US has plunged its relations with Israel into crisis
By Caroline B. Glick
Israel Hayom
May 9, 2021
In light of the reactions from Washington to the Hamas and Fatah-inspired Arab violence in Jerusalem, it is hard to see how Israel will be able to maintain a constructive dialogue about its relations with the Palestinians with the Biden administration or more broadly, with the Democrat Party. Indeed, the reactions coming out of Washington to the Arab violence in Jerusalem indicate that Israel will be hard-pressed to conduct a constructive dialogue with Washington about anything, and this will be the case regardless of who forms the next Israeli government.
Saturday, Democrat Senator Elizabeth Warren published a shocking post on her Twitter account in response to the Arab riots in Jerusalem's Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood, which started in earnest last Thursday. The progressive powerhouse wrote, "The forced removal of long-time Palestinian residents of Sheikh Jarrah is abhorrent and unacceptable. The Administration should make it clear to the Israeli government that these evictions are illegal and must stop immediately."
Warren's statement isn't a demand for justice for Arabs. It is a demand for injustice for Jews. Warren has become the first senior US official to call for Jews to be barred from doing something specifically because they are Jewish since Ulysses Grant barred Jews from entering Tennessee, Mississippi, and Kentucky at the height of the Civil War.
The situation in Sheikh Jarrah is cut and dry. Buildings in the neighborhood that were purchased by Jews 146 years ago were illegally seized in 1948 by Jordan as its forces illegally occupied eastern, northern and southern Jerusalem in the course of the pan-Arab invasion of the nascent Jewish state. During the course of Jordan's illegal occupation of those areas of Jerusalem, the Jordanian Registry of Enemy Property illegally leased the Jewish-owned buildings to Arab tenants.
When Israel liberated the Jordanian-occupied areas of Jerusalem in 1967, the owners of the buildings reasserted their property rights. Their ownership over the properties in Sheikh Jarrah was duly registered in Israel's land registry in 1973. But when the owners tried to retake poss. Their refusal instigated a now 48-year legal battle between the owners and the squatters which is scheduled to finally come to an end this week.
In countless court decisions, judges found time after time that the Jewish owners were the legitimate owners and the Arabs were illegal squatters. The Arab squatters admitted this was the case in 1982. And yet, 39 years later, the children and grandchildren of the squatters from 1982 still refuse to leave the buildings.
Following a last-ditch appeal of the Jerusalem District Court ruling that ordered their forced evacuation, the Supreme Court is scheduled to issue a final – and unappealable – ruling on the issue this week. The current Arab violence in Sheikh Jarrah and surrounding areas of Jerusalem has been incited by Hamas. It serves a dual purpose. It invents a rationale for a new Palestinian terror onslaught against Israel. And it pressures Israeli judges, government ministers and police commanders to weigh the possibility of discriminating against the Jewish owners in the hopes of stymying Hamas's declared plan to renew its terror offensive.
It is in this context that Warren made her demand, that the Biden administration insinuate itself into the middle of a legal dispute in a foreign country on behalf of the side that is clearly in the wrong against the side that is clearly right.
Warren has adopted this position and is demanding that the Biden administration adopt it as well for one reason. Warren is only demanding an action that empowers terror groups presently engaged in organized violence against Jews because the property owners are Jewish. If they were Muslims or Christians or members of any other group, she wouldn't have cared. But since they are Jews, Warren is spreading blatant lies that effectively justify terrorism, thuggery and mob violence against Jews.
This brings us to the Biden administration and to the issue of its position on Warren's anti-Semitic demand for Jews to be denied their legal right to property simply because they are Jewish. Unfortunately, there is very little daylight between Warren's anti-Semitic position and the administration's stand on the issue.
Even before Warren opened her mouth, on Friday the State Department issued a statement on the events in Sheikh Jarrah. It read, "We are … deeply concerned about the potential eviction of Palestinian families in Sheikh Jarrh and Silwan neighborhoods of Jerusalem, many of whom have lived in their homes for generations. As we have consistently said, it is critical to avoid steps that exacerbate tensions or take us farther away from peace. This includes evictions in East Jerusalem, settlement activity, home demolitions, and acts of terrorism."
