After in March that “We got the message”, Serbian President Aleksandar Vučić has continued to demonize and intimidate protesters by of “being paid by foreign intelligence agencies”, assaults by government-sponsored thugs and the use of a sonic weapon during a rally.

The protests were a response to a train station canopy collapse��that killed , including several children, in the city of Novi Sad last November. The renovation was part of Serbia’s railway system revitalization along the Belgrade-Budapest line. Chinese construction companies undertook the work as part of the Belt and Road initiative and formed����with leaders in Serbia.

Following the tragedy, government officials claimed the canopy was untouched during the renovation. However, , a geological engineer who consulted on stonework, said it was clear the��additional weight added��during construction caused the collapse. He����aggravating factors, including workers lacking proper professional training and the omission of a public tender for the project.

Vučić hasn’t given in to any of the students’ demands and has doubled down on his usage of political figureheads to create the appearance of change. He received flak for the rushed approval of several infrastructure projects that would run contrary to the interests of Serbian citizens and ignored the warnings of EU officials by Russia’s annual Victory Day parade in May.

Notably absent at the protests are European Union flags, an odd contrast considering their use at similar protest movements, such as those in Georgia or Moldova. Aside from the lack of support for the , the students’ frosty attitude towards Brussels has been shaped by an apparent EU policy of prioritizing economic opportunity and alliance enlargement over democracy.��

The development of a in Western Serbia and the deal to transform a into a luxury hotel and residential complex have weakened citizens’ trust in the EU and the US. As reform efforts stall, the situation necessitates tactful intervention that prioritizes long-term democratic stability.

Out with the old, in with the … old?

Serbian Prime Minister reluctantly resigned a few months after the canopy tragedy as protests intensified. His replacement, , is seen by many as another placeholder for a largely ceremonial role that Vučić will continue to exert control over. The investigative media outlet KRIK revealed that the day before his appointment, Macut acquired a��villa worth more than dollars from the director of a public road construction company. This was in addition to the four other apartments he already owned.

Vučić’s political career began as a spokesperson for Vojislav Šešelj, who founded the far-right Serbian Radical Party (SRS) and is a proponent of a greater Serbia. Šešelj was convicted of crimes against humanity and served ten years for the he gave in Hrtkovci, an ethnically mixed village in the northern autonomous province of Vojvodina.

The speech consisted of reading a list of names of Croat residents that needed to leave and was followed by a campaign of ethnic cleansing that included harassment, intimidation and, in several cases, violent behaviour towards non-Serb civilians. He made similar statements against Kosovar Albanians while part of the government of Slobodan Milošević, which��planned to �����Dz��DZ���.

In addition to campaigning for the release of Šešelj, Vučić Radovan Karadzic, the former president of the Serb Republic of Bosnia. During the Bosnian War, Karadzic, with support from Milošević, instituted near-constant violence against the Bosnian Muslim population and, to a lesser extent, other ethnic minorities. The genocide in Srebrenica, where over 8,000 Bosnian Muslim men were brutally executed, is not accepted by those in Belgrade.

Serbian governments have historically and the genocide. Vučić himself against the UN on the subject as recently as 2024. The government and the media, monopolized by Vučić’s Serbian Progressive Party (SNS), focus on a 2015 incident where Vučić made a surprise appearance at the annual commemoration. His stunt was brief, as locals out of the town with��bottles and rocks. The anger towards Vučić stemmed from in parliament��only days after the genocide occurred: “You kill one Serb, and we will kill 100 Muslims.”

Since becoming president, Vučić has�� to have reformed��his previously hardline views and has worked to develop a foreign policy that envisions Serbia coexisting independently of global alliances. Allowing the most powerful leader in Southeastern Europe to repeatedly violate democratic rights, as long as he peddles the language of European integration, sets a dangerous precedent.

No to authoritarians and no to the EU

Serbia has attempted to play adversaries against each other. Despite advocating for future EU accession, they’ve broken with common policy numerous times. They’ve�� out��imposing sanctions on Russia following their invasion of Ukraine and have been attempting to persuade countries to withdraw recognition of Kosovo.

The EU’s neutral stance on the matter is viewed as complicit by��. Marta Kos, the EU’s enlargement commissioner,�� in response to a lack of progress on reforms in Serbia, “We are now assessing whether to distribute them [EU growth funds] or not.”

The EU’s hesitancy to castigate the Serbian leadership resides in its intention to��open a ��in the Jadar Valley. The mine would provide Europe with a major rare earth mineral supply as the demand for rechargeable batteries explodes globally. Locals have that the proposed mine, a venture by British–Australian giant Rio Tinto, will cause irreversible damage to nearby water sources and farmland.

On Rio Tinto’s website, they have a specifically for all the concerns surrounding the mine. Brief references to the potential loss of economic opportunity provide dim encouragement that agricultural production won’t be affected. Instead, the text is directed at promoting the tax and royalty contributions the mine could generate for local government and the state.

Citizens are acutely aware of the effects of allowing foreign governments to dictate mineral policy and preservation standards after the Chinese-majority-owned copper mine opened in Bor, a town in Eastern Serbia. The mine’s industrial pollution has��harmed nearby ��and has not produced the economic benefits promised to taxpayers by the state.

Across the Atlantic, the US President Donald Trump’s Administration has been equally admonished for seemingly ignoring continual anti-democratic abuses against Serbian citizens. A protest followed the revelation that Jared Kushner’s investment firm, Affinity Partners, had the Ministry of Defense buildings that had previously been damaged during NATO’s bombing raid against Yugoslavia in 1999.

The firm had intended to turn the site, considered a memorial by some Serbian citizens, into a luxury hotel and apartment complex complete with shops and office space. Last month, the process encountered a snag when it was revealed that the “expert opinion” that facilitated the removal of the heritage designation for the buildings was by Goran Vasić, the acting director of the Republic Institute for the Protection of Cultural Monuments. The future of the project currently remains uncertain.

Chasing Kremlin windmills

There’s a lot of publicity surrounding the connection between Russia and Serbia. The major media outlets wax lyrical about how Orthodox roots, antagonistic politicians and football hooligan friendships are the perfect mesh. The reality, however, reveals an exchange that is more suited to each nation’s individual interests.

The myth of friendship gained full traction as Serbia sought to veto any resolution that came before the UN’s Security Council regarding Kosovo. The move was costly as Serbia sold the majority control of its gas company, NIS, to Russia’s Gazprom. Moscow intended to��on the gas shortage in Serbia and utilize the country as an entry point to the Central European energy market.

In the November–December issue of New Eastern Europe, Natasza Styczyńska����how poorly constructed Western reporting helped breed acceptance of this narrative. She cited the concept of “systematic forgetting,” the idea that, despite knowing the EU was the largest provider of aid to Serbia, the media portrayed Russia as its dearest ally.

Reciprocity has been extended regarding��the fast-tracking of ��for well-to-do members of Russia’s elite. The relationship remains useful for Russia as a means of working around ongoing EU–US sanctions. Serbia’s government will continue to eagerly accept support from Russia and China as it engages in state-capture at home, while Eastern powers have capitalized on the EU’s inability to respond promptly to faux reformers.

The stability of the soft alliance has been tested once or twice. Most recently, Vučić was on the receiving end of some hostility from Putin’s government after being of supplying Ukraine with war munitions through intermediary countries.

A journey marred by uncertainty

The student’s task is enormous — they aim to oust an entire political class and remain unscathed while doing so. Reprisals have against academic staff members who joined the protests: a government decree implemented in March cut the number of hours academics are allowed to dedicate to research per week from twenty to five.

Without , don’t expect pro-European rhetoric alone to threaten the stability of Vučić’s regime. Although excluding them from membership discussions is unlikely, the economic potential of Serbia cannot take priority over protecting the rights of citizens. Each day of inaction equates to another individual who questions where true leadership lies.

Messaging that pledges to “listen to the students” has gotten tiresome. Using it as a tactic to stall the implementation of a comprehensive policy towards authoritarians that operate within Europe’s reach is cheap and evasive. Sole MEPs and smaller ideological collectives that don’t possess voting power have been made opaque throughout this crisis.

Civil disobedience should only be fashioned as a means to urge any semblance of accountability and not the general destruction of property. To this point, it has largely remained that way. However, the situation will need to be monitored both locally and externally.

While Vučić fashions himself as wholly reformed and continues to pack his cabinet full of corrupt undesirables, those in Brussels, Strasbourg and Washington must bid him adieu. It’s already shameful to have provided this much leeway. Ignoring willful abuses in governance so long as rare earth minerals and private real estate deals can be secured violates every promise they’ve ever made to safeguard democracy.

Gaining back the trust of the citizens they took for granted should be their sole priority.

[ edited this piece]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

The post Crackdown Against Protesters Quickly Reveals Old Wounds In Serbia appeared first on 51�Թ�.

The Contradictory Musings of Biden’s Speculator of State

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The Forbes article, an excerpt from Bourla’s book, “Moonshot,” ends with a moving story about how Pfizer boldly resisted the pressure of the evil Jared Kushner, Donald Trump’s son-in-law, who had no qualms about depriving the rest of the world — even civilized countries such as Canada and Japan — of access to the COVID-19 vaccine to serve the US in their stead.

“He insisted,” the good doctor explains, “that the U.S. should take its additional 100 doses before we sent doses to anyone else from our Kalamazoo plant. He reminded me that he represented the government, and they could ‘take measures’ to enforce their will.”

Today’s Weekly Devil’s Dictionary definition:

Take measures:

Go well beyond any measured response in an act of intimidation

Contextual Note

Bourla begins his narrative at the beginning, before the development of the vaccine, by asserting his company’s virtuous intentions and ethical credentials that would later be challenged by bureaucrats and venal politicians. “Vaccine equity was one of our principles from the start,” he writes. “Vaccine diplomacy, the idea of using vaccines as a bargaining chip, was not and never has been.”

Some readers may note that vaccine equity was only “one” of the principles. There were, of course, other more dominant ones, such as maximizing profit. But Bourla never mentions these other principles, instead offering a step-by-step narrative meant to make the reader believe that his focus was on minimizing profit. That, after all, is what a world afflicted by a raging and deadly pandemic might expect. A closer examination of the process Bourla describes as well as the very real statistics about vaccine distribution reveals that, on the contrary, Pfizer would never even consider minimizing profits. It simply is not in their DNA.

Bourla proudly describes the phases of his virtuous thinking. The CEO even self-celebrates his out-of-the-ordinary sense of marketing, serving to burnish the image not only of his company but of the entire pharmaceutical industry. “We had a chance,” he boasts, “to gain back our industry’s reputation, which had been under fire for the last two decades. In the U.S., pharmaceuticals ranked near the bottom of all sectors, right next to the government, in terms of reputation.”

