https://www.thenational.ae/opinion/comment/there-are-no-meaningful-checks-on-donald-trump-s-outlandish-behaviour-1.902492

He might value being unpredictable but investors never do. Meanwhile seemingly immutable norms lie in tatters.

Even though he is already noted for being at best erratic and at worst eccentric, US President Donald Trump’s most recent comments and conduct have caused considerable alarm at home and abroad.

First there was his preposterous demand to buy Greenland from Denmark. When he was predictably rebuffed, he cancelled a state visit to Denmark and called its female prime minister “nasty”, a word he frequently applies to women.

Then there was his enthusiastic endorsement on Twitter of an obscure radio host’s comments that “the Jewish people in Israel love him like he’s the King of Israel. They love him like he’s the second coming of God.” Never mind that the concept is anathema to Judaism.

In the same spirit, when defending his trade war, Mr Trump declared he was the “chosen one” in tackling China, appealing to the heavens for confirmation with upturned eyes and outstretched hands. He later insisted he had only been joking but he isn’t noted for having a keen sense of humour. Certainly no one was left laughing.

Mr Trump similarly likes to repeatedly joke about holding power beyond the constitutional limit of eight years, as he did yet again last week. But these frequent quips are obviously intended to prepare the public for that possibility – and he is plainly at least half-serious about it.

But perhaps the most troubling of his comments over the last few days were the most anti-Semitic made by any prominent American leader, let alone a president, in many decades. The president is reportedly outraged that many Jewish Americans remain strongly opposed to him, despite his pandering to the Israeli annexationist right.

He declared that Jewish Americans who vote for Democrats (at least 70 per cent routinely do) are showing “great disloyalty” by not supporting him. The next day he unconvincingly claimed he meant they were being “very disloyal to Israel”.

Republicans and Democrats joined a chorus of immediate condemnation. As David Harris, the chief executive of the usually politically cautious American Jewish Committee, said: “His assessment of…‘loyalty’ based on their party preference is inappropriate, unwelcome and downright dangerous.” Although Mr Trump upbraided reporters that this is only “anti-Semitic in your head”, in fact the charge of disloyalty is the essence of modern western anti-Semitism.

Mr Trump’s behaviour has fuelled renewed demands for his impeachment, a move key Democratic leaders still regard as highly risky as the Republican-controlled Senate would most likely acquit him.

The even more fanciful idea that Mr Trump should be removed by his own administration under the provisions of the 25th Amendment has also reappeared. The amendment was intended to deal with the consequences of a president in office dying, resigning or being incapacitated by illness. But when the sitting president suggests he has messianic status, that notion predictably resurfaced, with the hashtag #25thAmendmentNow trending on Twitter.

Mr Trump’s outlandish outbursts could be prompted by a growing realisation that his plan to run primarily on the strength of the economy is deeply threatened. Manufacturing is down badly and growth has returned to the Obama-era levels he ridiculed as terrible.

It is now evident that, yet again, a massive tax cut has not led to either a wave of capital investments or a major surge of growth. It has just meant a transfer of wealth to the already very-rich and has bloated the budget deficit alarmingly.

In response, Mr Trump broke new ground in American central-command economics with an inexplicable order that US companies disengage from China. He lacks the authority – but not the arrogance – for this heretofore unimaginable commandment.

Republican and business leaders were clearly aghast at this de facto socialism from a supposedly conservative administration but were at a loss as to how to respond.

Mr Trump has been working hard to set up the Federal Reserve Bank and its chairman as the fall guy if the economy continues to drift towards a recession.

On Friday, he launched what is easily the most vicious attack by any US president on one of his own appointees, tweeting: “My only question is, who is our bigger enemy, [Federal Reserve chairman] Jay Powell or [China’s] Chairman Xi [Jinping]?” – effectively accusing him of being both treasonous and an enemy of the state.

Yet with his intensifying trade war with China almost universally identified as the main cause of economic gloom, Mr Trump’s prospects for re-election are visibly and rapidly dimming.

He might value unpredictability but investors never do. And his own erratic comments seemed to fuel a major stock market decline on Friday.

Nonetheless, calls for impeachment, let alone invoking the 25th Amendment, are hollow.

