Chris Hedges's Blog, page 587

Disillusionment Appears to Help Shiite Cleric in Iraq Vote

BAGHDAD — Widespread disillusionment with Iraq’s current political class appears to have helped influential Shiite cleric Muqtada al-Sadr become the early front-runner in national elections marked by record low turnout.

Partial returns of the 2018 vote — the first since Iraq declared victory over the Islamic State group — were announced late Sunday by the Iraqi electoral commission and put al-Sadr’s political alliance in the lead in four provinces, including Baghdad.

The election came as the country deals with the disenfranchisement of the country’s Sunni minority. Of more than 2 million Iraqis displaced by the war, the majority are Sunnis. Also at issue is the influence of Iran on the country: Iranian-backed Shiite militias who played a key role in defeating IS and were allied with the Shiite-led Baghdad government made significant electoral gains.

Al-Sadr is a strong Iraqi nationalist — he is critical of any outside influence in the country — and campaigned on a platform that criticized Iraq’s current political leadership as deeply corrupt. He rose to prominence in Iraq after the 2003 U.S.-led overthrow of Saddam Hussein when he commanded a militia that fought American troops. He also commanded paramilitary forces in the war against IS.

The election lacked a clear front-runner, but current Iraqi Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi was widely seen by analysts as the likely favorite. However, despite overseeing Iraq’s military defeat of IS, al-Abadi is so far preforming poorly, coming in third and fourth place in most provinces, according to the partial results announced Sunday.

The electoral commission released results from 10 of the country’s 19 provinces, including the provinces of Baghdad and Basra. The commission gave no indication on when further results would be announced.

The alliance currently in second place is made up of candidates linked to Iraq’s powerful Shiite paramilitary groups, with close ties to Iran. The development is seen as an indication of Tehran’s growing influence in Baghdad’s halls of power.

The “Fatah” alliance — Arabic for conquest — is headed by Hadi al-Amiri, a former minister of transportation who lived in exile in Iran under Saddam. After the fall of Mosul in 2014 al-Amiri became a senior commander of paramilitary fighters in the fight against IS.

Unlike al-Sadr, who is staunchly against foreign intervention in Iraq of any kind, al-Amiri maintains close ties to Iran, praising the country’s early support for Iraq in the IS war. He has also said that he is open to American training of Iraq’s military and regularly meets with U.S. ambassadors to Baghdad.

Al-Sadr has repeatedly called for the full withdrawal of American troops from Iraqi soil.

Members of the national election commission read out vote tallies for each candidate list in each of the 10 provinces on national TV. By the end of the announcement, al-Sadr’s list had the highest popular vote, followed by al-Amiri’s.

Seats in parliament will be allocated proportionately to coalitions once all votes are counted.

Celebrations erupted in Baghdad’s Sadr City, an impoverished quarter that is home to some 3 million people and is named after the cleric’s late father, Ayatollah Mohammad Sadq al-Sadr. The younger al-Sadr campaigned on a cross-sectarian platform of fighting corruption and investing in services and struck a surprising alliance with the Communist Party in the capital.

While many did not turn out to vote amid a general mood of apathy, al-Sadr’s sophisticated political machine mobilized his loyal base of followers to cast their ballots.

The elections held Saturday were the fourth since the 2003 U.S.-led toppling of Saddam Hussein. Officials said turnout was only 44 percent, the lowest ever since Saddam’s ouster.

Any political party or alliance must gain a majority of Iraq’s 329 seats in parliament to be able to choose a prime minister and form a government. Dozens of alliances ran for office in these elections and months of negotiations are expected before any one alliance can pull together the 165 required seats.

Until a new prime minister is chosen, al-Abadi will remain in office, retaining all his power.

Political power in Iraq is traditionally divided along sectarian lines among the offices of prime minister, president and parliament speaker. Since the first elections following the 2003 U.S.-led toppling of Saddam Hussein, the Shiite majority has held the position of prime minister, while the Kurds have held the presidency and the Sunnis have held the post of parliament speaker.

The constitution sets a quota for female representation, stating that no less than one-fourth of parliament members must be women. Nearly 2,600 women are running for office this year.

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Associated Press writer Qassim Abdul-Zahra contributed to this report.

Killing Gaza

WASHINGTON, D.C.—Israel’s blockade of Gaza—where trapped Palestinians for the past seven weeks have held nonviolent protests along the border fence with Israel, resulting in more than 50 killed and 700 wounded by Israeli troops—is one of the world’s worst humanitarian disasters. Yet the horror that is Gaza, where 2 million people live under an Israeli siege without adequate food, housing, work, water and electricity, where the Israeli military routinely uses indiscriminate and disproportionate violence to wound and murder, and where almost no one can escape, is rarely documented. Max Blumenthal and Dan Cohen’s powerful new film, “Killing Gaza,” offers an unflinching and moving portrait of a people largely abandoned by the outside world, struggling to endure.

“Killing Gaza” will be released Tuesday, to coincide with what Palestinians call Nakba Day—“nakba” means catastrophe in Arabic—commemorating the 70th anniversary of the forced removal of some 750,000 Palestinians in 1948 by the Haganah, Jewish paramilitary forces, from their homes in modern-day Israel. The release of the documentary also coincides with the Trump administration’s opening of the new U.S. Embassy in Jerusalem.

● Starting Tuesday, May 15, “Killing Gaza” can be seen at Vimeo On Demand.

Because of Nakba Day and the anger over the transfer of the embassy to Jerusalem, this week is expected to be one of the bloodiest of the seven-week-long protest that Palestinians call the “Great Return March.” “Killing Gaza” illustrates why Palestinians, with little left to lose, are rising up by the thousands and risking their lives to return to their ancestral homes—70 percent of those in Gaza are refugees or the descendants of refugees—and be treated like human beings.

Cohen and Blumenthal, who is the author of the book “Goliath: Life and Loathing in Greater Israel,” one of the best accounts of modern Israel, began filming the documentary Aug. 15, 2014. Palestinian militias, armed with little more than light weapons, had just faced Israeli tanks, artillery, fighter jets, infantry units and missiles in a 51-day Israeli assault that left 2,314 Palestinians dead and 17,125 injured. Some 500,000 Palestinians were displaced and about 100,000 homes were destroyed. The 2014 assault, perhaps better described as a massacre, was one of eight massacres that Israel has carried out since 2004 against the 2 million Palestinians in Gaza, over half of whom are children. Israel, which refers to these periodic military assaults as “mowing the lawn,” seeks to make existence in Gaza so difficult that mere survival consumes most of the average Palestinian’s time, resources and energy.

The film begins in the Shuja’iyya neighborhood, reduced to mounds of rubble by the Israelis. The wanton destruction of whole neighborhoods was, as documented by the film, accompanied by the shooting of unarmed civilians by Israeli snipers and other soldiers of that nation.

“Much of the destruction took place in the course of a few hours on July 23,” Blumenthal, who narrates the film, says as destroyed buildings appear on the screen, block after block. “The invading Israeli forces found themselves under ferocious fire from local resistance forces, enduring unexpectedly high casualties. As the Israeli infantry fled in full retreat, they called in an artillery and air assault, killing at least 120 Palestinian civilians and obliterated thousands of homes.”

The film includes a brief clip of young Israelis in Tel Aviv celebrating the assault on Gaza, a reminder that toxic racism and militarism infect Israeli society.

“Die! Die! Bye!” laughing teenage girls shout at the celebration in Tel Aviv. “Bye, Palestine!”

“Fucking Arabs! Fuck Muhammad!” a young man yells.

“Gaza is a graveyard! Gaza is a graveyard! Ole, ole, ole, ole,” the crowd in Tel Aviv sings as it dances in jubilation. “There is no school tomorrow! There are no children left in Gaza!”