Thanks to his capacity to tone down his company’s instinctive corporate greed, Bourla now feels he has silenced his firm’s if not the entire industry’s critics when he makes this claim, “No one could say that we were using the pandemic as an opportunity to set prices at unusually high levels.” Some might, nevertheless, make the justifiable claim that what they did was set the prices at “usually” high levels. A close look at Bourla’s description of how the pricing decisions were made makes it clear that Pfizer never veered from seeking “high levels,” whether usual or unusual, during a pandemic that required as speedy and universal a response as possible.

Thanks to a subtle fudge on vocabulary, Bourla turns Pfizer’s vice into a virtue. He writes that when considering the calculation of the price Pfizer might charge per dose, he rejected the standard approach that was based on a savant calculation of the costs to patients theoretically saved by the drug. He explains the “different approach” he recommended. “I told the team to bring me the current cost of other cutting-edge vaccines like for measles, shingles, pneumonia, etc.” But it was the price and not the cost he was comparing. When his team reported prices of “between $150 and $200 per dose,” he agreed “to match the low end of the existing vaccine prices.”

If Pfizer was reasoning, as most industries do, in terms of cost and not price, he would be calculating all the costs related to producing the doses required by the marketplace — in this case billions — and would have worked out the price on the basis of fixed costs, production and marketing costs plus margin. That would be the reasonable thing to do in the case of a pandemic, where his business can be compared to a public service and for which there is both a captive marketplace (all of humanity shares the need) and in which sales are based entirely on advanced purchase orders. That theoretically reduces marketing costs to zero.

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But Bourla wrote the book to paint Pfizer as a public benefactor and himself as a modern Gaius Maecenas, the patron saint of patrons. Once his narrative establishes his commitment to the cause of human health and the renunciation of greed, he goes into detail about his encounter with Kushner. After wrangling with the bureaucrats at Operation Warp Speed created to meet the needs of the population during a pandemic, Bourla recounts the moment “when President Trump’s son-in-law and advisor, Jared Kushner, called me to resolve the issue.” That is when Kushner, like any good mafia boss, evokes his intent to “take measures,” a threat the brave Bourla resists in the name of the health of humanity and personal honor.

That leads to the heartwarming, honor-saving denouement, the happy ending that Bourla calls a miracle. “Thankfully, our manufacturing team continued to work miracles, and I received an improved manufacturing schedule that would allow us to provide the additional doses to the U.S. from April to July without cutting the supply to the other countries.”

Historical Note

Investopedia up the reasoning of pharmaceuticals when pricing their drugs: “Ultimately, the main objective of pharmaceutical companies when pricing drugs is to generate the most revenue.” In the history of Western pharmacy, that has not always been the case. Until the creation of the pharmaceutical industrial sector in the late 19^th century, apothecaries, chemists and druggists worked in their communities to earn a living and like most artisans calculated their costs and their capacity for profit.

The Industrial Revolution changed all that, permitting large-scale investment in research and development that would have been impossible in an earlier age. But it also introduced the profit motive as the main driver of industrial strategy. What that meant is what we can see today. Pharmaceutical companies have become, as Albert Bourla himself notes, “ranked near the bottom of all sectors.” They exist for one reason: to make and accumulate profit. Industrial strategies often seek to prolong or extend a need for drugs rather than facilitate cures. Advising a company, Goldman Sachs famously asked, “Is curing patients a sustainable business model?” The implied answer was “no.” The greatest fear of the commercial health industry is of a cure that “exhaust[s] the available pool of treatable patients.”

In any case, COVID-19 has served Pfizer handsomely and is continuing to do so. In late 2021, the Peoples Vaccine Alliance “that the companies behind two of the most successful COVID-19 vaccines —Pfizer, BioNTech and Moderna— are making combined profits of $65,000 every minute.” Furthermore, they “have sold the majority of doses to rich countries, leaving low-income countries out in the cold. Pfizer and BioNTech have delivered less than one percent of their total vaccine supplies to low-income countries.”

At the beginning of the COVID-19 “project,” Bourla boasts, “I had made clear that return on investment should not be of any consideration” while patting himself on the back for focusing on the needs of the world. “In my mind, fairness had to come first.” With the results now in, he got his massive return on investment, while the world got two years and counting of a prolonged pandemic that will continue making a profit for Pfizer. At least he had the satisfaction of putting the ignoble Jared Kushner in his place.

*[In the age of Oscar Wilde and Mark Twain, another American wit, the journalist Ambrose Bierce, produced a series of satirical definitions of commonly used terms, throwing light on their hidden meanings in real discourse. Bierce eventually collected and published them as a book, The Devil’s Dictionary, in 1911. We have shamelessly appropriated his title in the interest of continuing his wholesome pedagogical effort to enlighten generations of readers of the news. Read more of The 51�Թ� Devil’s Dictionary.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

The post Pfizer’s Noble Struggle Against the Diabolical Jared Kushner appeared first on 51�Թ�.

Before that historic moment, the most serious problem Kushner had had to deal with was seeking the means to extricate his family enterprise from the mountain of debt incurred by the purchase of an piece of real estate at 666 Fifth Avenue. Kushner never quite managed to solve that one, but it didn’t deter him from stepping up to the new challenge.

Does Joe Biden’s Transition to the Center Have Any Meaning Today?

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In March 2017, Kushner officially accepted to play the role of viceroy of the neocolonial American empire Trump was now intent on remodeling. Focusing on America’s wealth, the almighty dollar and its military might, Trump set about imposing on the rest of the world his new idea of “America First.” The empire Trump inherited had been enfeebled by the actions of the “weak” Barack Obama, the previous president.

Kushner, the White House senior adviser, took his role seriously. His most talked-about feat, besides managing to squeeze himself into the diminutive of Saudi dictator Mohammed bin Salman’s , was his famous “deal of the century” that — according to Eric Trump — created the conditions of a lasting peace between Israelis and Palestinians. In his last week at the Republican convention, the president’s son revealed, to the surprise of most observers,  that there is now “peace in the Middle East” and “never-ending wars were finally ended.”

Now, Kushner has a new crisis to deal with. The disorder that broke out last week at the NBA threatened to cancel a basketball season rebooted after having been truncated by the COVID-19 pandemic. NBA players refused to play in protest after the shooting of Jacob Blake, a black American male, by a police officer in Wisconsin.

Interviewed by CNBC, Kushner his analysis of the root of the problem: “The NBA players are very fortunate that they have the financial position where they’re able to take a night off from work without having to have the consequences to themselves financially. They have that luxury, which is great.” 

Here is today’s 3D definition:

Luxury:

For privileged Americans, the ultimate goal of all human activity, which, once achieved by any individual, defines that person as a member of the reigning elite, who is expected to identify with the elite and support it in its continual effort to parry all challenges coming from outside, duplicating the logic of a gated community

Contextual Note

Like most Americans, Kushner is impressed by the exorbitant salaries that professional athletes earn. He is even more impressed by the fact that a majority of those athletes are black. With that kind of money, they should be happy and self-satisfied because, as Joe Biden recently revealed, black is supposed to be synonymous with the poor. During the presidential primary campaign, the Democratic candidate that “poor kids are just as bright and just as talented as white kids.” 

Kushner may find it hard to believe that players who are so “fortunate” would be interested in anything other than wallowing in their luxury. The luxury he refers to consists of not having to fear the flogging their ancestors were sure to receive if they refused to work on the plantation. 

Kushner believes black kids should be rewarded for working hard. With the reward comes the obligation of respecting the rules of society. This obviously includes allowing the police to enforce those rules in any way they deem appropriate. Thanks to that understanding, as many as 50 black youngsters in any given year might be drafted into the NBA. With such an opportunity extended to a population of nearly 50 million people, there can be no justification for riots, protests, boycotts or cancellations. The prospect of joining the elite is open to everyone, even to a poor black kid in the ‘hood.

Once again, Biden seems to agree. It’s the point he made in his acceptance speech at the Democratic convention when he announced what defines America. “I have always believed you can define America in one word: Possibilities. That in America, everyone, and I mean everyone, should be given the opportunity to go as far as their dreams and God-given ability will take them,” he said.

Kushner and Biden are clearly on the same page. Biden’s message might even be reframed as the “possibility of luxury.” The justification of creating an elite to rule over a democracy requires accepting that even poor black people can scratch their way to the top and become a bonafide member.

Kushner is a political realist, not a dreamer like Biden. “Look, I think with the NBA … they’ve put a lot of slogans out. But what I think we need is to turn that from slogans and signals to actual action that’s going to solve the problem,” Kushner said to CNBC.

He may have learned something from his “deal of the century” in the Middle East, generally acknowledged to be a failure, despite Eric Trump’s glowing evaluation. To devise his deal, Kushner avoided engaging with the Palestinians, preferring to let Saudi and Emirati leaders negotiate in their name. This time, he is proposing to “reach out” to basketball superstar, LeBron James to “agree on what we want to accomplish and … come up with a common pathway to get there.”

This should be an easier task than dealing with Palestinians. After all, James has an net worth of $480 million, placing him among the American elite, practically at the level of President Trump’s Florida buddy, the late Jeffrey Epstein. So far, however, the Los Angeles Lakers’ star has shown no interest in joining Kushner’s conversation. Atlanta Hawks coach Lloyd Pierce very clearly why the admittedly “privileged” players would remain focused on changing the system with no input required from the White House.

Historical Note

Donald Trump’s policy of “America First” relies on two distinct notions. The first represents the realpolitik approach maintaining that a nation’s foreign policy should privilege its own interests before considering the point of view of other nations. But “America First” also implies that the rest of the “free world” must recognize the US as their uncontested leader entrusted with both setting the rules of the global game and enforcing them. Every nation that respects those rules qualifies for two essential services: the protection afforded by the mightiest military force in human history and access to markets in which the means of payment is the dollar. 

That idea of “America First” was present in Jared Kushner’s failed elitist Middle East peace plan. It promised dollars for the Palestinians (mainly Saudi and Emirati petrodollars), complemented by the protection afforded conjointly by Israeli and American military might. In other words, a life of luxury for the Palestinians, with plenty of beachfront hotels in Gaza.

The system of dollars plus nuclear might lies at the core of the “rule of law” that was put in place at the end of World War II. One key component is the role of the dollar that provides a permanent incentive for local elites to engage in a system of global corruption. The International Monetary Fund and the World Bank — accompanied by powerful multinational companies focused on extracting resources — funnel dollars to local elites. This puts the international elite in control of local economies. The local elites then assume the responsibility of distributing those dollars through their economy, according to need. 

A good part of that “need” is naturally the funding of the members of the elite themselves, who can then place the dollars they receive in banks and holdings elsewhere in the world, with a special affection for tax havens. Some of the manna does trickle down to local populations, but never too much to upset the system.

Kushner and others in Washington have been surprised that some elites — from Hamas to LeBron James — are less eager to join their international club. But armed with powerful central banks and nuclear warheads, the Washington elite still believes history is on its side. Who isn’t interested in luxury? And they are probably right, at least for a few more years.

