People from Israel and South Africa offer their views on the Trump announcement
by Monessa Shapiro
Trump’s announcement to recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel has been met with mixed emotions. There has been much joy, especially amongst Jews, but overwhelming anger from both the media and world leaders. His action has been seen as reckless and irresponsible.
Joy, that at long last a world leader has had the courage to affirm that, which the Jewish people, have known from time immemorial. Donald Trump termed his announcement “the truth”. How right he was. For three thousand years Jews have turned to Jerusalem three times a day in prayer. The Passover Seder ends with the words: “Next year in Jerusalem.” Grooms break a glass under the marriage canopy in order to remember the destruction of the temple and the following words are said: “If I should forget thee oh Jerusalem, let my right hand be cut off.”
The media and world leaders berated Trump for ‘declaring’ Jerusalem the capital city of Israel. Donald Trump did not declare anything. His recognition of the fact that Jerusalem is the capital of Israel did not make it such – King David did that 3000 years ago. To recognize something that has been a fact for centuries is a long-overdue recognition, not a declaration. There has never been a time when Jerusalem was not the capital of the Jewish land of Judea and Samaria, with or without world recognition. And with the establishment of the modern state of Israel it naturally became the capital. Israel annexed East Jerusalem after capturing it from the Jordanians in the defensive six Day war, offered all the East Jerusalem Arabs Israeli citizenship, and declared re-united Jerusalem her capital.
In addition, the media has been full of dire warnings. Such an announcement will cause more terrorism. More blood. More chaos in the region. In 1929 the Jews of Hebron, the second holiest city in Judaism, were massacred – man, woman and child. That was long before the establishment of the state of Israel and almost 40 years before the so-called occupation of Judea and Samaria (the West Bank). The lust for the blood of Jews has continued unabated to this day, even without Trump’s recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s eternal capital. Babies have had their throats slit while sleeping in their cots. Rabbis have been stabbed to death in synagogues while praying. Just recently car rammings and stabbings were the order of the day. So to warn the Israelis about heightened violence is to ignore that with which they have been living on a daily basis. But then the world and the media are pros at ignoring violence when it is perpetrated against Israelis and Jews.
And because Trump had treated the Palestinians with such effrontery Saeb Erekat, secretary-general of the PLO, called in anguish for “Palestine from the river to the sea – nothing less”. The saving grace of this call was that for the first time Erekat, speaking on behalf of the PLO, was saying these words on the English media, in English, for the world to understand. That he and Abbas have always said them to their constituency in Arabic has of course been largely overlooked by world leaders and the media. Palestinian TV speaks of Jaffa as the most important port of Palestine, and of cities like Haifa, Ashdod and Beer Sheva as being occupied. Palestinian children learn from maps sans Israel, showing instead only Palestine. These messages do not envisage a two-state solution but rather a Palestine ‘from the river to the sea’ – a Palestine without Israel. But so angry is the media with Trump’s ‘irresponsible’ announcement that once again Erekat and Abbas are seen only as the victims rather than the duplicitous politicians that they are.
Trump’s recognition of Jerusalem and his plan to move the embassy to Jerusalem is a turning point. It is the first time in the history of the Arab-Israeli conflict that truth, no matter the consequences, has taken precedence over appeasement. Only when the world recognizes the truth behind the conflict and in turn prevails upon the Arabs to accept the truth can there ever be hope of peace. Here’s hoping.
