The Intercept reports: “Trump’s Transition Team Colluded With Israel. Why Isn’t That News?”
On Dec. 23, 2016, Al Jazeera reported: “Trump convinced Sisi to withdraw U.N. resolution.”
AARON MATÉ, aaronmate at therealnews.com, @aaronjmate
Maté is a host/producer for The Real News. He just wrote the piece “The Trump Team Definitely Colluded with a Foreign Power — Just Not the One You Think“, for The Nation.
He writes: “Friday’s indictment of former National Security Adviser Michael Flynn has confirmed that Donald Trump’s inner circle colluded with a foreign power before entering the White House — just not the foreign power that has been the subject of our national fixation for the past year. To be sure, the jury is still out on Russia, though there are new grounds for questioning the case for a plot tying the Kremlin to Trump Tower. But with Flynn’s plea, we can now say for certain that the Trump team did collude — with Israel. …
“There are no editorials or opinion pieces denouncing Israel’s ‘Plot Against America,’ or ‘War on America,’ or warnings that ‘Odds Are, Israel Owns Trump,’ or explorations of ‘What Israel Did to Control the American Mind.’ … In fact it is more than likely that going forward, the media will give Israelgate the same treatment as cable’s top Russiagate sleuth, MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow, gave during her exhaustive Flynn coverage so far, which is to not even mention it.”
STEPHEN ZUNES, zunes at usfca.edu, @szunes
Professor of politics and coordinator of Middle Eastern Studies at the University of San Francisco, Zunes just wrote the piece: “Why Democrats Don’t Want to Talk about Flynn’s First Meeting with the Russians,” for The Progressive, which states: “Democrats have been reluctant to call attention to another meeting held one week earlier, in which Flynn encouraged the Russians to postpone a scheduled vote at the United Nations until Trump came to office. Having a top advisor of a president-elect clandestinely meet with a representative of a foreign power to undermine the policies of a sitting administration is highly problematic, if not illegal. While this might have otherwise given the Democrats a welcome political opportunity to underscore the perfidy of the Trump team, they are hindered by the fact that the majority of Congressional Democrats opposed Obama and supported Trump’s position on the vote. …
“Less than two weeks later, in the first foreign policy vote of the newly convened 115th Congress, a majority of House Democrats joined virtually every Republican in voting for a resolution that criticized the U.S. refusal to veto. It declared U.N. opposition to Israel’s illegal colonization efforts as being ‘anti-Israel.’
“In the Senate, 30 out of 46 Democrats signed on as co-sponsors of a similar bill.
“The decision by the majority of Congressional Democrats to side with Trump over a sitting Democratic president is striking, particularly since moderate pro-Israel groups including J Street and Americans for Peace Now supported Obama’s decision not to use U.S. veto power.”