Terrified Palestinian families huddled inside their homes during the relentless shelling. Those who tried to escape in the face of the advancing Israelis often were gunned down with their hands in the air, and the bodies were left to rot in the scorching heat for days.

“I was inside when they started bulldozing my house,” Nasser Shamaly, a Shuja’iyya resident, says in the film. “They took down the wall and started shooting into the house. So I put my hands on my head and surrendered myself to the officer. This wasn’t just any soldier. He was the officer of the group! He didn’t say a word. He just shot me. I fell down and started crawling to get away from them.”

Shamaly, who hid wounded in his house for four days, was fortunate. His 23-year-old cousin, Salem Shamaly, who led a group of volunteers from the International Solidarity Movement to dig bodies out of the ruins in Shuja’iyya, was not.

“On the offensive’s 14th day, July 20th, 2014, four other activists and I went to the Shuja’iyya neighborhood, which Israel had bombed for days, to accompany rescue teams in the rubble during the two-hour cease-fire,” Joe Catron, one of the members of the International Solidarity Movement rescue team, says in the film. “A young Palestinian, whose name we later learned was Salem Shamaly, asked us to go with him to his house, where he hoped to find his family. It sounds ridiculous now, but at the time we thought the cease-fire would make it safe.”

“As we crossed an alley with a clear line of sight to Israeli positions by the separation barrier, a gunshot from their direction struck the ground between us. We scattered into two groups, sheltered behind buildings on either side. After a pause, Salem stepped into the alley, hoping to lead his group to our side, but was struck by another bullet. He fell to the ground.”

The film shows Shamaly wounded on the ground, barely able to move and crying out in pain.

“As he lay on his back, two more rounds hit him,” Catron continued. “He stopped moving. The gunfire kept us from reaching him. The Israeli artillery began flying overhead and striking the buildings behind us. We were forced to retreat, leaving him. We only learned his name two days later, when his mother, father, sister and cousin recognized him in a video I had tweeted.”

“We couldn’t retrieve his body for seven days,” Um Salem, the mother, says in the film. “His body was in the sun for seven days.”

Waseem Shamaly, Salem’s brother, who appears to be about 8 years old, is shown with his eyes swollen from crying. “He would take care of us, like our father,” the boy says. “Even at night, he would get us whatever we wanted. He used to buy us everything. Whatever we wished for, he would buy it. There was nothing he wouldn’t buy for us. He used to take us to hang out. He’d take us out with him just to kill our boredom a little.”

Waseem wipes his eyes.

“Now he is gone,” he continues weakly. “There is nobody to take us out and buy us treats.”

“This boy hasn’t been able to handle losing his brother,” says the father, Khalil Shamaly. “He couldn’t handle the news, seeing the way his brother died. He is in shock. It gets to the point where he goes lifeless. He collapses. When I pick him up he tells me his dying wishes. His dying wishes! As if he is leaving us. He is so young. But he gives us his dying wishes. If it weren’t for God’s mercy, I would have lost him too.”

“Destroyed cities and shattered homes can be rebuilt if the resources are there,” Blumenthal says. “But what about the survivors? How can they heal the scars imposed on their psyches? The youth of Gaza has grown up through three wars, each more devastating than the last. At least 90 percent of adolescents in Gaza suffer from post-traumatic stress disorder. With mental health services pushed to the brink, these unseen scars may never heal.”

The film turns to the town of Khuza’a, a farming community with 20,000 people, which was systematically blown up by Israel after three Israeli soldiers were killed in fighting with the al-Qassam Brigades, the armed wing of the ruling Hamas government in Gaza. The film shows a video from inside an Israeli tank as soldiers wait for explosives to bring down buildings in the town, including the mosque. When the explosions occur, the Israeli soldiers cheer and shout, “Long live the state of Israel!”

“We were shocked to see so many bodies in the streets,” Ahmed Awwad, a volunteer with the Palestinian Red Crescent, says in the film about Khuza’a. “Many were decomposing. We wanted to deal with it, but we didn’t know how. Once, when the Israelis let us in with our ambulance, we found about 10 corpses from different areas, scattered. As you approached a body, of course there is the odor, and there are worms. Hold it like this, and flesh comes off. Lift an arm and it pulls right off. We didn’t know what to do. There was nothing we could do. We had to stop. It would have been easier just to bury them. But we figured families would want the bodies. Bulldozers eventually loaded the bodies in trucks. We couldn’t pick up these bodies on our own. Most were executions, like an old lady at her front door. There was a young man, another man, and a little kid. The scenes, to be honest, were very ugly.”

The Rjeila family, including 16-year-old Ghadeer, who was physically disabled, attempts to escape the shelling. As a brother frantically pushes Ghadeer in her wheelchair (the scene, like several others in the film, is reconstructed through animation), the Israelis open fire. The brother is wounded. Ghadeer is killed.

The camera pans slowly through demolished houses containing blackened human remains. Walls and floors are smeared with blood.

Ahmed Awwad, a Palestinian Red Crescent volunteer, describes what happened after he and other volunteers finally receive permission from Israeli forces to retrieve bodies from Khuza’a. They find a man tied to a tree and shot in both legs. One of the volunteers, Mohammed al-Abadla, gets out of a vehicle and approaches the tree. When he switches on his flashlight, which the Israelis had instructed him to do, he is shot in heart and killed.

“For 51 days, Israel bombarded Gaza with the full might of its artillery,” Blumenthal says. “According to the Israeli military’s estimates, 23,410 artillery shells and 2.9 million bullets were fired into Gaza during the war.”

That’s one and a half bullets for every man, woman and child in the Gaza Strip.

There is footage of Israeli soldiers in an artillery unit writing messages, including “Happy Birthday to Me,” on shells being lobbed into Gaza. The soldiers laugh and eat sushi as they pound Palestinian neighborhoods with explosives.

Rafah is a city in Gaza on the border of Egypt. The film makes it clear that Egypt, through its sealing of Gaza’s southern border, is complicit in the blockade. Rafah was one of the first cities targeted by the Israelis. When Israeli troops took over buildings, they also kidnapped Palestinians and used them as human shields there and elsewhere, forcing them to stand at windows as the soldiers fired from behind.

“They blindfolded and handcuffed me and took me inside,” Mahmoud Abu Said says in the film. “They told me to come with them and put a M16 to my back. There were maybe six of them. They dropped their equipment and began searching. They started hitting me against the wall. And then sicced their dogs on me while I was handcuffed.”

“They put me here,” he says, standing in front of a window, “and stood behind me. Israeli soldiers placed me here while they stood behind me shooting. They took me to that window and that window too. Then they hit me against the wall and pushed me down. They put a mattress here,” he says, showing holes punched through the wall at floor level, “and sat down to shoot through these holes.”

“You see that car?” asks Suleiman Zghreibv, referring to a hunk of twisted metal that lies next to the ruins of his house. “He drove it,” he says of his 22-year-old son, who was executed by the Israelis. “This is the car we used to make our living. It wasn’t for personal use. It was a taxi. I can’t describe the suffering. What can I say? Words can’t express the pain. We have suffered and resisted for so long. We’ve been suffering our whole lives. We’ve suffered for the past 60 years because of Israel. War after war after war. Bombing after bombing after bombing. You build a house. They destroy it. You raise a child. They kill him. Whatever they do—the United States, Israel, the whole world, we’ll keep resisting until the last one of us dies.”

