After Donald Trump was sworn in as America’s 45th president in 2017, the Arab American community made the mistake of joining the Democrats’ attacks on him, refusing to meet him or engage with him on policies. This was despite the fact that one of Trump’s closest business friends on his hit TV shows “The Apprentice” and “The Celebrity Apprentice” was a Palestinian, Farouk Shami.

Many Arab Americans incredulously expected Trump to do what their own Democratic allies refused to do: undermine the extremist government of Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and elevate the interests of Palestinian rights.

Instead of engaging with Trump, they joined in the personal attacks and confrontation orchestrated by Democrats, including defeated presidential candidate Hillary Clinton, who was responsible for many failures in the Middle East when she was secretary of state.

One of the consequences was that Palestinians boycotted the 2019 “Peace to Prosperity” conference organized in Bahrain by Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner, an Orthodox Jew with strong ties to Israel. With no Palestinians present to push back, the conference strengthened the agenda of Israel and Netanyahu with Trump and the White House. As a result,........

© Eurasia Review