Like
the proverbial bull in a china shop, our very own Caesar Disgustus
has gone about willy-nilly upsetting one apple cart after another.
This month has seen him trash not only the nuclear agreement reached
with Iran but, in yet another act of blind stupidity, the moving of
our embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. On Tuesday last, recoiling
to reports of violence in Gaza, The New York Times featured
a column by Michelle Goldberg in which she excoriated the
administration in what she called “A Grotesque Spectacle
in Jerusalem”. (1)
“On Monday, Ivanka
Trump, Jared Kushner and other leading lights of the Trumpist right
gathered in Israel to celebrate the relocation of the American
Embassy to Jerusalem, a gesture widely seen as a slap in the face to
Palestinians who envision East Jerusalem as their future capital.
“The event was
grotesque, it was a consummation of the cynical alliance between
hawkish Jews and Zionist evangelicals who believe that the return of
Jews to Israel will usher in the apocalypse and the return of Christ,
after which Jews who don't convert will burn forever.
“Religions like
'Mormonism, Islam, Judaism, Hinduism' lead people 'to an eternity of
separation from God in Hell,' Robert Jeffress, a Dallas megachurch
pastor, once said. He was chosen to give the opening prayer at the
embassy ceremony. John Hagee, one of America's most prominent
end-times preachers, once said that Hitler was sent by God to drive
the Jews to their ancestral homeland. He gave the closing
benediction.” (2)
This
'spectacle', Goldberg rightly points out, was nothing less than a
crass appeal to the tRUMP base, an increasingly strident and wholly
unhinged segment of the American electorate to which Benjamin
Netanyahu and his Likkud Party have hitched their hopes and dreams
of completing the ethnic cleansing of the West Bank. The whoring
after the Religious Wrong in this country, in spite of its pronounced
antisemitism has been a hallmark of Netanyahu strategy, destroying
the bi-partisan consensus in support of Israel's legitimate national
security needs, a strategy in that became openly apparent when the
Prime Minister thumbed his nose at President Obama, accepting a 2015
Rescumlican invitation to speak before Congress without consulting
either the State Department or the White House.
Recognition
of Jerusalem, as the editors of The New York Times pointed out
in an accompanying editorial, was supposed to represent “the end
of a seemingly endless conflict, a blood-soaked tragedy with justice
and cruelty on both sides. Israelis and Palestinians have envisioned
a capital in Jerusalem, and for generations the Americans, the honest
brokers in seeking peace, withheld recognition of either side's
claims, pending a treaty that through hard compromise would resolve
all competing demands.
“But on Monday
President Trump delivered the embassy as a gift without concession or
condition to the Israeli government of Benjamin Netanyahu, as as a
blow to the Palestinians. The world did not witness a new dawn of
peace and security for two peoples who have dreamed of both for so
long. Instead, it has watched as Israeli soldiers shot and killed
scores of Palestinian protesters, and wounded thousands more, along
Israel's boundary with the Gaza Strip....
“Mr. Trump has
repeatedly promised a grand peace plan without delivering, and he has
now lent America's weight to this maximalist Israeli strategy. For
decades, the United States prided itself on mediating between Israel
and the Palestinians. Successive administrations urged a peace
formula in which the two parties would negotiate core
issues—establishing boundaries between the two states; protecting
Israel's security; deciding how to deal with refugees who fled or
were drive away after Israeli statehood in 1948; and deciding the
future of Jerusalem, which was expected to become the shared capital
of Israelis and Palestinians.
“Mr. Trump's
announcement that he was recognizing Jerusalem as Israel's capital,
and moving the embassy from Tel Aviv, swept aside 70 years of
American neutrality”
Note
the words chosen by the Editors of the Times. They didn't say
that Disgustus had swept away 70 years of American diplomacy, which
in fact he did. They said instead, and quite rightly, that he swept
aside 70 years of American neutrality and with it,, they could have
added, any pretense that the United States can now be an honest
broker of peace. Disgustus has given up the leadership of this
country in the Middle East peace process, or whatever is left of it,
in the name of choosing sides so that the Lord will return and take
from him the reigns of power—or at least so the bat-shit crazy
functionaries of the idiot wrong would have you believe.
The
event, as the editors also pointed out, couldn't have been more ill
conceived. “It was timed to make the American bias clear,
coming on the 70th anniversary of Israel's
independence in 1948—and the day before Palestinians observe Nakba,
or Catastrophe, the expulsion from their ancestors from the newly
formed Jewish state.” (4)
“The
juxtaposition of images of dead and wounded Palestinians and Ivanka
Trump smiling in Jerusalem like a Zionist Marie Antoinette”, wrote
Michelle Goldberg, “tell us a lot about America's to Israel
right now.” (5) Indeed it does. By Disgustus empowering
Netanyahu and through him the worst Israeli instincts; and by
Netanyahu catering further to the American Political Wrong, both
nations have further isolated themselves in the region and the world,
but the Israeli's have further isolated themselves within the United
States. So much so that the editors, as well as a featured
commentator, of the leading newspaper of the largest Jewish city in
the world, has called them to task.
This
much is clear. The two-state solution is dead. Israel is moving
toward an Apartheid government as it annexes the occupied
territories. The United States has lost it's position as the broker
of peace and has openly joined Israel as a pariah in the region.
Once again Disgustus has ceded ground and will get nothing but
conflict in return.
“An Br'er Putin jus'
laugh and laugh”
Impeach and Imprison.
______________
- Goldberg, Michelle “A Grotesque Spectacle in Jerusalem”. The New York Times, Tuesday, May 15, 2018 Page A25.
- Ibid
- The Editors. “Mr. Trump's Failure in Jerusalem” The New York Times. Tuesday, May 15, 2018Page A24
- Ibid
- Op. Cit.
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