Israel intentionally targeted power plants, schools, medical clinics, apartment complexes, whole villages. Robert Piper, the United Nations Coordinator for Humanitarian Aid and Development Activities, said in 2017 that Gaza had “a long time ago” passed the “unlivability threshold.” Youth unemployment is at 60 percent. Suicide is epidemic. Traditional social structures and mores are fracturing, with divorce rising from 2 percent to 40 percent and girls and women increasingly being prostituted, something once seen only rarely in Gaza. Seventy percent of the 2 million Gazans survive on humanitarian aid packages of sugar, rice, milk and cooking oil. The U.N. estimates that 97 percent of Gaza’s water is contaminated. Israel’s destruction of Gaza’s sewage treatment plant means raw sewage is pumped into the sea, contaminating the beach, one of the very few respites for a trapped population. The Israelis did not even spare Gaza’s little zoo, slaughtering some 45 animals in the 2014 assault.

“I liked the monkeys best,” says a forlorn Ali Qasem, who worked at the zoo. “We laughed with them the most. We would laugh and play with them. They would take food right from your hand. They’d respond the most. There is a heavy feeling of sorrow. I used to spend 18 hours a day here. I was here all the time. I’d go home for five or six hours, then come back. I worked here as a volunteer. A few volunteers built this place little by little. We were excited to finish and invite visitors for free. To me, it was like humans were killed. It’s not OK because they were animals. It’s as if they were human beings, people we know. We used to bring them food from our homes.”

The film shows Palestinians, who have received little reconstruction aid despite pledges by international donors, camping out amid the ruins of homes, gathered around small fires for heat and light. Moeen Abu Kheysi, 54, gives a tour of the smashed house he had spent his life constructing for his family. He stops when he comes upon his 3-month-old grandson, Wadie. His face lights up in delight.

“Months passed and the cold rains of winter gave way to baking heat of spring,” Blumenthal says. “In Shuja’iyya, the Abu Kheysi family was still living in remnants of their home, but without their newest member. Born during the war, little Wadie did not make it through the harsh winter.”

“He was born during the war and he died during the war, well after the war,” a female member of the family explains. “He lived in a room without a wall. We covered the wall with tin sheets. We moved, but then we got kicked out. We couldn’t make rent. [We] had to come back, cover the wall and live here. Then the baby froze to death. It was very cold.”

“One day it suddenly became very cold,” Wadie’s mother says. “Wadie woke up at 9 in the morning. I started playing with him, gave him a bottle. Suddenly, he was shivering from the cold. I tried to warm him up but it wasn’t working.”

She begins to weep.

“There wasn’t even time to get to the hospital,” she says. “He stopped breathing before they left the house. His heart stopped beating instantly. His father started running in the street with him. He fainted when they yelled, “The baby is dead!” The baby’s uncle took over and carried him. He looked everywhere for a taxi but couldn’t find one. We couldn’t give him first aid ourselves. They finally found a car. They did all they could at the hospital, but he never woke up. He was dead. What can I say? We remember him all the time. I can’t get him off my mind. It’s as if I lost a piece of my heart. His sisters want to sleep in his cradle and wear his clothes. This one always asks to wear her brother’s clothes. We can’t forget him.”

“Grandpa!” Wadie’s small sister cries out. “Mama is crying again.”

Trump Is Trying to Save Jobs—in China

WASHINGTON—President Donald Trump said Sunday he has instructed his Commerce Department to help get a Chinese telecommunications company “back into business” after the U.S. government cut off access to its American suppliers.

At issue is that department’s move last month to block the ZTE Corp., a major supplier of telecoms networks and smartphones based in southern China, from importing American components for seven years. The U.S. accused ZTE of misleading American regulators after it settled charges of violating sanctions against North Korea and Iran.

ZTE, which has more than 70,000 employees and has supplied networks or equipment to some of the world’s biggest telecommunications companies, said in early May that it had halted its main operations as a result of the department’s “denial order.”

Trump, who has taken a hard line on trade and technology issues with Beijing, tweeted on Sunday that he and Chinese leader Xi Jinping “are working together to give massive Chinese phone company, ZTE, a way to get back into business, fast. Too many jobs in China lost. Commerce Department has been instructed to get it done!”

In a separate tweet, the president said the two economic giants were “working well together on trade, but past negotiations have been so one sided in favor of China, for so many years, that it is hard for them to make a deal that benefits both countries. But be cool, it will all work out!”

ZTE has asked the department to suspend the seven-year ban on doing business with U.S. technology exporters. By cutting off access to U.S. suppliers of essential components such as microchips, the ban threatens ZTE’s existence, the company has said.

The U.S. imposed the penalty after discovering that Shenzhen-based ZTE, which had paid a $1.2 billion fine in the case, had failed to discipline employees involved and paid them bonuses instead.

ZTE’s case dates to before Trump took office in January 2007 but the Commerce Department’s decision came amid worsening trade tensions between the U.S. and China centered on technology-related intellectual property.

Just ahead of trade talks earlier this month, the Trump administration handed China a list of hard-line demands that trade experts said could make it even more difficult to resolve the disputes between the world’s two largest economies.

At the trade meetings in Beijing, Chinese officials said they raised their objections to ZTE’s punishment with the American delegation, which they said agreed to report them to Trump.

“A reversal of the ZTE decision could temporarily tamp down trade tensions by allowing the Chinese to make concessions to the U.S. without losing face,” said Eswar Prasad, a professor of trade policy at Cornell University. “Trump may have recognized that backing off on ZTE clears the path for him to claim at least a partial victory in the US-China trade dispute based on the concessions the Chinese seem prepared to offer.”

Trump is seeking to cut the chronic U.S. trade deficit by $100 billion and gain concessions over the policies that foreign companies say force them to share technology in order to gain market access.

Israel Boosts Border Force Ahead of U.S. Embassy Opening

JERUSALEM—Israel on Sunday kicked off festivities to celebrate the opening of the new U.S. Embassy in Jerusalem, even as it bolstered its forces along the Gaza border and in the West Bank in anticipation of mass Palestinian protests of the move.

A day before the embassy’s formal opening, Israel hosted a gala party at its Foreign Ministry with President Donald Trump’s daughter Ivanka, her husband, Jared Kushner, and other American VIPs.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu praised Trump’s “bold decision” in upending decades of U.S. policy by recognizing Jerusalem as Israel’s capital. “It’s the right thing to do,” a smiling Netanyahu told the jubilant crowd.

Trump announced his decision on Jerusalem in December, triggering a joyous reaction from Netanyahu’s nationalist government. The move infuriated the Palestinians, who claim Israeli-annexed east Jerusalem as their capital.

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas halted ties with the Trump administration and declared it unfit to remain in its role as the sole mediator in peace talks.

The rival Hamas movement, which controls the Gaza Strip, has been staging a series of weekly demonstrations against a crippling Israeli-Egyptian blockade of the territory. Those protests are to climax Monday, with tens of thousands of people expected to gather along the Israeli border in an event timed to coincide with the U.S. Embassy move.

Hamas has signaled that large crowds, numbering perhaps in the thousands, might try to break through the border fence to realize the “right of return” to lost homes.

Both the embassy move and the protests have symbolic timing. Trump has said the opening is meant to coincide with the 70th anniversary of Israel’s establishment. The Palestinian protests also mark the date as the anniversary of their “naqba,” or catastrophe, when hundreds of thousands of people fled or were forced from their homes during the war surrounding the event. About two-thirds of Gaza’s 2 million people are descendants of Palestinian refugees.

A mass border breach could trigger potentially lethal Israeli force. Forty-two Palestinians have been killed and over 1,800 have been wounded by Israeli fire since the weekly protests began on March 30. The U.N., European Union and rights groups have accused Israel of using excessive force against unarmed protesters.

Israel says it is protecting a sovereign border and accuses Hamas of using the unrest to plan and carry out attacks. Marchers have thrown stones and burned tires at the fence and flown flaming kites over it to try to set Israeli fields on fire.

On Friday, a Palestinian crowd attacked the main cargo crossing between Israel and Gaza, disrupting shipments of cooking fuel, gasoline and building materials, and causing millions of dollars in damage. Israeli officials said it could take weeks or months to repair the crossing.

