“I have determined that it is time to official recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel,” President Trump said. “While previous presidents have made this a major campaign promise, they failed to deliver. Today, I am delivering.”
He later added: “Today, we finally acknowledge the obvious: that Jerusalem is Israel’s capital. This is nothing more or less than a recognition of reality. It is also the right thing to do. It’s something that has to be done.” Go here to read the rest.
As faithful readers of this blog know, I very reluctantly voted for Donald Trump last year. I must say that overall he is making that vote easier for me in retrospect with each passing day.
When i was there earlier this year our guide said something like “maybe the business man can do what politicians can’t.”
I hope he and the others we met are doing well. God be praised.
Al Kreska–whose show is generally the finest talk show on radio or TV–flatulated commentary on this embassy move on his show Wednesday afternoon that was embarrassing in its naivete. He noted that the Pope opposed it, he who recommends we go along with the UN. That all of our “allies” disapproved–who always back away from offending Palestinians in the UN. And that it would cause trouble with the Palestinians and their allies throughout the world. Ummmm…and how would that be any different from what our previous presidents have done for the last 70 years?
Margaret Thatcher had it right when she told Ronald Reagan “don’t go wobbly.”
My guess would be that the original reason to have the embassy in Tel Aviv was derived from the 1947 partition plans having allocated Jerusalem to some sort of ‘international authority’. By 1955, it was clear there wasn’t going to be a settlement any time soon, so the embassy should have been moved. Among the Arabs, it seems from a distance that someone (Nasser? Shukairy?) struck some pose about this back then and succeeding generations of Arab ‘leaders’ have felt the need to do so because not doing so would entail some sort of loss of face. Trump moving the embassy to Jerusalem tells them they can take their phony sensibilities and stick ’em where the son don’t shine. They don’t care for that.
Good for Trump. That his opponents are having epileptic fits pleases me no end.
I doubt anyone in Congress or the Resistance is all that animated by this. There’s a small population of Arab revanchists on campuses and such (e.g Linda Sarsour) and there are the usual red haze types who pick the wrong side in any conflict in order to be ‘edgy’ and obnoxious (one I can think of fancies himself some sort of Catholic Worker type). There are a mess of European constituencies hostile to Israel. In this country, you don’t have that, just our local chapter of Davos Bores International (Jimmy Carter, now to be joined by John Kerry and Barack Obama).
Deleted your comment Tom. No Israel bashing will be tolerated on this blog. The idea that the preposterous fiction known as international law has any relevance in regard to Jerusalem did start my day off with a laugh however.
“This year in Jerusalem!” Praise God! Thank you, Me. Trump!
“I very reluctantly voted for Donald Trump last year. I must say that overall he is making that vote easier for me in retrospect with each passing day.”
Same. I don’t like the bombastic-ness, but basically agree with almost everything he is trying to do.
The idea that the preposterous fiction known as international law
There are conventions and courtesies which are adhered to, arguably because no one benefits much in not adhering to them and they permit exchanges which have some use. That doesn’t matter much when something materially important is at stake. And there can be no ‘law’ without an authority to define, enforce, and adjudicate it.
Folks,
While in one sense the Church is the new Israel, in another sense God has not revoked His promises to His Chosen People the Jews. Romans 11:1-2 states:
“I ask, then, has God rejected his people? By no means! I myself am an Israelite, a descendant of Abraham, a member of the tribe of Benjamin. God has not rejected his people whom he foreknew…..”
And God did give to the Abraham and his descendants the land on the east of the Mediterranean, north of Egypt, and south and west of the Euphrates as their own in perpetuity. Furthermore, Jerusalem was always called the City of David since his reign some 3000 years ago.
Now yes, I do reject the Protestant Scofield dispensational view of eschatology. But that said, Israel belongs to the Jews, and the idea that the Arab people who took over with the rise of Islam should be afforded special protection status as Palestinians is ludicrous. Let them become citizens of a free Israel and participate in its Republican institutions. Israel has freedom of religion. Neighboring Muslim states don’t. Indeed, that the Romans created a province of Palestine does not entitle Arabs in Israel to create their own separate state. If they want a separate state, then let them petition one of the neighboring Arab states from whose people they are descended. But it is ever fascinating that the neighboring Arab states don’t want the Palestinians within their own confines and borders either. Now why is that? Is it perhaps because every bullet from a Palestinian weapon that hits a boy or girl is directly on target and every bullet from an Israeli weapon that hits a boy or girl is a complete miss?
No Israel bashing will be tolerated on this blog.
