Israel’s Bibi Netanyahu, Donald Trump’s close personal friend, has done it again.
Congress is in recess, as Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Kentucky) sits at home figuring out how badly he would anger his close personal friends in the NRA by allowing the Senate to vote on meaningful gun control legislation, as in universal background checks.
Nine million seventy-four thousand people live in Israel, and seventy-four percent of them are Jews. Arabs comprise twenty-one percent of the population (some of them, in and around Bethlehem, in the Occupied Territories, are Orthodox Christians).
America’s first two Muslim Congresswomen, Ilhan Omar (D-Minnesota), and Rashida Tlaib (D-Michigan) were all set to visit Israel during the recess. Both, especially Rep. Omar, have been justifiably critical of Israel’s policies against Arabs.
Congresswoman Omar is part of the “squad” of progressive, newly elected Democratic Congresswomen, vilified by Trump, who are women of color. Omar was born in Somalia and is a naturalized American citizen. Omar, Rep. Tlaib, Rep. Ayanna Pressley (D-Mass.), and AOC (Rep. Alexandra Ocasio-Cortez, D-NY) have all been told by our Xenophobe-in-Chief to “go back where they came from” as he continues to whip up his base.
Although Reps. Omar and Tlaib had been approved for travel to Israel, Trump asked Bibi at the last minute to forbid their entry, and of course Bibi accommodated him (https://www.politico.com/story/2019/08/15/israel-ilhan-omar-rashida-tlaib-netanyahu-1463655).
Associate solitary reporter Aziz Mahmood cheered loudly when Speaker Nancy Pelosi and others in the Democratic leadership in the House, as well as Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-New York), blasted Bibi’s highly provocative move.
Our chief international correspondent, associate solitary reporter Larry Theis, and our Chief Congressional correspondent, associate solitary reporter Melissa Smith, heard numerous Republican Members of Congress grumbling about the nefarious Trump-Bibi decision.
Elsewhere, former Colorado Governor John (“Hick”) Hickenlooper has, sensibly, dropped out of the Democratic presidential primary field. Hick has been widely courted by national Democrats to enter the very crowded primary field to run against Sen. Cory Gardner, one of the most vulnerable GOP senators up for re-election next year.
But Hick had earlier taken himself out of the Senate race. If he does enter, he will lose big-time to Colorado’s former Speaker of the House, Andrew Romanoff.