“I am Yahweh; that is My Name! I will not give My glory to anyone else, nor share My praise with carved idols.” (Isaiah 42: 8)
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This is the End of Another Beginning
I’ll begin with a short video:
And they wonder why President Trump calls it “fake news”.
Anti-Zionist student groups have expressed outrage over US President Donald Trump’s recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital on Wednesday, holding rallies and calling for a violent uprising.
Students for Justice in Palestine (SJP) at Stony Brook University in New York shared a Russia Today video of protests in Ramallah against the embassy move on Wednesday, with the caption, “Intifada Revolution is the only way”.
“Intifada” — an Arabic term for a popular uprising — refers to two violent Palestinian campaigns carried out against Israel in recent decades, which included multiple suicide bombings, shootings, stabbings, and other terrorist attacks.
SJP at Florida State University warned, in turn, “In Jerusalem and throughout Palestine we will see popular uprising and we’re called to support Palestinians in every way we can.”
“After all, it will have been the actions of the United States that sparks this resistance,” the group claimed.
Similarly, New York City SJP — which represents local “students and community members” — shared a post claiming that “jaffa, where the u.s. embassy is currently located, is no less palestinian than jerusalem, and it is ours just as jerusalem is ours just as the rest of the land from the river to the sea is ours.”
NYC SJP captioned the post with the slogan, “We don’t want two states – we want ’48! ,” and urged supporters to attend a Friday rally in Times Square against the embassy move. It added the hashtag, “#LongLiveTheIntifada.”
SJP at the University of Oklahoma (OU) also organized a campus demonstration against the White House decision, which featured chants including, “Jerusalem for all,” and “From OU to DC, do not move the embassy.” Protests also took place at Hunter College in New York, and will be cohosted by local SJP chapters in cities including San Francisco, Chicago, and Columbus.
On Wednesday, SJP at Columbia University condemned the embassy move by tweeting that the Palestinians “are fighting a genocide,” adding, “The manner by which they respond is entirely up to them.”
Simmering Hatred Unleashed
When the Allies finally confronted Adolf Hitler and national socialism, Winston Churchill said, “Now this is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end, but it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning.”
Today, we are at the end of another beginning. President Trump’s decision to recognize Jerusalem as Israel’s capital and to move the U.S. embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem unleashed hatred that has been simmering in the U.S. for decades.
The Madrid Conference of 1991 is the root cause of the problem. The Oslo Accord of 1993 set the problem in stone. Hatred of Israel and Jewish people has been simmering since then, and President Trump’s decision caused it to boil over.
Every President of the United States since 1991 has contributed to the problem. That includes George H.W. Bush, Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, and Barack Obama. With each passing year, the problem grew, but under Barack Obama it reached its zenith.
President Trump’s decision represents a radical departure from the status quo. The tide is turning against Palestinians and their supporters. They are up in arms about it and are determined to regain the upper hand. Because presidents in the past threw in the towel at the slightest resistance, they think the path to victory this time will be mass demonstrations and acts of random violence. That’s what we are witnessing now.
President Trump isn’t like his predecessors. He has shown no signs of wavering. In fact, like Winston Churchill, he has demonstrated resolve in the face of resistance, and unlike his predecessors, he has not been afraid to tell us the truth. That’s exactly what we need from our president.
Palestinian malcontents and their supporters are going to make life difficult for the rest of us. We have no one to blame for our problem but ourselves. Our fatally flawed immigration policies encouraged Palestinians to come to the U.S., and we imported them by the thousands. Today, they live among us in virtually every city, but they have congregated in and around our colleges and universities.
On college campuses across America, there are groups of Palestinians and Muslims with Palestinian leanings who were planted here over the last two decades for a time like this. On their end, it was part of a strategic plan. They played a long game, and our immigration policies enabled them to succeed.
This is a Global Problem with Many Faces
This is a global phenomenon. Brexit and the dissolution of Europe as we know it are part of the problem. So is the upheaval in the Middle East where Iran is vying with Saudi Arabia for regional hegemony and Israel is seeking recognition as a Jewish state.
China is a big player, too, as are countries across Southeast Asia including North Korea. Russia and Turkey are part of it. So are South America, Mexico, and Canada. The entire world is in a state of flux. The rules that we have lived by since the end of World War II are being jettisoned, and new rules are being written.
It’s a Long Way from Being Over
This is the end of another beginning. It’s gets a lot worse before it starts getting better.
Jewish people, in particular, need to be careful. They are easy targets, and easy targets are just what Palestinians and their supporters are looking for.
Switching Gears
See Caroline Glick’s article “Trump’s great gifts to Israel and America”:
With his recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital on Wednesday, US President Donald Trump gave a Hanukka gift to the Jewish people. But he also gave a Christmas gift to the American people.
Trump’s gift to Israel is not merely that 68 years after Israel declared Jerusalem its capital, the US finally recognized Israel’s capital.