The American constitutional structure assumed that presidents would embody certain minimal standards of public-spirited duty, competence and propriety. If an inappropriate individual gains the position, Congress is empowered to implement the needed correctives.

But the Constitution was drafted before party loyalties developed. It was assumed lawmakers would jealously protect the institutional prerogatives of Congress, not allegiance to a presidential party leader.

Consequently, there is now no meaningful check on a president who retains significant support in the Senate, no matter how inappropriate and disturbing their behaviour might be.

Still, this week dramatically illustrated how easily once seemingly immutable norms and principles can be shredded by a president no longer restrained by anyone – even himself.

https://www.thenational.ae/opinion/comment/in-refusing-to-go-to-israel-rashida-tlaib-has-squandered-her-moral-victory-1.899692

The visit to her grandmother could have been an historic trip, which could have been recorded, immortalised and publicised to show Palestinian life under occupation

At first glance, the brouhaha over efforts by the first two American Muslim congresswomen, Rashida Tlaib of Michigan and Ilhan Omar of Minnesota, to visit the Palestinian territories occupied by Israel, looks like a comedy of errors.

But behind this absurdist farce lies a sinister domestic political struggle, in which its author, US President Donald Trump has demonstrated his formidable political skills.

Ms Tlaib and Ms Omar were invited by Palestinian and Israeli NGOs to visit several occupied cities, including Ramallah, Bethlehem and East Jerusalem. They are critics of the occupation and supporters of the movement to boycott, divest from and sanction Israel.

The Israeli government reluctantly agreed that “out of respect” for Congress and Israel’s relations with the US, they would be allowed into the occupied territories. But Mr Trump’s keen predatory instincts scented political blood.

In an extraordinary move, the US president urged a foreign country to bar lawmakers for his own nation from entering its territory, thus manufacturing a crisis to the detriment of all parties, except himself.

Mr Trump and his allies have been trying to turn support for Israel, traditionally a bipartisan consensus, into a partisan wedge by driving US policy towards the annexationist Israeli right.

He is trying to appeal to his evangelical Christian base and win over largely Democratic Jewish Americans, while casting Republicans as genuinely pro-Israel and Democrats as hostile or even anti-Semitic.

To that effect he tweeted that Israel would “show great weakness” by allowing the congresswomen into the occupied territories, adding that they “hate Israel and all Jewish people and there is nothing that can be said or done to change their minds”.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, facing a massive struggle to cling to power and to stay out of prison over corruption investigations, felt bound to obey his benefactor, reversed course and banned the lawmakers.

The depth of the crisis for Israeli-American relations this produced is hard to overstate. The entire Democratic Party, which is supported by most Jewish Americans, erupted in outrage.

Even Jewish American organisations like the America Israel Public Affairs Committee (Aipac) and the American Jewish Committee, which almost never criticise Israel, issued complaints.

Pro-Israel American commentators were virtually unanimous in concluding, correctly, that Mr Netanyahu had allowed his loyalty to Mr Trump to severely damage Israel’s standing and greatly bolster the campaign to transform support for Israel into a Republican wedge issue.

Banning Ms Tlaib was particularly ironic, given that Mr Trump had suggested she, Ms Omar and two other Democratic representatives should “go back” to their countries of origin. Although born in Michigan, Ms Tlaib is a Palestinian and the Israeli government conceded that she might be granted a permit to visit her 90-year-old grandmother in the West Bank on “humanitarian” grounds, provided she agreed not to advocate boycotts against Israel during the trip.

Thus far, the affair was a total fiasco for Israel and the first major political triumph by newly elected Democratic critics of Israel.

Ms Tlaib could have done nothing and secured a huge win. But, understandably, she took Israel up on its offer and requested permission to visit her grandmother, agreeing to the onerous terms.

Perhaps hoping to establish a precedent to force other visitors to the occupied territories to also forswear criticism, Israel agreed. Despite the restrictions, Ms Tlaib had won again and was poised to make a poignant visit to elderly relatives enduring decades of hostile occupation.

But the congresswoman then managed to snatch at least a partial defeat from the jaws of a massive victory.

After coming under enormous pressure from fellow Democratic leftists and Palestinian activists, implausibly citing the potential model Israel might establish by her agreement to such terms, she suddenly changed her mind, saying she would not accept Israel’s censorious conditions.