People can argue about what a peaceful settlement between the Palestinians and Israel should look like. There is a wide spectrum of legitimate positions in this policy dispute. But those who seek to deny Jews their well-established property rights simply because they are Jews are not a legitimate side in that policy debate or any other policy debate. They are anti-Semites.
Statements like Warren's and the State Department don't serve to calm the situation and restore peace to Jerusalem. They serve to incite still more violence by inspiring the likes of Fatah and Hamas to believe that US supports them as they threaten an all-out terror offensive, beat Jews, burn Jewish property and intimidate Israeli judges, government ministers and police into unlawfully discriminating against Jews. In light of the administration's hostile behavior, and the even more hostile positions of the dominant progressive wing of the Democrat Party, the prospects for constructive relations between the Biden administration and Israel have all but disappeared.
5 comments:
I guess the thousands of homes taken at bayonet point from Palestinian people during the 1967 war in East Jerusalem don’t matter? Should they get their homes back or just the Jews? Anybody who dares ask that question must be, by definition a rabid anti-semite? Anyone who dare criticize the Zionist state for anything must hate Jews. It’s truly sad that this otherwise well thought out blog takes that position.
The facts on the ground on literally every large Ivy League campus is there are more Jewish college students who join students for justice in Palestine than the pro Israel groups. From Stanford to Columbia and everywhere in between, this generation of Jews just isn’t drinking the Zionist koolaide. They see for themselves that the actions of the Zionist government are heretical to Jewish values and discriminatory. Why is it only important to write one wrong, the Arabs don’t count? Are they Jewish anti-semites? Or just educated people who see the hypocrisy?
Israel should take the 3.5 billion in welfare we give them every year and appreciate the United States and shut up.
Ha Ha Ha, you claimed earlier that you were not anti-Semitic. What a joke! If you're not anti-Semitic, then Hitler and Himmler were opposed to the murder of 6 million Jews.
As for those students, they're educated idiots and Jews in name only. They haven't a clue about why Israel was established and could care less.
Do you know that the concept of a modern Israel was the invention of a Christian Puritan named Thomas Brightman? He was a Jew hater who hoped that the Jews would convert once they returned to what is now modern day Israel. Theodor Herzl, the founder of modern day Zionism was an atheist, or , in your words, a Jew in name only. He refused to give his son a bris and openly detested
Religious Jews. The state of Israel ignores Halacha, desecrates ancient grave sites and allows for secular courts, a grave sin in a Jewish state whose constitution, if truly a Jewish state , should be its Torah.
My fellow landsman, you don’t know the difference between a Jew and a Zionist. They are not the same thing.
"Fellow landsman" Ah, a Jew-hating Jew. That's worse than an anti-Semite.
You must get your history from QAnon. Herzl was not an atheist. It is true that he did not have his son circumcised and he did not like ultra-orthodox Jews, but all his life he acted and spoke as a Jew.
Under Jewish law anyone born of a Jewish mother is a Jew. I qualify. I love my people and as commanded by the Torah, I love and treat all of humanity with love and attempt to hold myself to the highest ethical standards in business and personal dealings. I’m a Jew in the USA. If I decide to move to my Uzbekistan, I’m still a Jew.
I don’t need a Zionist state to be Jewish. I don’t need a state founded by atheist “Jewish anti semites” to tell me to join an army and hate my neighbors. If you would actually study the writings, in his diary, Herzl was the quintessential anti-Semite who hated religious Jews. Read it yourself, then tell me I’m wrong. Also, do you deny that the modern concept of Zionism is Christian in orgin and based on the belief that all Jews must convert? Is that not inherently anti Semitic? Do you deny that most Israeli support in the USA is not from Jews, but fundamentalist Christians who believe Israel must exist for the second coming of Christ to occur and all Jews will convert or die in a sea of fire.
They believe Israel must exist for their macabre fantasy to occur. They don’t support Israel because they love Jews, they support Israel because they believe that it must exist for their messiah to return.
I am happy to cite to line and verse in the Herzl diary if you disbelieve me, but I would ask you to research it yourself.
If you can prove I’m wrong on Anything I said, 10,000 to a Zionist cause of your choice.
Viva Palestina- your fellow Jew
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