Speaking at the American Israel Political Affairs Committee Monday, Trump blasted “the utter weakness and incompetence of the United Nations”.
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Trump also dismissed Clinton’s critique about his potential qualifications to serve as president.
“We say, unequivocally, that we do not countenance ad hominem attacks and we take great offence against those that are levied against the president of the United States of America from our stage”, AIPAC President Lillian Pinkus said. “Well, my friends, Israel’s security is non-negotiable”.
Mr. Trump and Mr. Cruz both said that as President they would shift the US embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, “the eternal capital of the Jewish state”.
On Tuesday, Netanyahu told the conference he hoped the USA would continue to reject any move towards a United Nations security council resolution backing Palestinian statehood.
“She will be weak on the military and weak frankly with other countries”, he said.
For the first time during his frequently improvisational White House run, Mr Trump’s speech had been prepared beforehand, and its policy substance was straight out of the Republican playbook. “It’s too much and frankly it’s a different world than it was when we originally conceived of the idea”, he said.
He drew boos past year from the Republican Jewish Coalition when he refused to take a stance on the embassy location.
Trump said Obama “may be the worst thing that ever happened to Israel”, to some applause from the AIPAC crowd. And he suggested that Trump’s speech would be a good opportunity for him to “address the ambiguity before a serious foreign policy audience”.
Mr Trump’s GOP rivals, Texas Senator Ted Cruz and John Kasich, the Governor of OH, also made AIPAC appearances.
Fellow Democratic hopeful Sen. They include Joseph Schmitz, a former inspector general of the US Defence Department under President George W Bush, and George Papadopoulos, a conservative energy consultant who previously advised Dr Ben Carson’s presidential campaign. While the US is officially neutral in the Middle East conflict, his statement was a marked rhetorical departure for typically strongly pro-Israel US presidential candidates. The former secretary of state also criticized Trump throughout her 34-minute-speech, though never saying his name.
Trump, she said, sounded authentic about his support for Israel, but that was not enough. And he promised, if elected, to defeat terror groups including the Taliban, Al Qaeda and the Islamic State.
But moments later, Trump said he would “enforce it like you’ve never seen it enforced before”, comments more in line with the stance he has laid out over months of campaigning.
Kasich called for the suspension of the Iran nuclear deal in response to recent ballistic missile tests, which he said were a violation.
Most of the remaining 2016 USA presidential candidates addressed AIPAC’s 18,000-strong convention this week. There’s the Iran nuclear deal.
Clinton and Sanders support the deal.
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“I know deal-making and let me tell you, this deal is catastrophic – for America, for Israel, and for the whole of the Middle East”, Trump said. He touched on the FBI investigation of her mishandling of sensitive email during her four years at the State Department and the so-called Whitewater real estate business scandal that marred Bill Clinton’s governorship of Arkansas decades ago.