*[In the age of Oscar Wilde and Mark Twain, another American wit, the journalist Ambrose Bierce, produced a series of satirical definitions of commonly used terms, throwing light on their hidden meanings in real discourse. Bierce eventually collected and published them as a book, The Devil’s Dictionary, in 1911. We have shamelessly appropriated his title in the interest of continuing his wholesome pedagogical effort to enlighten generations of readers of the news. Read more of The Daily Devil’s Dictionary on 51�Թ�.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

The post Jared Kushner Appeals to the NBA’s Taste for Luxury appeared first on 51�Թ�.

The deal sparked outrage by the Palestinians but was praised by the Israelis. Even though the plan addresses controversial issues such as Israeli settlements, Palestinian refugees and the status of Jerusalem, many observers have rebuffed it as one-sided.

The plan sets out both political and economic steps for peace. For the Israelis, Jerusalem would be the undivided capital of Israel. They would also have full control over Jewish settlements in the West Bank and East Jerusalem, and Israel would retain most of the territories it captured during the 1967 war. For the Palestinians, the West Bank would be connected to the Gaza Strip via a tunnel or highway. However, the Palestinians would have to relinquish almost 40% of the West Bank and would have their capital in Abu Dis, a Palestinian village in the Jerusalem Governorate. The framework also contains economic advantages that are offered to the Palestinians, including an investment of $50 billion and 1 million jobs.

51�Թ� Debates the Trump-Kushner “Deal of the Century”

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In a televised statement shortly after the deal went public, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas  to it by stating: “[W]e say one thousand times no, no, no to the Deal of the Century.” In a joint communique, the Arab League  that it would not cooperate in the enforcement of the plan. The Israeli prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, welcomed the peace plan and : “[T]he deal of the century is the opportunity of a century, and we’re not going to pass it by.”

Antony Loewenstein is a Jerusalem-based Australian journalist. His latest book is “Pills, Powder and Smoke: Inside the Bloody War on Drugs.” Loewenstein has written extensively on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and is a frequent commentator on TRT World, CNN and Al Jazeera.

In this edition of The Interview, 51�Թ� talks to Loewenstein about the “deal of the century,” Israeli settlements in the West Bank and the role of international organizations in settling the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

This interview took place before the recent Israeli elections. The transcript has been edited for clarity.

Kourosh Ziabari: No Palestinian official attended the White House announcement on the “deal of the century.” The attendees were evangelicals and the entourage of President Donald Trump and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Does it matter to Trump if the Palestinians perceive the deal as disproportionately biased?

Antony Loewenstein: I think the aim is to show that. It is quite clear that, for a long time, the close coordination between the Israeli government and the American administration is to almost guarantee that the Palestinian Authority and Hamas, for that matter, will reject it. So, they can then turn around and say: You see, we gave them a deal and it was a great deal, but they didn’t want it. Now we have to go on and continue with our plan which is annexation, indefinite apartheid, etc.

So, to me, in fact, the idea was that Palestinians would reject it — they knew that they would, almost certainly. It’s hard to see how they could ever imagine that the Palestinian leadership would accept this deal — and it’s not really a deal, it’s more of a gun to the head. It’s basically saying that you have no choice but to accept this. And if you don’t accept this so-called deal, then you will not be treated with respect.

And to actually launch a peace deal in which one of the two sides are not present and have not been involved in drafting the process, and the key people who drafted it were all Orthodox Jews who support the illegal settlements in the West Bank, says all you need to know about what kind of absurd deal this is.

Ziabari: You said the Americans knew from the beginning that Palestinians would reject the peace plan. In the interim, the White House published a map, delineating the future composition of Palestinian lands and Israeli territory. The Palestinian response has been stringent, saying they’ll not accept this deal under any circumstances. Considering the map has been published, do you think that is the green light for Israel to annex more Palestinian lands, including the Jordan Valley, and to build more settlements in the West Bank?

Loewenstein: I think it’s almost inevitable and, in fact, one of the things that is important to remember is, in some ways, that Israel doesn’t even need this deal. I mean they’re annexing territory to an extent now anyway. There’s currently in Israel and Palestine a “one-state” solution. It’s an apartheid state for Palestinians in the West Bank, Gaza and the Jordan Valley, but what it means practically on the ground is that Israel has the freedom to do what it wants. There is one civilian law for Israeli Jews in the West Bank and one law for Palestinians, which is a military rule, and that’s discriminatory and apartheid by definition.

So, does the map guarantee Israel will continue on its part? I think the answer is: yes. But Israel doesn’t need the Trump plan or the Trump map or the Trump deal to do that. They’re doing it anyway and, frankly, they’ve been doing that for years.

The problem with this issue is not Donald Trump. Donald Trump is a terrible, racist president, but he has only accelerated the trends that were happening here already. These problems were created long before Trump — for decades, in fact — by the Republican and Democratic presidents who allowed Israel to occupy and discriminate against Palestinians without any punishment, including Democratic presidents such as [Barack] Obama. So, Trump is really not the problem here; Trump has merely made the problem worse, for sure, but when he leaves office, Israel would almost certainly continue behaving as it does because there’s literally no international pressure on them to stop them.  

Ziabari: Do you think the economic incentives of Trump’s “vision for peace,” including tripling Palestine’s GDP, investing $50 billion in the new state and creating 1 million new jobs for Palestinians over the next 10 years, are attractive enough to satisfy the Palestinians and compel them to accept the plan?

Loewenstein: Well, I’ve read not one Palestinian who’s accepted it. That’s pretty much all you need to know. I can’t say there’s not one Palestinian amongst 5 million in the West Bank or Gaza who do accept it, but I’ve read no one who says they accept it. And, to be clear, the offer that Trump has apparently put on the table is not actually that amount of money — it’s an aspiration for that amount of money, maybe down the track if Palestinians accept a demilitarized, weak, broken-up state.

So, frankly, I’m not surprised Palestinians won’t accept it and reject it, and if you’re a logical, sensible person, you would as well. So, I think really that the issue here is Israel and the US can throw money at the problem but, ultimately, unless you make a political deal and you actually imagine what an equitable solution will be, this problem will continue to get worse.

And that will happen if Netanyahu loses the upcoming election because it’s the third Israeli election in a year happening in early March; he might win or he might lose. We don’t know yet, of course, but the likely alternative, the opposition leader, thinks pretty much in exactly the same way. He supports annexing territory. He’s a right-winger in Israel. He doesn’t see Palestinians as equal human beings.

So, the sad reality politically here, in Israel at least, is that both major sides of politics think exactly the same way. In fact, even before Trump’s plan, Benny Gantz, the leading opposition leader, flew to Washington to essentially meet Trump and give him his blessing for the plan, essentially saying that if I win the election in March and I become prime minister, I’ll move forward with that plan as Netanyahu will if he wins. So, this is a very elaborate but sick game that the Israeli elites are playing, because Palestinians are simply seen as irrelevant and viewed as subhuman and it’s not surprising, therefore, that every sane Palestinian would 100% reject this deal.

Ziabari: The Organization for Islamic Cooperation has rejected President Trump’s peace plan and called on its 57 member states not to cooperate in the implementation of the deal. Does the refusal of major Muslim countries to work on the enforcement of the deal affect its prospects for success?

Loewenstein: Well, the short answer is it has no impact. I mean, that’s the sad reality. There are many dozens of Muslim countries around the world, I know, but they have virtually no influence or impact on Israel or the US, and it’s important to know that a number of Muslim, Arab states are, in fact, looking to maybe make a deal with Israel. They may not accept the Trump peace plan, but they are increasingly close with Israel; they are very keen to isolate Iran; they are keen to share defense arrangements; they are keen to get Israeli weapons and surveillance technology.

That’s the reality of what’s happening in the Middle East. And of course, Israel is very happy about that. For decades, the Arab world was particularly united against Israel. That has radically changed in the last 10 years. On paper, yes, many leaders came out and they are opposed to the peace plan, but in practice, it actually is very different. It’s very conceivable that either some will accept the peace plan or a version of it because they’re so keen to become close to Israel because of their fear of Iran.

Ziabari: Again, on the peace plan, Jared Kushner, the main architect of the deal, has said Palestinians have repeatedly missed opportunities for peace, and that they should accept the deal if they want a viable state of their own. Do you think this plan is genuinely what will guarantee an independent Palestinian state and bring an end to the seven-decade-old conflict, or was Kushner simply trying to sell his deal by saying so?

Loewenstein: Jared Kushner was being a typical colonial master saying how his misbehaving subjects, the Palestinians, were not behaving nicely. I mean it’s basically the agenda of Kushner. He has spent his entire life around Israeli settlements. His family supports the settlements. Kushner is a right-wing fundamentalist and so the idea that someone like him and all the other people around him who drafted this plan — David Friedman and others — have any real intention or understanding or care about Palestinians, the answer is no because what’s suggested is not a viable Palestinian state.

If Palestinians have a choice between the status quo and the prospect of some kind of state, which is not really a state — with no independence, no army, no freedom of movement really, no ability to go in and out as you please — because Israel ultimately is the master of that state, it’s very reasonable that they will reject it, which is what they’ve done.

At the moment, there is no viable alternative on the table, but the challenge now is for Palestinians as a mass movement, both within Palestine and globally to devise a new strategy which could involve, for example, a “one-person, one-vote” campaign, to say that the two-state solution is dead, it’s been dead arguably for 20 years, and now we demand equal rights in the state — which is, to me, an international law requirement and also a very legitimate claim. And that’s something, I think, that growing numbers of Palestinians do support, are talking about it and that has to be emphasized with the leadership, namely the Palestinian Authority and Hamas.

But let’s be clear: The leadership in Palestine is part of the problem as well. They are corrupt and they’ve been in power for far too long. They’ve not had free and fair elections for a very long time. Many Palestinians treat them with contempt because they mostly are very old men who don’t speak for Palestinian people, and that’s a problem. And, of course, that situation is what makes Israel and America very happy. They’re very content with that situation because the Palestinian Authority today is essentially the policemen for the occupation. They are armed and trained by Israel and international forces to essentially go around the West Bank, suppressing the opposition to their rule and keep calm. But keeping calm means keeping Israel happy, and a lot of Palestinians are very upset and angry about that [and] rightly so. So, to me, until the Palestinian Authority is either abolished or radically reformed, which I’m not convinced is actually possible, and we have free and fair elections, they are also part of the problem.

Ziabari: Benjamin Netanyahu recently said that Trump is the “the best friend that Israel has ever had in the White House.” The Trump administration has strived to promote itself as the most pro-Israel in the country’s modern history. Why is Trump so persistent in appealing to the Israelis? Does he gain domestically?

Loewenstein: I think he thinks that it does. I think there are a few reasons: One, the Republican Party is very pro-Israel. He’s got a very strong evangelical Christian base who are also very fanatically pro-Israel. The majority of Jews in America have always voted Democrat, so they wouldn’t vote for Trump anyway. There are obviously some Jews who do vote for Republicans or Trump, but they are very few. So, he sees that his base is quite pro-Israel. He doesn’t see any downside because the Palestinians as a people and as a lobby group are very weak as opposed to the pro-Israel lobby in America, which is very strong and powerful.

