Jerusalem and Gaza

5/17/2018—All those people bemoaning the move of the American embassy to Jerusalem should be apologizing for the lies told to the American people. For years, Presidential candidates promised to move the embassy—Republicans and Democrats—and then once elected did not do it. It would have been the same with a President Hillary Clinton.

You can’t have democracy that way. It is similar to the way the Democrats treat global warming—don’t campaign on it but govern on it. It is ridiculous. It infantilizes the electorate. And then we wonder why democracy is shot to hell.

The move of the embassy to Jerusalem could have been accompanied by a real promise to have a similar embassy in East Jerusalem for a Palestinian State. But instead, American officials stood by while Netanyahu spoke of an “undivided Jerusalem.” No room for Palestinians then.

This is the real lesson of the Gaza protests. The Israelis are determined to impose apartheid on the Palestinians. And the Palestinians play into their hands by their refusal to accept the existence of Israel. As long as that is so, what sense does any movement by Israel make?

But this is not sustainable. That is what Netanyahu does not see. The future he is bequeathing is more war—with the Palestinians, with Iran, with who else? This is no future and the realistic Israeli politicians are anything but realistic.