Why, do you suppose, are people getting worked up about the nepotism angle of Donald Trump appointing his son-in-law, Jared Kushner, as a senior policy adviser, with particular responsibility for the Middle East, when there’s so much else to worry about it? The one thing that should concern us is that it means that a friend of Benjamin Netanyahu, perhaps the most destabilising figures in Israeli politics, is now effectively in charge of policy in respect of the Israel–Palestine question. That’s right; Kushner is the young man who introduced Netanyahu to Trump. He was also presumably behind Trump’s incandescent response to the US abstention on the UN Security Council vote on illegal Israeli settlements – a gesture by the outgoing president so belated as to be downright offensive. And no doubt he was behind the inflammatory Trump promise to shift the US embassy to Jerusalem. That’ll help, won’t it?
There are aspects of the Trump presidency that don’t worry me; I am rather encouraged by his willingness to have a pragmatic relationship with Russia, for instance.
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