So, he does see it as beneficial for him and, obviously, we will see this year in the US whether it helps him win reelection. I mean the Israel issue on its own will not win reelection, but we need to see whether this issue becomes a serious one during the campaign once we know who Donald Trump is facing, whether it’s Bernie Sanders or somebody else. So yes, I think Trump sees it as beneficial to his agenda and outlook.

Also, frankly, Trump and many people around him hate Muslims, hate Arabs, hate Palestinians. It very much fits into their worldview. There is contempt, open contempt to people who are not white, who are different to them, who are brown, who have different skin, who have a different religion and who have a different background, and the Palestinians are simply part of that, unfortunately.

Ziabari: Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank are considered illegal, according to the UN Security Council’s Resolution 2334. However, the US recently shifted its position on the settlements, no longer considering them a violation of international law. What will be the effects of the new US approach? Will it encourage Israel to construct more housing units in the West Bank while the UN Security Council still sticks to its stance?

Loewenstein: Well, one of the key problems with this conflict is that international law and the United Nations are toothless and often powerless. They’re choosing not to exercise their power because, ultimately, the settlements have been illegal since the beginning in 1967; virtually the entire world agrees with that except for Israel and the US. The United States did change its position recently, but to be honest, it had that position unofficially for decades.

Israel has been building settlements for 52-53 years, and there are now 750,000 Jewish settlers all living illegally in the West Bank and East Jerusalem. No one seriously thinks they’re going to be removed; they’re there permanently, the occupation is now permanent. That’s the reality which Israel has created.

So, one of the really disappointing aspects of this whole issue is that the International Criminal Court, which has been really weak on many global conflicts for many years including this one, just recently announced that, possibly, they’re going to move forward with an investigation into some of the issues around the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. But even if they do, and it’s not clear that they will, the ICC has shown on this issue, amongst other issues, that they’re very toothless and powerless and the United Nations is exactly the same. So, ultimately, the resolution of this issue will not come through the UN. With the Security Council, there are obviously various countries that have veto power. Then there is just not really any viable way to see the situation changing that way unless the global makeup shifts.

And with the international law, there have obviously been a number of attempts over the years to bring justice to the Palestinians, by trying to prosecute Israeli prime ministers or defense minsters or army generals. Virtually none of them ever succeeded in many countries, including in Europe, which may be more open to such things. I think that will change eventually, but I think we’re a long way away from that still, sadly.

Ziabari: By saying that international organizations such as the United Nations and the Security Council are powerless and unable to come up with a panacea for the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, are you implying that the settlement of the crisis is merely contingent upon the will and determination of any US government, or is it a matter of having a reliable broker in the White House?

Loewenstein: Well, ultimately, the US has never been that reliable broker because they’ve always been what I would call “Israel’s lawyer.” They’ve always been on Israel’s side. This has been pretty much the case in the last 50 years. So, there’s never really been an American government, Democrat or Republican, that has viewed Palestinians as having equal rights to Israeli Jews.

The only possible change to that view is if someone like Bernie Sanders wins the presidency. He has talked about seeing Palestinians as human beings, talking about a peace deal and trying to negotiate, which may or may not happen, because there’ll be a huge amount of pressure on him to either back down or to not make it the focus of his presidency. He will be so busy trying to undo years of damage done by Trump if he wins this year.

So, someone like him is a possibility but, ultimately, I think the US has placed itself at the center of global negotiations. What the United Nations should have done, and the European Union particularly should have done years ago but did not, was to make themselves a viable alternative power source to the US. And the European Union has failed in doing that, and now as Europe increasingly becomes politically fractured, there is no consensus; there are growing numbers of Eastern European states particularly that are very pro-Israel, including Hungary and Poland. There are some Western European nations that are more critical of Israel, like Belgium, France and others, but they’re quite weak and the EU works on consensus, but there’s simply no consensus there.

So, apart from the US and the EU, where is this alternative global broker going to come from? It’s not going to be the Arab states. I don’t know where that comes from right now. That’s the problem. And until there is a viable alternative, this situation will continue to be managed badly by the more powerful forces which are Israel and the US.

Ziabari: A 2019 by the Van Leer Institute found that 71% of Jews in Israel believes there is a moral problem with the Israeli occupation of Palestine. Israel appears to be highly divided on the issue of occupation. Is there any chance these fissures might lead to a change of policy on the part of the Israeli government?

Loewenstein: I wish there was. But the truth is that most people I speak to here who are looking for change — I’m talking about on the Israeli Jewish side — have accepted many years ago that that change will not happen. In other words, it will not happen within the country. There are definitely people within Israeli Jewish society who are very opposed to what’s going on, and they are very outspoken and they are very brave, but there are very few of them. And even though many Israeli Jews, when they’re asked in studies, will say the occupation is not their ideal outcome, they continually vote for politicians that are making the settlements permanent.

It’s interesting that it’s definitely a minority of Israeli Jews who are very pro-settler. That is true, but that shows in some way the strategic brilliance of the settler movement that a minority population in Israel have spent 50+ years being able to be the key drivers of Israeli government policy where the majority of Israelis are either paralyzed, blind or deaf, including willfully blind to what’s going on.

And it’s amazing how you can have an occupation down the road from your house if you live inside Tel Aviv or West Jerusalem where a lot of Israeli Jews live. And they are never going to the West Bank; they never meet Palestinians; they often express incredibly racist views.

Obviously, I’m generalizing. There are many Israeli Jews who don’t think like this, but a lot of public opinion polls of Israeli Jews find racism very strong against Palestinians. They wouldn’t share an apartment block with a Palestinian; they wouldn’t want to send their child to the same school or kindergarten as a Palestinian Muslim or Christian child. There’s very deep racism here. And there’s racism on the Palestinian side, too, but most studies have shown that Israeli Jews are much more racist to Arabs than the other way around, despite decades and decades of conflict with the Palestinians who are the occupied people, not the other way around.

So, I think without outside international pressure, either from government or other places, it’s very hard to see the Israeli Jewish population rising up because, ultimately, people don’t give up power by choice. They don’t give up their privileges by choice. We saw that in South Africa during apartheid. White South Africans didn’t one day wake up and say: Gee! I really want to give blacks equal rights.

No. They realized it over years of international pressure and, obviously, a very strong black movement led by the ANC [African National Congress] and Nelson Mandela who showed them that South African whites had a choice: you either accept blacks as equals or you become an increasingly global pariah and outcast society. And at the moment, Israel is a long way away from that, but that’s the future potentially unless there’s growing international pressure against Israel to change its policies.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

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His reasoning nevertheless echoes US President Donald Trump’s when he warns that “this could be the last opportunity they will ever have.” It also echoes US Ambassador to Israel David Friedman’s that the terms are non-negotiable: “They’re not going to get more by holding a day of rage.” 

With Trump’s Peace Plan on the Table, Palestinians Face an Existential Decision

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Grappo, the former US ambassador to Oman, is certainly right in thinking that the Israelis on their own will never offer the Palestinians anything better than this plan by Trump and Jared Kushner, the president’s son-in-law and adviser. But does it make sense for the US, supposedly in its role as an honest broker, simply to align itself with what Israel is willing to offer?

Referring to one of the most sensitive issues, the Palestinians’ right of return, which is peremptorily dismissed by the authors of the plan, Grappo writes: “[T]he Palestinian leadership had always held out this empty promise to the Palestinian refugee diaspora as a kind of sop. It was never to be, and anyone familiar with the matter knew it.” He then adds this extraordinary assertion: “The Trump plan merely codifies this.”

Here is today’s 3D definition:

Codify:

Transform existing patterns of behavior — even brazen and unsanctioned violations of universally recognized principles — into law through the use of intimidation or crushing force when the power to do so exists, even when any moral authority is clearly lacking

Contextual Note

The literal meaning of codify is, quite simply, to settle on a formal, legally recognized definition of a practice or a relationship. Grappo has taken a shortcut by equating with a codified law a totally one-sided plan that has never been openly discussed among the interested parties. Perhaps he should have used the IT term “coded” rather than “codified.” In effect, Kushner, Trump and Friedman have attempted to write the code of a new operating system for the Middle East. What they haven’t done, which any vendor of software is professionally obliged to do before releasing it to the public, is to attempt to debug it.

In the phrase, “the Trump plan merely codifies this,” “this” refers to the refusal of the Israelis to even consider a right of return, even though Israel as a nation is founded on the right of Jewish people to return to a land they and most of their ancestors never lived in. Not only is “codifies” inaccurate, but adding “merely” makes it doubly suspect. There is nothing mere about what the plan does. In politics, one should always beware of assertions that appeal to the idea of “merely.” The term can permit a thinly-disguised denial of the obvious, something far more consequential and worth pondering than the speaker or writer wants us to believe.

And what should we think of another assertion that assumes something that was clearly never true? Grappo writes: “When the Palestinians recklessly launched the Second Intifada, they lost the trust of the Israeli people.” Can Grappo or anyone else cite a period or even a moment when the Palestinians had the trust of the Israelis? Black slaves in the antebellum South in the US or in apartheid South Africa had the trust of their masters so long as they did what they were told to do and accepted their fate. So had it been in Israel until the First Intifada in 1987. Is that the kind of trust that Grappo has in mind?

Of course, on one key point, Grappo is fundamentally right. History, as it plays out in the real world, has never been a moral construct. It is built on a long series of faits accomplis, a term so embarrassing in the English-speaking world that there’s no truly equivalent translation of the French term. Imposing one’s will while expecting one’s victims to consider it the norm and adapt to it may be shameful, but most of the time it works.

It may violate everyone’s sense of morality, especially in political regimes that claim to be democratic, but historical reality has always been about another French term people are squeamish about translating correctly: rapport de force. Official translations tend to settle on the “balance of power.” But any French speaker will tell you that “rapport de force” designates an unbalance of power or even an aggressive display of power. It describes how things are managed favorably to one side and unfavorably to the other.

Perhaps now that Brexit is official, Europeans should think about bringing back French as the universal language of diplomacy. It could make it easier to understand the interactions between political powers. If the leaders and diplomats admit that their position has little to do with morality and everything to do with competitive advantage, even the media might begin to interpret events more honestly than they do today. 

The English language has offered the world a culture of unparalleled cynicism and hypocrisy. It prefers to invoke human rights, rule of law, democratic principles and numerous other moralizing slogans to describe actions that are the fulfillment of a simple rapport de force designed to result in faits accomplis. Always holier than thou in our Anglo-Saxon certitude, we reserve the immoral sounding stuff for the French language.

Historical Note

In his article, Gary Grappo rapidly lists the failed attempts at pushing the now mythical (because never codified) two-state solution between the Israelis and Palestinians, from 1947 to the present. The litany of failures allows him to conclude: “But this is the reality. There is little with which to negotiate now.” He explains that the Palestinians no longer have most of the influential Arab states backing them. Isolated, they have no choice but to capitulate.