In his declaration, Trump said, “Israel has made its capital in the city of Jerusalem, the capital the Jewish people established in ancient times.”
By stating this simple truth, Trump fully rejected the anti-Israel legacy of his predecessor Barack Obama.
In his speech in Cairo in 2009, Obama intimated that Israel’s legitimacy is rooted in the Holocaust, rather than in the Jewish nation’s millennial attachment to the Land of Israel. Whereas the Balfour Declaration and the League of Nations Mandate rooted the Jewish people’s sovereign rights to the Land of Israel in its 3,500-year relationship with it, Obama said that Israel is nothing more than a refugee camp located in an inconvenient area. In so doing, he gave credence to the anti-Israel slander that Israel is a colonialist power.
By asserting the real basis for Israel’s legitimacy, Trump made clear that the Jewish people is indigenous to the Land of Israel. He also made it US policy to view Israel’s right to exist, like its right to its capital city, as unconditional.
Trump’s extraordinary gift to Israel was an act of political and moral courage. It was also a stroke of strategic brilliance.
Finally, See This from Caroline Glick
“I hope that one day I’ll have the time to sit down and write a book about how the American Jewish community raised a generation of Jews with protestations to leadership, who have devoted themselves to destroying Israel and Jewish peoplehood. In the meantime, print, file and save the names on this list and know that if you want your kid to learn anything about Judaism or Jewish history, he or she shouldn’t study with these fake scholars”:
Jewish Studies Statement on Jerusalem Declaration
We write as Jewish Studies scholars to express our dismay at the Trump administration’s decision to reverse decades of bipartisan U.S. policy by declaring Jerusalem the capital of Israel, and authorizing the relocation of the U.S. embassy from Tel Aviv, outside of a negotiated political framework that ends the legal state of occupation and ensures respect for the rights of all Israelis and Palestinians to Jerusalem.
Jerusalem is of immense religious and thus emotional significance to Jews, Muslims, and Christians alike. It is the focus of national aspirations for both Israelis and Palestinians. We hope one day to see a world in which all inhabitants of the land enjoy equal access to the city’s cultural and material resources. Today, unfortunately, that is not the case.
As the Israeli human rights organization B’Tselem* has documented, Palestinian residents of Jerusalem endure systematic inequalities, including an inequitable distribution of the city’s budget and municipal services, routine denial of building permits that are granted to Jewish residents, home demolitions, and legal confiscation of property for Jewish settlement. In addition, Palestinians in the West Bank, unlike Jewish Israelis resident in that territory, require a special permit to visit Jerusalem’s holy sites.
In this context, a declaration from the United States government that appears to endorse sole Jewish proprietorship over Jerusalem adds insult to ongoing injury and is practically guaranteed to fan the flames of violence. We therefore call on the U.S. government to take immediate steps to deescalate the tensions resulting from the President’s declaration and to clarify Palestinians’ legitimate stake in the future of Jerusalem.
1. Beverly Bailis, Brooklyn College
2. Mark Baker, Monash University
3. Elissa Bemporad, Queens College and The CUNY Graduate Center
4. Mara Benjamin, Mount Holyoke College
5. Matthew Berkman, University of Pennsylvania
6. Joel Berkowitz, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee
7. Lila Berman, Temple University
8. David Biale, University of California, Davis
9. Jeffrey Blutinger, California State University, Long Beach
10. Ra’anan Boustan, Princeton University
11. Zachary Braiterman, Syracuse University
12. Francesca Bregoli, Queens College and The Graduate Center, CUNY
13. Emma Brodeur, Syracuse University
14. Samuel Brody, University of Kansas
15. Jeremy P. Brown, University of San Francisco
16. Debra Caplan, Baruch College, CUNY
17. Jessica Carr, Lafayette College
18. Flora Cassen, UNC Chapel Hill
19. Geoffrey Claussen, Elon University
20. Aryeh Cohen, American Jewish University
21. Rebecca Davis, University of Delaware
22. Hasia Diner, New York University
23. Laura Duhan-Kaplan, Vancouver School of Theology
24. Barat Ellman, Fordham University
25. Barbara Epstein, University of California, Santa Cruz
26. Robert Erlewine, Illinois Wesleyan University
27. Sara Feldman, University of Illinois
28. Sandy Fox, New York University
29. Ben Freeman, Harvard Divinity School
30. Joshua Friedman, Duke University
31. Olga Gershenson, University of Massachusetts
32. Terri Ginsberg, Formerly Jewish Studies, Dartmouth College
33. Shai Ginsburg, Duke University
34. Evan Goldstein, Yale University
