Summary

U.S. Muslim leaders who supported Trump to protest Biden’s stance on Gaza and Lebanon now feel betrayed by Trump’s pro-Israel Cabinet picks.

His appointments of Marco Rubio as Secretary of State, Mike Huckabee as ambassador to Israel, and Elise Stefanik as UN ambassador have drawn sharp criticism, with some accusing the administration of pursuing “Zionist overdrive” and “neoconservative” priorities.

Rabiul Chowdhury, a Philadelphia investor who chaired the “Abandon Harris” campaign and co-founded “Muslims for Trump,” and Rexhinaldo Nazarko, executive director of AMEEN, feel betrayed by broken promises of peace.

“It’s like he’s going on Zionist overdrive,” said Nazarko, adding, “it does look like our community has been played.”

    • @tal@lemmy.todayEnglish
      27•1 month ago

      kagis

      https://forward.com/fast-forward/675325/pete-hegseth-tattoos-christian-crusades-trump/

      One of Hegseth’s most prominent tattoos is a large Jerusalem cross on his chest, a symbol featuring a large cross potent with smaller Greek crosses in each of its four quadrants. The symbol was used in the Crusades and represented the Kingdom of Jerusalem that the Crusaders established.

      Hegseth also has “Deus Vult,” Latin for “God wills it,” tattooed on his bicep. The phrase was used as a rallying cry for the First Crusade in 1096. It is also the closing sentence of Hegseth’s 2020 book, titled “American Crusade.”

      Hegseth also has a cross and sword tattooed on his arm, which he says represents a New Testament verse. The verse, Matthew 10:34, reads, “Do not think that I have come to bring peace to the earth; I have not come to bring peace, but a sword.”

      He later added “Yeshua,” or Jesus in Hebrew, under the sword. Hegseth told the site Media Ink in a 2020 interview that the tattoo was Jesus’ Hebrew name, which he mistakenly said was “Yehweh,” a Biblical spelling of God’s name. He told Media Ink that he got the tattoo while in Bethlehem, Jesus’ birthplace, which is located in the present-day West Bank, where he was reporting for Fox Nation.

      “Israel, Christianity and my faith are things I care deeply about,” Hegseth told Media Ink.

      Hegseth opposes the two-state solution and supports exclusive Israeli sovereignty in the Holy Land. He has also said the idea of rebuilding the biblical Temple on Jerusalem’s Temple Mount is a “miracle” that could happen in our lifetimes. The First and Second Temples stood on a site where the Dome of the Rock, an Islamic shrine, now stands.

      Hegseth expressed these views in a 2018 speech delivered in Jerusalem at a conference organized by the right-wing Israel National News, also known as Arutz Sheva.

      The speech laid out a vision of a world beset by a growing darkness that can only be saved by the United States, Israel and fellow “free people” from other countries.

      The amusing thing is that OP’s article didn’t even get to him because it was talking about other nominations.

      • Flying Squid
        15•1 month ago

        This is my favorite part:

        “I was in the National Guard during the inauguration of Joe Biden, so I served under Bush, served under Obama, served under Trump, and now was going to guard the inauguration because I was in the D.C. guard,” he told Fox in June. “Ultimately, members of my unit in leadership deemed that I was an extremist or a white nationalist because of a tattoo I have, which is a religious tattoo. It’s a Jerusalem cross. Everybody can look it up, but it was used as a premise to revoke my orders to guard the inauguration.”

        GUUUUYS! I’m not a white supremacist, I’m a Christian supremacist!

        …

        Why are you all looking at me like that?