Elliott Abrams, who served Presidents Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush, will not get the No. 2 job at the State Department, three Republican sources told CNN.


But Abrams was nixed from the list of contenders after President Donald Trump learned of Abrams' biting criticism last May of his fitness to become president, the Republican sources said.


The President found out about Abrams' outspokenness against Trump after meeting with him on Tuesday to consider him for the position, which would have made him Secretary of State Rex Tillerson's deputy. The meeting went well, but Trump could not get past Abrams' past criticism, the sources said.

Abrams, Bush's deputy national security adviser, had emerged as the top contender to become Tillerson's right-hand man.


"This is a loss for the State Department and the country and, for that matter, for the President," said one Republican source.

Another Republican source with knowledge of what happened said Abrams would not get the job because of "Donald Trump's thin skin and nothing else."

A vice president of the New Israel Fund, Jennifer Gorovitz, was detained for questioning at Ben-Gurion Airport on Wednesday by Immigration Authority police.

Gorovitz, who had arrived in Israel to attend the fund’s executive committee meeting, told Haaretz that she was detained for about 90 minutes and underwent three rounds of questioning, during which she was asked to give details about the New Israel Fund’s activities and the funding that it transfers to Israeli NGOS. This is the first time a senior NIF official has been detained at the airport.

Gorovitz, 50, joined the NIF in 2015, after serving for a decade in various positions in San Francisco’s Jewish community, the most senior of which was director of the San Francisco Jewish Federation. Gorovitz serves as the NIF’s vice president for operations and administration, and is responsible for budget issues, among other areas.
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Gorovitz said that she asked the border control official if there was any problem, saying that she was Jewish and a Zionist, but that the officer made a sarcastic remark about her Zionism. He made her wait 10 minutes and then asked her to wait in a nearby room, where she underwent further questioning.

While she was questioned, Gorovitz saw that her interviewer was holding a document with a considerable amount of information about her. One of the words highlighted on the document was BDS.

Following months of coalition wrangling, damning criticism from internal and international opposition, and bleak warnings from legal experts, Israel on Monday legalized all West Bank outposts with sweeping legislation that aims to prevent future demolitions of settler homes built on private Palestinian land.

In a late-night session, the Knesset passed the final readings of the controversial so-called Regulation Bill, which paves the way for Israel to recognize some 4,000 illegally built settler homes.

The legislation, which would allow Israel to retroactively claim private Palestinian land where Israeli settlers live in exchange for compensation, is expected to be voted on late Monday after a Knesset debate, which began in the afternoon.




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Netanyahu had reportedly sought to delay the vote until after he could speak with Trump when the two meet in Washington next week, though the Jewish Home party hd pushed it forward for its final readings in the Knesset over his objections.

The Israeli leader added that he laid out his positions on the question of Palestinian statehood, saying he has not changed his position that any peace agreement be conditioned on a Palestinian recognition of Israel as the Jewish state and an Israel security presence from the Green Line to the Jordan River.

WASHINGTON – The White House warned Israel on Thursday – in a surprising statement – to cease settlement announcements that are “unilateral” and “undermining” of President Donald Trump’s effort to forge Middle East peace, a senior administration official told The Jerusalem Post.

For the first time, the administration confirmed that Trump is committed to a comprehensive two-state solution to the Israeli- Palestinian conflict negotiated between the parties.

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The official told the Post that the White House was not consulted on Israel’s unprecedented announcement of 5,500 new settlement housing units over the course of his first two weeks in office.

“As President Trump has made clear, he is very interested in reaching a deal that would end the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and is currently exploring the best means of making progress toward that goal,” the official said.

"With that in mind, we urge all parties to refrain from taking unilateral actions that could undermine our ability to make progress, including settlement announcements,” the official added. “The administration needs to have the chance to fully consult with all parties on the way forward.”

But as we look at Trump's chaotic first week in office, rumblings at least of Republican discomfort if not discontent and a wave of protests around the country, we should remember some critical things. Resistance to Trump and anti-Trump activism is a critical precondition of turning back to Trumpite tide. But it is not a sufficient one. I appear to be considerably more confident than a lot of other people I know that Republicans may face a big electoral backlash in 2018. But if it happens it will happen because of grassroots organizing in red states and the red parts of blue states. The cities are already overwhelmingly Democratic. The fight is really outside the major cities. Nor is it just geographical. Trump's power will be broken most on issues like health care - some mix of Medicare, Obamacare repeal, etc. These are issues that cut across the urban/rural divide.
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Let me take a stab at the last one. Midterm elections are not for President but they are almost always about the President. One doesn't need to support the opposition party to want to put some brake on an unpopular or unpredictable President. Putting a check on President Trump's power will be a powerful mid-term message as long as he's under 50% approval and a very powerful message if he stays under 40%, which seems much more likely.

Put me down as a gravity believer. I think the White House and the entire GOP are setting themselves up for a 2018 reckoning. But it won't happen automatically. It requires activation of the Democratic base, which is already happening with dramatic speed. Just as much it requires cutting into the non-big city territories with specific messages which divide Trump from his voters or potential voters.

We hear people constantly saying 'Nothing will change his supporters' minds. They're with him no matter what.' First of all this is enervating defeatism which is demoralizing and loserish. But it also misses the point. It is factually wrong. For the supporters those people have in mind, they're right. They're true believers, authoritarians who are energized by Trump's destructive behavior. But there are not that many of those people. A big chunk of Trump's voters voted for him in spite of their dislike. Those people can be carved away. But Democrats will regain power by winning it in what amount to our 21st century internal American borderlands, not in the big cities or rural areas mainly but in between. So what's happening now to lay that groundwork for 2018?

Palestinian officials are demanding an apology from the new United Nations chief after he said it was “completely clear that the Temple that the Romans destroyed in Jerusalem was a Jewish temple.”

Secretary-General Antonio Guterres also told Israel Radio in an interview Friday with its New York correspondent that “no one can deny the fact that Jerusalem is holy to three religions today,” including Judaism.

On Sunday, Adnan al-Husseini, the Palestinian Authority’s Jerusalem Affairs minister, told the Chinese news service Xinhua that Guterres “ignored UNESCO’s decision that considered the Al-Aqsa mosque of pure Islamic heritage.” He also said Guterres “violated all legal, diplomatic and humanitarian customs and overstepped his role as secretary general … and must issue an apology to the Palestinian people.”

Xinhua also spoke with an adviser to PA President Mahmoud Abbas, Ahmad Majdalani, a member of the executive committee of the Palestine Liberation Organization, who said that Guterres’s comments “undermine the trustworthiness of the UN as a body that should support occupied peoples” and that Guterres “should clarify his remarks that give Israel a green light for more measures against Jerusalem.”

Defense Minister Avigdor Liberman on Monday said the omission of Jews from the White House’s International Holocaust Remembrance Day statement was likely a “mishap or a misunderstanding,” even though the Trump administration has insisted it was intentional.

The White House came under fire from Jewish groups and others Friday after releasing a statement to mark Holocaust remembrance that did not mention Jews or anti-Semitism, but officials have said they were intending to highlight the fact that the Nazis had many victims, not just Jews, and that they had “no regrets” about the formulation.