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Trump Israel Tag

From March 1-3, 2020, I attended the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) Annual Policy Conference in Washington, D.C. on a press pass. As part of my coverage of the conference, I spent nearly four hours interviewing, taping, and photographing anti-Israel protesters who had gathered outside the venue. Though their chants of "Judaism, yes! Zionism, no!" might have been meant to convey a rejection of anti-Semitism, the protesters' statements and behavior both during and after the rally shows how deeply and often anti-Jewish hatred informs anti-Israel worldviews.

President Donald Trump's Israeli-Palestinian peace plan received a mixed response from the European leaders. While the European Union, France, and Germany reacted with caution to the U.S. initiative, it was received positively by the leaders of the United Kingdom and Austria.

Never missing an opportunity to miss an opportunity, Palestinian leadership has decided to thwart U.S. President Donald Trump's peace plan by inciting mass protests, media reports suggest. "Palestinian officials warned over the weekend that US President Donald Trump’s plan for Mideast peace, which is expected to be announced on Tuesday, would spark a new wave of mass protests in the West Bank and Gaza Strip," the Jerusalem Post reported.

Australia has blasted the International Criminal Court (ICC) for launching an investigation against Israel. Rejecting the decision by the Hague-based tribunal to target the Jewish State over alleged 'war crimes,' Australia's Foreign Ministry questioned the legitimacy of the ICC probe against Israel. "Australia's position is clear — we do not recognize a so-called ‘State of Palestine’ and we do not recognize that there is such a State Party to the ICC’s Rome Statute,"said the ministry's spokesperson.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has unveiled a new community in the Golan Heights named after U.S. President Donald Trump. The Israeli Prime Minister convened a cabinet meeting at the site on Sunday as part of the formal inauguration. U.S. Ambassador to Israel, David Friedman, along with officials from the Golan region attended the ceremony renaming the neighborhood of Bruchim to "Ramat Trump," or "Trump Heights" in English.

Then-president Obama's Iran Nuclear Deal was widely condemned on the right and by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu who referred to the deal as a "bad" and "very bad deal."  One of then-candidate Trump's campaign promises was to extract the the U.S. from this very bad deal, and he did so in the second year of his presidency. Much to the chagrin of Democrats, the DNC, and the former Obama administration, this withdrawal from the Iran deal has been far more successful in stopping Iran from obtaining nuclear capabilities and from sponsoring worldwide terrorism than the original, bad deal was sold to accomplish.

There were news reports recently that during Benjamin Netanyahu's upcoming trip to D.C., during which he will meet with Trump, the United States would recognize Israel's sovereignty over the Golan Heights. The Heights had only been Syrian territory since 1948, after the end of the French Mandate, Syrian independence, and the Arab attempt to destroy Israel.  Syria used the Golan Heights to aim artillery and sniper fire on Israel. Israel captured the Golan Heights during the 1967 war, and almost lost it during the surprise attack in the 1973 Yom Kippur War.