“Unfortunately, the crossing is closed today and will remain closed until the foreseeable future due to severe damage caused by Palestinian rioters,” said Lt. Col. Jonathan Conricus, a military spokesman. “It is still unclear how long it will take to fix and replace the necessary parts.”

The Israeli military announced that it bolstered forces on the Gaza border with combat battalions, special units, intelligence forces and snipers. Israeli warplanes also dropped leaflets in Gaza, urging residents to stay far from the fence.

“You deserve a better government. You deserve a better future,” the leaflets said. “Do not approach the security fence nor participate in the Hamas display that is putting you in risk.”

A high-ranking delegation of Gaza’s Hamas rulers headed Sunday to Egypt, amid diplomatic efforts aimed at containing the mass rally. But one of the Hamas participants, Khalil al-Hayya, said there were no breakthroughs and the march would go on as planned Monday.

The army said it was also reinforcing its troops in the West Bank with several combat battalions and intelligence units in case of possible unrest there as well.

Sunday’s celebrations coincided with Israel’s “Jerusalem Day,” the 51st anniversary of what it refers to the city’s “unification” during the 1967 Mideast war.

Israel immediately annexed east Jerusalem — home to the city’s most sensitive Jewish, Muslim and Christian holy sites — in a move that has not received international recognition. The Palestinians claim east Jerusalem as the capital of a future state.

In an annual ritual, tens of thousands of Israelis marched through Jerusalem’s Old City to mark the day. Revelers sang, danced and waved Israeli flags.

Earlier Sunday, Netanyahu told his Cabinet that there would be a “series of decisions” to build up Jerusalem, including its contested eastern sector. Shortly after, the government approved construction of a $57 million cable car system that will link west Jerusalem to the Old City.

Although Trump has said his declaration does not set the final borders of the city, his recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital has been perceived by both Israel and the Palestinians as taking Israel’s side in the most sensitive issue in their conflict. Only two countries, Guatemala and Paraguay, have said they will follow suit. Most of the world maintains embassies in Tel Aviv, saying the Jerusalem issue must first be resolved.

In a reflection of the deep sensitivities, dozens of countries — including Britain, France and Germany — skipped Sunday night’s celebration at the Israeli Foreign Ministry.

Netanyahu, who frequently clashed with President Barack Obama, has found a welcome partner in Trump. The new administration has lined up solidly behind Netanyahu in his dealings with the Palestinians and delighted him last week when it withdrew from the international nuclear deal with Iran, Obama’s top foreign policy achievement.

Addressing the crowd Sunday evening, Netanyahu said Israelis would be “eternally grateful” for Trump’s decision on Jerusalem.

“Thank you, President Trump, for your bold decision. Thank you for making the alliance between Israel and the United States stronger than ever,” he said.

Netanyahu said Trump’s decision recognized a 3,000-year Jewish connection to Jerusalem and the “truth” that Jerusalem will be Israel’s capital under any future peace deal.

“It’s been the capital of our state for the past 70 years. It will remain our capital for all time,” he said.

Kushner and Ivanka Trump sat in the front row near Netanyahu during the ceremony but did not speak. Netanyahu called their presence a “national and international statement” that “touches our hearts.”

U.S. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin said Trump was fulfilling a key campaign promise by moving the embassy. “The United States has no greater partner than Israel,” he said.

Jeremy Ben-Ami, president of J Street, a liberal pro-Israel group in the U.S., expressed concern that the embassy move would backfire.

He accused the White House of putting the interests of a small group of hard-liners ahead of the larger interest of promoting peace with the Palestinians.

“Making a move like this removes the U.S. as a credible mediator,” he said.

The Palestinian ambassador to Washington sharply condemned the relocation of the U.S. Embassy in a statement Sunday.

“Tragically, the US administration has chosen to side with Israel’s exclusivist claims over a city that has for centuries been sacred to all faiths,” said Husam Zomlot.

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Associated Press writer Josh Lederman in Washington contributed to this report.

New Jersey Release of Gun Data Lauded and Deplored

TRENTON, N.J.—Gun control advocates are hailing New Jersey’s release of near-real-time firearms trafficking data as a trailblazing use of federal information, but Second Amendment advocates and skeptical Republicans question whether the report amounts to a way around a federal limitation on the release of some data.

Democratic Gov. Phil Murphy unveiled the data Tuesday as part of a campaign promise to strengthen New Jersey’s already-tight gun laws. The colorful, four-page report uses what gun control supporters say is a novelty: Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives gun-trace data for the first quarter of 2018 to show that 77 percent of guns used in crimes in New Jersey come from out of state.

The publication appears to be the first time a state has taken advantage of the ATF data with such speed, according to experts at the gun safety Giffords organization and the Brady Campaign and Center to Prevent Gun Violence. Cities, most notably Chicago, have used the ATF data in reports, but those came out annually. New Jersey has pledged to post monthly data and quarterly data based on ATF reports.

“New Jersey stepped up, said we have this data, we get it from ATF and we’re going do the work to gather, visualize and then publicize this,” David Chipman, a former ATF agent and the senior policy adviser at Giffords, the organization named for gun-attack victim and former Arizona Rep. Gabrielle Giffords.

The data release comes amid a national conversation surrounding gun control in the aftermath of fatal shootings at a high school in Parkland, Florida, and as Democrats push for tighter gun laws while the Republican-led Congress has not passed any such measures.

In New Jersey, Murphy and the Democrat-led Legislature are pushing a package of six gun control bills.

The speed of the state’s release of ATF data stands out particularly because the most current information the bureau has publicized is from 2016.

ATF Special Agent Joshua Jackson said the bureau won’t comment on how a state could publicize data faster than the agency itself. He also said the bureau doesn’t track state initiatives in response to questions about whether New Jersey was the first to publish the data this quickly.

Chipman and Kyleanne Hunter, the Brady Campaign’s vice president for programs, said they believe ATF does not prioritize near-real-time release of data.

“It hasn’t been a priority, even less so in this administration,” Hunter said of President Donald Trump.

Speedy data reporting by ATF is also a political lightning rod. That’s because the ATF’s release of data is governed by an appropriations provision that prohibits it from releasing information from its firearms trace database to anyone other than a law enforcement agency or prosecutor in connection with a criminal investigation.

That has led Second Amendment advocates to raise concerns over the publicizing of such information.

The Association of New Jersey Rifle and Pistol Clubs, an affiliate of the National Rifle Association, said Murphy could be skirting the federal provision on gun data.

“This is part of a larger regional effort by Murphy’s coalition of anti-gun states to circumvent federal restrictions on release of gun trace data, and to manipulate data for the purposes of influencing public policy in other states,” the group said in a statement.

The group also worries that the data leaves out all the cases when guns are used to stop crimes.

Murphy spokesman Dan Bryan said the governor believes the data will encourage other states to strengthen their own gun laws, or to join the multistate regional gun safety coalition that Murphy helped establish.

Republicans say it’s hardly a surprise that most of the crime-related guns recovered by law enforcement in New Jersey have come from out of state, saying it’s a result of the state’s tough gun laws. They also argue that the reports don’t support the governor’s push for the legislation, including measures to limit the size of magazines from 15 rounds to 10.

“He’s just grandstanding,” said Republican Assemblyman Erik Peterson. “There’s nothing in the reports that anyone would have thought wasn’t the case.”

Gun control has been a major focus in Murphy’s first year in office. Beyond the new reports, Murphy appointed a gun safety adviser whose role is focused on pursuing litigation and joined the multistate gun control coalition.

In the U.K., Old Money Makes Way for Wealthy Refugees

A survey conducted in the United Kingdom found that residents are seven times more willing to admit they’ve contracted a sexually transmitted disease than answer questions about their salary or reveal their household income.