35. Andrew Gordon, University of Florida
36. Erin Graff Zivin, University of Southern California
37. Ronnie Grinberg, University of Oklahoma
38. Atina Grossmann, Cooper Union
39. Chaya Halberstam, Western University
40. Rachel Havrelock, University of Illinois Chicago
41. Tim Hegedus, Wilfrid Laurier University
42. Elizabeth Heineman, University of Iowa
43. Susannah Heschel, Dartmouth College
44. Jonathan Hess, UNC Chapel Hill
45. Klaus Hoedl, University of Minnesota
46. Curtis Hutt, University of Nebraska at Omaha
47. Daniel Itzkovitz, Stonehill College
48. Claire Katz, Texas A&M
49. Gwynn Kessler, Swarthmore College
50. Rebekah Klein-Pejsova, Purdue University
51. Michal Kofman, University of Louisville
52. Rachel Kranson, University of Pittsburgh
53. Chana Kronfeld, University of California, Berkeley
54. Jacob Labendz, Youngstown State University
55. Yitz Landes, Princeton University
56. Timothy Langille, Arizona State University
57. Nitzan Lebovic, Lehigh University
58. Daniil Leiderman, Texas A&M
59. Brian Leonard, Boston College High School
60. Rebecca Lesses, Ithaca College
61. Maggie Levantovskaya, Santa Clara University
62. Daniel Levine, University of Alabama
63. Laura Levitt, Temple University
64. Lital Levy, Princeton University
65. Andrea Lieber, Dickinson College
66. Ari Linden, University of Kansas
67. Joe Lockard, Arizona State University
68. Ian Lustick, University of Pennsylvania
69. Lindsay Macumber, Saint Mary’s University
70. Shaul Magid, Indiana University
71. Charles Manekin, University of Maryland
72. Barbara Mann, Jewish Theological Seminary
73. Samira Mehta, Albright College
74. Jeffrey Melnick, University of Massachusetts Boston
75. Ibrahim Miari, University of Pennsylvania
76. Michael Miller, Liverpool Hope university
77. Sarah Anne Minkin, UC Berkeley
78. Leslie Morris, University of Minnesota
79. Eva Mroczek, UC Davis
80. Rachel Neis, University of Michigan
81. Judith Newman, University of Toronto
82. Anita Norich, University of Michigan
83. Jess Olson, Yeshiva University
84. Ranen Omer-Sherman, University of Louisville
85. Annelise Orleck, Dartmouth College
86. Riv-Ellen Prell, University of Minnesota
87. Vadim Putzu, Missouri State University
88. Shari Rabin, College of Charleston
89. Randi Rashkover, George Mason University
90. Elliot Ratzman, Lawrence University
91. Emily Rogal, Harvard Divinity School
92. Na’ama Rokem, University of Chicago
93. Kate Rosenblatt, Emory University
94. Jordan Rosenblum, University of Wisconsin-Madison
95. Bruce Rosenstock, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
96. Michael Rothberg, UCLA
97. Adam Rovner, University of Denver
98. Nora Rubel, University of Rochester
99. Elias Sacks, University of Colorado Boulder
100. Alison Schofield, University of Denver
101. Benjamin Schreier, Penn State University
102. Joshua Schwartz, New York University
103. Naomi Seidman, Graduate Theological Union
104. Sasha Senderovich, University of Washington, Seattle
105. Joshua Shanes, College of Charleston
106. Nathaniel Shils, University of Pennsylvania
107. Anne Shlay, Georgia State University
108. David Shneer, University of Colorado Boulder
109. Maeera Shreiber, University of Utah
110. Larry Silver, University of Pennsylvania
111. Lisa Silverman, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee
112. Shana Sippy, Centre College
113. Andrew Sloin, Baruch College, CUNY
114. Rachel Smith, UCLA
115. Scott Spector, University of Michigan
116. Loren Spielman, Portland State University
117. Gregory Spinner, Skidmore College
118. Neta Stahl, Johns Hopkins University
119. Deborah Starr, Cornell University
120. Richard Steigmann-Gall, Kent State University
121. Mira Sucharov, Carleton University
122. David Teutsch, Reconstructionist Rabbinical College
123. Irene Tucker, University of California, Irvine
124. Alana Vincent, University of Chester, UK
125. Burton Visotzky, Jewish Theological Seminary
126. Anika Walke, Washington University in St. Louis
127. Kerry Wallach, Gettysburg College
128. Mira Wasserman, Reconstructionist Rabbinical College
129. Dov Waxman, Northeastern University
130. Liliane Weissberg, University of Pennsylvania
131. Beth Wenger, University of Pennsylvania
132. Barry Wimpfheimer, Northwestern University
133. James Young, University of Massachusetts Amherst
134. Michael Zank, Boston University
135. Saul Zaritt, Harvard University
136. Sarah Zarrow, Western Washington University
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“The glory which You have given Me I have given to them, that they may be one, just as We are one; I in them and You in Me, that they may be perfected in unity, so that the world may know that You sent Me, and loved them, even as You have loved Me. Father, I desire that they also, whom You have given Me, be with Me where I am, so that they may see My glory which You have given Me, for You loved Me before the foundation of the world.” (John 17: 22-24)
See “His Name is Yahweh”.
