As he attempts to wind down the regional war in the Middle East he kicked off in February by joining Israel in attacking Iran, Donald Trump just hosted the ambassadors of Lebanon and Israel in the Oval Office, and invited television cameras in to capture the foreign officials praising him.
The ambassadors agreed to extend a ceasefire in Lebanon, which has been bombarded and invaded by Israel as it seeks to degrade the Lebanese militant group Hezbollah, and Trump pledged to support the Lebanese government’s efforts to govern without the support of Hezbollah, which also has a political wing with significant support in the country.
As +972 magazine, an independent Israeli and Palestinian outlet, reported last year, Israel’s ambassador to the United States, Yechiel Leiter, was born and raised in the United States.
Leiter thanked Trump for bringing him together with the Lebanese ambassador and cast Israel’s objective as “liberating Lebanon” from what he called Hezbollah’s “occupation” of the country. Hezbollah is, however, a Lebanese movement which only came into being in 1982 in response to a previous invasion and occupation of Lebanon by Israel.
Before he emigrated to Israel at the age of 18, and joined the Israeli military, Leiter was, +972 reported, “a member of the far-right Jewish Defense League, a violent vigilante group founded by the extremist American rabbi Meir Kahane.”
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