#the rudolph slander WILL continue

[chongoblog]

The other reindeer chatting with Rudolph

#the rudolph slander WILL continue

[bopinion]

2020 / 47

Aperçu of the week:

I dissent! (Ruth Bader Ginsburg)

Bad news of the week:

Why am I actually surprised? It was clear that Donald Trump would fight against an unfavorable election outcome for him. It is well known that the Republicans are bad losers, since they know that they are simply entitled to the political leadership of the USA. It was foreseeable that loudspeakers like Rudolph Giuliani or Tucker Carlson would now finally, albeit invisibly, think they had evidence of an anti-American conspiracy in their hands. It was to be expected that disappointed voters of a defeated demagogue would take to the streets to demand their own version of the truth as reality.

None of this comes as a surprise. But the Republican establishment's stupid adherence to Trumpism does. It was clear that the two "sons by profession" Donald Junior and Eric, or various Fox News presenters, lacked insight in their public statements. But Mike Pompeo, Mitch McConnell, Lindsey Graham, etc. are coldly calculating, lying opportunists - but they are certainly not stupid. Why do they hold on to something that should go down in the history books of American politics as an absurd episode, but not as the beginning of a new era? Are they really looking for the perspective salvation of their "Grand Old Party" on the horrifying aberrations of the last four years?

The first week after election day I was shocked that (almost) half a democratic nation voted for an autocrat - this time with a sighted eye. The second current week I am shocked at how the Republican establishment is lacking in identity and standing. I remember how, at the beginning of the pre-election campaign, practically all the party's officials made disparaging remarks about this self-centered, ignorant newcomer to politics, who seriously thought he could lead this proud party. Level of mental disorientation: about 10%. Then he actually won the ticket and one had to stand behind him in the name of the greater good, he would lose and one could soon forget this abnormality. Level of mental disorientation: above 25%. Then he triumphed over Hillary Clinton and you rubbed your eyes in amazement, would contain him confidently ("The office is stronger than the person") and make the best of it, the main thing was that you were back in power. Level of mental disorientation: well over 50%. Then this guy turned out to be a lazy and unteachable tyrant, raging in the staff tableau and on Twitter, not giving a damn about responsibilities and "checks and balances," confusing official authority with personal loyalty, pushing allies and partners to the side in favor of dictators, and isolating himself and his country in international politics, lost the midterm elections and his approval ratings dropped, proved incapable and unwilling to face any social challenge - and he was allowed to continue and simply waved him through as a presidential candidate. Level of mental disorientation: a good 90 %. Then he polarized worse than ever, dismantled state institutions, slandered political competitors, lost the Popular vote and the Electoral College, refused to recognize them, and there is talk of electoral fraud, dreams of a second term in office, and at least expects to run with him again in 2024. Excuse me? Where do we stand now? At over 100%?

Of course, you can change your political positions over many years, even revise them. One makes compromises and forges appropriate and timely coalitions of convenience. In a classic party career, you not only gain political experience, but also companions - in negative terms, dependencies. Nothing welds people together like a common corpse in the cellar. But you never lose your ideals, you have to stand for something. Actually, there are only two possible interpretations of this distortion of reality, which is in principle incomprehensible. Either there is a secret master plan, which I simply haven't understood yet. Or the Republicans are now showing their true face. And that would be a pretty ugly one.

Good news of the week:

It used to be called hocus-pocus or abracadabra before the rabbit was pulled out of the cylinder. The current magic word is BNT162b2. The biotechnology start-up BioNTech from Mainz, Germany, seems to have succeeded, coupled with the resources and market power of Pfizer, the second largest pharmaceutical company in the world, in developing a truly highly effective vaccine against the coronavirus with hardly any side effects. What is fascinating for the amateur is that the vaccine is not, as it is usually the case, a miniature version of a pathogen that tricks the body into believing that it is diseased so that it can produce antibodies against it. Rather, a messenger substance consisting of ribonucleic acid building blocks simply tells the corresponding cells what to do without any detours. Sounds so simple that one almost has to ask oneself why nobody has thought of it so far.

Now follows the fireworks of stock market explosions, interpretative sovereignty and false laurels that are common in breakthroughs. Donald Trump, for example, claims that the new vaccine is due exclusively to his "Operation Warp Speed", although the decisive interim financing came from the German government. And Pfizer too has somehow forgotten that they just jumped on a moving train, but maybe the PR department just doesn't know that. Anyway, it's the result that counts.

