Jared Kushner Going To Solve Middle East Without Any Of Your Bullshit Book-Learning, Is What!

So, Boychik! Your meeting leaked to the press, and for once   you weren't the leaker! There's a first time for everything, right? Your deputy staff director Katie Petru warned the roomful of interns that God would surely smite them if they shared your top-secret words of wisdom with the press.

To record today’s session would be such a breach of trust, from my opinion. This town is full of leakers, and everyone knows who they are, and no one trusts them. In this business your reputation is everything. I’ve been on the Hill for 15 years. I’ve sat in countless meetings with members of Congress where important decisions were being made. During all those years in all those meetings, I never once leaked to a reporter … If someone in your office has asked you to break our protocol and give you a recording so they can leak it, as a manager, that bothers me at my core.

So of course the tape wound up in Wired's inbox within a few hours.

</center> <p>In fairness, if I was dumb enough to tell a bunch of interns that I ran a campaign <a href="http: //foreignpolicy.com/2017/07/31/kusher-to-interns-trump-team-too-disorganized-to-collude-with-russia/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">too stupid and disorganized to collaborate with the Russians</a>, <em>I'd want to keep that stuff on the DL, too</em>. </p><p>But as the resident Hebrew in the Wonkhaus, I have a bone to pick with you on your extemporaneous musings on the Israeli Palestinian situation. </p><p/><blockquote>So first of all, this is one of the ones I was asked to take on, and I did with this <strong>something that I do with every problem set</strong> you get.</blockquote> <p>Let's just skip past "one of the ones I was asked to take on," because NO, WE CANNOT EVEN. </p><p>"Every problem set"? Are you really going to solve the Middle East with your Mad MBA Skillz? <em>Vey iz mir!</em> </p><p/><blockquote>And what I’ve determined from looking at it is that not a whole lot has been accomplished over the last 40 or 50 years we've been doing this.</blockquote> <p>Got it. Nothing at all happened since the Six Days War in 1967. No annexation of the Golan Heights. No occupation. No arrival of <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jewish_exodus_from_Arab_and_Muslim_countries" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">hundreds of thousands of non-white Jews</a> expelled from Arab countries. No <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Egypt%E2%80%93Israel_Peace_Treaty" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">peace treaty with Egypt</a> in 1979. No expansion of settlements in the West Bank. No <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Israel%E2%80%93Jordan_peace_treaty" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">peace treaty with Jordan</a> in 1994. No war with Lebanon. No Israeli withdrawal from Gaza in 2005. No border wall. No intifadas. <em>Bupkis</em>. </p><p/><blockquote>And the other thing about it I’d say is that the variables haven’t been changed much, so at some point it's just one of those things where you kind of have to just pick and choose where you draw conclusion. But that was the other observation I had.</blockquote> <p>Dude, have you been drinking from your father-in-law's special coffee mug? Absolutely everything has changed in the Middle East over the past "40 or 50 years." In case you didn't notice, Israel became a massive tech and arms hub. The days when it could claim a credible threat from an organized Arab army ended decades ago. Every government in the region has been captured by fundamentalists. Lebanon, Syria, and Iraq are melting down in the brewing regional conflict between Sunnis and Shiites. Iran is ascendant. And, by the way, Israel has already chosen to ally with Sunni Saudi Arabia if and when this war really gets going. </p><p>Not for nothing, Boychik, but what exactly did they teach you in that yeshiva? </p><p/><blockquote>You know everyone finds an issue, that “You have to understand what they did then” and “You have to understand that they did this.” But how does that help us get peace? Let's not focus on that. <strong>We don’t want a history lesson. We’ve read enough books.