassroots organization inspired by Jewish tradition to work for a just and lasting peace according to principles of human rights, equality, and international law for all the people of Israel and Palestine. JVP has over 200,000 online supporters, over 70 chapters, a youth wing, a Rabbinic Council, an Artist Council, an Academic Advisory Council, and an Advisory Board made up of leading U.S. intellectuals and artists.
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"Save this for the next time you hear that the Israeli military does everything possible to avoid harming civilians, and that the level of civilian harm in Gaza is less than other comparable conflicts," said one advocate.
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Key findings include:
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Throughout the new report, Airwars compares Israel's bombardment of Gaza to two other campaigns it has extensively analyzed, the battles for Mosul, Iraq and Raqqa, Syria during the U.S.-led coalition war against the so-called Islamic State. Airwars concluded that more Palestinian civilians were killed by Israeli forces during the first 25 days of the Gaza campaign than were slain in Raqqa during the entire four-month period studied and the deadliest month in Mosul—combined.
The report also pushes back on claims that Israel "does everything possible to avoid harming civilians," and that "the level of civilian harm in Gaza is broadly consistent with, and even favorable to, other comparable conflicts in recent decades."
Save this for the next time you hear that the Israeli military does everything possible to avoid harming civilians, and that the level of civilian harm in Gaza is less that other comparable conflicts… gaza-patterns-harm.airwars.org
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— Huwaida Arraf (@huwaida.bsky.social) December 13, 2024 at 9:27 AM
"The manner in which Israel has conducted the war in Gaza may signal the development of a concerning new norm: a way of conducting air campaigns with a greater frequency of strikes, a greater intensity of damage, and a higher threshold of acceptance for civilian harm than ever seen before," the authors wrote.
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Altman said in a statement that was sent to multiple outlets that "President Trump will lead our country into the age of AI, and I am eager to support his efforts to ensure America stays ahead."
The donation from Meta follows a trip by Meta CEO and founder Mark Zuckerberg down to Trump's Mar-a-Lago Club to meet with the president-elect last month. Jeff Bezos, Amazon's executive chairman, is slated to head to Florida to meet with Trump at Mar-a-Lago next week, according to The Wall Street Journal.
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Zuckerberg and Meta refrained from donating to Trump's inauguration fund in 2017, and to President Joe Biden's inauguration fund in 2021, according to The Wall Street Journal.
In response to the news that Meta donated to Trump's inauguration fund this time, the watchdog group Public Citizen wrote: "Shocker! Another tech bro billionaire trying to buy his way into Trump's good graces. Zuckerberg donated $1 million to Trump's inaugural fund. $1 million to the man who threatened Zuckerberg with life in prison. Grow a spine."
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Bezos also chafed against Trump during his first presidency. Trump has repeatedly criticized The Washington Post, which is owned by Bezos, for its coverage of him. In legal proceedings, Amazon also accused Trump of swaying the bidding process when the Pentagon chose Microsoft over Amazon for a lucrative contract because of Trump's disdain for Bezos. However, in a move that was viewed as a signal to Trump, Bezos blocked the Post from endorsing Vice President Kamala Harris just before last month's election.
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Paxton is suing Dr. Margaret Daley Carpenter, co-founder of the Abortion Coalition for Telemedicine (ACT), for providing mifepristone and misoprostol to a 20-year-old resident of Collin County, Texas earlier this year.
ACT was established after the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade in 2022, with the intent of helping providers in "shielded states"—those with laws that provide legal protection to doctors who send abortion pills to patients in states that ban abortion, as Carpenter did.
New York passed a law in 2023 stipulating that state courts and officials will not cooperate if a state with an abortion ban like Texas' tries to prosecute a doctor who provides abortion care via telemedicine in that state, as long as the provider complies with New York law.
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"What will it mean to say for the GOP to say abortion should be left to the states now?"
"It is important to remember that Dr. Carpenter did nothing wrong," said Greer Donley, a legal expert and University of Pittsburgh law professor who specializes in reproductive rights. "She followed her home state's laws."
The Food and Drug Administration also allows telehealth abortion care, "finding it safe and effective," Donley added. "Texas is trying to apply its laws extraterritorially."
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The patient experienced heavy bleeding after taking the pills and asked the man who had impregnated her to take her to the hospital. The lawsuit suggests that the man notified the authorities:
The biological father of the unborn child was told that the mother of the unborn child was experiencing a hemorrhage or severe bleeding as she "had been" nine weeks pregnant before losing the child. The biological father of the unborn child, upon learning this information, concluded that the biological mother of the unborn child had intentionally withheld information from him regarding her pregnancy, and he further suspected that the biological mother had in fact done something to contribute to the miscarriage or abortion of the unborn child. The biological father, upon returning to the residence in Collin County, discovered the two above-referenced medications from Carpenter.
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Carpenter and ACT did not immediately respond to a request for comment on the case.
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