Trump's embassy move to Jerusalem 'self-destructive'

Your desire for a single state solution is an obvious desire to see the end of a Jewish State, and Israelis eventually forced out of their homeland. You are too intelligent for there to be any other explanation.

Your prescription for the single state solution no doubt includes granting the so-called call right of return. This, as is certainly envisioned by you and likeminded individuals, will result in an Israeli population that is increasingly Palestinian Muslim population and eventual control of the Israeli government by Palestinian Muslims. With the help of the right, of return this should take no more than a few generations, if that. Throughout this period, Hamas and the PLO will continue to control the Palestinian vote, although, through internecine struggle, one might vanquish the other. It won't matter which one is triumphant...to Jews living there.

Once there is a Palestinian majority in solid control of all aspects of the Israeli government, Israel will literally cease to exist as the ruling majority will, undoubtedly rename the single state. It will, of course, also no longer be a Jewish state. Actually, it will matter slightly to some Jews living in Israel whether Hamas or the PLO assume complete control. The PLO is far more likely to attempt an arrangement such as Mugabe established in Zimbabwe where very wealthy Whites were allowed to retain their riches in return for helping to prop up a collapsed economy.The PLO will make a similar offer to wealthy Jews. If the Hamas fanatics gain control, no such accommodations will be offered. There will be a series of parliamentary passed orders confiscating the wealth and property of Jews. Most will be held by Hamas and a token amount distributed to the people, meaning poor Palestinian Muslims. If such actions don't cause the Israeli Jews to leave the country, violence will follow. There will be much bloodshed but eventually, the Jews will be scoured from Palestine. The PLO, like Mugabe, will only drag out the process; taking small bites to induce rich Jews to remain, but in the end there will be the same result.

There is no existing democratic Muslim Arab state (The American experiment with Iraq has been a failure that will, before too long, result in a dictatorial Muslim state without any pretense of democratic institutions or principles.) It is disingenuous or completely foolish to presume that the Palestinians will even attempt to create the first once they establish a controlling majority.

Fortunately for the Jews of Israel, their majority will never fall for the Palestinians' subterfuge. There are always dangerously foolish idealist willing to welcome the barbarians at the gate into the city and Israel has its share, but the Palestinians have always managed to undercut the credibility of their unwitting allies, by taking action or making statements that strike fear into sensible Israelis.

We will never see a single state solution unless it is imposed on Israel by external forces. We will probably also never see a two-state solution because the Palestinians still refuse to give up their dream of controlling all of Israel, and driving the Jews into the sea.

And there is very little chance of that.

Israel has artillery-fired atomic shells that would wipe out any superior conventional army that might be able to conquer them.

If Israel were faced with nuclear attack, they would retaliate with strategic nukes against the population centers of their attacker.



That depends on the nature of the two-state solution.

A two-state solution where Israel agrees to withdraw back to 1967 borders (or perhaps to the Security Fence) would require the Palestinians to negotiate and agree to peace.

But if the Palestinians were to just declare themselves independent and have that independence recognized by European and Muslim governments, they would have control over their current areas of autonomy (Area A) but nothing else.

I believe that this will be the end state: a unilaterally-declared Palestinian state based on Area A alone (plus Gaza), with Israel keeping everything else.

The Israelis have designated Jerusalem as their capital city. It is arrogant, hypocritical and absurd for other nations to play this silly symbolic game of non-recognition. It is perfidious for Israel's allies to do so.

Recognition by the US is going to light the fuse of all-out war? Designation by Israel didn't, but recognition by the US will?

Who is going to declare all-out war? I suppose the Palestinians could, but that would be falling into the hands of Israeli hardliners. They cannot possibly win such a war, and they aren't foolish enough to give Israel any excuse to crush them militarily. Might it lead to terrorism in the guise of resistance? Probably, but how do the Palestinians rationalize to the world that Israeli Jews should suffer and die because the US established its embassy in Jerusalem? Should another Intifada occur, plenty of innocents will suffer and some will die, but their suffering and deaths will be on the hands of those that kill them: terrorist Palestinians or Israeli security forces using excessive violence; not Trump.