Really? Of course it is to be welcomed that there seems to be an effective remedy against the current scourge of mankind soon. At least if the final test series are positive and the relevant authorities carry out their market approval procedures meticulously but please quickly. But the really good news of the week for me is a different one, namely the development of BioNTech itself.

The two founders and masterminds of the company are not only a married couple, but also the children of Turkish migrants. That has rolemodel character in society. And with private venture capital (which, by the way, came mainly from two entrepreneurs in our district) and public funding, they succeeded in bringing an innovative flash of inspiration to market maturity. And not in Silicon Valley, but in the German province, where - typically German - you actually only get a loan when you can prove that you don't need it. In this country, "venture" is associated more with recklessness and risk than with the spirit of research and opportunities. This has rolemodel character in economis. If neither of these things turns out to be the exception, but rather a paradigm shift, I look forward to the future of the "old continent" with much more basic confidence. Yes, we can (also).

Sense of achievement of the week:

Ten weeks ago (2020/37) I wrote about the problem of nuclear waste. For which there is simply no solution. And now I get three answers yesterday. All three from the same sender: "Nuclear for Future". The name is program, of course. With a few empty Phrasen, it is explained that renewable energy is not yet sufficiently available and that nuclear energy is better than fossil fuels. Well, then I know now... ;-)

The great thing about it is that I seem to have been targeted by lobbyists. Some PR professional gives me the relevance to invest work in me. Even though it's only a few clicks for copy and paste, it makes me a little proud. And is my sense of achievement of the week.

By the way: yesterday was Friday the 13th - what a timing!

#aperçu #bad news #good news #thoughts #donald trump #gop #republicans #takeover #mental disorder #operation warp speed #coronavirus #pfizer #biontech #mrna #startup #biotechnology #politics #washington #bnt162b2

[samanthaviolet]

your final paper

I took a history of american television class in the spring, and after turning in my final paper, my TA emailed me with an email whose subject was “your final paper.” My heart sank as I opened an email that I was sure was going to be bad news, and she said something along the lines of how she was super impressed with it and that if I wanted to get it published, I probably could. 

now, I don’t know how valid that is, nor do I care too much to go into the detail of how to achieve actual, real life publication. But, i do know that I can copy and paste it here, and that throws it out into the world and reaches the potential that Victoria saw in me. 

This one’s for you, Vicki. 

LADIES WHO LAUGH: Exploring Feminist Progress in Saturday Night Live 

“Live from New York, it’s Saturday Night!” These seven words explode from the mouths of varied celebrities and comedians at 30 Rockefeller Center into the homes of millions across the nation, always at the same time each Saturday night. Saturday Night Live, the late night sketch comedy show created by Lorne Michaels and produced by NBC (commonly referred to as SNL), has been entertaining audiences since its premiere in 1975. With over thirty years of sketches, political commentary, and social spoofs, the show has been a breeding ground for discussions on representations in the world and workplace, specifically with regards to gender. Through an analysis of casting and a variety of show content, this paper will prove Saturday Night Live’s reflection of the women’s movement, effectively portraying women’s changing societal roles during the thirty-two years it has been on the air.

The format and structure of Saturday Night Live has stayed relatively in tact from the first episode to present day. Having a show primarily driven by the cast, beginning with seven members and getting all the way to sixteen by Season 42, an additional celebrity host appears on each episode. The ratio of male to female cast members is fairly close (in fact, they made it a point from the beginning for it to be equal among the genders, even though they have strayed from this ideal in recent years), but the number with regards to the hosts is startling and gives a good insight on which gender mainstream audiences. Over the forty years of SNL, there were 370 men as hosts and only 175 women (Baskin). Women have always been seen as the outcast with regards to entertainment, especially comedy, and this statistic proves that SNL was not doing much to break that. They had to give the people what they wanted in order to keep their ratings up, and instead of using their platform for good, they used their platform to perpetuate the inequality of women in entertainment.

