Trump’s Recognition Of Jerusalem As Israel’s Capital Matters-And Is Long Overdue
President Donald Trump’s announcement is an act of political bravery and moral courage, underlying the vital importance of Jerusalem to the religion of Judaism.
What proof do you need of this direct link between the two? Jerusalem is mentioned hundreds of times in Jewish text, in the Israeli national anthem, and while Jerusalem is the historical capital of Israel, it is also a very historical and holy place for the Christianity and all Europe.
President Trump has made a wise decision, that recognises reality and is politically useful, despite the sceptical portrait of some circles in leftwing media.
Why is it politically useful?
All peace process negotiations have thus far been preconditioned on Israel giving up its eternal capital which is a complete fallacy. Jerusalem is where it is because The Bible said it is where it is, and so the freedom of Israel is connected to the freedom of Jerusalem.
Israel undertakes negotiations based on Jerusalem being its capital — not based on falsehoods.
The general response from Muslims has been (predictably) rage and threats masked amidst doom-laden forewarning.
The spokesman for the Turkish president, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, said the US was “plunging the region and the world into a fire with no end in sight,” and the Palestinian envoy to the UK, Manuel Hassassian, added, “He is declaring war in the Middle East, he is declaring war against 1.5 billion Muslims.”
They and other left wing commentariats suggest Trump has been irresponsible because he will cause unrest in the Middle East. Yet when in the past several decades has something not caused unrest in the region? Is there any guarantee that there will be no violence in Gaza if the United States fell in line and did not make such a declaration? Can anyone even distinguish the chaos due to the US declaration from the upheaval and brutal violence, or disturbance that are routine to the region?
East Jerusalem is already a hotbed of terrorism, chaos, instability and is dangerous for any person (let alone a Jew) to spend significant time there. It must also be remembered, as Tzipi Hotovely recently alluded to, that Israel has constantly lived in a state of undeclared war. Any more unrest that is promised by the terrorists of the Middle East will hardly be a blip of the radar given the already deadly exchanges with Hamas, Hezbollah, the occasional Syrians, and other armed thugs.
Predictably Iran’s leader Ali Khamenei has warned of dire consequences but that’s entirely in line with what the Islamic Republic says anyway, when doesn’t it threaten to wipe Israel off the face of the earth?
Turkey has threatened to cut off diplomatic ties with Israel but relations have already been for all intents and purposes frozen between the two American allies after the Mavi Marmara incident in 2010. Egypt and Jordan, the two Arab states Israel has peace treaties with, have also not reacted positively to the news. Yet it is not sure what either Abdel Fattah el-Sisi or King Abdullah will or can do as neither country has had a particularly good past with the Palestinians.
As the Oslo Accords and the failed Camp David Summit in 2000 showed, Jerusalem is not a negotiable issue for either side. The Arabs want to control their holy site, the Haram al-Sharif; the Jews remind us that when that was the case before 1967, they were not given access to their holy sites.
What about Palestine’s right over Jerusalem or even its own existence? Well it has never existed as a state — before 1967, the West Bank, along with Jerusalem, was occupied by Jordan and the Gaza Strip by Egypt. The Palestinian government Cairo set up in the Strip was not even recognised by Jordan!
Israel’s reaction to Trump’s announcement underpins the joy of reality. Take Naftali Bennett, the leader of the HaBayit HaYehudi and the Minister for both, Education and Diaspora Affairs, who is said to have written to the US president, “thank you from the bottom of my heart for your commitment and intention to officially recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel.”
Commentators from Israel have been more direct with Caroline Glick calling the decision 70 years late but welcome and Arsen Ostrovsky reinforcing that Jerusalem is the “eternal & undivided capital of the State of Israel and the spiritual homeland of the Jewish people!” This is underpinned by what HaAvoda leader Avi Gabbay said after Trump’s announcement: “When my parents came from Morocco to Jerusalem, I can assure you they didn’t check the State Department website to see if it’s the capital or not. They knew Jerusalem was the capital and just came.”
This might be all about symbolism but for Jews and Judaism it is everything. It doesn’t matter that Jerusalem is the seat of the Israeli government as President Reuven Rivlin remarked, what matters is that the ultimate symbol to this diaspora is the City of David.