Never quite understood how palaeo types reconcile two strands of thought: (2) the notion that nothing that happens in the world is of interest to us or can injure us provided we’re not provocative juxtaposed to (2) an intense preoccupation with the doings of a country which has a population of 8 million and a domestic product smaller than Austria’s.
When I first moved to the area in which I now live, my first roommate was a Palestinian Arab muslim, born in on the West Bank, but raised in Ohio. I learned a lot about that area about Islam from him.
He was kind of a “half-assed muslim” –loved beer and bacon, “’cause bacon’s not really pork because of all the chemicals.
One night, after a few beers and some talk about a lot of political stuff, I asked him, “Why in 1948 when y’all (Palestinian Arabs) had a chance at your own country for the first time ever (the U.N. 2 state partition), you didn’t accept. I mean, isn’t half better than nothing, and perpetual war.” He answered: ” Yeah, we probably should have, but what do you do when all your cousins from the nations next door are saying to you ‘Fight! We’ll back you up.'”
His father was Hamas when he lived on the West Bank, and they were very close. His father was afraid he’d get an American non-muslim pregnant, and went to the West Bank and bought him a bride for $3000 gold. Happily married last I heard.
True story.
“Salvation is from the Jews”. How then can any Christian be an anti-Semite?
LQC, I agree with your comments generally, about the God and the Jews and that the evangelicals are somewhat wrong.. But evidently Jerusalem is something…special.
From wikipedia (but I’ve read more detailed stuff on this elsewhere)-
Emperor Julian (the apostate) granted permission in the year 363 for the Jews to rebuild the Temple….. he was also a strong opponent of Christianity. Church historians wrote that the Jews began to clear away the structures and rubble on the Temple Mount but were thwarted, first by a great earthquake, and then by miracles that included fire springing from the earth.”
Is is possible that God allowed (decide to use–like Babylon & the Persians?) Islam to chastise the Jews and keep sacrifices from being performed on Temple Mount? Because that will never happen as long as Dome of the Rock mosque is there.
SMOKE AND MIRRORS DISTRACTION,,,,,if you noticed by chance your bank savings have been drawiing NOTHIN SINCE JAN 2001,,,,AND GONNA BE THAT WAY FOR THE NEXT WHO KNOWS HOW MANY YEARS,,,,TRUMP IS ALL ABOUT BUX AND THE WALL STREET WEALTH CLASS TOP 5 PERCENT,,,,now of course he is better than the HILDABEAST BLOOD RED COMMIE FROM PARK RIDGE ILLINOIS…..BUT HE IS PACKIN THE FEDERAL RESERVE WITH DOVES WHICH MEANS LOW RATES AND MAYBE NEGATIVE RATES AT THE BANK,,,,,,people,,,,wake up,,,,,his clowning around is a calucalated distraction FOR THE BIG CRASH ON WALL STREET OVERINFLATED STOCKS AND THE POST 29 AND WAY FAR WORSE AFTERMATH…..its all about THE FEDERAL RESERVE SYSTEM,,,and the rest is just a distraction.
BPS-
what I get a kick out of is that some of the breeding programs to get a heifer that is suitable for the sacrifice to re-establish the Temple is largely done, and funded, by Evangelicals.
It makes sense that someone bugged by those crazy heretical Jews that think the Covenant has been fulfilled and renewed would back the “normal” ones that disagree on if it’s been fulfilled.
Just Joan: you may want to check your bank, even my paltry accounts are getting savings.
Not much since Obama tanked the interest rate, but I am still getting something.
Obviously, you do not agree with our Pope. You do not represent my Catholicism. You stand out as some pundit of what? As a cradle Catholic did you not learn in Catechism that lying, cheating, purposefully hurting others and making the rich richer at the expense of the poor are sins? Shameful, that you make it so hard to defend our Church. What a small pebble we sit on when we defend the immoralities of a man that encourages hatred, diminishment of women, incites murderous acts, promotes leaders who do, bullies the disabled, and includes his own children and friends in illegal activities? A tax break for the rich and the stock market going up is worth that to you? Today, because of him, this country lies in fear of a nuclear bomb-a bit more of a problem than say…abortion (which seems to be your resume to speak for us).
“You do not represent my Catholicism.”
Thank God for that Annie. My Catholicism is a wee bit older than the current Pontificate. As for your scattershot comments about Trump, next time actually try to make them germane to the subject of the post under discussion.
People afflicted by Trump derangement syndrome are truly amusing as they do off into their epileptic fits because HE is President and NOT their choice. That they are frustrated and angry pleases me no end.