These gender dynamics are not only seen on stage, but in the writer’s room as well. Saturday Night Live organizes the content of its show on a week-by-week basis — pitches happen on Mondays, table reads happen on Wednesdays, and material that worked from these move on to the shows on Saturdays. The weekly process weeded out all the ideas until only the best remained for the live airing on Saturday night. For sketches to proceed to the actual show, they had to be “funny in the room.” The problem is, is that most of the people in the room were men. Doug Hill and Jeff Weingrad state in Saturday Night: A Backstage History of Saturday Night Live that “a lot of the women writers’ sketches weren’t making it on the air, and the women performers were getting too many secretary and receptionist parts, written by the men” (Murphy). The gender binary was alive and well in the writing room, but of course, it was alive and well in every aspect of professional work, even in the wake of second-wave feminism. This misogynistic environment wasn't actively being worked against, either. Original SNL cast member John Belushi is often cited with his claim that “women aren’t funny.” His stunts to get women off the show included sabotaging table reads and even pressuring executive producer Lorne Michaels. He also refused to appear in the sketches written by women writers (Miller). This attitude toward women existing, as well as being tolerated by network executives, dominated for most of SNL life in the 20th century.

From the beginning of the show, the male-dominated aura of production prevailed. Women, as stated before, were cast as receptionists, nurses, makers of the household, and waitresses. Besides their actual roles on the show, they were also commonly seen solely as the objects of the male cast members. A great example of this is seen in the recurring sketch “The Festrunk Brothers,” featuring SNL greats Dan Aykroyd and Steve Martin. In this sketch from the third season, debuting on September 24, 1977, the duo try to pick up two women played by fellow cast members. The lines they give to the women are outlandish and supposed to garner some laughs, but causes more of a head-turning reaction than they probably intended. After some small talk, they lead into, “You know, you American girls have such big breasts all the time! Well, I guess you must like us by now, so please give us the number of your apartment so we can go up and have sex with you right now.” The antics between the two pairs continue until the end of the sketch (Baskin). Of course, it leaves live audiences and the people at home laughing at the absolute ridiculousness of the interaction. But, why would it be acceptable to be saying that to a woman at all, especially on national television? In a textbook on arts analysis, scholar Mark Fortier defines feminist theory as “profoundly concerned with the cultural representation of women, sometimes as a strictly masculinist fantasy with no relation to real women, sometimes as the appropriation of women and women’s bodies to masculine perspectives” (Fortier 72). This sketch violated both of these ideas by simply having the women in the sketch portrayed as the object of the men’s desires. Until the turn of the century, this is what plagued the women of the highest rated comedic variety show since the inception of television. Women already have the lower hand with regards to their legitimacy on screen (in both television and film), and portraying them in this light does not lend itself to improving this situation.

By 2000, SNL was dealing with some low ratings and trying to keep the show fresh and interesting after 25 years on the air, and to combat this, they began to flip societal expectations. In 2002, Newsweek proclaimed: “For most of its 27 years, Saturday Night Live has been comedy’s premier boys club. But not anymore.” This sudden influx of women increased the amount of women performers seen on screen and the show was carried with show-stopping females. It led into the time of Tina Fey, Amy Poehler, Maya Rudolph, and Kristin Wiig, the women who have made names for themselves in the entertainment world, using SNL as a springboard. This is directly related to the increase of women and women’s power in the writing room (Murphy).

As the years went on, there was increase of women on the production side, which correlated to an increase and improvement of female representation on the performance side. While of course it wasn’t perfect, there were not only were more women included in the acts, but the way that they were represented did not always align with traditional gender roles. For the first time ever, there were sketches entirely comprised of female cast members, without leaning on the stability of a man. “The Women of SNL” parody sketch (spoofing The Real Housewives) is a 2010 special from Season 36 that premiered on November 1, 2010, featuring women cast members and alumni. Seeing a couch full of just women was a sight that was not commonly seen, and relying on each other for the comedic effect was particularly successful. The fact that this special could stand alone separate from the season speaks volumes. Even so, women had to fight to get on. For example, comedian Rachel Dratch (famous especially for her hilarious “Debbie Downer” persona) took multiple auditions to get on the show. After her first audition, she recounted that “I didn’t get it that year...they said, ‘we’re not taking any women this year. But maybe next year.” She got casted three years later (Itzkoff).