He then adds another argument in favor of the fatalistic acceptance of the status quo: “Moreover, Israel … is the regional power now and a reliable counterbalance to the real threat — Iran.” Describing the same situation, , a Palestinian author and journalist, observes: “Some Arabs have completely forsaken Palestine and are embracing Israel to fend against an imaginary Iranian threat.” So, which is it? Is the threat “real” or “imaginary?”

In the age of the “global war on terror” that clicked in a decade after the end of the Cold War, politicians in our democracies have elevated political paranoia to the status of what, at least locally, turns out to be an effective electoral strategy. Identifying threats and warning the public against them serves to stir the emotions of the electorate, who end up seeing policies of aggressive action against other populations as indispensable for their own protection and defense. Seeking to understand when threats are real or imaginary has become a lost art, banished from public debate, since the media themselves have every interest to amplify their importance. 

In the US, it has become a dogma to consider Iran, like Russia (for very different reasons), to be an unqualified threat. But, of course, all recent polls show that most people across the globe see the US as the. To take seriously the idea that Iran threatens the US requires a truly psychedelic stretch of the imagination. Even the business world doesn’t see Iran as a threat, which is why Donald Trump had to threaten businesses across the globe with sanctions against doing deals with Iran.

Michael Doran, a conservative analyst and former official of the Bush administration, very frankly expresses his to what he calls the “American security system in the region.” He is undoubtedly correct. But this statement stands as a clear admission that the US sees itself as a global empire with the right to threaten and punish whomever it chooses, even halfway across the globe, for failing to conform to its wishes.

And what does it mean to assert that tiny Israel is “the regional power” (which, by the way, implies that there is only one)? Grappo seems to be suggesting that Israel’s military strength — backed, as everyone knows, by the US — endows it with some form of natural authority over the region. The same observation would have applied just as accurately to Germany in 1939, apart from the difference in size of the two countries. But does that military clout justify codifying the status quo and elevating the dominant and aggressive regime to the status of unique regional power?

The article continues by presenting another concept that requires some further examination. We learn that Israel is “a reliable counterbalance to [Iran’s] threat.” What do the ideas of “balance” and “counterbalance” represent? Like rapport de force, the terms “balance” and “counterbalance” tend to be used to describe permanently unhealthy situations, states of conflict, instability and insecurity. They make sense in contexts where balance, when it occurs, will usually be perceived as precarious and ephemeral. Is it fair to the populations concerned to apply this kind of geopolitical game theory approach to what for them is an existential question concerning their identity and survival? That’s what empires do but is it appropriate to a nation that champions democracy? This kind of analysis implies a complacent acceptance of a situation in which initiatives or demands for justice or equality will be systematically opposed as factors that may potentially “upset the balance.”  

In insisting that this is a real opportunity for Palestinians to attain their fundamental goal of autonomy, Grappo also chooses to ignore what most lucid observers have noticed and at least one Israeli, Akiva Eldar — a senior columnist for Al-Monitor’s Israel Pulse — has: “Netanyahu’s pro-Israel friends in the Trump administration, chief among them US Ambassador to Israel David Friedman and White House adviser Jared Kushner, helped sow numerous landmines among the pages of the ‘plan’ to ensure the Palestinians will not even be tempted to discuss it.” If the authors designed it to be rejected, can there be any sense in the argument that the Palestinians would be wise to accept it?

Following Kushner and Friedman, Grappo instructs the Palestinians: “But it is time to be realistic.” Far more realistically, Eldar reasons: “If the Palestinian Authority will be tempted to accept this, it will lead to a Palestinian civil war.” Paradoxically, both Grappo and Eldar are right in the sense that what we’re seeing is part of a predictable pattern in recent history. Whether it’s Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya, Somalia or other countries where the US has stepped in to propose what in Washington were seen as “realistic” solutions designed to change the rapports de force, the result has been chaos and never-ending civil war.

Now we learn that not only has the Palestinian Authority categorically rejected the Kushner plan, but also that the Arab League has “not to .. cooperate with the US administration to implement this plan.” As with every initiative of the US in the Middle East over the past 20 years, futility and inevitable failure seem to be written into the program. Accepting the fait accompli, as Grappo suggests in the interest of peace and prosperity now seems out of the question. Not even the self-interested complicity of the two despotic regimes in Saudi Arabia and Egypt is likely to make a difference. 

The “pent-up fury” that Al Jazeera’s Marwan Bishara last week and that Akiva Eldar confirms appears to be the most likely consequence of the rejected deal. Nobody can predict just how pent-up and how furious it may become.

*[In the age of Oscar Wilde and Mark Twain, another American wit, the journalist Ambrose Bierce, produced a series of satirical definitions of commonly used terms, throwing light on their hidden meanings in real discourse. Bierce eventually collected and published them as a book,, in 1911. We have shamelessly appropriated his title in the interest of continuing his wholesome pedagogical effort to enlighten generations of readers of the news.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

The post 51�Թ� Debates the Trump-Kushner “Deal of the Century” appeared first on 51�Թ�.

As the world continues to hang on every word spoken by Middle East problem-solver Jared Kushner in the hope of understanding the future of the entire region as it will play out according to his still unveiled “,” his latest comments reveal important evidence of what he and the Trump administration are preparing.

Kushner, who is US President Donald Trump’s son-in-law, believes in self-determination for the Palestinians, but sees before they can be trusted to govern themselves: “The Palestinians, he said, ‘need to have a fair judicial system … freedom of press, freedom of expression, tolerance for all religions’ before the Palestinian areas can become ‘investable.’”

Here is today’s 3D definition:

Investable:

Applied to people and nations, existing or worthy of being recognized as existing because the prospect of making a profit from the fact of their existence will earn the confidence of the financial sector

Contextual note

According to Kushner, self-determination involves creating an “area” where people with money from the West can use their cash in opportunities that are “investable” for their own profit. He is expecting the Palestinians to provide the area — their living space that has been granted to them by Israel —in which foreigners, once the plan is implemented, will not only be the owner and most likely the managers of the assets, but will also be in a position to impose the behavioral rules for the people who inhabit the area. In classical economic terms, these people should be called “the consumers,” though in another sense they might even be the equivalent of slave labor.

What emerges from the hints Kushner is willing to release is the message everyone has been expecting: that the Middle East peace plan is built on the idea that Palestinians will accept second-class citizenship in a prosperous economy provided paternalistically by Israel and the US, complemented by the riches and benevolent oversight of Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates.

Unconcerned by the fact that the Palestinians have said — on the basis of the rare hints that have been given — that they would oppose the plan, Kushner frames the question of their motivation to accept or reject it much in the same way as a Madison Avenue marketing executive might. “Do they think this will allow them to have a pathway to a better life or not?” is what he to journalist Jonathan Swan’s question about whether it would be reasonable for Palestinians to trust a team composed of orthodox Jews telling them how they may live their lives after the US government has betrayed their wishes and legal rights on every key issue — from funding Israeli settlements in Palestinian territory to moving the US Embassy to Jerusalem and cutting off all aid.

Historical and cultural notes

Kushner, who is senior adviser to the president, perfectly exemplifies the gap between US culture and practically every other culture in the world. This is not a dramatic “clash of civilizations,” but more simply a deep and messy cultural misunderstanding due to the arrogance of a nation that is economically and militarily dominant and incapable of calling into question its inclination to suppose that its own values are a model the rest of the world wishes to emulate.

American capitalism sees entrepreneurial initiative as the sole solution to all problems. Kushner has no idea why Palestinians might cling to cultural values transmitted by the history of their people when an enterprising consultant from the richest nation in the world can show them how to improve their bottom line.

Swan raises the vital question of trust, an essential value shared by many cultures, particularly in the Middle East, which Kushner dismisses as irrelevant. Negotiation, for him, is not about people but about monetary interest. Kushner states, “I do believe they want to have a better life,” apparently meaning access to the kinds of consumer goods Americans and Israelis live for and work for.

When pressed about his personal relations with Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, specifically with reference to the murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi, Kushner reveals another feature of his culture: the in political decision-making. He says: “One thing about the way I’ve conducted myself is not a lot of people know who I’ve been talking to and what I’ve been talking about and that protects people.” This attitude would appear to contradict the supposed openness and frankness of US culture. It belongs to both mafia culture (�dz������à or the law of silence), and the political culture of despotic, monarchic or military regimes, such as Saudi Arabia and Egypt.

One of the true contributions of the Trump administration to the understanding of contemporary US history is to reveal the serious contradiction (some might say, hypocrisy) that existed well before Trump as an essential feature of a regime that proclaims itself to be the model of transparent democracy, but has progressively perfected the means of “protecting” anyone and everyone complicit in the kinds of “understandings” and dealings that allow specific groups of people to exercise inordinate degrees of power over the rest of the population, behind closed doors. Thanks to Hollywood and television, we know what the mafia offers (and demands) when it promises a local shopkeeper “protection.”

Kushner reveals that his secret talks with public criminals are there because “that protects people.” It also protects their investments.

*[In the age of Oscar Wilde and Mark Twain, another American wit, the journalist Ambrose Bierce, produced a series of satirical definitions of commonly used terms, throwing light on their hidden meanings in real discourse. Bierce eventually collected and published them as a book,, in 1911. We have shamelessly appropriated his title in the interest of continuing his wholesome pedagogical effort to enlighten generations of readers of the news.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

The post Jared Kushner’s Message to Palestinians: Be Investable appeared first on 51�Թ�.

The key planned event is an improvised summit to take place in Bahrain later in June with the purpose of establishing the grounds of future development in the harmonious environment promised by Jared Kushner’s “deal of the century.” The Palestinians have refused to participate, deeming the conference — led by Kushner and Jason Greenblatt, two declared American Zionists — to be biased in favor of Israel. Jordan has yet to declare its intentions, finding itself in a difficult position, described by The Times of Israel in these terms: “Reliant on American political and military support, it will be difficult for Jordan to reject the invitation.”

Here is today’s 3D definition:��

Reliant:

A polite term used in politics and the media to signify utterly and slavishly dependent on

Contextual note��

The Washington Examiner draws the that adds to the already laughable status of the Kushner peace plan: “President [Donald] Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, might have to shelve his long-awaited plan for Israeli-Palestinian peace due to a dispute in Jerusalem that’s put Benjamin Netanyahu’s political future at stake.”

Why The Examiner would call an inconclusive election a “dispute” leaves us wondering about what message it intends to convey. But so does this sentence: “Kushner has kept his peace plan under wraps to avoid complicating those negotiations.” This makes it sound like some sort of subtle strategy guided by prudence and careful planning. Yet most observers have understood that the reason for concealing the terms of the plan from those most concerned — the Palestinians and their sympathizers — was the wild, unrealistic hope of achieving a fait accompli.

Clearly, the Trump administration has been working for more than two years to ensure enough support from other Arab nations, beyond the captive voices of Saudi Arabia and Egypt, to cow the Palestinians into accepting the unacceptable. Rather than describing that as avoiding “complicating the negotiations,” it should be termed, “bullying into submission”. This in fact seems to be the basis of Trump’s foreign policy, wherever it is applied.