Might this lead to terrorist attacks in the US? Possibly, but then just about everything America does or doesn't do seems to be justification for Islamist terrorism. The notion that the terrorists must be placated and appeased so that innocent lives are spared is dangerously stupid or insane. Blaming Trump rather than the actual murderers for any deaths that can be connected to this move only perpetuates the terrorists' strategy of deadly extortion.

Nothing is worth fighting for if it means people might die? It's good policy to concede to the demands of murderers because they threaten to kill innocents if you do not? Those who do not appease terrorists are responsible for the death and destruction of those terrorists? It's insane and it wouldn't be argued by half as many people as do if the nation was any other than Israel or the president was any other than Trump.

Several presidents before Trump vowed to move our embassy to Jerusalem, including Bill Clinton, If he had made good on his promise and deaths by terrorists resulted, you would have blamed Clinton? Easy to say "Yes" now but there are is only a small minority of liberals in the nation that could honestly do so.

If any US president ran for office on the promise of recognizing Tibet, Taiwan, Southern Sudan or any other nation resisting a much larger; more powerful aggressor country as an independent state, all violence that resulted from his or her making good on that promise would be the responsibility of the president? There may even be a few people here in A2K who could honestly say they would have argued this to be the case at the time, even if the president was a Democrat, but again they would be in a very small minority.

Obama chooses not to interfere in the internal politics of Iran; even to the extent of only lending moral support to courageous citizens fighting and dying for their freedom and that's A-OK. Brilliant and quite proper geopolitical strategy! Afterall, what right do we have to interfere in Iran's internal affairs? How would we like it if another nation chose to interfere in ours?

Obama chooses to interfere in the internal politics of Libya and support the violent overthrow and murder of the existing dictator and that's A-OK too. Brilliant geopolitical strategy and a great humanitarian endeavor. He should have received another Nobel Peace Prize for that move!

To be fair, not everyone arguing that Trump's decision to recognize Jerusalem is a dangerous mistake was OK with Obama authorizing military action in Libya, but then it's not like the two decisions even exist in the same dimension, AND a majority of them were, in fact, supportive of it and moreover saw it as a golden star line item on Hillary Clinton's resume:

The people of Israel want Jerusalem as their nation's capital. It is perfectly understandable why they do. In designating it their capital I can't and won't accept that they have violated the city's status as a holy place for Muslims. I could be wrong but I doubt the Koran contains anything about the desecration of a mosque by virtue of Jews claiming the city in which it stands is the capital of their nation, and I'm sure it doesn't warn that any nation's recognizing the Jew's claim is an even more heinous act of desecrations.

Jerusalem is a holy place for Muslims. I respect that and I would condemn any effort made by Israelis to prevent legitimate Muslim pilgrims and worshippers from having access to the Al-Aqsa mosque. Last time I checked, this wasn't the case, but I'm sure the anti-Zionists attending this thread will correct me if I'm wrong. Similarly, I fully expect them to correct me if I am wrong in stating that Trump hasn't picked the site of the Al-Aqsa mosque as the very site of our new embassy.

Muslims seem to have more holy sites that Carter has little pills, which is fine providing they don't insist that these places be scrupulously free of all potential contamination by infidels. It's like Indian claims that virtually every square inch of Utah or the entire country, for that matter, is sacred burial ground. After a few thousand years on the North American continent, I'm sure there are Indian remains buried everywhere, but such graves are not legitimate site markers for no-go zones for anyone other than Indians.

Amazing how the religious traditions of certain religions are scoffed at as ignorant and superstitious while those of certain other ones should command the height of serious respect. Geez...I wonder if politics has anything to do with this dichotomy or reverence?

Did Trump have to promise he would move our embassy to Jerusalem? Of course not. Did it make the majority of the citizens of our major ally in the region happy? I'm wagering it did, but whether or not that's why he did it, he was right to do it. Huge swathes of the world (and notably in the West) insist on dealing with the Palestinians as if they were spoiled brats, ever ready to throw a tantrum should they not get their way. Unfortunately, their tantrums lead to suffering and death. No one would argue that the best way to deal with spoiled brats is to give them whatever they want, and no one should argue that the same strategy is appropriate for dealing with people who throw bricks and bombs rather than tantrums.

