ABBA SOLOMON, abbasolomon@gmail.com, @abba.a.solomon
Solomon is author of two books on Zionism, The Miasma of Unity: Jews and Israel and The Speech, and Its Context: Jacob Blaustein’s Speech “The Meaning of Palestine Partition to American Jews.”
He said today: “This week, both Donald Trump and Joe Biden spoke to American Jews with a Zionist accent. In both cases, they cast American Jews as appendages to Israel, the Zionist project controlling Palestine.
“Trump did so with an ominous post on the Rosh Hashanah new year holiday: ‘Just a quick reminder for liberal Jews who voted to destroy America & Israel because you believed false narratives! Let’s hope you learned from your mistake & make better choices moving forward! Happy New Year!’
“President Biden greeted Prime Minister Netanyahu in New York with, ‘I think without Israel, there’s not a Jew in the world who’s secure.’ [See video.]
“President Biden’s Rosh Hashanah phone message from the White House to American rabbis included a pledge to ‘protect’ Israel.
“In the case of both American leaders, Jewish Americans are spoken to as having a second nationality, Israeli in spirit — confirming British cabinet member Edwin Montagu’s 1917 warning at the time of the Balfour Declaration promising UK support for a ‘Jewish Homeland’ in Palestine:
“Zionism has always seemed to me to be a mischievous political creed, untenable by any patriotic citizen of the United Kingdom. … it seems to be inconceivable that Zionism should be officially recognised by the British Government, and that Mr. Balfour should be authorized to say that Palestine was to be reconstituted as the ‘national home of the Jewish people’. … Jews will hereafter be treated as foreigners in every country but Palestine. … I would ask of a British Government sufficient tolerance to refuse a conclusion which makes aliens and foreigners by implication, if not at once by law, of all their Jewish fellow-citizens.”
