Jerusalem

In the fevered imaginations of their supporters on the Left, the palestinians are an "oppressed" people who would want nothing more than a peaceful existence with Israel. The harsh reality is rather different. It's a short history of a violent, virulently anti-Semitic people who have consistently avoided any concessions that might lead to peace (you know, little things like accepting Israel's right to exist). Over the past five decades, palestinian leaders have created a fictional history in which they had a state (untrue) and their lands were stolen from them (equally untrue). During that time they have regularly attacked Israeli civilians with everything from kitchen knives, to bus bombs, to rockets (targeted at elementary schools). They have tunneled under the Israeli border to attack and murder civilians. They have on a number of occasions walked away from peace agreements that would have allowed them to govern themselves, and when they were unilaterally given Gaza, they turned it into into a terror haven and a center for human rights abuses.

Leftists tell us that the original violent Intifada on the late 1980s and the sequel in 2000 were all due to the palestinians' "frustration" over their lack of statehood. In actuality, it was frustration over their inability to destroy Israel as a country and achieve their fevered fantasies of murdering as many Jews as possible.

And now at long last, the Trump Administration has announced that the United States will move its embassy to the Israeli capital of Jerusalem. The mere suggestion that this will happen has given the Left the vapors. With one voice they cry: "Violence will erupt. The Muslim world will be outraged. The peace process (as if) will be destroyed forever." It is likely that all of those things will happen, but it's not like there has been no violence in the region or that the Muslim street doesn't already hate the Jews in their midst, or the peace process isn't a sham because the palestinians will only accept "peace" if Israel disappears.

For 50 years, the palestinians have perpetrated terror, violence, and murder against Israel. And now, we are warned not to do the right thing and move our embassy to the Israeli capital because the palestinians will perpetrate more terror, violence, and murder. We are, according to those who argue against the move, required to perpetrate the fiction that Israel will give up or share its capital because that's what the palestinians want. After 50 years of terror, violence, and murder, it might not be a bad idea to let the palestinians know that we no longer care what they want. At least until they accept Israeli's right to exist, until they stop committing human rights abuses, until they stop teaching anti-Semitism in kindergarten, until they until they walk away from terror, violence, and murder, they do not deserve a state and should not get one.

And if moving an embassy to Jerusalem foments even more terror, violence, and murder, it provides still more solid evidence of exactly who the palestinians really are.

And then, of course, there's the small matter of thousands of years of history. David Harsanyi comments:

Jerusalem, after all, is not some concocted modern capital. The place itself is the affirmation of the Jewish claim on Israel. Consequently, the coming protests over Trump’s move are not merely about a city, they are about challenging the right of Israel to exist — a self-destructive position that most Palestinians still embrace. This isn’t new. There has been a destructive effort within the Muslim world — although it has been taken up by others, including the United Nations — to deny the religious and historic connection between the city and the Jews. Moving the embassy, even if it entails nothing more than hanging a sign on a new building, is a pushback against attack on an ally.

That is, if you still view Israel as a close ally. Most do. Over the past 30 years, in fact, politicians keep telling voters that an undivided Jerusalem is the capital of Israel then doing nothing about it once they’re elected — and not some of them, but virtually all of them.

It's time we stop the fiction that Jerusalem is somehow in play. It isn't, and kudos to Donald Trump for making that clear.

UPDATE:
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Roger Simon writes:

The president's decision to move the U.S. embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem to be announced Wednesday is already sending the usual suspects into a tizzy. The famous Arab Street, we are told, will be erupting. The despicable fascist that runs Turkey has warned of imminent disaster. And the president of France is doing what the French usually do vis-a-vis the Jews -- well, not quite that bad.

But the real question is how the Palestinians themselves will react once the dust has settled. Will they continue decades of self-destructive violent protests that have led many of us to believe they never had an interest in a two-state solution in the first place, that it was all posturing for handouts? Or will they grow up and realize the time has come to negotiate to a conclusion and accept the responsibility of their own state and the adult compromises that would naturally entail?

Heh. Not. Gonna. Happen.