The Republican Party’s Strategic Thinker in the United States: Bradley Blakeman

26-8-2018

I watched the program “Beyond the News” on Al Jazeera last night, Saturday, 25-8-2018 at 9:30, where the program host Ghada Owais hosted Bradley Blakeman, the media and political adviser of the Republican Party in the United States, and Mohammad al-Hourani, a member of the Palestinian Revolutionary Council, to comment on the US administration’s reduction of its aid to the Palestinian Authority by $200 million. Blakeman stated the reasons for this reduction, and without any hesitation, that the United States cannot continue to support a terrorist state — by which he meant the Palestinian Authority — that does not know how to use the funds the United States gives it, but rather conducts terrorist operations against Washington’s allies such as Israel, to which “we are loyal first and last.” He claimed that the Palestinian Authority is terrorist and its leaders are corrupt, and that the United States cannot assist while this terrorist regime exists. He added in several interventions that the Palestinians are terrorists who kill Israeli children daily. When the presenter asked him to name an Israeli child killed by Palestinians — while she had names of hundreds of Palestinian children killed by Israelis — he replied that she (the program host) should read the newspapers on the Internet. He said that the US administration made this reduction in aid to the Palestinian Authority because it — meaning the US administration — wants to invest its funds in the right direction and to ensure that these funds are spent according to US national security interests, as he said. He said that the despair visible on the faces of the Palestinians does not originate from the Israelis, but rather the problem is the Palestinian Authority, “the terrorist [authority],” he claimed. He believes that Israel wants peace with the Palestinians, that it is the United States’ most important ally, and that it — meaning Israel — is a lawful state that exports the goods the world wants, while the Palestinians export terrorism and use schools and hospitals to store weapons and create human shields, he claimed.

In his answers, Blakeman also wondered about the billions of dollars the Palestinian Authority has received from donors, dollars that, if the Authority were sincere in spending them in the right direction, could have paved the Palestinians’ streets with gold, he claimed.

The answers of the media and political adviser of the Republican Party in the United States left no room for doubt about the current and future orientation of the US administration, which does not recognize the existence of Palestinians under Israeli occupation.

It is worth noting that Blakeman is an American Jew, he is a lawyer, he worked in the administration of President Bush between 2001–2004, and he was one of the supporters of the invasion of Iraq. He is the president of Freedom Watch and a member of the boards of directors of media and political institutions, and he served as a member of the United States Holocaust Memorial Council. He is a university professor at George Washington University. He is among the neoconservatives in the Republican Party and is sixty years old.

Blakeman drew listeners’ attention that if peace is not achieved, they — meaning the Americans — will maintain the status quo as it currently stands.

It is worth mentioning that US President Trump had signed a law called “Taylor Force” that prohibits funding the Palestinian Authority in the amount of $300 million. This law, signed in March 2018, prevents the US State Department from transferring aid to the Palestinian Authority so long as the Palestinian Authority transfers allocations to the families of martyrs and prisoners, whom the law states are persons who killed Israelis. The US Congress had approved this law named “Taylor Force,” commemorating an American student who was an officer in the US Army and who was killed in the city of Jaffa in March 2016 — stabbed by a Palestinian in the city’s clock square, the Palestinian city located in the territories of Palestine of 1948.

The Palestinian National Authority is called upon to pursue options to confront this American siege, whether philosophically — by not recognizing the occupation and by maintaining the current status quo as it is — in addition to defining and classifying the number of refugees at the figure of 40,000 refugees based on neighborhoods of Palestinian refugees. Financially, Palestinian schools and hospitals will be affected by this American funding cut, in addition to being noticeably affected by the United States’ freezing of support to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency for Palestine Refugees, which runs 700 schools with about half a million students.

All these American concepts must be corrected, not by refusing to negotiate with them, but by negotiating with them in ways not previously tried. The Russian Federation continues to negotiate with the United States despite ongoing sanctions imposed on it in a humiliating manner, as described by Russian officials. Sitting in isolation from America, with successive racist laws and settlement activity and other near-daily approvals to construct new settlement units that complete facts on the ground, is severely harmful to the cause — the same harm that Palestinian division has continued for twelve years in imposing choices with this side or that in order to liquidate the Palestinian cause, with no Arab support and no Palestinian concord. It is enough to have a division. The Palestinian National Authority must refute all these allegations of its corruption by all means of disclosure and transparency to its citizens and to its donors, and through specialized United Nations organizations, and prove the falsity of such allegations. Time is running out, and there is fear of the end of hope, despite the Palestinians not surrendering and not raising white flags — as Mr. al-Hourani said in this interview — but that is insufficient. And the days are coming....