This not only squandered a potentially historic trip, which could have been recorded, immortalised and publicised, documenting Palestinian life under occupation; it also allowed Israel to pose as the spurned reasonable party and paint Ms Tlaib as a frustrated would-be grandstander.

Yet few Americans see Israel as the victim given that, at the behest of a highly partisan president, it banned two Democratic congresswomen because of their political views. The damage was enormous and will play out over years.

Mr Trump, as ever, could not resist a final low blow, tweeting that the “only winner” in this affair was Ms Tlaib’s grandmother, who would not have to endure seeing her.

Sadly, none of his supporters are likely to notice or care that he just insulted an elderly lady struggling under occupation and gloated over his successful effort to prevent her seeing her granddaughter because she is one of his critics.

But Mr Trump is wrong. In reality, he is the only winner in this utter fiasco.

Israel is severely damaged among Democrats. Mr Netanyahu looks like a coward and a thug. Ms Tlaib seems confused at best and opportunistic at worst. Jewish Americans are further alienated from Israel. And Palestinians gained nothing and missed a major opportunity for Americans to learn about their plight.

Meanwhile, lounging at his golf club in New Jersey this weekend, Mr Trump is undoubtedly smugly surveying the wreckage.

https://www.thenational.ae/opinion/comment/the-myth-of-the-great-replacement-how-white-nationalism-has-gone-mainstream-1.897074

This conspiracy theory is based on the premise that white people are under siege from an influx of non-white immigrants

Terrorist violence goes through cycles, like all fads, as ideologies of hate develop, metastasise, evolve and finally ebb in their perverse allure.

In the 1980s, radical, violent Islamism spread around the Middle East and then to the rest of the world, bolstered by the Iranian revolution, the war in Afghanistan and subsequent key triggers such as the 9/11 terrorist attacks in the US.

In the 1960s and 1970s, the dominant rationale was distinctly left-wing, informing western Maoist groups like the Baader–Meinhof Gang, a West German militant outfit, or anti-colonial forces like Palestinian factions or the South African Umkhonto we Sizwe, the armed wing of the African National Congress.

In the 1940s, before the formation of Israel, Jewish nationalists in Palestine like Menachem Begin and Yitzhak Shamir were the original Middle East terrorists.

That followed a wave of fascist violence throughout the western world in the 1930s. In the immediate aftermath of World War I, anarchism was the most common expression of the rage of alienation.

There is nothing new about white nationalism but in recent years it has developed so much momentum as an organising principle for terrorist massacres, especially in the US, that it is starting to displace radical Islamism as the main inspiration for terrorist attacks today, particularly in the West.

Last week’s massacre in El Paso, Texas, allegedly aimed at the Hispanic community, joins a raft of other similar recent atrocities conducted by violent young terrorists, who have cited a white nationalist agenda in a series of attacks aimed at minorities, including deadly assaults on a mosque in Quebec in 2017 and a Pittsburgh synagogue in 2018.

Such terrorist brutality requires not only a mindset of extraordinary cruelty but also a powerful narrative of an existential threat that appears, in the eyes of the perpetrators, to justify such mass murder.

The Norwegian white nationalist terrorist Anders Breivik, who massacred 69 people in 2011, appears to have provided the most potent contemporary template, with his notorious manifesto explaining his racist, Nazi and fascist motivations.

Mr Breivik was motivated mainly by hatred of Muslims but his manifesto outlined all the key themes of the “great replacement” theory that has become the driving force behind the current epidemic of white nationalist terrorism.

This theory thrives in far-right forums and is based on the premise that white people and a western identity are under siege from an influx of non-white immigrants. It is no coincidence that the alleged perpetrator of the Christchurch mosque massacres last March titled his screed The Great Replacement.

It is especially striking that white supremacy has shifted from more traditional assertions of white power based on purported superiority to an existential panic about a non-existent crisis, whereby white people in western societies are supposedly being “replaced” by non-whites, such as North African Muslims and black Africans in Europe or Mesoamericans in the US.

It is often accompanied by the preposterous suggestion that this is a Jewish-inspired plot or a conscious trade-off by western leaders for some implausible benefit.

Human beings have a natural tendency to form in- and out-groups and to define their interests against each other, generally irrationally.

