US must reduce aid to Israel, says Ramaswamy

Vivek Ramaswamy, a long-shot contender for the Republican presidential nomination, said in an interview that the United States should reduce its aid to Israel.

In an interview on Rumble, a platform popular with far-right viewers, Ramaswamy said Israel should not get more aid than its Middle Eastern neighbors after 2028, the year that the current US aid package of US$38 billion expires.

Later on Friday, he was referred to as a promising candidate by Elon Musk, the owner of X, formerly known as Twitter. Musk reacted to a post shared by former FOX News presenter Tucker Carlson showing a clip from an interview conducted with Ramaswamy.

"Vivek Ramaswamy is the youngest Republican presidential candidate ever. He's worth listening to," Carlson wrote on X.

He said that he would expand the Abraham Accords, the normalization deals between Israel and Arab countries. After Israel is more integrated with its neighboring countries, Ramaswamy said, Israel should be able to stand on its own two feet financially.

“Come 2028, that additional aid won’t be necessary in order to still have the kind of stability that we’d actually have in the Middle East by having Israel more integrated in with its partners,” he said.

The policy point separates Ramaswamy from his two main rivals vying for the nomination — Donald Trump and Ron DeSantis, who are staunch supporters of Israel and its military. But it puts him in line with a growing number of voices from across the ideological spectrum who says Israel should no longer get as much from the United States as it has.

Ramaswamy, a 38-year-old biotech entrepreneur, and investor, appeared on comedian-turned-podcaster Russell Brand’s video show on Rumble. The comments on aid to Israel were a response to a viewer's question.

He argued that Israel should not receive preferential treatment from the United States, even though our relationship with Israel has advanced American interests over time. “There’s no North Star commitment to any one country, other than the United States of America,” Ramaswamy said.

Ramaswamy’s popularity is on the rise and he is now close behind DeSantis in national polls. A Fox News survey published Wednesday found 11% of respondents support him, compared to 16% for DeSantis and 53% for Trump.

Ramaswamy mentioned Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Oman, and Indonesia as countries he would target as Abraham Accords partners; while Saudi Arabia is deep in negotiations with Israel and the United States about a possible Israel treaty, Oman recently criminalized relations of any kind with Israel. Indonesia is also noted for its high levels of antisemitism — FIFA, the world soccer body, this year moved its under-20 World Cup from Indonesia to Argentina after the Southeast Asian nation protested Israel’s inclusion in the event.

US aid to Israel has become more of a campaign issue over the past two presidential contests. In the lead-up to the 2020 election, prominent Democrats such as Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez brought up the idea of conditioning at least some aid over Israel’s policies, particularly those involving the Palestinians.

In May, Betsy McCollum, a longtime critic of Israel policy, re-introduced a bill that would condition US aid to Israel. Sixteen progressive House representatives co-sponsored the bill, including other prominent Israel critics such as Rashida Tlaib, Ilhan Omar, and Pramila Jayapal.

More recently, centrists and people on the right have joined in openly considering reducing aid to Israel, though for different reasons. Last month, New York Times columnist Nick Kristof floated ending aid to Israel entirely.

Ramaswamy — who had before his campaign been a leading defender of Donald Trump in his ongoing indictment crises — has also indicated he would pull back funding and military support for other allies, including Ukraine and Taiwan.

He told Jewish Insider in June that Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky had allowed Jews and other minorities to be mistreated during the country’s war with Russia, Zelensky himself is Jewish.

 

 

 

 

 

McCarthy pledges to invite Netanyahu to Washington

US House Speaker Kevin McCarthy arrived in Israel with a bi-partisan delegation of 19 other members of Congress to celebrate Israel’s 75th anniversary. He promised to bring Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to Capitol Hill in Washington if US President Joe Biden continued to refuse to invite him to the White House.

"I'll invite the prime minister to come meet with the House. He's a dear friend, as a prime minister of a country that we have our closest ties with,” McCarthy told the Hebrew daily Yisrael HaYom on the first day of his two-day trip to Israel.

McCarthy arrived with a bi-partisan delegation of 19 other members of Congress to celebrate Israel’s 75th anniversary. He is expected to address the Knesset plenum on Monday, a rare move that has been done only once before by Newt Gingrich in 1998.

The bi-partisan delegation’s visit is viewed as symbolic of the strong Israeli-US ties at a time when tensions are high between Biden and Netanyahu over the latter’s judicial overhaul plan.

Netanyahu had expected to be invited to the White House after his new government was sworn in at the end of December. Despite initial promises that an invitation would be forthcoming, Biden publicly stated he had no plans to invite Netanyahu at this time.

The Biden administration fears that the overhaul would weaken Israeli democracy, while Netanyahu has argued that it would strengthen it.