That the subject of money is taboo for the British does nothing to diminish their interest in who among them has it. This might explain the popularity of The Sunday Times Rich List. Updated annually in April and published as a supplement by the newspaper, the list ranks the 1,000 wealthiest people or families in the United Kingdom. A candidate’s net worth is estimated from a range of public information based on values at the beginning of each calendar year.

The editors make a point of specifying that the list “includes individuals and families born overseas but who predominantly work and/or live in Britain.” Statistically and culturally revealing this year is the increased number of people generating the nation’s private wealth who are not British-born citizens. To put it bluntly, the crown and fortuned aristocrats have given way to the nation’s earners. 2015 was the first year that Queen Elizabeth failed to make the list’s 300 most wealthy—when the list began in 1989, she was ranked No. 1. The 2018 list illustrates how money is being made more frequently than it is being inherited. It also shows the growing number of places claimed by former refugees.

In a time of polarizing debates on immigration, this year’s Sunday Times Rich List includes a Bangladesh-born seafood tycoon, who, as a boy, witnessed the massacre of Hindus during his nation’s independence war; a billionaire financier who survived two incarcerations in Iraqi prisons, where he was beaten and tortured; and a property entrepreneur who fled Cyprus with his family after the 1974 Turkish invasion. Ranked as well is someone who arrived in Britain with $27 to support himself, his wife and two daughters. His current wealth is listed as just over $271 million, and he has given some $54 million to worthy causes, including the National Health Service.

Another rags-to-riches story—albeit not rich enough to make its way onto the list—is that of 48-year-old Sajid Javid, a British Conservative Party politician who, formerly and at the age of 25, was named a vice president of Chase Manhattan Bank in New York City before he became a managing director of Deutsche Bank. Javid recently was appointed home secretary. He is the first Asian and the first from a Muslim background to hold that position, which is recognized as one of the most crucial roles in the British Cabinet.

Javid’s father arrived in Britain from Pakistan with no money, and “no money” is meant in the literal sense. After working as a bus driver, he moved his family to Bristol and opened a clothes store on what was then described as the most crime-ridden street in the country. The Javids lived in a two-bedroom flat above the store. “Three brothers were in one bedroom, and myself and a younger brother were with my parents in the other” is Javid’s description. His area of expertise as home secretary includes the issue of immigration.

Meanwhile, on the United States side of the Atlantic, the number of refugees allowed to enter America has been capped by the Trump administration at the lowest since Congress created the program in 1980. That being the case, it would behoove American politicians who have taken a stand against people fleeing persecution in their home countries to consider the refugees who have added to this year’s economy in Britain, a nation that took them in.

As Midterms Near, New Polls Show Democrats Stalling

With six months to go before the midterm election, new national polls are showing that the Democratic Party’s much-touted momentum to gain control of the House has stalled out. The latest numbers tell us a lot about the limits of denouncing Donald Trump without offering much more than a return to the old status quo.

Under the headline “Democrats’ 2018 Advantage Is Nearly Gone,” CNN reported Wednesday that nationwide polling found “the generic congressional ballot has continued to tighten” — “with the Democrats’ edge over Republicans within the poll’s margin of sampling error for the first time this cycle.”

With so many gerrymandered districts as well as widespread voter-ID laws and other GOP-engineered voter suppression, Democrats will need a substantial margin in vote totals to prevent Republicans from retaining a majority in the House of Representatives. (The prospects are worse in the Senate, where Democrats are defending a lopsided number of seats this year.)

While “47 percent of registered voters say they back the Democratic candidate in their district, 44 percent back the Republican,” according to CNN. “Voters also are divided almost evenly over whether the country would be better off with the Democrats in control of Congress (31 percent) or with the GOP in charge (30 percent). A sizable 34 percent — including nearly half of independent voters (48 percent) — say it doesn’t matter which party controls Congress.”

The CNN survey comes on the heels of other grim national polling. Released last week, a Reuters poll concluded that “enthusiasm for the Democratic Party is waning among millennials.”

“The online survey of more than 16,000 registered voters ages 18 to 34 shows their support for Democrats over Republicans for Congress slipped by about 9 percentage points over the past two years, to 46 percent overall,” Reuters reported. “And they increasingly say the Republican Party is a better steward of the economy.”

Young people overwhelmingly supported Bernie Sanders during his 2016 campaign for president. With their votes in Democratic Party primaries and caucuses two years ago, the young showed that they want truth about the destructive effects of corporate power — and forceful action against its manifestations, whether economic injustice or climate change.

Overall, the latest generation of adults is negative about the demagogue in the White House. But most Democratic leaders aren’t offering a clear and compelling alternative. As Reuters put it, “Although nearly two of three young voters polled said they do not like Republican President Donald Trump, their distaste for him does not necessarily extend to all Republicans or translate directly into votes for Democratic congressional candidates.”

Six months ago, the independent report Autopsy: The Democratic Party in Crisis pointed out that young people “increasingly want politics to be for something profoundly positive rather than just against Republicans.” As a member of the task force that worked on the report, I was struck by how the top echelon of the Democratic Party keeps trying to insulate itself from — and fend off — the tremendous energy that mobilized behind Sanders during the primaries.

In short, the Democratic Party is still dominated by elected officials and power brokers who appear to be deeply worried that a future progressive upsurge of political engagement could loosen — or even end — their corporate-funded grip on the party. As the Autopsy report said, “Emerging sectors of the electorate are compelling the Democratic Party to come to terms with adamant grassroots rejection of economic injustice, institutionalized racism, gender inequality, environmental destruction and corporate domination. Siding with the people who constitute the base isn’t truly possible when party leaders seem to be afraid of them.”

The Sanders campaign was “mostly propelled by millennials,” the report noted, and the campaign “turned what conventional wisdom had pegged as an obscure, 2-percent campaign into a photo finish with the establishment’s preferred candidate. Once the nomination was settled, much of this grassroots energy dissipated as the Clinton campaign declined to adopt positions like single-payer health care and free public college that resonated with young voters.”

Those kinds of positions have gained some traction in the aftermath of 2016, but they still have a steep climb in the  upper reaches of Democratic Party power. For the people atop the party, it’s so much easier and more comfortable to selectively denounce Trump — while opposing genuinely progressive agendas that would really challenge income inequality or take aim at the warfare state’s bloated budget or cross up the big donors who funnel vast quantities of money into the party.

With the world facing the dual threats of climate change and nuclear holocaust, it’s no exaggeration when Noam Chomsky describes the present-day Republican Party as “the most dangerous organization in human history.” The latest national polling reflects the reality that Democrats’ feeble partisan maneuvers are ill-suited to ousting the Republicans from power. Methodical grassroots organizing will be necessary — to bring down the GOP’s deranged leadership, and to defeat the forces of corporate power and militarism that continue to hold sway at the top of the Democratic Party.

The President’s Drug-Pricing Scam

[Donald] Trump promised to rein in drug prices. It was his only sensible campaign promise.

But the plan he announced Friday does little but add another battering ram to his ongoing economic war against America’s allies.

He calls it “American patients first,” and takes aim at what he calls “foreign freeloading.” The plan will pressure foreign countries to relax their drug price controls.

America’s trading partners “need to pay more because they’re using socialist price controls, market access controls, to get unfair pricing,” said Alex Azar, Trump’s Secretary of Health and Human Services, who, perhaps not incidentally, was a former top executive at the drug maker Eli Lilly and Company.

By this tortured logic, if other nations allow drug companies to charge whatever they want, U.S. drug companies will then lower prices in the United States.

This is nonsensical. It would just mean more profits for U.S. drug companies. (Revealingly, the stock prices of U.S. pharmaceutical companies rose after Trump announced his plan.)

