Trump gave money to “West Bank” settlement

The Washington Post reports that in 2003, Donald Trump gave $10,000 to “institutions in one of Israel’s oldest and most steadfast West Bank settlements.” He made the donation in honor of David Friedman, who is now Trump’s pick to be U.S. ambassador to Israel.

I wish I had known about this before. It would have made me more supportive of Trump.

Trump’s donation was used to support schools in the Beit El settlement. According to the Post, he has donated money to many Jewish schools (yeshivas) in Israel and the U.S.

Beit El was founded in 1977. It is located on the outskirts of Ramallah, a major Palestinian population center. Approximately 1,300 Jewish families live there.

Israeli settlements are a bugaboo of the American left and of some on the center-right, as well. They are an impediment to a “peace” agreement, they say.

But Israel is a vibrant, dynamic, and growing society. The notion that its population should have remained confined to land within the pre-1967 borders in the hope that a peace agreement might one day be reached is ridiculous. One might just as well have expected Americans to confine themselves to the original 13 colonies.

The term “West Bank settlements” gives the game away. The settlements are no more on West Bank than the rest of Israel is. There is no natural barrier between the settlements on the outskirts of Jerusalem and Jerusalem itself. There is no significant natural barrier between the Beit El settlement Trump supported and the Mediterranean Sea.

The Mediterranean Sea is what most Palestinians want to drive Israeli Jews into.

Israel shouldn’t be pressured into assisting Palestinians in this quest by ceding control of the West Bank. And, security concerns aside, it shouldn’t be pressured into abandoning places where its citizens have lived for nearly 40 years (in the case of Beit El).

The only salient facts about the pre-1967 borders are: (1) they were untenable and (2) they were swept away by Israel’s military victory. Losing a war has consequences. There is no exception for losing a war intended to obliterate a nation.

But let’s return to president-elect Trump. Remember when mainstream media stalwarts accused him of running an anti-Jewish campaign in order to appeal to the “alt-right”? I wonder what the “alt-right” will make of Trump’s donations to Jewish educational institutions in the U.S. and Israel.

It’s time for a narrative shift. Hence forward, until further notice, the liberal MSM will no longer portray Trump as Jew-baiting. He will now be deemed fanatically pro-Jewish.

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