This paranoid narrative emerged at the beginning of the 20th century in the US through the racial theories of the eugenicist Madison Grant, who suggested that Nordic people were both superior to, and being overwhelmed by, others.

He not only influenced exclusionary US immigration policies but was an inspiration for Nazis, with Adolf Hitler describing Grant’s most notorious book, The Passing of the Great Race, as “my Bible”.

Contemporary replacement theory linked to immigration began to emerge in American white power circles and among European anti-immigrant demagogues like British politician Enoch Powell in the 1960s.

The thread was elaborated by post-9/11 Islamophobia propagated by the likes of authors Bat Yeor and Oriana Fallaci, who specifically targeted emergent Muslim communities in Europe.

The contemporary narrative was solidified in the 2012 book Le Grand Replacement by French writer Renaud Camus, who has been cited by several white power terrorists. He claimed white populations around the world were being “replaced” by non-whites via immigration.

In the Donald Trump era, these views have migrated from the fringe into the mainstream, particularly in the US.

The US president has repeatedly trafficked in many of these sentiments, referring to Mexican and Central American immigration as an “invasion” and an “infestation.” He hasn’t explicitly called for violence against migrants, but what does one do to “invaders” except violently repel them, and how does one combat an infestation except by eradicating the vermin?

And the president’s biggest media supporters, particularly Fox News channel’s evening commentators Tucker Carlson and Laura Ingram, have been force-feeding their audience thinly-veiled great replacement theory rhetoric on a nightly basis for several years.

This explains why the neo-Nazis marching in Charlottesville, Virginia, in 2017, whom Mr. Trump referred to as including “very fine people”, notoriously chanted: “You will not replace us” and “Jews will not replace us”.

Mr Trump and his supporters are enraged that anyone would connect his anti-immigrant rhetoric to incidents such as Charlottesville and El Paso but the direct echoes are undeniable.

Radical Islamism remains a serious threat globally, particularly in the Arab and Islamic worlds.

But in the West, there is every reason to fear that, driven by great replacement paranoia and egged on by the most prominent leaders and major TV news channels, we are entering a gruesome heyday of white nationalist terrorism.

The worst is almost certainly yet to come.

https://www.thenational.ae/opinion/comment/kushner-s-real-purpose-has-little-to-do-with-a-peace-plan-and-everything-to-do-with-us-domestic-politics-1.894406

The Middle East envoy, on a tour of the region, champions a shift away from a two-state solution to wholesale support of Israeli annexation.

The charade continues and the circus is in town. Jared Kushner, Donald Trump’s son-in-law and Middle East emissary, is visiting Israel, Jordan, Egypt, Saudi Arabia and Morocco to try to drum up support for his as-yet-unreleased “peace plan”.

He is likely to be disappointed again by the reaction in the region, but his real aims have little to do with the Middle East and everything to do with American domestic politics.

In this case, failure isn’t only an option, it’s virtually a goal.

Mr Kushner has been touting his plan for more than a year but there is still no sign of it. That is because of the extreme damage it will do to the US reputation in the Arab world and to any remaining prospects of a peace agreement.

But even though the plan has not been formally released, even to governments close to the US, thanks to a series of leaks, statements and pointed hints, we now have a pretty good idea of what is being cooked up by Mr Kushner and his two partners, Middle East peace envoy Jason Greenblatt and US ambassador to Israel David Friedman.

It is clearly going to centre on a complete repudiation of the two-state solution that has driven US policy since at least the end of the Cold War in the late 1980s and effectively since the 1967 war.

The two-state solution is also deeply rooted in international law, with its origins in UN Security Council resolutions 242 and 338, which followed the 1967 and 1973 wars respectively; the 1993 Declaration of Principles signed between Israel and the Palestine Liberation Organisation; and UN Security Council resolution 1397, which in 2002 called for the creation of a Palestinian state alongside Israel.

Mr Kushner and his colleagues have been remarkably agile in avoiding anything that might smack of this long-standing international goal. He says he won’t use the term “two states” because “if you say two-state, it means one thing to the Israelis [and] one thing to the Palestinians”. Obviously, that’s equally true of peace – or any word, for that matter.

Mr Friedman waxed philosophical, musing “What is a state?” as if the basic attributes of statehood and sovereignty under the UN system were a profound metaphysical mystery.