Moving the embassy will probably not help the peace process in the short term (Thanks in large measure to nations around the world and politicians in America falling all over each other and legitimizing Palestinian extortion by immediately condemning Trump and America), but Israel is not going to concede to demands they view as extreme, no matter how much pressure is applied by the UN, nations sympathetic to Palestinians, and American presidents. Giving the Palestinians reason to believe that if they just hold on to these demands long enough, eventually external pressure will force Israel to concede doesn't enhance the prospect of peace in either the short or long term.

Due to an array of complex and often corrupt reasons, the Palestinians have received more support from the rest of the world than any other group demanding independence. This support has given them false hope and made them intransigent. Apparently, they don't realize what a royal pain in the ass they are to the nations that support them and the minute it becomes convenient for those countries to throw them under the bus, they will. The support of A2K anti-Zionists and anti-Semitics, ancient guitar players from obsolete rock bands, Birdbrain Hollywood crusaders, and college students more focused on sanctimonious protest than education will not, in any way, be sufficient for them to hold on to their excessive demands and at that point, their negotiating position will be less than pitiful. The world is not going to support the Palestinians for as long as the Israelis are willing to resist its pressure.They need to take what has been offered to them and devote their energy to building a nation for their children rather than focusing it all on hate, resentment, violence and dreams of conquest via warfare or demographics.

Finn's prolix pontificating notwithstanding, there is a precedent for the attitude of western liberal democracies and the placement of embassies. Berlin was a divided city for 45 years, and the western liberal democracies maintained embassies in Bonn, in the Federal Republic of Germany. It made sense for a variety of reasons. The expense of keeping an embassy in Berlin would have been enormous, not the least of the considerations being the cost of security. Furthermore, nations keep embassies in the capital of the nation to which they are accredited so as to keep a finger on the pulse of that nation's government. Tel Aviv was the capital of Israel until 1949, and when the Israeli state made Jerusalem their capital, western nations did not move their embassies for the same reasons that they did not establish embassies in Berlin before 1990. Quite apart from the political flash point which Jerusalem represents, the financial "capital" of Israel is Tel Aviv, and they call it the "silicon wadi," a reference to silicon valley--Tel Aviv is the technological "capital" of Israel as well.

Maybe it's because Plump is a city boy. Country boys know better than to go around whacking hornets' nests.

That was well stated.

That host is a moron, so is the argument that because Chuck Schumar said something that it automatically means that it's now the democratic party position.

Increments in action.

I want my seven minutes back.

Yep, he read a bunch of twitter comments then complained about Chuck Schumer.

If that passes for news/thinking then I know why we're in trouble.

This may be the first time Schumer ever did the right thing. The Democratic Party would be well advised to follow his lead on this matter.

I'm not commenting on the right-ness or wrong-ness of the Israeli issue.

I know my limitations and international politics in the middle east is well beyond my understanding.

I'd characterize the video as "a leftist extremist brown-nosing Islamic terrorists".

In regard to the state of Israel, as it exists, I'd like to see it dismantled and replaced by an inclusive, egalitarian and pluralistic state that serves all of the peoples of Palestine. There is no other way to reconcile the claims of both the Palestinians and the Zionists. The idea of the prepetual oppression of the Palestinian peoples to accomodate the Zionists desire for a Jewish majority state in all of Palestine is repulsive.

That you equate an inclusive and pluralistic democratic state with the expulsion of populations reveals your own state of mind, what with your "barbarians at the gate" bigotry, not mine. You, apparently, aren't intelligent enough to see the fallacy of your simplistic equation. Your prejudice addles your mind.

Measure could be taken to ensure the rights of all of the peoples in Palestine, not just the Zionists, not just the Palestinians.

Concerns about logomachies, and what this state might be called do not outweigh concerns about egalitariansim, pluralism and democracy.

Your doomsday scenarios are not actualities, they're merely paranoid fantasies of what might occur after the dismantling of the Zionist state. Your violent scenarios are more likely to play if the Zionists refuse to comply with what is right and proper, the concession of the rights of the Palestinians, and the matter comes to a violent resolution. Unfortunately, that's the path that's being forged right now.

A two state solution cannot reconcile some of the demands from both sides, e.g. Jerusalem, the Right of Return, the borders of the two states, sovereignty, etc.


That has not been the reality of the proceedings what with the Zionists' unabated creation and expansion of settlements in the West Bank, their refusal to cede part of Jerusalem for a Palestinian state, etc.