Reuters now that, “White House senior adviser Jared Kushner said in an interview broadcast on Sunday that the Palestinians deserve ‘self-determination,’ but … expressed uncertainty over their ability to govern themselves.” He didn’t specify whether it was their ethnicity or their religion that prevented them from assuming the kind of responsibilities only white, Western Judeo-Christian people are capable of. One can draw one’s own conclusions, but clearly the Trump administration believes that self-governing Arab nations should either be absolute monarchies (Saudi Arabia) or military dictatorships (Egypt).

Historical note

Netanyahu wants everyone to believe that the uncertainty of his continued leadership of Israel leaves him undeterred and all will carry on as planned. “I’m tremendously encouraged by how the United States, under President Trump, is working to bring allies together in this region against common challenges, but also to seize common opportunities,” Netanyahu .

But events have taken a major historical turn, which the prime minister has been forced to admit, as he raises the stakes in what has become a game of bluff. Presenting a map of Israel signed by Trump that includes the Golan Heights, the march of history when he announced: “This map has not been update [sic] since the Six Day War,” and then added, “Well it has been updated, it just got an update … That is to say, there are very important developments here.”

Netanyahu believes that, assisted by President Trump, he is in control of history. This is at the very moment when, as The Guardian , former ally Avigdor Lieberman has sabotaged the coalition process that would have allowed the prime minister to continue to govern, which “has not only severely weakened Netanyahu but also cast fresh doubt on the Trump administration’s faltering plans for a ‘deal of the century’ to solve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.” Netanyahu now refers to Lieberman as “a serial saboteur of right-wing governments,” even though Lieberman himself, a super-hawk, has a reputation of being more right-wing than the prime minister, politically if not religiously, since he has taken a secular stand against the ultra-Orthodox.

The Trump administration appears to be in a state of benighted confusion over its peace plan. As The New York Times : “A senior administration official said only that the plan would be presented when the ‘timing is right.’ But that timing has grown increasingly problematic. Any new Israeli coalition probably would not be formed until at least October, which would delay the announcement of a Trump plan until November, uncomfortably close to the first primaries of the 2020 election in the United States.”

Though many consider it indelicate to admit it, Israeli politics depends absolutely on US politics, while US politics in the Middle East seems to depend entirely on Israel and Saudi Arabia’s needs.

The Guardian mentions that the peace plan still referred to as the deal of the century “was satirised on Thursday as the ‘deal of the next century’” by Saeb Erekat of the Palestine Liberation Organization. This is a satirical point we made in The Daily Devil’s Dictionary back in September 2018, when we presciently wrote: “For his ‘deal of the century’ in the Middle East, Trump forgot to tell us in which century it would be revealed.” Some may forget that even nine months ago, the faux suspense had already become tragi-comic.

*[In the age of Oscar Wilde and Mark Twain, another American wit, the journalist Ambrose Bierce, produced a series of satirical definitions of commonly used terms, throwing light on their hidden meanings in real discourse. Bierce eventually collected and published them as a book, , in 1911. We have shamelessly appropriated his title in the interest of continuing his wholesome pedagogical effort to enlighten generations of readers of the news.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

The post The Unveiling of the Kushner Peace Plan May Be Postponed appeared first on 51�Թ�.

The world continues to wait in anxious anticipation of what was once called Donald Trump and Jared Kushner’s “deal of the century” for the Middle East. It may soon be known as “deal of a century” since there’s no telling which century it might be revealed in. That should keep it in the news for some time to come as its release can always be announced as imminent.

Although recently expected for mid-April and previously March, February and January as well as most of the tail end of 2018, the Kushner plan may be released after Islamic month of in early June or — according to — “perhaps not even then.”

Jared Kushner, the identified author, appears worried, if not depressed, by the potential critical reception of his masterpiece. “It’s been very disheartening for us to see the Palestinian leadership has basically been attacking a plan (when) they don’t know what it is,” he said. The one thing they do know, however, is that the plan’s author and the Trump administration as a whole appear to be so ashamed of its contents that they keep postponing the date at which their opponents will have a chance to “know what it is.”

Here is today’s 3D definition:

Disheartening:

Deeply disappointing for people who fail to make the slightest effort to understand the futility of their own expectations or the arrogance they project to those they hope to convince

Contextual note

Kushner, the son-in-law of America’s grand master of the “art of the deal,” doesn’t appear to have absorbed the key lessons his father-in-law guru should have taught him. One of the first principles of negotiations should be: Don’t denigrate the party you’re negotiating with, especially if the terms of the negotiation have not yet been made clear. But here is what Kushner says of the Palestinians: “If they truly cared about making the lives of the Palestinian people better, I think they would have taken very different decisions over the past year — and maybe over the last 20 years.”

The Jerusalem Post now that “the plan will be unveiled in June.” Quoting Kushner himself, it reveals how little confidence the author of the deal has in the eventuality of a positive reception. All he can do is hope against hope and count on both parties “believing” in his plan. “I hope they will look at it and suss it and see if they do believe that this is a pathway for a better future.” Kushner even resorted to use the informal British term “suss,” which no Brit would use in such a way and in such a context. This may simply prove that anyone incapable of understanding the practices and assumptions of one culture (Arab) will probably also have difficulty with another one (British).

In an article that begins with the idea that “two states” doesn’t mean the same thing to Israelis and Palestinians, Kushner used a technocratic ploy to avoid dealing with this major issue. “If you say two state, it means one thing to the Israelis and one thing to the Palestinians, so we said let’s just not say it, let’s just work on the details of what it means,” he said. It’s similar to defining the forest one tree at a time before agreeing that the forest exists.

The Times of Israel repeats Kushner’s explanation that the “peace plan is going to be centered around the ‘bottom-up’ model — ‘which is how do you make the lives of the Palestinian people better.’” At least this is clear. He defines the Palestinians as the bottom, who may one day — if they renounce their “evil” ways — aspire to a prosperity similar to (but certainly not equal to) the Israelis’ prosperity. It’s the tiny carrot that replaces the big stick. Explaining his bottom-up approach, he that he was looking at what they could “resolve to allow these areas to become more investable.” Just as Trump lectured Kim Jong-un about the of North Korean beach property, Kushner appears to be sticking to the party line if not following Trump’s one-track mind. After all, what is Gaza other than a future Honolulu in the making?

Historical note

Kushner has been preparing his plan for two years, practically since President Trump’s inauguration in January 2017. Some may remember that at that , Trump made Kushner “personally responsible for an astonishing variety of tasks, despite lacking any apparent knowledge or experience relevant to any of them.” Now, as the media awaits the reaction to Kushner’s solution for the Middle East, the president’s son-in-law has begun pitching his solution to immigration across the US-Mexico border. The has begun with a briefing of Republicans in Congress, though no one will be surprised to learn that “a senior administration official … declined to say when the White House would release the plan publicly or when Trump hopes to see action in Congress.”

Jared Kushner lets us know that his peace plan emerged from his own study of the history of Middle East peace plans. He proudly announces the he has taken: “We’ve taken what I think is an unconventional approach. We’ve studied the past efforts and how they failed and why they failed … We’ve tried to do it a bit differently.” Most observers take the last part of the sentence to translate as: Why they failed … We’ve tried to do it [fail] a bit differently. And in that he is likely to succeed.

Nothing Kushner’s confusion and ignorance more than when he “cited as a ‘good attempt’ the Arab Peace Initiative adopted by 22 Arab states in 2002. ‘But if that would’ve worked, we would’ve made peace a long time ago on that basis.’” That should stand as one of the great tautologies in the history of global diplomacy. Seventeen years after the event, we learn that if a proposed peace plan had worked, peace would have been the result. The French call that a lapalissade, derived from the name of Jacques La Palice, a 16th-century nobleman. The classic example is: “If he weren’t dead, he would still be alive.”

*[In the age of Oscar Wilde and Mark Twain, another American wit, the journalist Ambrose Bierce, produced a series of satirical definitions of commonly used terms, throwing light on their hidden meanings in real discourse. Bierce eventually collected and published them as a book, , in 1911. We have shamelessly appropriated his title in the interest of continuing his wholesome pedagogical effort to enlighten generations of readers of the news.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

The post Who Believes in Kushner’s Peace Plan? Apparently Not Kushner appeared first on 51�Թ�.

Suddenly Americans are discovering that money plays an important role in their society, that in fact it makes it possible to buy anything and, possibly, everything. Along with numerous other publications, Vogue its outrage at the scandal involving rich Hollywood parents buying admission for their children into elite colleges.

“The blatant fraud that some of the parents who were taken into custody on Tuesday engaged in (paying proctors to doctor tests, staging photoshoots of their children playing sports) may be ‘a big leap’ from making a donation, but it has clearly helped to call attention to technically legal methods that skirt ethics—and remain tax-deductible,” Vogue reports.

Here is today’s 3D definition:

Technically legal:

Immoral and unethical, applying to acts that usually involve serious expense, which are permitted since only the small minority with the means to carry them out will be tempted to do so

Contextual note

Vanity Fair that this scandal has “has gripped news readers eager to learn its every absurd detail.” Vogue focuses its critique and its irony on the case of Donald Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, rather than the kids of the celebrities who have been accused in the scandal. This has the titillating advantage of transforming a cautionary tale about the perverse role of money and privilege in society into another “look what Trump has been up to” story.

Interviewed by Vogue, ProPublica editor Daniel Golden provides the juicy details concerning Kushner’s utterly unmerited admission to Harvard, confirming what everyone would have expected: that Kushner’s ticket to success — a diploma from a prestigious university — was paid for in hard cash by his rich father (also a convicted criminal). But, as Golden points out, it was done in a “technically legal” way.

The media in general have exulted in reporting a story that contains lurid details concerning practices that clearly cross ethical lines, such as photoshopping pictures of athletes with the faces of the candidates in order to benefit from the more “acceptable” privilege of lower admission standards for athletes.

On that score, The Washington Post offered a very “serious” with a parallel scandal, unfolding at the same time, that concerned illegal payments to the families of college athletes, which violates the rules of the National Collegiate Athletic Association. The Post sees the latter as a mere violation of arbitrary rules (therefore “technically legal”), justified in principle by the fact that the athletes are providing something that has monetary value (as commercially exploited entertainers). In contrast, The Post see the admissions scandal as serious fraud that “merits prosecution.”

Historical note

This scandal owes its prominence in the news cycle to the troubling question of the status of money and celebrity in US culture. Inequality and privilege based on wealth have long been taken for granted in a society founded on the belief in individual assertiveness and upward mobility. In their “pursuit of happiness” (as recommended in 1776 by Thomas Jefferson), Americans have learned to define what will make them happy and then work out the cost of achieving it. People still adhere to the notion that cost has something to do with hard work, a heritage of the Puritan tradition. But, in parallel, they have come to understand that the notion of cost correlates with price.

