Here on the Lake Traverse Reservation, home to the Sisseton Wahpeton Oyate of Dakota, we admired a question Brainerd Dispatch reporter Gabriel Lagarde reports asking in Gazelka one of few state lawmakers invited to Trump-Netanyahu summit:
. . . Gazelka — who described himself as deeply religious and an ardent supporter of the Jewish people — said just as Trump was the first U.S. president to declare Jerusalem the capital of Israel, the plan shows he will continue to honor the birthright of “God’s chosen people” that’s over 2,000 years in the making.
Gazelka speculated his own participation at the event may have stemmed, in part, from his widely publicized statements in opposition to rising anti-Semitism in recent months. [Editor's note: Example here]
Asked how biblical rights based on texts written 2,000 years ago have bearing on modern land disputes in Palestine when, closer to home, local Minnesotan communities struggle to reconcile Native American treaties written in the 1800s, Gazelka didn’t answer directly, but noted Trump’s plan is also a victory in strategic and humane terms.
“It’s a step forward for the Judeo-Christian connection, but also the democracy connection with Israel in finding peace there,” Gazelka said of the region’s only functioning democratic state. “This region is the center of conflict of the big three monotheistic religions and we have an opportunity to protect democracy in a land where democracy hasn't existed.”
We'll remember that love of democracy on the part the Minnesota Senate Majority Leader when Minnesota conservatives next bloviate about republics over democracies.
Bluestem confesses to being much more cynical about Gazelka's presence at the White House summit. We tweeted:
— Sally Jo Sorensen (@sallyjos) January 28, 2020
We might have been on to something about the motives of the national leaders, however cheeky we were about what's moving Gazelka's behavior, though his religious impulses have been in the news this month. Witness the Minnesota Reformer's Senate leader tells televangelist he’s in a ‘spiritual battle.'
At the New York Times, analyst David Sanger was blunt in A Deal That Has Two Elections, Rather Than Mideast Peace, as Its Focus:
A president trying to prevail in an impeachment trial stood with an Israeli prime minister under indictment on Tuesday to announce a long-delayed plan for resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, and the result sounded more like a road map for their own futures than for the Middle East.
For President Trump, it is a plan that builds on his decision to move the United States Embassy to Jerusalem — a huge political success among his conservative Jewish donors and evangelicals that, contrary to predictions, did not touch off a violent reaction in the region.
Mr. Trump now enters the heart of his election campaign declaring that he has delivered a plan that makes Jerusalem the undivided capital of Israel and relegates the Palestinian capital to a suburb, and one that Mr. Trump, in a triumph of real-estate branding, is suddenly calling “East Jerusalem.”
And the timing is no accident: At a moment when cable television is focused on impeachment and the prospect that the former national security adviser John R. Bolton might testify, Mr. Trump had a chance to stand in the East Room and cast himself as a peacemaker. With rare self-discipline, he never mentioned the word impeachment.
For his part, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel marches toward his March elections wielding the potent argument that Israelis should ignore his indictment on corruption charges and focus on the fact that he, by force of his relationship with Mr. Trump, moved Washington to give permanent legitimacy to the Jewish settlements in disputed territory.
By Sunday, the prime minister said as he was leaving Washington, Israel will essentially annex the strategically vital part of the Jordan Valley that its military already controls. As the Israeli election nears, those moves allow him to sell himself as the Trump whisperer, the indispensable man who bent the White House to his will.
“Strip away the domestic and Israeli political considerations that determined the timing of the plan’s release," said Robert Malley, the president of the International Crisis Group and a former Obama administration official, “and the message to the Palestinians, boiled down to its essence, is: You’ve lost, get over it.”
That message, implicitly or explicitly, rewrites the art of the Middle East deal. By tilting the map of a future Palestinian state so precipitously in Israel’s direction, Mr. Trump has embraced a plan that essentially dismantles 60 years of bipartisan support for a negotiated process between Israelis and Palestinians, in which both make concessions and land swaps that would define the lines of a new map.
As Mr. Trump acknowledged, Washington would no longer play the role of neutral arbiter — even while vowing to be Israel’s source of protection. Instead, the United States has drawn the lines in a series of maps that sketch out a future Palestinian state that is so gerrymandered that it requires the construction of a giant tunnel across Israel to connect two areas of Palestinian control. . . .
Read the rest at the New York Times. Perhaps the Dispatch's Mr. Lagarde is on to something in raising the nagging questions that remain from the consequences of treaty-making closer to home.
Photo: Senate Majority Leader Paul Gazelka and Senate President Jeremy Miller, R-Winona, at the White House with former U.S. Senator and lobbyist Norm Coleman. Photo via Minnesota Senate Republican Caucus twitter feed. The Hill reported earlier this month Ex-Sen. Norm Coleman leaving leadership role at lobbying firm. While Coleman is no longer in the leadership role, he's still on staff:
“From time-to-time we take a hard look at whether everyone’s talents are being used in the most productive possible way, and we determined that Sen. Coleman better served the practice by simply being Norm and having more time to devote himself to advocating for our clients," Zapien told The Hill in a statement.
View Coleman's 2019 clients here. Also of interest, a 2019 New Yorker interview, Norm Coleman Explains Why Supporters of Israel Should Thank Donald Trump.
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