Asaf Elia-Shalev
In one of his first actions as president, Donald Trump canceled sanctions targeting dozens of far-right Israeli individuals and settler organizations accused by the Biden administration of violent extremism against Palestinians.
The rescinding of the sanctions appeared on a long list of executive orders signed by Trump immediately after his inauguration on Monday, many of which focused on undoing policies enacted by his predecessor in the White House.
The move delivers a victory to the government of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, which regarded the sanctions enacted by Biden last year as an inappropriate intervention into the internal affairs of an allied country. Israeli officials had repeatedly asked the incoming president to lift them when he entered office.
Netanyahu’s finance minister, Bezalel Smotrich, who is associated with the settler movement, thanked Trump in a post on social media.
“These sanctions were a severe and blatant foreign intervention in Israel’s internal affairs and an unjustified violation of democratic principles and the mutual respect that should guide relations between friendly nations,” Smotrich wrote.
Other prominent figures on the Israeli right also praised Trump for the move, including Itamar Ben-Gvir, who recently resigned from Netanyahu’s coalition to protest the deal Netanyahu signed with Hamas to release Israeli hostages held in Gaza, and Naftali Bennett, a former Israeli prime minister and erstwhile Netanyahu ally.
Enacted by a Biden administration that was supportive of Israel’s war on Hamas but frustrated with Israeli policy in the West Bank, the sanctions were meant to pressure the Israeli government to take action against surging settler violence targeting Palestinian civilians.
Trump’s lifting of the sanctions comes amid raids by multiple days of settler raids on a West Bank Palestinian village of al-Funduq and as Israel declares an “extensive” military operation against Palestinian militants in the city of Jenin. The raids themselves follow the decision by Israeli’s defense minister, Israel Katz, to release all settlers who had been detained over their activity in the West Bank, a decision that he tied to the ceasefire deal and said was meant to support settlement activity.
“It is better for the families of Jewish settlers to be happy than the families of freed terrorists,” Katz said.
Trump’s day-one executive orders include another move signaling a shift in U.S. policy on Israel. He canceled a Biden order blocking sanctions on the International Criminal Court, which has issued arrest warrants for Netanyahu and his former defense minister, Yoav Gallant, over alleged war crimes during the fighting in Gaza. Trump also reportedly plans to revoke the pause imposed by the Biden administration on the supply of 2,000-pound bombs to Israel.
Where is the commentary? Your lack of analysis and critique suggests that Philadelphia Jews agree with ultra Orthodox settlements, which are illegal, yet blatantly move forward.
Have you asked ANYONE local what they think, or are we reduced to a mouthpiece for the radical right and money grubbing Trump and his colleagues.
The term “West Bank,” which only came about as result of Jordan’s imperialist effort to expand its borders at the cost of the Jewish State, is only as old as the State of Israel. Before the Jordanian invasion, this region was always called Judea and Samaria. The land in question belongs to Israel under international law. Specifically, Article 6 of the League of Nations Mandate for Palestine (preserved under Article 80 of the UN Charter) calls for “close Jewish settlement” on the land west of the Jordan river.
Even the original version of the Palestinian National Charter — formulated in 1964, a full three years before the “West Bank” fell under Israeli administration — unequivocally forswears Palestinian claims to “any territorial sovereignty over the West Bank in the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan and Gaza.”
It is difficult to imagine a more authoritative source for exposing as bogus the Palestinian claim that the “West Bank” and Gaza comprise their “ancient homeland.”
Radical right, money grubbing Trump? Wow the hatreds run deeply in the minds of some on the left. Israel is an independent, highly moral member of the world community which treats all races and religions with respect. Charges of starving Palestinians, and the genocide of the Gazan population were used by Biden and his fellow Democrats to appease the American Muslim voters in order to prop up his presidential bid. These are libels, blood libels more accurately, which are easily disproved. The problem here is not the radical right nor “money grubbing Trump and his colleagues,” but rather the radical left fools who swallow that groups propaganda hook, line and sinker.
The lack of commentary, Trump-hating commentary of course, signifies nothing. Isn’t there enough of that in the editorial section of the Exponent to satisfy the most ultra-leftist of readers?