Consequently, if you know the price and have the means to purchase your key to happiness, you will naturally seek the most efficient way of achieving your goal. As Vogue points out, the traditional and technically legal way is the one Kushner’s father chose: making a significant donation to build a library, for example. This has the added advantage of perpetuating the family brand as the library will be known by the name of the donor.

At the same time, this case illustrates the sacred principle of creative entrepreneurship. College counselor William “Rick” Singer, clearly aware of the state of supply and demand, realized that, like everything else in life, you could put a price on the value to a family of college entrance for one of their children. Singer understood there are easily implementable and ultimately profitable means of delivering the merchandise. He cleverly identified those means and successfully pitched his target market segment. The only problem is that, in desperate cases, his means involved misrepresentation of the truth, otherwise known as “lying,” the most serious cardinal sin in US culture.

Vanity Fair describes in detail the professional services Singer provided, which were not all about cheating and lying. Singer positioned himself as what might be called a “success builder,” who understood, just as his clients did, that education wasn’t about learning and the growth of wisdom but about assertiveness, individuality, competitive edge and a ticket to a prosperous future. This included developing a “‘personal brand’ for teenagers that would help them stand out among the throngs of other applicants.”

Alas, Singer couldn’t guarantee a success that depended on the child’s performance. But his entrepreneurial spirit told him to seek the means to make sure his customers were satisfied. And in a world in which what you may have learned has far less value than the diploma that says you may have learned something, it seemed like a natural extension of Singer’s business to use his knowledge of the system for the benefit of his customers.

In a nation that elected as president a man who epitomizes every aspect of privilege and wealth — including paying his way into college, paying a doctor to “technically” avoid the draft, using the legal technicalities of bankruptcy to prosper and grow, and manipulating the media to get elected — should anyone be surprised that money accomplishes things that aren’t always “equitable”? Could this new awareness be an indication that Bernie Sanders has changed something in the prevailing value system at the core of US culture? Those who are most upset with this scandal see it as a symptom of the growing gap between the wealthy and the rest of humanity, the consequence of a system that is designed to exacerbate that gap and punish or humiliate those who can’t pay for privilege.

Concerning education, Sanders has highlighted a much bigger problem and a greater injustice: the actual price you pay once you are admitted to a college. It’s a price only the rich can afford, leaving most aspiring students either on the outside looking in or struggling for decades to pay back their accumulated debt in exchange for an often useless diploma and a perfunctory education.

Have we reached a point with regard to education at which people are ready to stop worshipping and trusting the brutal laws of the marketplace, even when what is done is “technically legal”?

*[In the age of Oscar Wilde and Mark Twain, another American wit, the journalist Ambrose Bierce, produced a series of satirical definitions of commonly used terms, throwing light on their hidden meanings in real discourse. Bierce eventually collected and published them as a book, , in 1911. We have shamelessly appropriated his title in the interest of continuing his wholesome pedagogical effort to enlighten generations of readers of the news.]��

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

The post Calculating the Price of College Admission in the US appeared first on 51�Թ�.

Donald Trump’s son-in-law, Jared Kushner, has to the Middle East, presumably to play out the long-promised but still unperformed final act of his absurdist drama, “Waiting for Godot in the Holy Land.” Kushner prefers to call it a peace plan and Trump “the deal of the century.” Kushner affirms that, when it is finally revealed to the world (no specific date announced), it will make all parties happy. In an interview in 2018, he : “[I]f there is peace, Israel’s prosperity would spill over very quickly to the Palestinians.”

Here is today’s 3D definition:

Spill over:

To produce a form of superfluous gains, considered by the owners as expendable waste that may be useful for those who, by virtue of standing below, happen to receive it by virtue of Newton’s law of gravity. Similar to “trickle down,” but representing a not quite as rational, controlled and disciplined process. Synonym: leave the crumbs on the floor.��

Contextual note

As the world waits with bated breath not for the plan itself, but just to have an idea of what the blockbuster “deal” contains, Kushner wants us to know that everyone will benefit, even if, in his , it’s a deal “not every side is going to love.” In other words, much as President Trump would philosophize in his science of the “art of the deal,” instead of “win-win,” it’s “win-lose but as a takeaway, the consolation that given who you are, there was no hope of getting a better deal, whatever happened.”

As Marwan Bishara, Al Jazeera’s senior political analyst, , a plan designed by three Zionists “masquerading as peacemakers,” whatever the terms it ends up proposing, is unlikely to satisfy the population most concerned: the . Kushner claims that “this plan will keep the Israeli people safe, give them a good future, but also give a real opportunity and hope for the Palestinian people, so that they can live much better lives.”

This gives us an idea of the logic of the tradeoff that Kushner and Trump envisage. gets safety — presumably the guarantee that the nation will always be a “Jewish state,” rather than a multicultural democracy in which the Jews might at some point be overruled by non-Jews — and a “good future,” which appears to mean assured economic prosperity, thanks perhaps to American support and technology transfer as well as Saudi money for investment.

The Palestinians would be only too delighted to go away from the deal with “opportunity” and “hope.” That means they have the right to compete (opportunity) with Israel or even emulate their actions. But once having demonstrated their inability to perform at the same level, thanks to the opportunity to do so, they can hope that the next time they try, they may succeed.

This is the traditional language to justify inequality that still reigns among conservative minds in the US. It defines the logic behind the theory of trickle-down economics. All men are created not equal, but with equal opportunity. Of course in reality those who have the means to exploit opportunity will be assured of having a “good future.” Those who don’t have the means will most likely fail. But they can’t complain, because even after failure (and the deprivation of means) they will still have both the “opportunity” to benefit from what trickles down and the “hope” of receiving some of what spills over from the initiatives of the successful.

Coincidentally, this week Kushner’s wife, Ivanka Trump, in a verbal tussle with Democratic Representative , affirmed her in a similar principle of opportunity for the lower classes in the US. Ivanka said: “So, I think that this idea of a guaranteed minimum is not something most people want. They want the ability to live in a country where’s there’s the potential for upward mobility.” In other words, give people nothing more than opportunity, even if they don’t have enough to live on, and they will be motivated to become “upwardly mobile.”

Historical note

To defend his plan, Kushner reading of history: “The conflict between Israel and the Palestinians has been used for many years to incite and radicalize, when hatred of Israel united all the countries in the region. Today that has changed because of Iran, which is the greatest threat to the entire region and unites all of them.”

Reading between the lines, we need to make sense of what he means by “that has changed because of Iran.” Does he really believe that Turkey, Syria, Qatar, Lebanon, Iraq and Kuwait see Iran as the “greatest threat to the entire region”? That President Trump has appealed to the paranoia of Mohammed bin Salman’s Saudi Arabia and the automatic complicity of Egypt’s authoritarian regime is undeniable. The nations of the region are increasingly worried about Saudi Arabia, not Iran. Israel and Saudi, for different reasons, have focused on Iran, but the fiasco in Yemen, to say nothing of the assassination and the continuing blockade of Qatar, has seriously dimmed the attraction of aligning with Saudi Arabia. As for aligning with Israel, even the Saudi people are uncomfortable with the implications of that.

Kushner claims that “hatred of Israel united all the countries in the region,” which sounds suspiciously like an appeal to the currently popular theme of accusing anyone who doesn’t support Israeli policies or American-Israeli alignment of anti-Semitism. What did for decades unite both governments and populations in the Middle East in their opposition to Israeli expansion was not hatred of Israel, but hatred of expansion.

Marwan Bishara is hopeful that Trump and Kushner’s failure to do a deal will become a learning experience. That is precisely what hope is for.

*[In the age of Oscar Wilde and Mark Twain, another American wit, the journalist Ambrose Bierce, produced a series of satirical definitions of commonly used terms, throwing light on their hidden meanings in real discourse. Bierce eventually collected and published them as a book, , in 1911. We have shamelessly appropriated his title in the interest of continuing his wholesome pedagogical effort to enlighten generations of readers of the news.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

The post The Kushner Peace Plan Spills Over with Good Intentions appeared first on 51�Թ�.

According to sources, including three former White House officials who to ABC News, Jared Kushner, “in a bid to symbolically solidify the new alliance between the Trump administration and Saudi Arabia … pushed State and Defense officials to inflate the figure with arms exchanges that were aspirational at best.”

Here is today’s 3D definition:

Solidify:

Make something appear visible, tangible and permanent through prevarication and subterfuge

Contextual note

Call it the art of turning a crazy wish into the public’s belief that they are reading a “solid” fact. Or call it fake news, which would be more accurate. To get it to work, there has to be a signed document to validate the scam, even if the document is meaningless. The media will do the rest.

This is what happens when personalities, who had spent decades of their long lives (Donald Trump) or the majority of their young adult years (Jared Kushner) in real estate, enter the world of international politics. When your finest skills were focused on engineering whopping real estate deals whose worth can reach the billions, you tend to think in the same terms and apply the same methods in your new vocation.

In their former job, Donald Trump and his son-in-law, Jared Kushner, learned the art of creating a magical belief in the wonderful building that didn’t yet exist but would have a “huge” dynamizing impact on the community and make everyone a “winner.” This is how they would get the bankers on board to fund it and the local authorities to approve its conformity with the letter and the spirit of existing zoning laws and, if need be, change those laws to accommodate their exciting project. They knew that with bankers and local politicians, it’s all about numbers in the end and nothing else matters.

If there’s one thing the financial crash of 2008 should have taught us, it’s that numbers do not “solidify” anything. In the case of Kushner’s agreement for $110 billion, we learn that: “The photo of the memorandum of intent shows an agreement between the two countries [the US and Saudi Arabia] with very little legal weight.” But if it’s solid, it must weigh something! Even liquid and gas have weight.

Historical note

Thanks to this revelation about the truth of the deal of the century between the US and Saudi Arabia, we have a better handle on understanding how Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Salman (MBS) managed to get Kushner “,” as he confided to his mentor, the Emirati crown prince, Mohammed bin Zayed (MBZ), earlier this year. Exchanging favors is common in high-level business and it’s clear that the entire Trump family sees diplomacy as just another type of high-level business. Many journalists and historians are eagerly awaiting the end of Trump’s presidency to see how he and his family build their business interests out of the political and diplomatic initiatives they took when they were in power.

By agreeing to Kushner’s demand to “inflate the figures,” MBS could then gently ask his American friend to share with him any gossip he managed to glean about other Saudis from the top-secret presidential daily briefing that Kushner was in the habit of reading.

A week after their meeting, in which Kushner is reported to have spilled the highly confidential beans, Mohammed bin Salman launched his infamous roundup of disloyal family members and Saudi businessmen, whom he imprisoned in the Riyadh Ritz-Carlton, accusing them of corruption. He ended up offering bail to the nice guys — those who weren’t tortured or murdered — with a price tag that could reach billions of dollars. The young, inexperienced crown prince, who had never lived elsewhere than Saudi Arabia or tried to understand how the outside world works, also believed in numbers.