Reporters began to claim at the beginning of the 21st century that women had moved from “saucy sidekick to stand-alone stars.” Helmed as the “Tina Fey” era, this is when cast members such as Tina Fey and Amy Poehler began to be known as the faces of the show as a franchise, both on screen and off screen. Here is when sketches such as “Debbie Downer” and

“Target Lady” became recurring, and women sketches took up a bulk of the program time. Another big marker of women’s progression on Saturday Night Live was the addition of female anchors on the weekly segment “Weekend Update.” A spoof on current events, “Weekend Update” features commentary and satire in the middle of each episode, usually led by a male cast member who is presented as themselves (rather than as a character). Jane Curtin was the first female anchor in the second season of the show. While it was great that she was at the desk, the treatment she received from aforementioned John Belushi contradicted any kind of advancement that the presence of a woman created. Belushi would scream and raise fists in the air, telling Jane to calm down. Of course, the famous phrase “Jane, you ignorant slut!” proclaimed by co-star Dan Ackroyd resulted from her stint on “Weekend Update” during an episode premiering on May 26, 1979. Lorne Michaels did nothing to stop these slanderous and misogynistic ad-libs. In an interview with Curtin, she stated, “Lorne didn’t help, because that isn’t what Lorne did. Oh, it was ridiculous. It was just insane...you just have to learn to live with it, [and] plod on” (Miller). After Curtin’s departure in 1980, a woman didn’t sit behind the desk until twenty years later, with Tina Fey’s addition in 2000. In the beginning of Tina Fey’s reign as “Weekend Update” anchor (co-anchor with Jimmy Fallon), there was a part of the segment entitled “Women’s News,” in which Fey commented on issues such as reproductive rights and women’s roles in the home and at work (this is seen in a Season 28 episode from 2002). This direct dealings with issues of women was a direct result as Fey’s appointment of head writer. The progress of Tina Fey’s work on “Weekend Update” compared to Jane Curtin’s shows the amount of progress that SNL took in the women’s movement on television.

Broadly looking at television in the 1970s, the medium was struggling itself with its identity just as the female population of the United States was. As Kirsten Lentz says in her essay, “Quality versus Relevance,” “If 1970s feminism, broadly speaking, sought to champion the ‘rights’ of women, drawing attention to the inequities of gender role socialization and attempting either to revalue or to eschew femininity, 1970s television was similarly enmeshed in an attempt to resist its inferior status in relation to other media (especially cinema) and to revalue or reverse its associations with femininity... Scholars of television and feminism have tended to assume that the relation between the television industry and the feminist movement is primarily a negative one. According to this model, television has generally acted to distort, trivialize, or erase feminist issues and the women’s movement” (Lentz). However, as time goes on, to its credit, Saturday Night Live did do a lot to help progress the movement. Seeing women on TV and talking about women’s issues became a normal thing for the American household, making the feminist movement less of a political craze and more of something that every citizen can take part in. And this quality is what makes SNL so popular and a show that hasn’t gotten old for the forty plus years it has been on air —it reflects an ever changing society and challenges old- school ways of thinking.

However, that’s not to say that Saturday Night Live is perfect in the representation game by any means. Minority women, especially LGBTQ women and African American women in particular have always faced adversity in the entertainment industry, and Saturday Night Live has not properly used its platform and clout to change this. In its entire history up until 2013, there have only been four African-American women featured. After Maya Rudolph’s departure in 2007, there were none. Long-time cast member Kenan Thompson has had to cross-dress to impersonate several women, from Maya Angelou to Jennifer Hudson. In an interview with TV Guide, Thomspon made statements refusing the show’s request to portray black women, hoping that his resistance would prove to the network that advancements have to be made. Sasheer Zamata being hired was the first African American to be hired since Rudolph, and still stands as the only African American woman on the show today (Weisman).

By analyzing Saturday Night Live with a feminist lens, viewers can view the show as a program that did a lot for women in the entertainment industry, yet still is not reaching its full potential in what it can do for women as a whole. Women will always have the lower hand in regards to equality in entertainment, however, seeing the progress in the past gives hope that it will continue to improve, on Saturday Night Live and beyond.

#saturday night live #academic writing #television history #feminism

[noellemichela300-blog]

The 1996 Summer Olympics in Atlanta, Georgia will forever be marked as the summer Richard Jewell went from hero to suspect in a matter of days. In the ESPN 30 for 30 shorts, “Judging Jewell”, directed by Adam Hootnick, the film shows the frenzy that surrounded the 1996 Centennial Park explosion and the prime suspect, Richard Jewell.