PS, I truly hope that God keeps me from ever being the Katholyck Marxist Peronist that Jorge Bergoglio is.
Is that who she was talking about? For a minute there I thought it might have been referring to Obama. 😉
Ms. Odell:
at least your first comment is accurate. Unfortunately, you follow it up with an ill-informed spew of calumny, rather than attempting to support the notion that the Pope is right.
I notice, also, that you attack Donald here for supposedly speaking for us when he makes rational arguments on a Catholic foundation, yet you are quite willing to claim that and declare him out of bounds because… you say so?
No worries, I figure I’m right where the sweet spot is if I’ve had thoughtcrime posts deleted at Shea and here.
But your comment to another poster about pontificates older than this one makes me chuckle, since the sentiments I expressed reflect mainstream Catholic thought from Peter through at least Pius XII. Anti-Zionism does not equal antisemitism, though it certainly fits the need of the secular nation of Israel and her allies to conflate the two, and allows discussion to be closed by mere ad hominem appeal.
TRUMP IS LIGHT YEARS BETTER THAN THE BLOOD RED COMMIE FROM PARK RIDGE,,,HILDABEAST,,,,,but when you understand he is one of our truly accidental presidents, never thought he would win, and totally unprepared, then you can understand the next axiom HE CARES ONLY ABOUT HIS MONEY AND THE MONEYED,,,,,,he is not a frriend of mainstreet, he likes a cheap dollar and low bank rates,,,never made a secret of that ever in his life. ALL THESE TRICKS ARE TO KEEP HIS CHUMPED VOTERS CHUMPED,,,,MEANWHILE HIS NEW YORK BANKERS ARE PLOTTING AGAiNST HUMBLE NEST EGGERS AND SAVERS,,,,YOU GOTTA CONQUER YOUR COGNITIVE AFFECTIVE DISONANCE AND RESOLVE THAT MIKE PENCE WOULD BE A GREAT POTUS,,,,and that trump was the useful vehicle to accomplish that….pence would have never beaten hildabeast….THE LORD WORKS IN MYSTERIOUS WAYS,,,,,,,,HIS WONDERS TO BEHHOLD!
I follow Popes on religious matters as a matter of Faith Tom. On political matters that depends upon the wisdom or lack thereof of the Pope in question. I do not back Israel as a result of any religious belief, but rather out of admiration for a people who carved a nation for themselves against the most overwhelming odds that any people have ever confronted.
Well, interesting and provoking (but not thought-provoking) comments by Ms. Joan and Ms. Odell. Ms Joan: do you understand that using uppercase for more than proper capitalization is the equivalent of SHOUTING? Ms. Odell, I disagree with our Holy Father when he presumes to speak on matters of science, politics and economics and shows himself to be cast in a mode of Peronista/Liberal stone–matters which are outside the realm of faith and morals over which he is supposed to provide guidance.
Anti-Zionism does not equal antisemitism,
In the most bloodless discourse, perhaps. Not in that which has real people attached to it.
I do not back Israel as a result of any religious belief, but rather out of admiration for a people who carved a nation for themselves against the most overwhelming odds that any people have ever confronted.
It’s certainly an outlier in the post-war world. Whether you back it or not, it’s actual material conflicts with other parties are limited to flagitious paramilitary organizations (and, of course, the Iranian government, which would like to detonate a nuclear weapon over Tel Aviv). Israel’s detractors are given to inanities like ‘end the occupation’ as if Israel hadn’t been rebuffed 6 times over a period of 50 years in efforts to devolve authority over the West Bank and Gaza or transfer it to another party (and as if 60% of the population thereof were not outside the ambo of Israel’s security patrols and 85% were not outside of Israel’s civil administration). You kind of get the idea that half the people yammering about ‘the occupation’ don’t know much and that the other half understand ‘end the occupation’ to mean ‘bend your neck for the axe, yids’. Thank God they’re just ‘anti-Zionist’.
I think ‘Just Joan’ is some bot which has breached Tito’s spam filter.
LET’S PUT THOSE GOLD BRICKING STATE DEPARTMENT EMPLOYEES IN THE ACTION,,,IN THE HEART OF THE COMBAT ZONE,,,,THEY NEED TO HAVE SKIN IN THE GAME AND BE PART OF THE SOLUTION,,,NO MORE CUSHY GIG ON ROTHSCHILD AVENUE IN T-A,,,,THEY NEED TO WORK FOR A LIVING. LET THEM EAT HALVAH.
Bot or troll? Who knows.