On Palestinian liberties, Mr Greenblatt also seemed bewildered by conceptual complexities, saying that, when it comes to Palestinians, “rights is a big word”.

Such sophistry aside, Mr Friedman last week acknowledged that the Trump plan will not call for Palestinian statehood but “Palestinian autonomy”, whatever that means, presumably within a vastly unequal Greater Israel.

These three men are passionate supporters of Israel but they are not simpletons. They know this is a complete non-starter for the Palestinians and other Arabs.

The Arab world remains united behind the 2002 Arab Peace Initiative, which calls for peace with Israel based on the creation of a Palestinian state, with its capital in East Jerusalem. No Arab government has given any indication of abandoning that policy.

Given that their efforts have nothing whatsoever to do with advancing peace, what is the Trump team really trying to achieve?

It has been obvious for more than two years, although it has taking many people a long time to see it.

They are trying to shift US policy away from the baseline expectation and long-standing bipartisan consensus of a two-state outcome and create a US political climate that supports the Israeli annexation of occupied territories such as Jerusalem and the Golan Heights and repudiates Palestinian independence.

Internationally, this is designed to advance the extreme Zionism championed by Mr Kushner and his colleagues, help Benjamin Netanyahu remain Israeli prime minister, facilitate the recognition of a Greater Israel and eliminate prospects for a Palestinian state.

Domestically, which is all Mr Trump cares about, the policy is aimed at appealing to his strongest body of support, those evangelical Christians who yearn for the apocalypse and second coming and who are single-minded in support of Israel’s occupation and expansion.

Republicans are also hoping that by abandoning the two-state solution – whose greatest champion, ironically, was probably George W Bush in his second term – they can create what they are calling a “Jexodus” of Jewish Americans away from the Democrats towards their own party.

Already, many Republican factions appear to be joining the Trump administration in renouncing the two-state solution and embracing Israeli annexation.

Whether this could lead to serious Republican inroads with Jewish Americans remains to be seen. It is possible that Democrats might follow suit to keep hold of Jewish support, expanding the US constituencies abandoning the idea of peace.

Mr Kushner’s current trip, just like his investment conference in Bahrain, will almost certainly prove a total bust – and the release of any such plan would be a devastating blow to ending the conflict.

But none of that is a failure for Mr Kushner and Mr Trump. To the contrary, while it’s a catastrophe for peace, this elaborate fiasco is serving their cynical ideological and political purposes admirably. For them, this is a great success.

https://agsiw.org/uae-outreach-to-iran-cracks-open-the-door-to-dialogue/

While the Emiratis have their own reasons for outreach to Tehran, Washington and Riyadh may find it useful as well.

Over the past week, at least two official delegations from the United Arab Emirates have visited Iran to discuss issues of mutual concern. While routine contacts between the governments had been a regular feature of relations in the past, such open contacts dried up as regional tensions intensified, leaving only a quiet intelligence backchannel between the two countries. The Emirati outreach is all the more striking given that a number of the low-intensity military actions allegedly conducted by Iran in an effort to break out of the Washington-imposed economic straitjacket were aimed at the UAE and UAE-related interests, including oil tankers. Yet this marked adjustment of UAE diplomacy is neither unexpected nor inexplicable.

On July 26, Iranian officials told the media that the UAE had dispatched a “peace delegation” to Tehran to discuss unspecified issues; the timing of the visit was notable, coming in the immediate aftermath of the announcement that there would be a significant drawdown of Emirati forces in southern Yemen. The UAE did not deny these reports, but also did not put its own spin on the nature or topics of the conversations.

On July 30, both sides acknowledged that an Emirati delegation led by coast guard commander Brigadier General Mohammed Ali Musleh al-Ahbabi went to Iran to discuss maritime security. The UAE insisted that this was the sixth in a series of coast guard meetings to discuss fishing issues that have traditionally arisen because of several disputed islands currently under Iranian control. But reports suggest that the talks also covered border security and other unspecified issues presumably related to attacks on shipping in Gulf waters. In the aftermath of this visit, the UAE Foreign Ministry officials expressed “satisfaction” with the outcome.