This short done by ESPN and director Hootnick captured the craziness that ensued with this case. Interviewing several people, ranging from Jewell’s lawyer to even the editor from the Atlanta Journal, gave a moving description and presentation of what exactly happened during this event.

What began as a celebration for the heroism Jewell exhibited by evacuating a number of citizens and workers after he spotted a suspicious backpack, turned into a media frenzy that framed Jewell as no longer the hero, but the prime suspect.

However, things turned ugly quickly for Jewell. Days later, the Atlanta Journal Constitution broke the story that Jewell was the FBI’s prime suspect in the investigation of the bombing. The media went on to portray Jewell in a demeaning manner, using phrases like “lone bomber” and as a failed law enforcement officer who wanted to be a hero.

The media continued to slander Jewell in the media, along with accounts from former employers, friends and neighbors, all painting Jewell as someone who fed off attention from others. Jewell went under 24-hour surveillance from not only the FBI, who followed his every move, but also the media, who forced Jewell and his mother essentially into house arrest.

Throughout this time, Jewell claimed innocence, saying that he had nothing to do with the crime, but people were desperate for a conviction and the FBI wanted to close the case. However, with barely any evidence against Jewell and after passing a lie detector test, in October of 1996, Jewell was cleared as a suspect.  

However, things did not change for Jewell. People still went on to believe that Jewell had planted the bomb. Since citizens have a great deal of faith in the media, especially journalism, they expect the reports all to be true so they can believe something. The Atlanta Journal Constitution broke one of the largest rules of journalism, which is to not report unsupported and possibly untruthful stores. In this case, the Atlanta Journal wanted to break the case on Jewell before they even had all the facts and evidence to back up their claims. This was in part one of the ways that Jewell became so quickly hated by America.

By hearing an account from an editor from the Atlanta Journal about what exactly went wrong in the case, it allows a deeper understanding of how things can go from zero to 100 quickly. “Judging Jewell” is a perfect example of how the media feeds off of attention and desperation to report a story.

The FBI later went on to convict Eric Rudolph of the crime, who pled guilty to the bombings. However, Jewell continued to receive backlash from citizens who still truly believed he committed the crime, however, Jewell was recognized by some institutions and others as the hero he truly was.

After the case was closed, Jewell had a series of lawsuits against the media outlets, especially against the Atlanta Journal Constitution. The Atlanta Journal took all the wrong steps in reporting this case. They did not remain objective and clearly took a side, while also reporting on the case without all the evidence. Although it was probably protocolled to investigate Jewell, the FBI was fueled by the media to tear this man’s life apart and try to make it seem as best they could as they got the suspect.

This case is an example of what bad journalism is. Telling unsearched and unsupported facts to the public is the one thing that all journalists are supposed to avoid. Jewell passed away in 2007 from heart disease and diabetes, but his story about being a hero turned villain will always remain an example of how people can easily become part of a bigger media scheme.

#noelle

[newstfionline]

Jared Kushner’s Connection to Israeli Business Goes Without Scrutiny

By Robert Fisk, The Independent, January 12, 2017

There was a time when we all went along with the myth that American peacemaking in the Middle East was even-handed, neutral, uninfluenced by the religion or political background or business activities of the peacemakers. Even when, during the Clinton administration, the four principal US “peacemakers” were all Jewish Americans--their lead negotiator, Dennis Ross, a former prominent staff member of the most powerful Israeli lobby group, Aipac (The American Israel Public Affairs Committee)--the Western press scarcely mentioned this. Only in Israel was it news, where the Maariv newspaper called them “the mission of four Jews”.

The Israeli writer and activist, Meron Benvenisti, wrote in Ha’aretz newspaper that while the ethnic origin of the four US diplomats may be irrelevant, “it is hard to ignore the fact that manipulation of the peace process was entrusted by the US in the first place to American Jews, and that at least one member of the State Department team was selected for the task because he represented the view of the American Jewish establishment. The tremendous influence of the Jewish establishment on the Clinton administration found its clearest manifestation in redefining the ‘occupied territories’ as ‘territories in dispute’.