While it’s true that Americans spend far more on medications per person than do citizens in any other rich country – even though Americans are no healthier – that’s not because other nations freeload on American drug companies’ research.

Big Pharma in America spends more on advertising and marketing than it does on research – often tens of millions to promote a single drug.

The U.S. government supplies much of the research Big Pharma relies on through the National Institutes of Health. This is a form of corporate welfare that no other industry receives.

American drug companies also spend hundreds of millions lobbying the government. Last year alone, their lobbying tab came to $171.5 million, according to the Center for Responsive Politics.

That’s more than oil and gas, insurance, or any other American industry. It’s more than the formidable lobbying expenditures of America’s military contractors. Big Pharma spends tens of millions more on campaign expenditures.

They spend so much on politics in order to avoid price controls, as exist in most other nations, and other government attempts to constrain their formidable profits.

For example, in 2003, Big Pharma got a U.S. law prohibiting the government from using its considerable bargaining clout under Medicare and Medicaid to negotiate lower drug prices. Other nations with big healthcare plans routinely negotiate lower drug prices.

During his campaign Trump promised to reverse this law. But the plan he revealed Friday doesn’t touch it. Trump’s plan seeks only to make it easier for private health insurers to negotiate better deals for Medicare beneficiaries.

In reality, private health insurers don’t have anywhere near the clout of Medicare and Medicaid – which was the whole point of Big Pharma’s getting Congress to ban such negotiations in the first place.

In the last few years, U.S. drug companies have also blocked Americans from getting low-cost prescription drug from Canada, using the absurd argument that Americans can’t rely on the safety of drugs coming from our northern neighbor – whose standards are at least as high as ours.

Trump’s new plan doesn’t change this, either.

To put all this another way, when Americans buy drugs in the United States, they really buy a package of advertising, marketing, and political influence-peddling. Consumers in other nations don’t pay these costs. Which explains a big part of why drug prices are lower abroad. Trump’s so-called plan to lower drug prices disregards this reality.

Trump’s plan nibbles at the monopoly power of U.S. pharmaceutical companies, but doesn’t deal with the central fact that their patents are supposed to run only twenty years but they’ve developed a host of strategies to keep patents going beyond then.

One is to make often insignificant changes in their patented drugs that are enough to trigger new patents and thereby prevent pharmacists from substituting cheaper generic versions.

Before its patent expired on Namenda, its widely used drug to treat Alzheimer’s, Forest Labs announced it would stop selling the existing tablet form of in favor of new extended-release capsules called Namenda XR. Even though Namenda XR was just a reformulated version of the tablet, the introduction prevented generic versions from being introduced.

Other nations don’t allow drug patents to be extended on such flimsy grounds. Trump’s plan doesn’t touch this ploy.

Another tactic used by U.S. drug companies has been to sue generics to prevent them from selling their cheaper versions, then settle the cases by paying the generics to delay introducing those cheaper versions.

Such “pay-for-delay” agreements are illegal in other nations, but antitrust enforcement hasn’t laid a finger on them in America – and Trump doesn’t mention them although they cost Americans an estimated $3.5 billion a year.

Even after their patents have expired, U.S. drug companies continue to aggressively advertise their brands so patients will ask their doctors for them instead of the generic versions. Many doctors comply.

Other nations don’t allow direct advertising of prescription drugs – another reason why prices are lower there and higher here. Trump’s plan is silent on this, too. (Trump suggests drug advertisers should be required to post the prices of their drugs, which they’re already expert at obscuring.)

If Trump were serious about lowering drug prices he’d have to take on the U.S. drug manufacturers.

But Trump doesn’t want to take on Big Pharma. As has been typical for him, rather than confronting the moneyed interests in America he chooses mainly to blame foreigners.

For Palestinians, U.S. Embassy Is a Show of Bias

JERUSALEM—Monday’s opening of the U.S. Embassy in contested Jerusalem, cheered by Israelis as a historic validation, is seen by Palestinians as an in-your-face affirmation of pro-Israel bias by President Donald Trump and a new blow to dreams of statehood.

The festive inauguration helps harden Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas’ rejection of Washington as a future mediator in the conflict with Israel, likely ushering in a prolonged period of diplomatic vacuum in which other powers are unwilling or unable to step up as brokers.

Such paralysis and loss of hope have been major drivers of Palestinian unrest.

Underscoring the conflict’s volatility, thousands of Gaza residents plan to march Monday toward Israel’s border and possibly breach it in an attempt to break a decade-old blockade of their territory. Israel has vowed to stop any breach by force, raising the possibility of major bloodshed at a time when Trump’s daughter Ivanka and son-in-law Jared Kushner preside over the embassy ceremony just 70 kilometers (45 miles) away.

From Tel Aviv to Jerusalem

Tel Aviv is the customary base for foreign embassies in Israel, with the U.S. and other countries having avoided Jerusalem because of its contested status. Over the years, a few countries set up embassies in Jerusalem and then left it again. From 2006 until this week, the city didn’t host a single foreign embassy.

Israel captured east Jerusalem, along with the West Bank and Gaza Strip, in the 1967 Mideast war. It annexed the eastern sector to its previously declared capital in the western part of the city, a move not recognized at the time by the U.S. and most other nations.

The fate of the city has been a central issue in years of intermittent U.S.-brokered negotiations. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, taking a harder line than two predecessors, has said he won’t give up any part of Jerusalem, home to 883,000 people, 38 percent of them Palestinians. Abbas wants east Jerusalem to be the capital of a Palestinian state that would include the other war-won territories.

In December, Trump recognized Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, saying he was simply acknowledging reality, while omitting any mention of Palestinian claims to the city. Trump said at the time he is not taking a position on the boundaries of Israeli sovereignty that are to be determined in negotiations. But just a month later Trump told Netanyahu he had taken Jerusalem “off the table” and that “we don’t have to talk about it anymore.”

Abbas, who for years had banked on the U.S. to persuade Israel to cede land for a Palestinian state, felt betrayed and halted contacts with the Trump administration.

No to Kushner’s Deal

Abbas recently laid out conditions for coming back to the table that — based on Trump’s past statements — seem unlikely to be met. Abbas says the U.S. must explicitly support a two-state solution, recognize east Jerusalem in principle as a Palestinian capital and allow other powers to join as mediators.

In the meantime, Abbas vows to reject any U.S. proposal for an Israeli-Palestinian agreement, arguing that there’s nothing to talk about because of the U.S. policy shift on Jerusalem and its failure to rein in Israeli settlement expansion on lands sought for a Palestinian state.

“We will not accept the deal,” Abbas told a PLO convention two weeks ago, referring to the plan reportedly being prepared by Trump’s Kushner-led Mideast team.

It’s unclear when or if the U.S. plan will be released. No details of the proposal have been confirmed, though Palestinian officials, citing information from Saudi intermediaries, suspect it’s an offer for a Gaza-based mini-state with parts of the West Bank and a small foothold in Jerusalem.

No Alternatives

Abbas, a staunch opponent of violence, hasn’t offered an alternative to statehood through negotiations with Israel or found a world power willing to challenge Washington.

European foreign ministers, while opposed to the U.S. policy shift, have urged Abbas to give Washington’s peace plan a chance. Even European criticism of the U.S. Embassy move will likely be diluted, with Hungary, the Czech Republic and Romania reportedly having blocked a joint EU statement on the issue.

Monday is bound to be one of the worst days in office for Abbas since the Islamic militant Hamas seized Gaza in a 2007 takeover. The 83-year-old appears politically weak and out of ideas, at a time when Hamas is seen as taking charge by leading mass protests against Israel.

Abbas is also increasingly at odds with his own public, especially the younger generation, where support for establishing a Palestinian state alongside Israel — the solution backed by the international community — is steadily declining because of growing disillusionment.