Seen in the broader context, these visits make sense from the UAE’s perspective. The widespread perception that the UAE (along with Saudi Arabia and Israel) has been pressing the United States into a conflict with Iran deeply misunderstands Emirati policy goals. While it welcomed the U.S. campaign of “maximum pressure” against Iran, the UAE sought policy change, not regime change, in Tehran. It never advocated warfare between the United States, or anyone else, and Iran. Such a conflict would not only fail to achieve the UAE’s aim of moderating Iran’s destabilizing regional conduct, it would also place the Emiratis themselves in peril. As Iran’s “maximum resistance” campaign of low-intensity military actions and sabotage have recently demonstrated, Tehran’s Gulf Arab adversaries would be immediate targets in any intensified regional conflict.

Given Iran’s apparent determination to continue testing the limits of “maximum resistance” with carefully calibrated escalations, the UAE has incentives to use dialogue to try to ensure that its interests are not targeted in the future. Moreover, the timing of the July 26 talks suggests that Abu Dhabi saw utility in dialogue with Iran in the immediate aftermath of the UAE’s drawdown of forces in Yemen. It would be reasonable that the Emiratis would want to explain directly to Iran their intentions in Yemen, to urge Iran not to interfere with the process and try to persuade the insurgent Houthis not to try to gain battlefield advantage from this redeployment.

Furthermore, for almost a year key Emirati officials have been quietly warning that while they strongly approved of the new sanctions regime against Iran, they worried that there did not appear to be a viable diplomatic or political path for translating the gains made by “maximum pressure” into a clear policy framework. Therefore, given recent reminders of its vulnerabilities, and since it was already quietly pressing for concerted outreach to Iran to leverage the sanctions, it is not surprising that the UAE is the first of Iran’s main antagonists to conduct this sort of public outreach. While all parties appear to be seeking a way to avoid conflict, and Washington and Tehran each has made conciliatory gestures, at the same time each has slowly continued to ratchet up pressure.

Washington does not appear to take exception to this modest outreach to Iran by the UAE. The administration of President Donald J. Trump has made its desire to engage in a dialogue with Iran very clear. So, if its allies begin the conversation with Tehran, even about unrelated issues like disputed islands, for example, that at least pushes in the direction Trump would like to go. If nothing else, the Emirati outreach to Iran, however limited, can serve as a test case for Washington itself for some sort of resumption of dialogue with Iran. If it succeeds and builds, perhaps there will be something for Trump to work with. If it fails, that comes at no cost to the U.S. administration.

The bigger question is whether Saudi Arabia will similarly feel comfortable with this outreach. If Riyadh was going to be displeased by UAE policy changes, it is more likely to have been over Yemen. By withdrawing most of its forces from southern Yemen, the UAE has pulled out of the most high-profile joint endeavor it has been engaged in with Saudi Arabia. That decision has left Riyadh essentially alone in pursuing the far more difficult tasks of dislodging the Houthis from Sanaa and much of the north and, most importantly for Riyadh, securing the kingdom’s southern border with Yemen.

Saudi Arabia could just as easily see the UAE’s very limited outreach to Iran in the same light as the Trump administration probably does: as a test case, to see how far Iran is willing to cooperate and what dialogue with the least threatening of its primary adversaries might produce, therefore suggesting whether others might also engage in “satisfactory” discussions with Tehran.

It is, of course, important not to read too much into this. The UAE is right that conversations between Iran’s border police and the UAE’s coast guard have gone on in the past. Emirati media emphasis that this is the “sixth in a series of meetings” clearly is meant to portray it as unremarkable, although on several issues there has not been such a conversation in six years. The caginess of this formulation indicates due caution. It is, of course, what outreach looks like unless there is a sudden and dramatic breakthrough. That is certainly not the case here, as the UAE and Iran remain at loggerheads.

Feeling that it had the advantage in recent years, Tehran has typically emphasized its willingness to talk, while Gulf Arab states have tended to insist that dialogue could not go very far unless Iran started to behave “like a normal country,” meaning that it should stop destabilizing the region through its support for nonstate armed groups. But in the light of “maximum pressure,” dialogue may be starting to look very different to both sides. While this outreach to Iran signals a shift in the UAE’s diplomatic tactics, it is important not to mistake these gestures for a significant change in policy. The same, of course, applies to Iran. But the door between the UAE and Iran, while never fully shut, has been cracked open a bit more and over time, that could enhance the prospects for dialogue between the United States, or Saudi Arabia, and Iran as well.