Turns Out Trump Won’t Be Meeting Bibi After All
Under fire, Trump cancels his planned trip to Israel.
Donald Trump is not going to Israel. At least not until he’s president of the United States.
Donald Trump is not going to Israel. At least not until he’s president of the United States.
With members of his own party and politicians from around the world bashing his plan to ban Muslims from entering the United States, the Republican 2016 presidential frontrunner took to Twitter Thursday morning to tell the world his plans to visit one of the most important U.S. allies in the Middle East are on hold.
His decision to cancel the trip, originally set for Dec. 28, comes after criticism from Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who condemned his plan to keep Muslims off American shores. The billionaire businessman announced his policy in the wake of the Paris and San Bernardino terror attacks.
“Prime Minister Netanyahu rejects Donald Trump’s recent remarks about Muslims,” according to a statement from the prime minister’s office released Wednesday. “The State of Israel respects all religions and strictly guarantees the rights of all its citizens. At the same time, Israel is fighting against militant Islam that targets Muslims, Christians and Jews alike and threatens the entire world.”
Netanyahu wasn’t the only Israeli politician calling out Trump. Omer Bar-Lev of the a member of the main center-left opposition party, the Zionist Union, tweeted this Wednesday:
Energy Minister Yuval Steinitz, a senior Likud lawmaker and a close Netanyahu ally, told Israel’s Army Radio, “I recommend fighting terrorist and extremist Islam, but I would not declare a boycott of, ostracism against, or war on Muslims in general.”
Photo Credit: Scott Olson/Getty Images
David Francis was a staff writer at Foreign Policy from 2014-2017.
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