Under Trump, the Israel lobby is a Hydra with many heads

Jonathan Cook

Since Trump took office, the Israel lobby has mobilised four other powerful lobbies: Christian evangelicals, the alt-right, the military-industrial complex and Saudi Arabia

Middle East Eye – 30 May 2018

The Trump administration’s recent steps in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict should surely lay to rest any doubts about the enormous, and dangerous, power of the Israel lobby in Washington.

Under Trump, the lobby has shown it can wield unprecedented influence – even by its usual standards – in flagrant disregard for all apparent US interests.

First, there was the move this month of the US embassy to Jerusalem, not quietly but on the 70th anniversary of the most sensitive day in the Palestinian calendar, Nakba Day. That is when Palestinians commemorate their mass expulsion from their homeland in 1948.

By relocating the embassy, Trump gave official US blessing to tearing up the 25-year-old peace process – and in choosing Nakba Day for the move, he rubbed the noses of Palestinians, and by extension the Arab world, in their defeat.

Then, the White House compounded the offence by lauding Israeli snipers who massacred dozens of unarmed Palestinians protesting at the perimeter fence around Gaza the same day. A series of statements issued by the White House could have been written by Israel’s far-right prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, himself.

At the United Nations, the US blocked a Security Council resolution calling for the massacre to be investigated, while Nikki Haley, Trump’s UN envoy, observed to fellow delegates: “No country in this chamber would act with more restraint than Israel has.”

None of these moves served any obvious US national interest, nor did Trump’s decision the previous week to tear up the 2015 nuclear accord with Iran that has long been reviled by the Israeli government.

In fact, quite the contrary: These actions risk inflaming tensions to the point of a regional war that could quickly drag in the major powers, or provoke terror attacks on US soil.

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Christian Zionists Woo U.S. Lawmakers

Al Jazeera 

At a reception celebrating Jerusalem Day last month on Capitol Hill, Rep. Andy Harris, a Maryland Republican, recounted a recent trip to the holy city. While there, he said, “I had the privilege” of visiting the Temple Mount, where “the real discrimination occurring right now is not, as some have suggested, on the part of Israel,” but rather “on the part of the group that held Jerusalem before 1967 — you all know who I mean.” 

Tensions at the site have been escalating as some Israeli lawmakers have stepped up provocations to reverse the long-standing ban on Jewish prayer there, once considered a fringe position but now a growing rallying cry on the Israeli right. No Israeli prime minister since the war of June 1967, when the Israeli occupation of East Jerusalem began — including stalwarts Menachem Begin, Ariel Sharon and current Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu — has supported changing Israeli law to allow Jewish prayer at the Temple Mount, based on security concerns.

As right-wing fervor in Israel for Jewish prayer intensifies, Christian Zionist advocacy groups are making efforts to shape U.S. lawmakers’ understanding of Jerusalem and its holy sites, particularly the Temple Mount, through visits aimed at convincing them that Jews (and Christians) face religious persecution there.

The site is the location of the destroyed Second Temple and sacred to Jews. To Muslims it is known as Al-Haram al-Sharif, and is the location of the Muslim holy sites Al-Aqsa Mosque and the Dome of the Rock.

Since 1967, when Israel captured the Old City from Jordanian control, the Temple Mount has continued to be administered by the Jerusalem Islamic Waqf, and Israeli law has barred Jewish prayer there. It has long been a flashpoint; in 2000, Ariel Sharon, then campaigning for prime minister, visited the site, igniting the second intifada.

The guide for Harris’ tour of the site was Rabbi Chaim Richman of the Temple Institute, which aspires to rebuild a third Jewish temple there. Richman maintains it will be a precise replica of the ancient temple described in the Bible, with its priestly castes and religious rituals, including animal sacrifice. Richman believes the ashes of a perfect red heifer are “required by the Bible for purification” before the temple can be rebuilt, and he has been involved in efforts to breed one.

According to Israeli journalist Gershom Gorenberg’s 2000 book “The End of Days: Fundamentalism and the Struggle for the Temple Mount,” which recounts Richman’s quest for the red heifer, the Temple Institute envisions the elimination of the Muslim holy sites as “part of a self-imagined vanguard who will restore the Jews to their proper status in the world.”

In an interview, Harris said Richman is “one of the world’s experts on the Temple Mount and gave me a great tour.”

Richman was once considered an “eccentric” in Israel but is now considered mainstream, said Daniel Seidemann, an Israeli attorney and founder of the NGO Terrestrial Jerusalem, which promotes agreement on the status of Jerusalem as part of a peace accord between Israelis and Palestinians.

“If current trends continue, there will be a significant eruption of violence on the Temple Mount,” Seidemann said, “within a matter of weeks and months and not years.” 

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See also:  Religious Authoritarians VIII: Temple Mount …Temple Might