</strong></blockquote> <p>Lordy I wish there weren't tapes! No, Jared. You <em>really, really</em> haven't read enough books. Maybe check out <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Doomed-Succeed-U-S-Israel-Relationship-Truman/dp/0374141460" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Doomed To Succeed</a> by Dennis Ross, an actual grown-up, career diplomat who worked on these issues in the Carter, Reagan, Bush 1, Clinton, Bush 2 and Obama administrations. Pretty sure he'd tell you NOT to waltz in and say that everything people have cared about for 5,000 years is unimportant and the only thing that matters is facts on the ground. </p><p/><blockquote>They say look, you know, this is a change to the status quo. The Temple Mount is a [unintelligible] occupation of Israel, and Israel was saying we don’t want anything to do with that, we just want to make sure people are safe. And that really incited a lot of tension in the streets.</blockquote> <p>See, that's what I'm talking about, Jared. To you and me, it's the Temple Mount. But to a billion Muslims, it's the Al Aqsa Mosque. <em>Nobody</em> likes being written out of the history of the Middle East -- not Muslims, not Christians, not Jews. Maybe if you'd ever read anything in your life besides Fast Company magazine, you'd understand that. No wonder you managed to <a href="http://www.nydailynews.com/news/world/jared-kushner-meeting-palestinian-leader-not-article-1.3275129" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">completely piss off the Palestinians</a> at your first meeting in Ramallah. </p><p/><blockquote>My point is that these things are very, very combustible and very, very delicate in terms of how you can do, but I think the fact that all these conversations were all done in quiet and nothing leaked out [unintelligible]. But I think we were able to keep things quiet. But I mean, any day something could happen.</blockquote> <p>So your meetings with the Israelis and the Jordanians didn't leak. Mazal Tov! Did you think we all forgot about that time <a href="https://wonkette.substack.com/p/trump-gave-the-russians-israeli-intelligence-have-fun-on-your-israel-trip-mr-president" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">your father-in-law blabbed highly classified Israeli intel to the Russians in the Oval Office</a>? Are you really the guy to be delivering the Loose Lips Sink Ships Lecture? </p><p>But to your other point -- yes, the Israeli-Palestinian conflict <em>is</em> "very combustible." Newsflash: Everyone involved is batshit crazy! In June, Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas asked the Israelis to decrease the power supply to Gaza in an effort to punish Hamas, which rules the Gaza strip. And Israel did it! So now 2 million people crammed into 140 square miles are subsisting on 4-5 hours per day of electricity. When you say, "Any day something could happen," you're right! </p><p><img id="a3198" data-rm-shortcode-id="b20743c6ba8e3b44b88918c272771cef" data-rm-shortcode-name="rebelmouse-image" class="rm-shortcode " loading="lazy" src="https://assets.rebelmouse.io/eyJhbGciOiJIUzI1NiIsInR5cCI6IkpXVCJ9.eyJpbWFnZSI6Imh0dHBzOi8vYXNzZXRzLnJibC5tcy8xNzY2NjI3MC9vcmlnaW4ucG5nIiwiZXhwaXJlc19hdCI6MTczMzAzMzQ2NH0.gM1wzUX1SQXNEOcv2b18igm8y-x6hvgLBLzcrui4SNU/img.png?width=980" /> Image from Haaretz.com </p><p>So why don't you do the world a favor and go sit next to your wife's father and make sure he doesn't tweet anything incendiary enough to start another shooting war in the Middle East. Because this isn't some condo development where you're going to let everyone have their say and then cut a deal in six months. It's fun to play the <em>macher</em>, but this job requires someone with an actual attention span. You can't pretend to solve it in your spare time when you're not busy pretending to solve America's opioid crisis! </p><p>This problem set isn't for you, Jared. Go home, Boychik! </p><p>[<a href="https://www.wired.com/story/jared-kushner-middle-east/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Wired</a> / <a href="https://www.mediaite.com/online/is-ivanka-a-white-house-leaker-speculation-abounds-after-curiously-timed-puff-pieces/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Mediaite</a> / <a href="http://www.haaretz.com/middle-east-news/palestinians/1.800735" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">Haaretz</a>] </p><p><strong>You may now commence screaming at us for being a Zionist mouthpiece! Hooray! But don't forget to <a href="https://wonkette.substack.com/subscribe/" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">put some money in the till</a> while you're at it.</strong></p>