But lest they be accused of antisemitism, said Benvenisti, the Palestinians “cannot, God forbid, talk about Clinton’s ‘Jewish connection’...” Still slandered as “antisemitic” for merely condemning Israel’s brutality and occupation of the West Bank and East Jerusalem, the same fear still eats away at the courage of the Palestinian Authority. When Trump’s Jewish son-in-law Jared Kushner became the President’s peace “envoy”, the Palestinians, well aware that he supported the continued--and internationally illegal--colonisation of Arab land, even politely welcomed his sudden exaltation as peacemaker. It was the Israeli media that first pointed out how little he knew--and how few people he knew--in the real Middle East.

But Dennis Ross, the ex-Aipac man whose bias towards Israel was criticised by Jewish colleagues as well as Arabs, hugely supported Kushner when he was appointed Trump’s special envoy. As for Trump, here is the official record of his thoughts on the prowess of Jared Kushner: “Ya know what, Jared is such a good kid, and he’ll make a deal with Israel [sic] that no one else can. He’s a natural, he’s a great deal, he’s a natural--ya know what I was talking about, natural--he’s a natural dealmaker. Everyone likes him.”

As a real estate investor, Kushner may indeed be a “natural dealmaker”. But no one expected to discover--as they did in the New York Times a few days ago--that shortly before Kushner accompanied Trump on his first diplomatic trip to Israel in May, his family real estate company received about $30m (£22m) in investments from Menora Mivtachim, one of Israel’s largest insurers and financial institutions. The agreement was--surprise, surprise--not publicised. There’s no evidence that Kushner was directly involved in the deal and it doesn’t seem to have violated federal ethics laws, according to the New York Times.

But as the paper said, quite apart from Trump’s decision to recognise Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, the Kushner arrangement “could undermine the ability of the United States to be seen as an independent broker in the region”. Tut tut. How could this be? Doesn’t the New York Times accept that Kushner “takes the ethics rules very seriously” (this from a White House press secretary) and that while Kushner Companies cannot be stopped from doing business with a foreign company just because Kushner works for the US administration; it “does no business with foreign sovereigns or governments”.

Kushner remains a beneficiary of trusts that have stakes in Kushner Companies, even though he resigned as chief executive in January of last year. My favourite quotation came from one of Kushner’s lawyers, Abbe D Lowell, who said that “connecting any of his well-publicised trips to the Middle East to anything to do with Kushner Companies or its businesses is nonsensical and is a stretch to write a story where none actually exists”.

So that’s OK, then. And if a future member of a principal US Middle East peace-negotiating team happened--just by chance, mind you--to be a Muslim (his ethnic origins as irrelevant as we must regard Kushner’s) and, while working for the US President, was a beneficiary of trusts in a company that was doing business with, let us say, companies in Saudi Arabia, Egypt or--even, heaven spare us--in Ramallah in the Palestinian West Bank, that would be above board, hunky-dory and acceptable practice for a chap whose only desire in life was to bring peace to Israelis and Palestinians. And if those Arab companies were investing in that particular peace-negotiator’s real estate company, no one would turn a hair or suggest that anything was just a bit remiss or--let us not use the word “unethical” for a moment--not really quite the appropriate thing to do.

After all, elected American officials have always been a bit sceptical about Arab financial “help” to the US, even when the aid has come free of charge and with no interest attached. Take Saudi Prince Al-Waleed bin Talal--one of the world’s richest men, currently residing on a mattress in the Riyadh Ritz Hotel as an unwilling guest of Crown Prince Mohamed bin Salman--who in 2001 offered a $10m donation to the Twin Towers Fund, for the families and victims of the 9/11 attack. He also mentioned the Palestinian cause because, he said, “reporters have since the attack repeatedly asked how to eradicate terrorism”. America had to understand, he said, that “if it wants to extract the roots of this ridiculous and terrible act, this issue has to be solved”.

Whoops! This self-evident truth was far too much for Mayor Rudolph Giuliani of New York, who promptly told Prince Al-Waleed bin Talal to keep his cheque. You can’t offer cash and talk politics at the same time. But it did show how sensitive can be the connection between money--even donations from an Arab--and politics in the Middle East-US axis. No such problems, however, seem to attend Jared Kushner--who obviously approved of his father-in-law’s grotesque decision to accept Jerusalem as the Israeli capital, thus cutting the Palestinians out of the “natural deal” which Trump claimed he could secure. And most surely, Kushner’s real estate company’s relationship with Israeli financial institutions have nothing to do with that.

#Jared Kushner #Israel #Israeli real estate company #Mideast peace talks