McCarthy told Yisrael HaYom that too much time had lapsed.

"I think it's too long now. He [Biden] should invite him soon,” McCarthy said.

McCarthy has in the past spoken strongly in support of Netanyahu who he is expected to meet during the visit.

 

 

Year 2020 has changed our lives for ever

It has truly been a year like no other, with the pandemic dominating not just every news cycle but each of our lives. From work to family life, where we went, and what we did, nothing was untouched by COVID-19. But as people got used to phrases like “self-isolate” and “social distancing”, there were plenty of other news too. 

Coronavirus

The year began with a new virus originating from Wuhan, China. Wei Guixian, a 57-year-old shrimp seller, is thought to have been the first person infected. “Every winter I always suffer from the flu,” she later told Chinese media. “So I thought it was the flu.” We now know it wasn’t. COVID-19, as it has since been named, first took hold in the Chinese city then swept the globe. In Wuhan, some citizens have decided to sue the government for what they believe was suppression of the news in the early days of the virus. By January, the first case was in the UK and by March the world witnessed lockdown, focused on maintaining distance and washing hands repeatedly. As cases mounted across the world, there were unexpected issues, like those who wanted to believe that Covid-19 was in fact a hoax. As well as the terrible human cost, with tens of thousands dead in Britain and more than 100,000 still suffering with long-term effects, the pandemic has delivered the largest economic shock to the UK in three centuries – and it isn’t over yet. But with a vaccine now being given to the most vulnerable, even with Christmas plans derailed by another surge, there is still hope for 2021.

Brexit

When Boris Johnson won last December’s election, he succeeded on a series of slogans. First up was to “Get Brexit Done”, which he did, taking Britain out of the European Union on 31 January. After that, it gets a bit more tricky. He pledged to “level up” the country, and, after coronavirus hit, suggested a “Rooseveltian approach”, invoking FDR’s New Deal, though there’s little sign much has changed yet in the “red wall” seats the Tories took from Labour. However, the most pertinent of his soundbites now appears to be the promise that he had an “oven-ready deal” with the EU over Brexit. With time running out, there’s still no trade deal in sight. In the pantheon of prime ministers, Johnson’s currently far from the top of the pile after a whirlwind 12 months. But falling at the final hurdle with Brexit could make things far worse for both the prime minister’s legacy and, more importantly, the country.

US politics

Even by the standards of Donald Trump’s presidency, 2020 has provided some eye-opening moments. Questionable presidential pardons were perhaps to be expected, as were outrageous election claims. Suggestions of injecting bleach into the body to stop coronavirus, on the other hand, were not something anyone expected of a president. As 2020 progressed, the protests in the wake of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor’s deaths took hold across the United States and with them questions over the response from heavy-handed police. Along with coronavirus, it became the big issue of American politics, neither of which Trump had any real solution too, other than to stoke flames. By summer, the Republicans were already preparing for life after Trump. Stuck in campaign mode, the president pressed on, maskless, with rally after rally, and even planned to go ahead with a Republican convention as normal. Now, with Joe Biden set to come into power in a few weeks, the question is how much havoc Trump can wreak before leaving the Oval Office – and what he does next.

Climate crisis

The year began with bushfires blazing across Australia, killing 500 million animals and more than a dozen people, with acres upon acres left scorched in their wake. But it could end on a hopeful note, as the UK looks ahead to hosting the Cop26 climate summit in November. Joe Biden’s election, and his pledge to sign the US up to the Paris Agreement again, will surely help – with climate an issue that could bring him together with British leaders. In the UK, the government’s independent climate advisers have put together recommendations for how the country can limit its carbon emissions to keep temperatures down, and it’ll take more than sending fewer emails. Instead, they say that by 2050 almost every element of our lives will have to change, from the cars we drive to what we eat, if we’re to reach net-zero emissions. But can it really be done while building a third runway at Heathrow airport?

Arabs Israel relations

Many countries have established diplomatic relations with Israel in quick succession. The decision to establish diplomatic relations by itself cannot create alliance. In case of the Arab world, the matter is different. Within each country, there are factions that are hostile to Israel. Any regime that opens relations with Israel will have to face this reality. Each state that has recognized Israel has broken a barrier. Among many Arabs, it is a violation of a fundamental principle. This process, which began with the UAE, is rooted partly in the US Middle Eastern policy that has played an important role in implicitly endorsing the process and occasionally adding a sweetener. The US also made it clear that it was withdrawing its forces from the region and reducing its commitments. That left the region without the power that held it together. These countries could and did work together, but only through secret contacts and US coordination. Without the United States, each state was left to either go it alone or form meaningful relations on the whole. The US policy forced the countries of the region to face a reality they had tried to hide.