As the first US president coming from outside the establishment, Trump brings a fresh dynamic and approach to the Middle East and beyond.
By: Daniel Krygier, Political Analyst, World Israel News
US President Donald Trump’s decision to recognize Jerusalem as Israel’s capital has been predictably condemned across the Muslim world as well as among Western liberal political elites. According to the logic of Trump’s critics, recognizing the Jewish state’s capital is “undermining” the prospects for peace between Jews and Arabs.
Western liberal self-appointed Middle East experts continue clinging to the fallacy that all Middle Eastern problems could be solved if sufficient pressure is applied on Israel and Jews to give in to the Palestinian leadership’s genocidal demands. However, this failed policy has been tried for several decades without bringing Jews and Arabs closer to a lasting peace. Quite the contrary, Western leaders have effectively undermined any genuine peace prospects by encouraging Arab leaders to maintain their extremist positions towards Israel.
Western pro-Arab appeasement policies perfectly illustrate the popular definition of insanity as doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. However, the Western establishment’s Middle East policy makers are not in a rush to adapt their policies to harsh Middle Eastern realities.
As the first US president coming from outside the establishment, Trump brings a fresh dynamic and approach to the Middle East and beyond.
Trump upset the Western liberal establishment by recognizing reality: “Israel has made its capital in the city of Jerusalem, the capital the Jewish people established in ancient times.”
This simple, straightforward statement reverses former President Barack Obama’s badly informed position of viewing the Jewish state as a compensating refugee camp for Holocaust survivors. Trump may not be a historian, but he recognized what should have been recognized long ago: the Jewish people is the indigenous nation of Israel and Jerusalem is the ancient capital of the Jewish people.
The American leader correctly reminded his audience that modern Israel is a sovereign nation that was recognized almost 70 years ago by US President Harry Truman. Like any independent nation, Israel chooses the location for its own capital. Imagine if the world attacked Britain and France for choosing London and Paris as their capitals.
Like it or not, Israel’s government, parliament, supreme court, the prime minister’s and president’s residences, and most ministries are located in Jerusalem. By recognizing Jerusalem as Israel’s ancient and modern capital, the US president recognizes what has been badly missing in our Orwellian world: reality. Genuine peace must be based on reality, not fantasies. Peace between Arabs and Jews can only arrive when Arab leaders are forced to abandon their genocidal fantasies of wiping the Jewish state off the map.