Only 35 percent of those between the ages of 18 and 22 still favor a two-state solution, compared to almost 60 percent in the 40-49 bracket, said pollster Khalil Shikaki, whose surveys have an error margin of 3 percentage points. Among the young, almost one-third support the idea of equal rights for Arabs and Jews in a single state, while 58 percent — the highest result in any age group — demand a return to an armed uprising.

Irreversible Move

Moving the U.S. Embassy to Jerusalem has enjoyed bi-partisan support in Congress, as expressed in the 1995 bill requiring its relocation, though until now presidents used a waiver every six months allowing them to put off the move on security grounds.

It would be politically difficult for any Trump successor to move the embassy back to Tel Aviv, though the next administration could theoretically still try to broker talks on the future of Jerusalem, said Nathan Thrall of the International Crisis Group think tank.

Yet the partition option may no longer exist a few years from now as settlements expand. Some 600,000 Israelis already live on war-won lands, including several tens of thousands in the West Bank’s heartland, east of the Israeli separation barrier.

Veteran Palestinian negotiator Nabil Shaath thinks there’s still hope, citing long-term trends he believes favor the Palestinians, including growing disagreements between the Trump administration and traditional U.S. allies, and demographic pressure on Israel as the numbers of Arabs and Jews in the Holy Land approach parity.

He hopes for a change of direction by Washington, particularly if Republicans suffer a setback in November’s midterm elections. “Rejecting Trump’s policy and afterward rejecting Trump himself would open the door for change,” Shaath told reporters as he led a field trip to the embassy site last week.

As their bus drove past the compound, the journalists took photos of workers planting flowers in the area and paired Israeli and American flags fluttering from electricity poles.

___

Laub reported from Amman, Jordan.

How the Saudis Took Trump for a Ride

It’s another Trump affair—this time without the allegations of sexual harassment (and worse), the charges and counter-charges, the lawsuits, and all the rest. So it hasn’t gotten the sort of headlines that Stormy Daniels has garnered, but when it comes to influence, American foreign policy, and issues of peace and war, it couldn’t matter more or be a bigger story (or have more money or lobbyists involved in it). Think of it as the great love affair of the age of Trump, the one between The Donald and the Saudi royals. And if there’s any place to start laying out the story, it’s naturally at a wedding, in this case in a tragic ceremony that happened to take place in Yemen, not Washington.

On Sunday, April 22nd, planes from a Saudi Arabian-led coalition dropped two bombs on a wedding in Yemen. The groom was injured, the bride killed, along with at least 32 other civilians, many of them children.

In response, the Saudis didn’t admit fault or express condolences to the victim’s families. Instead, they emphasized that their “coalition continues to take all the precautionary and preventative measures” to avoid civilian casualties in Yemen. This disconnect between Saudi rhetoric and the realities on the ground isn’t an anomaly — it’s been the norm. For four years, the Saudis and their allies have been conducting airstrikes with reckless abandon there, contributing to a staggering civilian death toll that now reportedly tops 10,000.

The Saudis and their close ally, the United Arab Emirates (UAE), have repeatedly reassured American policymakers that they’re doing everything imaginable to prevent civilian casualties, only to launch yet more airstrikes against civilian targets, including schools, hospitals, funerals, and marketplaces.

For example, last May when Donald Trump landed in Saudi Arabia on his first overseas visit as president, Saudi lobbyists distributed a “fact sheet” about the prodigious efforts of the country’s military to reduce civilian casualties in Yemen. Five days after Trump landed in Riyadh, however, an air strike killed 24 civilians at a Yemeni market. In December, such strikes killed more than 100 Yemeni civilians in 10 days. The Saudi response: condemning the United Nations for its criticisms of such attacks and then offering yet more empty promises.

Through all of this, President Trump has remained steadfast in his support, while the U.S. military continues to provide aerial refueling for Saudi air strikes as well as the bombs used to kill so many of those civilians. But why? In a word: Saudi Arabian and UAE money in prodigious amounts flowing into Trump’s world — to U.S. arms makers and to dozens of lobbyists, public-relations firms, and influential think tanks in Washington.

Trump’s Love Affair with the Saudi Regime

Saudi Arabia’s influence over Donald Trump hit an initial peak in his first presidential visit abroad, which began in Riyadh in May 2017. The Saudi royals, who had clearly grasped the nature of The Donald, offered him the one thing he seems to love most: flattery, flattery, and more flattery. The kingdom rolled out the red carpet big time. The fanfare included posting banners with photos of President Trump and Saudi King Salman along the roadside from the airport to Riyadh, projecting a five-story-high image of Trump onto the side of the hotel where he would stay, and hosting a male-invitees-only concert by country singer Toby Keith.

According to the Washington Post, “The Saudis hosted the Trumps and the Kushners at the family’s royal palace, ferried them around in golf carts, and celebrated Trump with a multimillion-dollar gala in his honor, complete with a throne-like seat for the president.” In addition, they presented him with the Abdul-Aziz al-Saud medal, a trinket named for Saudi Arabia’s first king, considered the highest honor the kingdom can bestow on a foreign leader.

The Saudis then gave Trump something he undoubtedly valued even more than all the fawning — a chance to pose as the world’s greatest deal maker. For the trip, Trump brought along a striking collection of CEOs from major American companies, including Marillyn Hewson of Lockheed Martin, Jamie Dimon of JPMorgan Chase, and Stephen Schwarzman of the Blackstone Group. Big numbers on the potential value of future U.S.-Saudi business deals were tossed around, including $110 billion in arms sales and hundreds of billions more in investments in energy, petrochemicals, and infrastructure, involving projects in both countries.

The new president was anything but shy in claiming credit for such potential mega-deals. At a press conference, he crowed about “tremendous investments in the United States … and jobs, jobs, jobs.” On his return to the U.S., he promptly bragged at a cabinet meeting that his deal-making would “bring many thousands of jobs to our country… In fact, will bring millions of jobs ultimately.” Not surprisingly, no analysis was offered to back up such claims, but it’s already clear that some of these deals may never come to fruition and many of those that do are more likely to create jobs in Saudi Arabia than in the United States.

Still, President Trump’s love affair with that country’s royals only intensified, leading to a triumphant U.S. visit last month by Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman, the power behind the throne in that nation. He is also the architect of its brutal Yemeni war, where, in addition to those thousands of civilians killed thanks to indiscriminate air strikes, millions have been put at risk of famine due to a Saudi-led blockade of the country. But neither of these activities that, Democratic Congressman Ted Lieu has noted, “look like war crimes” nor Saudi Arabia’s abysmal internal human rights record drew a discouraging word from Trump or anyone in his cabinet. First things first. There were business deals to be touted — and so they were.

Mohammed bin Salman’s visit to the White House took place on the very day that the Senate was considering a bill to end U.S. support for Saudi Arabia’s Yemeni bombing campaign. While senators debated the constitutional authority of Congress to declare war and the human-rights impact of U.S. support for the Saudi war effort, Trump was boasting yet again about all those jobs that arms sales to Saudi Arabia would create, adding — in a sign of the total success of the Saudi charm offensive — that the relationship between the two countries “is now probably as good as it’s really ever been” and “will probably only get better.”

The centerpiece of Trump’s meeting was a show-and-tell performance focused on how Saudi arms sales would boost American jobs. As he sang the praises of those Saudi purchases, he brandished a map of the United States with the legend “KSA [Kingdom of Saudi Arabia] Deals Pending” above a red oval that said “40,000 U.S. jobs.” Prominent among them were jobs in the swing states that put Trump over the top in the 2016 elections: Pennsylvania, Ohio, Michigan, and Florida. Score another point for Saudi influence in the form of Trump’s firm belief that his relationship with that regime will bolster his future political prospects.

