WASHINGTON (Dispatches) – Former U.S. president Donald Trump in an interview that circulated on social media on Friday said Jewish people in the United States “don’t like Israel”.
“The Jewish people in the United States either don’t like Israel or don’t care about Israel,” Trump said in an interview with Israeli journalist Barak Ravid, author of the recently published book, Trump’s Peace: The Abraham Accords and the Reshaping of the Middle East.
The former U.S. president blamed many Jewish Americans for their voting record, stating: “It used to be that Israel had absolute power over Congress, and today I think it’s the exact opposite.”
Trump said his predecessor, Barrack Obama, and President Joe Biden (both Democrats) were responsible for what he claimed is the lack of congressional support for the Zionist regime, adding: “Yet, in the election, they still get a lot of votes from Jewish people.”
Over the past few years, some have said that the Democratic Party is slowly tilting against support for the occupying regime, a position that has been a bedrock of U.S. foreign policy in the Middle East for decades.
In 2019, Trump said Jews who vote for Democrats are not loyal to the Zionist regime. He also said American Jews “don’t love Israel enough.”
In the recent interview with Ravid, Trump also said that the Jewish Sulzberger family publishes The New York Times, but the publication, he said, “hates Israel.”
“They’re Jewish people that run The New York Times,” Trump said.
Trump, who closely allied with former Zionist prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu during the latter’s time in office, also said Netanyahu did not want to make peace with the Palestinians.
In his comments, Trump voiced an expletive about Netanyahu for being quick to congratulate Biden on his controversial victory in last year’s election.
Experts and politicians have said that Trump’s hardline support for the Zionist regime was aimed at appealing to evangelical Christians, who believe the only intense conflict in the Middle East and the gathering of Jews in the occupied territories is a prerequisite for the return of Jesus.
Trump recognized Al-Quds as the Zionist regime’s so-called capital in December 2017 and signed a proclamation in March 2019 recognizing the occupying regime’s ‘sovereignty’ over the occupied Golan Heights, Syrian territory.