Trump says US backs Israel '100%' over Gaza escalation

WASHINGTON/JERUSALEM: President Donald Trump assured Israel on Sunday that it has Washington's full support after the Jewish state led waves of retaliatory strikes in the Gaza Strip in response to Palestinian rockets.

"Once again, Israel faces a barrage of deadly rocket attacks by terrorist groups Hamas and Islamic Jihad. We support Israel 100% in its defense of its citizens," Trump tweeted.

"To the Gazan people - these terrorist acts against Israel will bring you nothing but more misery. END the violence and work towards peace - it can happen!"

....To the Gazan people — these terrorist acts against Israel will bring you nothing but more misery. END the violence and work towards peace - it can happen!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) May 6, 2019

Reviewing ties

The United States may review its ties with countries it deems as being anti-Israel after what a US envoy said on Sunday was a shift in policy toward equating anti-Zionism with anti-Semitism.

US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo said in a March speech that anti-Zionism - opposition to Israel’s existence as a homeland for the Jewish people - was a form of anti-Semitism, or hostility toward Jews, that was on the rise worldwide and that Washington would “fight it relentlessly”.

The State Department’s special envoy for monitoring and combating anti-Semitism, Elan Carr, said this US position could spell reviews of ties with foreign governments or leaders.

“The United States is willing to review its relationship with any country, and certainly anti-Semitism on the part of a country with whom we have relations is a deep concern,” he told Reuters during a visit to Israel.

“I will be raising that issue in bilateral meetings that I am undertaking all over the world,” he said. “That is something we are going to have frank and candid conversations about - behind closed doors.”

Carr declined to cite specific countries or leaders, or to elaborate on what actions the Trump administration might take.

“I obviously can’t comment on diplomatic tools that we might bring to bear,” he said. “Each country is a different diplomatic challenge, a different situation, number one. And number two, if I started disclosing what we might do it would be less effective.”



Some US political analysts say that President Donald Trump and other Republicans hope support for Israel will attract Jewish voters, including those disaffected by pro-Palestinian voices within progressive Democratic Party circles.

At the same time, critics have credited Trump’s confrontational, nationalistic rhetoric with encouraging right-wing extremists and feeding a surge in activity by American hate groups. The administration has flatly rejected that charge.

Carr said the administration’s equating of anti-Zionism with anti-Semitism “certainly breaks new ground ... by making clear that something that a lot of us who are involved in the Jewish world and a lot of us who are proponents of a strong US-Israel relationship have known for quite some time, and that is that one of the chief flavors of anti-Semitism in the world today is the flavor that conceals itself under anti-Zionism”.