So the public courtship of Trump by the Saudi royals is already paying large dividends, but public flattery and massive arms deals are just the better-known part of the picture. The president has been heavily courted privately as well, both through personal connections and through an expansive lobbying operation, which it’s important to map out, even if there’s no administration show-and-tell on the subject.

The Personal Courtship

As a start — as has been widely publicized — Jared Kushner, the president’s son-in-law and officially anointed point man on Middle Eastern peace (an outcome he is uniquely ill-equipped to deliver), has struck up a beautiful friendship with Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman. Their relationship was solidified at a March 2017 lunch at the White House, followed by numerous phone calls and several Kushner visits to Saudi Arabia, including one shortly before the prince cracked down on his domestic rivals. Though that crackdown was publicly justified as an anti-corruption move, it conveniently targeted anyone who could conceivably have stood in the way of bin Salman’s consolidation of power. According to Michael Wolff in Fire and Fury, after bin Salman’s power play, Trump joyfully told Kushner, “We’ve put our man on top!” — an indication that Kushner had offered a Trump stamp of approval to the prince’s political maneuver during his trip to Riyadh.

The friendship has clearly paid off handsomely for the Saudis. Kushner was reportedly the main advocate for having Trump make his first foreign visit to that country — over the objections of Secretary of Defense James Mattis, who felt it would send the wrong signal to allies about Trump’s attitudes towards democracy and autocracy (as indeed it did). Kushner also strongly urged Trump to back a Saudi-UAE blockade and propaganda campaign against the Gulf state of Qatar, which Trump forcefully did with a tweet: “So good to see the Saudi Arabia visit with the King and 50 countries already paying off. They said they would take a hard line on funding extremism and all reference was pointing to Qatar. Perhaps this will be the beginning of the end to horror of terrorism!”

Trump later changed his mind on this issue — after learning that Qatar hosts the largest U.S. military air base in the Middle East and after Qatar launched a PR and lobbying offensive of its own. That small, ultra-wealthy state hired nine lobbying and public relations firms, including former Attorney General John Ashcroft’s, in the two months after the Saudi-UAE blockade began, according to filings under the Foreign Agents Registration Act. Most notably, the Qataris agreed to spend $12 billion on U.S. combat aircraft just weeks after Trump’s tweet.

Wherever Trump ultimately ends up on the campaign against Qatar (driven in part by a Saudi belief that its emir hasn’t sufficiently toed a tough enough line on Iran), Kushner’s role in the affair gives new spin to the old phrase “The personal is the political.” According to a source who spoke to veteran reporter Dexter Filkins, Kushner’s antipathy toward Qatar may have been driven in part by anger over its unwillingness to bail his father out of a bad Manhattan real estate investment with a massive loan.

Another snapshot of the Saudi-UAE urge to get up close and personal with The Donald lies in the strange case of George Nader, a political operative and senior advisor to the UAE, and Elliott Broidy, who reportedly can get face time with President Trump as needed. Nader evidently successfully persuaded Broidy to privately press Trump to take positions ever more in line with Saudi and UAE interests on Qatar and in their urge to see Secretary of State Rex Tillerson head for the exit. Whether or not Broidy’s appeals were instrumental in Trump’s decisions, he can’t be faulted for lack of effort. His exploits underscore how far both countries are willing to go in their efforts to bend U.S. foreign policy to their needs and interests.

In his campaign to win over Broidy, Nader gave him a cool $2.7 million to fund an anti-Qatar conference sponsored by the Foundation for Defense of Democracies, a sum that was also followed by more than $600,000 in donations for Republican candidates.

The keynote speaker at that conference was House Foreign Affairs Committee Chairman Ed Royce, who then crafted a sanctions bill against Qatar and — miracle of miracles — shortly thereafter received a campaign contribution from Broidy. Wherever those funds came from, it strains credulity to believe that this was all coincidental. To sweeten the deal, Nader also dangled the prospect of major contracts for Broidy’s private security firm, Circinus. One deal with the UAE, for $200 million, has already been sealed, while a Saudi one is in the works. At this point, who knows whether any of this was illegal, but in the world of Washington influence peddling, what’s legal is often as scandalous as what’s not.

The Lobbying Courtship

If such deep connections between Saudi Arabia and the Trump administration sometimes seem to surface out of nowhere, they all too often stem from an extraordinarily influential, if largely unpublicized, Saudi lobbying and public relations campaign.

Following the November election, the Saudis wasted no time in adding more firepower to their already robust influence operation in this country. In the less than three months before Trump was sworn in as president in January 2017, the Saudis inked contracts with three new firms: a Republican-oriented one, the McKeon Group (whose namesake, Howard “Buck” McKeon, is the recently retired chairman of the House Armed Services Committee); the CGCN Group, a firm well connected to conservative Republicans whose clientele also includes Boeing, which sells bombs to Saudi Arabia; and an outfit associated with the Democrats, the Podesta Group, which later dissolved after revelations about its work with Paul Manafort, Trump’s former campaign manager, and Russian banks under sanction.

Before Trump even made it to Riyadh that May, according to an analysis of Foreign Agents Registration Act records, the Saudis signed contracts with six more public relations firms and then added two more immediately after severing diplomatic ties with Qatar in early June. All told, in just the first year of the Trump administration, the Saudis spent more than a million dollars monthly on more than two dozen registered lobbying and public relations outfits. The UAE was not far behind, boasting 18 registered lobbying and public relations firms in 2017, including more than $10 million dollars that year alone that went to just one of them, the Camstoll Group.

All this lobbying firepower gave those two countries an unparalleled ability to steer U.S. foreign policy on the Middle East. Among other avenues of influence, their campaign included a steady stream of propaganda flowing to policymakers about the war in Yemen.

Large foreign lobbies of this sort also enjoy an even more direct path to influence through campaign contributions. While it’s illegal for foreign nationals to make such contributions in U.S. elections, there’s an easy workaround for that — just hire lobbyists to do it for you. Such firms and figures have, in the past, admitted to serving as middlemen in this fashion and are known to have sometimes given handsomely. For example, a study by Maplight and the International Business Times found that registered lobbyists working at just four firms hired by the Saudis gave more than half a million dollars to federal candidates in the 2016 elections.

Another important avenue of influence for the Saudis and Emiratis: their financial contributions to Washington’s think tanks. The full extent of their reach in this area is hard to grasp because think tanks and other non-profits aren’t required to disclose their donors and many choose not to do so. However, an eye-opening New York Times exposé in 2014 revealed an expansive list of think tanks that received money from the Saudis or Emiratis, including the Atlantic Council, the Brookings Institution, the Center for Strategic and International Studies, and the Middle East Institute. In the age of Trump, it’s a reasonable bet that it has only gotten worse.

A War Alliance?

There is more at stake in Washington’s present web of ties to those two lands than just business. The uncritical embrace of such reckless, extreme, and undemocratic regimes by President Trump and many members of Congress has far-reaching implications for the future of American foreign policy in the Middle East. Saudi Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman has asserted that Iranian leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei “makes Hitler look good” and has suggested military action against Iran on a number of occasions. Add to this the prince’s successful efforts to keep the Trump administration on board in supporting his war in Yemen, plus Riyadh’s political interference in Qatar and Lebanon, and there is a real danger that Trump’s uncritical embrace of the Saudi regime could spark a regional war. The indiscriminate killing of Yemenis by the Saudi coalition, with the help of U.S. weapons, has already contributed to the world’s largest humanitarian crisis, while reportedly making the al-Qaeda franchise in Yemen “stronger than ever.”

There is much concern in official Washington about Trump’s seemingly cavalier attitude towards longstanding U.S. alliances, but in the case of Saudi Arabia, a major change of course would undoubtedly be advisable. The least we can do is help make sure that the people of Yemen don’t fear for their lives at their own weddings.