I had to chuckle this morning as I looked at the news regarding the reaction to President Trump's decision to recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel. The mainstream media is going all out to portray the move as an error which throws away seven decades of US policy. CNN ran a story discussing how even White House officials said that the move will damage the peace process.
But when you look around, not all that much has happened.
1. According to reports, hundreds of Palestinians marched in protests in the West Bank. Although these reports are meant to show that Trump was wrong, they actually show the opposite. The key word in the reports is "hundreds". A few hundred people marched in the West Bank; the news acts as if it was tens or hundreds of thousands. But it wasn't.
2. The president of Turkey threatened to break relations with Israel, but he didn't. The Turkish president didn't threaten a break with the USA which took the action. Instead, he just talked and aimed his upset at the Israelis who did nothing.
3. There have been two missiles launched from Gaza against nearby Israeli targets. They hit nothing. We don't even know yet if the launches came from Hamas or from some splinter group that periodically launches such missiles thereby causing retaliation from the Israelis.
4. The Palestinian "leadership" called for three days of rage. In other words, it was much like everything else that "leadership" does. Hamas called the decision by Trump an "outrage", but so far no response has been forthcoming.
5. The pundits on TV for the most part continue expressing shock and sadness that Trump would actually do what he promised to do during the campaign. After all, Obama and Bush both promised this, but they never actually delivered on those promises. We can't have a president who speaks honestly to the people during the campaign, can we?
6. Perhaps the funniest take on the event came in the pages of the NY Times. On the op-ed page, Tom Friedman wrote about how Trump gave away the US position without getting anything for it in return. Trump recognized actual reality without demanding that Israel build no more settlements. Oh, the horror! Of course, when president Obama gave away the entire edifice of sanctions on Iran together with nearly $150 billion to the Iranians in exchange for an unverifiable promise to stop work on nuclear weapons for just a few years, Friedman was fine with that. Two administrations or more had struggled to get the sanctions in place, and Obama gave them away for a deal that guarantees that Iran would have nukes in a few years.
These fools are not seeing the forest. In a way that is unmistakable, President Trump has explained to the Palestinians and their allies that the USA will be recognizing reality rather than the fantasy world in which Palestinians actually want peace with Israel and facts are to be avoided.
But when you look around, not all that much has happened.
1. According to reports, hundreds of Palestinians marched in protests in the West Bank. Although these reports are meant to show that Trump was wrong, they actually show the opposite. The key word in the reports is "hundreds". A few hundred people marched in the West Bank; the news acts as if it was tens or hundreds of thousands. But it wasn't.
2. The president of Turkey threatened to break relations with Israel, but he didn't. The Turkish president didn't threaten a break with the USA which took the action. Instead, he just talked and aimed his upset at the Israelis who did nothing.
3. There have been two missiles launched from Gaza against nearby Israeli targets. They hit nothing. We don't even know yet if the launches came from Hamas or from some splinter group that periodically launches such missiles thereby causing retaliation from the Israelis.
4. The Palestinian "leadership" called for three days of rage. In other words, it was much like everything else that "leadership" does. Hamas called the decision by Trump an "outrage", but so far no response has been forthcoming.
5. The pundits on TV for the most part continue expressing shock and sadness that Trump would actually do what he promised to do during the campaign. After all, Obama and Bush both promised this, but they never actually delivered on those promises. We can't have a president who speaks honestly to the people during the campaign, can we?
6. Perhaps the funniest take on the event came in the pages of the NY Times. On the op-ed page, Tom Friedman wrote about how Trump gave away the US position without getting anything for it in return. Trump recognized actual reality without demanding that Israel build no more settlements. Oh, the horror! Of course, when president Obama gave away the entire edifice of sanctions on Iran together with nearly $150 billion to the Iranians in exchange for an unverifiable promise to stop work on nuclear weapons for just a few years, Friedman was fine with that. Two administrations or more had struggled to get the sanctions in place, and Obama gave them away for a deal that guarantees that Iran would have nukes in a few years.
These fools are not seeing the forest. In a way that is unmistakable, President Trump has explained to the Palestinians and their allies that the USA will be recognizing reality rather than the fantasy world in which Palestinians actually want peace with Israel and facts are to be avoided.
No comments:
Post a Comment