Instead of the win-win of solidified relations, the world is now wondering about how the two parties to this phantom deal will survive politically. President Trump’s position on Saudi Arabia, defending MBS on the basis of Kushner’s memorandum of intent, is being challenged at home most vociferously by members of his own party. Mohammed bin Salman has turned out to be a liability for the image and operational integrity of the kingdom, and many in the royal family would like to see him removed from power.

The entire Middle East is awaiting the long ago announced but continually delayed , originally built on the three quickly eroding pillars of Benjamin Netanyahu’s Israel, Trump’s US and Prince Mohammed’s Saudi Arabia. Netanyahu is now hanging onto power with a, Trump is contested by his own troops and MBS by his family. Kushner turns out to be an , devious manipulator, who never managed to live up to the administration role his father-in-law created for him, but enjoys the satisfaction of being by outgoing Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto, who is reviled by Mexicans for his corruption, with an approval rating as he leaves office of 24%.

What Kushner designed to be solid has turned out to be what Shakespeare’s Prospero called an “” that has now “melted into air, into thin air.” The title of Shakespeare’s play? The Tempest, subtitled in this modern production, “When Caliban Ruled America.”

*[In the age of Oscar Wilde and Mark Twain, another American wit, the journalist Ambrose Bierce, produced a series of satirical definitions of commonly used terms, throwing light on their hidden meanings in real discourse. Bierce eventually collected and published them as a book, , in 1911. We have shamelessly appropriated his title in the interest of continuing his wholesome pedagogical effort to enlighten generations of readers of the news.]��

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

The post Did Jared Kushner Inflate the Saudi Arms Deal Figures? appeared first on 51�Թ�.

I ended my last piece on Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman’s (MBS) master plan for the Middle East with the question, “What could possibly go wrong?” The answer is, everything.

There are four objectives in the master plan devised by MBS, UAE Crown Prince Muhammad bin Zayed (MBZ), Egyptian President Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, and US President Donald Trump’s advisor and son-in-law Jared Kushner. These are to contain Iran, to quash the Muslim Brotherhood, to consolidate MBS’ control in Saudi Arabia, and to force a permanent solution to the Israeli-Palestinian dispute. All four are interlinked.

The first few steps have already been taken — the Qatar embargo, the subsequent capitulation of Hamas, a purge and shakedown of the Saudi aristocracy, and the decertification of the Iran nuclear deal. The next step was to destabilize Lebanon to provide a pretext for Israel to attack Hezbollah — a necessary move before any further action against Iran. This is why MBS forced Lebanese Prime Minister��Saad Hariri to resign and denounce both Iran and his Hezbollah partner in the power-sharing government.

This is the point the master plan is beginning to unravel. Hariri, now safely returned to Beirut, has rescinded his resignation. Hezbollah, as well as the Sunni and Christian communities in Lebanon, have refused to be manipulated by MBS and the Israelis. They may have religious differences, but they are Lebanese first and resent any outside interference, particularly from high-handed despots. None of this plan is the result of consultation with the populations of Saudi Arabia or the other quartet countries, or the Palestinians or the US — where even the State Department has only the haziest idea of what is going on.

By contrast, the tiny population of Qatar has woken up and discovered that it too wants a say in its future. MBS has brought into existence the new phenomenon of Qatari nationalism, and it is opposed to outside interference. Qatar is showing much more resilience than anyone expected and has found many new friends in the process.

The idea of neutralizing the internal opposition to MBS and at the same time funding the Saudi budget deficit with ransoms for those held hostage in the Ritz Carlton is also disintegrating. Capital flight and reinsurance is now top of the list of priorities for the wealthy Saudi elite. Everyone who can is making sure their wealth is placed beyond MBS’ reach and instructing their lawyers to ensure their resident permits in Monaco, the Bahamas or other convenient locations are fully up to date. Little appetite remains to bring new finance into the kingdom to fund any of MBS’ grand schemes. For the same reason, the Aramco IPO will now be pushed even further back, if not canceled in favor of a private placing with the Chinese.

MBS is soon going to discover that he has few resources to spend on providing jobs for the unemployed millions of young people — and few allies to help him do it. He claims he has the support of the Saudi youth for his program, but there is no evidence that he has actually consulted them.

Prince Mohammed’s war in Yemen is similarly going badly. It is costing the Saudis an estimated $700 million a month. The resultant humanitarian disaster — hundreds of thousands are dying of disease and starvation — has finally begun to demand the attention of the international community and even the US Congress, which is currently authorizing the supply of weapons and US military support to Saudi Arabia, including air-to-air refueling for Saudi bombers, intelligence support and training. MBS has no exit strategy from this disaster. Although President Trump still loves the Saud family, broader US attitudes to Saudi Arabia are in decline and will sour even further as the victims families’ 9/11 class action suit against the Saudi government in New York works its way through the courts.

Finally, we should consider the Palestinians — a mere pawn in MBS’ game. The crown prince has already stated publicly that he believes the Palestinians should accept the plan currently on offer. He may have seen the plan, but apart from MBZ, Jared Kushner and Benjamin Netanyahu, no one else has. The price Netanyahu has demanded for his alliance with the quartet is that that the Palestinians must take his offer of a Vichy France-like entity with limited powers based in a series of enclaves inside a greater Israel. When they hear about it, the Palestinian people will comprehensively reject it as a betrayal of everything they have fought for. Many other Arab streets will also rise up in protest.

The stakes are high for Mohammed bin Salman. As his plan unravels, we should expect a great deal of turbulence in Saudi Arabia.

*[Updated: November 27, 2017, at 20:45 GMT.]

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

Photo Credit:����

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The recent, unexpected election of Donald J. Trump to the US presidency has aroused widespread fear, anxiety and, not infrequently, derision on the part of political observers—both at home and abroad. Why?

At first, the answers seem obvious and straightforward. The president-elect is an amateur at politics, never having run for public office. He is a huckster and conman who bears a closer resemblance to P.T. Barnum than Dwight Eisenhower. Trump is also a notoriously thin-skinned bully and is unable to tolerate even mild criticism without recourse to vengefulness. He is also a sexist whose views on women often appear to approach lechery. Yet that is not the worst of it.

As far as his policy proposals are concerned, Trump appeals to a renewed nationalism, “America First”— itself first popularized by interwar fascists in the US, led by an earlier celebrity, Charles Lindbergh—aimed at limiting the country’s international engagements and curtailing free trade. On the domestic front, Trump aims to expel millions of undocumented Mexican immigrants and to prevent Muslims, or at least those from Arab countries, from being admitted altogether—he has used the term extreme vetting more recently. Beyond these commitments, or ostensible commitments, Trump’s outlook resembles traditional Republican views on the benefits of deregulation and lower tax rates domestically.

Fears and Anxieties

Basic to the about Trump’s ascent to the presidency is his apparent endorsement of racial, religious and ethnic bigotry. His call to build a wall on the country’s southern border—to prevent Mexican immigrants from entering the country illegally—and his comments about radical Islamic terrorism between American shores has struck a major chord with resentful voters in many parts of the country.

Accordingly, Trump’s flirtation with white revanchism won him the enthusiastic support of David Duke, the longtime neo-Nazi and Ku Klux Klan leader, the current KKK itself and the loose aggregation of white nationalists, right-wing populists and anti-Semites who have recently attempted to rebrand themselves as the .

The latter generally perceives the white race as the only source of invention and creativity in the world. In their narrative, the US is threatened from other racial and/or religious groups who have gradually invaded and occupied the whites’ traditional European and North American homeland. The more conspiracy-minded activists among these white nationalists see American Jews as, once again, behind efforts to undermine American greatness and white leadership.

As evidence, radical (aka alt-)right ideologues like Richard Spencer cite the role of Jewish figures in the mainstream media, public radio and television; and in particular, The New York Times, The Washington Post and the leading social media websites. He and other white nationalist leaders stress the role of these key news outlets in undermining Trump’s presidential campaign. And, of course, they have a point. Every major big city newspaper around the country (save the , ironically enough, owned by Sheldon Adelson), including those with long-time Republican commitments, endorsed Hillary Clinton. The latter’s near-unanimous support from the country’s foreign policy establishment was widely publicized by the news outlets.

At the street level, such watchdog organizations as the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC), as well as the FBI and other law enforcement agencies, have called attention to the rapid rise in hate crimes and acts of hate driven vandalism since Trump’s election. Swastikas have been painted on a variety of public buildings. Just 10 days after Trump won the Electoral College vote, were nearing 900.

These developments have led some commentators to observe that Trump’s campaign expressed a thinly-veiled form of anti-Semitism in the country. For one, the appointment of Steve Bannon as a White House adviser appeared to strengthen the case for a new anti-Semitic tone in the Trump transition team and, therefore, incoming administration. Bannon, a well-known veteran of white nationalist and other far-right enterprises, has caused more than 100 US Congressmen to sign a petition demanding that Trump rescind the appointment. Even in these early days of astonishing Trump’s paramountcy, spines are stiffening.

The Red Herring

Whatever the truth about Trump’s sexist attitudes and his xenophobic expressions against Latinos and Muslims, the accusation of anti-Semitism does not conform to reality. This is largely a red herring.

President-elect Trump’s daughter Ivanka is a convert to Orthodox Judaism, a result of the fact that her husband, Jared Kushner, is a religiously-observant Jew. Moreover, Kushner, whose business background, like Trump’s, is in property development, has become a close adviser to the incoming president. He will likely remain in this position, or in one similar, after Trump takes office in January 2017.

Yet the story does not end with the Trump family. Trump has surrounded himself with a substantial list of Jewish business partners, legal advisers, upper echelon employees and campaign contributors. Here are some examples: Jason Greenblat, another Orthodox Jew, is Trump’s principal attorney. Another lawyer, David Friedman, handles Trump’s bankruptcy filings. Michael Cohen has served as a campaign spokesman and was recently called on to chair Trump’s council of economic advisers. Boris Epshteyn is also listed as a spokesman and senior adviser. Lewis Eisenberg chaired Trump’s victory committee. and fundraisers for the Trump presidential campaign included the hedge-fund manager and recently named treasury secretary, Steven Mnuchin, and the billionaire casino owner Adelson.

If we add to this list the fact that Trump spoke recently before a meeting of the American-Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) and has advocated moving the American Embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, a position long-advocated by the Israeli far-right. In fact, Israel’s right-wing prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, has expressed a close friendship with the American president-elect. The claim he is an anti-Semite appears shaky.

Indeed, if there is some underlying conflict at work here it has to do with the Jewish community itself. Trump’s Jewish supporters and confidants are drawn largely from the world of business, investment banking and law and, especially, New York property development. Trump’s loudest and most visible critics have also tended be Jewish. But these academics, newspaper and blog reporters, columnists, magazine editors and writers occupy a completely different social and political milieu than Trump’s Jewish supporters.

What we appear to be witnessing then is not a conflict between anti-Semites and the principles of constitutional liberalism, but a sectarian struggle over American Jewish values.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect 51�Թ�’s editorial policy.

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