A multitude in their minds. Nearly a week after the announcement, and contrary to both their predictions, the number of world leaders who support President Donald Trump on his Jerusalem move stands at just two. Israeli Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu and Trump himself.
Oh, isn’t this surprising?
Donald Trump breaks with the rest of the world and 70 years of U.S. policy in declaring Jerusalem the lawful capital of Israel and destructively distracting chaos follows.
Why, it’s almost enough to make one forget about Trump’s scandalous Russian entanglements.
Or not.
Days of angry protest in the relatively tiny space with Palestinians and Israelis chock-a-block, with several dead and hundreds more injured; an attack on the U.S. embassy in Beirut; big anti-American demonstrations across the Middle East, Africa, and parts of Asia; furious condemnation by the Arab League; a Palestinian declaration of the end to any nascent peace process pushed by Trump’s very eager son-in-law; condemnation from our oldest and most important allies and all the European Union, as well as every other nation represented on the UN Security Council; two very pointed cautions from Russian President Vladimir Putin; a vicious war of words between recently realigned Turkey and Israel; maybe even inspiration for today’s barely avoided terrorist attack in New York City.
But, hey, white evangelical Christians, powering tomorrow’s expected win in the Alabama Senate race by accused child molester and champion Creationist Roy Moore (back in the lead in all but one poll taken this month), love Trump’s Jerusalem move. And the old Manhattan modelizer sure loves his steadfast evangelical Christian base, for their support if nothing else. He re-stated his backing for ex-Alabama Chief Justice Moore in a big, boisterous rally just over the border from Alabama Friday night.
Like his Christian fundamentalist allies, Israeli Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu, the only world leader to embrace Trump’s move, cites ancient divine authority for Israel’s claim to Jerusalem.
In the real world, the Israeli army seized Jerusalem by force of arms in two wars, the Arab-Israeli War of 1948 and the Six-Day War of 1967.
But speaking in Paris yesterday after talks with disapproving French President Emmanuel Macron — who is about to host a follow-up summit to the 2015 Paris Climate Accords at which the American contingent is headed by Governor Jerry Brown — the veteran Israeli pol declared that Jerusalem has been Israel’s capital for 3,000 years.
The State of Israel will be 70 years old next year.
“You can read it in a very fine book — it’s called the Bible,” declared Netanyahu. He labeled any denial of “the millennial connection of the Jewish people to Jerusalem” to be “absurd.”
The problem, of course, is that not one but three major religions have ancient connections to Jerusalem. And one of them has been there for a very, very long time.
The anthology of stories contained in the Bible is often powerful, not to mention not infrequently not at all what many would associate with the teachings of Jesus Christ. But this resort to divine right as the basis for a power grab — even one understandable in the aftermath of the Holocaust, when Jewish survivors from far away hoped for a national home — shows how dangerous to the stability of the world religionism in politics really can be.
With its invocation of the supernatural and non-rational, religionism leads inexorably to today’s spectacle in which Netanyahu met in Brussels with European Union international affairs chief Federica Mogherini.
In a bizarre sequence, Netanyahu declared his belief that Europe will follow the lead of Donald Trump in legitimizing Jerusalem as Israel’s own.
“I believe that all, or most, European countries will move their embassies to Jerusalem, recognize Jerusalem as Israel’s capital and engage robustly with us for security, prosperity, and peace.”
Of course, Netanyahu also thought the U.S. invasion of Iraq was a great idea, and lobbied hard in Washington for one of world history’s most boneheaded geopolitical moves.
Standing beside Netanyahu as he made his latest preposterous prediction today, Mogherini admirably kept a straight face before dismissing his errant nonsense.
The European Union, she declared, will continue to support “the international consensus” on Jerusalem. “We believe that the only realistic solution to the conflict between Israel and Palestine is based on two states, with Jerusalem as the capital of both.”
My old friend Tom Hayden, who would have been 78 today, long ago prophesied that a collapse of the world order, if it comes, would emanate from Riyadh. And that may well be, as discussed a month ago.
But probably only because Trump is enabling the foolhardy new Saudi crown prince.
And Trump may just eliminate the middle man altogether.
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