This week on Monday the US officially opened its embassy
in Jerusalem, the first nation to accept that city as the capital of Israel.
Typically Trump he chose Robert Jeffries a conservative
evangelistic leader to give the invocation. Trump had also selected The
Rev. John Hagee, the founder of influential evangelical Christians United for
Israel and a pastor from San Antonio, to deliver a closing blessing at the
ceremony.
Jeffries according to Romney has said,
‘You can’t be saved by being a Jew,’ and ‘Mormonism is a heresy from the pit of
hell,’”. “He’s said the same about Islam. Such a religious bigot should not be
giving the prayer that opens the United States Embassy in Jerusalem.”
Jeffries had tweeted in response; Historic Christianity
has taught for 2,000 years that salvation is through faith in Christ alone. The
fact that I, along with tens of millions of evangelical Christians around the
world, continue to espouse that belief, is neither bigoted nor newsworthy
In a separate interview in February on NBC News Romney said
“The Bible says this land belongs to the Jewish people — period,” "God has
pronounced judgment after judgment in the Old Testament to those who would
‘divide the land,’ end quote, and hand it over to non-Jews.”
The moving of the embassy to Jerusalem in de facto
recognizing it as the capital of Israel has been criticized as an action that
would destroy any possibility of peace in Palestine. A peace that Palestinian leaders
have backed away from many times these past 70 years.
Yes there has been increased conflict along the Gaza
border with deaths, but not because of the embassy move or recognizing
Jerusalem as Israel’s capital but as Ron Dermer Israel’s ambassador to the
United States, wrote in a Washington Post Op-Ed article:
“Hand it to Hamas. As this week’s events in Gaza showed, the
terrorist organization committed to Israel’s destruction can still manipulate
the media into demonizing Israel for the legitimate actions it takes to defend
itself.
Hamas’s four-step formula for success is by now
familiar. First, get a media that is largely hostile toward Israel, simply
ignorant or both to ignore Hamas’s genocidal goals and excuse its terrorism.
Second, put Palestinian civilians in harm’s way. Third, force Israel, while
defending itself, to kill some of those civilians. Fourth, rely on that same
hostile and ignorant media to blame Israel for these deaths”----
Since the end of WWII much has been distorted about who
and why involving the West Bank, the so called occupied territories and the
Palestinians themselves.
Therefore a brief review of the history as I understand
it is in order. . During its long history, Jerusalem has been attacked 52
times, captured and recaptured 44 times, besieged 23 times, and destroyed
twice.
The oldest part of the city was settled in the 4th millennium BCE,
making It is a fact that
David created his portion of Jerusalem as the capital of his kingdom after the
defeat of the Canaanites and it remained so despite the Babylonian, Hellenistic
conquest as the center of Jewish religion even under the Romans until the Roman destruction of the city in 70 AD. Hadrian
began rebuilding it as a pagan city about 130 AD. It gradually became
Christian.
In 638 AD the Arab Caliphate conquered the city. Umar ibn
al-Khattab allowed the Jews back into the city and freedom to live and worship
after four hundred years. The early Arab period was also one of religious
tolerance, however, in the early 11th century, the Egyptian Fatimid Caliph Al-Hakim bi-Amr Allah ordered the
destruction of all churches.
In 1099 the Crusaders first reclaimed the city and up to
the Ottoman controlled which ended in WW1 it changed hands between Christians
and Muslims. The Balfour Declaration was a public statement issued by
the British government during World War I
announcing support for the establishment of a "national home for the Jewish people"
in Palestine, then an Ottoman
region with a minority Jewish population
At the end of that war the Mid-East was divided into
several mandates, the British receiving control over Transjordan (modern day
Jordan) and Palestine (modern-day Israel, with the West Bank and Gaza Strip).
Between the two wars there was constant unrest and strife
between Jews .Muslims and the British in the Mandate
The British
couldn’t handle it after the end of WWII and turned it over to the UN. On 29
November 1947, the United Nations General Assembly approved a plan which would
partition the British Mandate of Palestine into two states: one Jewish and one
Arab. Each state would be composed of three major sections, linked by
extraterritorial crossroads, plus an Arab enclave at Jaffa. Expanded Jerusalem
would fall under international control as a Corpus Separatum.
The Israelies accepted the UN resolution but over the
next few days after the declaration, armies of Egypt,
Trans-Jordan, Iraq,
and Syria
engaged Israeli troops inside the area of what had just ceased to be Mandatory
Palestine, thereby starting the 1948 Arab–Israeli War which ended in
the armistice with the Kingdom of Jordan
controlling all of the West Bank and Jerusalem itself. Jews were denied access to their holy sites and in
some cases synagogues destroyed.
In June 1967 after the Syrians bombarded the Israeli
settlements from the Golan Heights and Egypt marshalled forces Israel unleashed
a preemptive air strike destroying the Egyptian air force on the ground Syrian
forces from the Golan Heights, took control of Gaza and the Sinai Peninsula
from Egypt, and drove Jordanian forces from the West Bank. Importantly, the
Israelis were left in sole control of Jerusalem,
In 1973. On October 6, the Jewish holy day of Yom Kippur
(thus “Yom Kippur War”), Israel was attacked by Egypt across the Suez Canal and
by Syria on the Golan Heights. The Syrians were defeated on the Golan and
Israel’s armies encircled the Egyptian
Third Army by crossing the Suez Canal and establishing forces on its west bank,
As part of the peace treaty the Israel forces withdrew to the left bank and
subsequently ceded much of the conquered Saini back to Egypt.,
Relative peace between the parties has existed since then
but only Egypt and Jordan have signed peace treaties.
As to the displaced “Palestinians” an estimated
700000 fled from territory before the Israel army in the 1948 war. None were
reestablished as residents by the Arab nations except in refugee’s camps.
On the other hand 800,000–1,000,000 Jews left, fled,
or were expelled from their homes in Arab countries; 260,000 of them reached
Israel between 1948 and 1951; and 600,000 by 1972. They and emigres from other
countries especially Russia have been the main source for the expansion towns
in the West Bank territories.
Who is right or wrong? Who is the villain and who are
the victims? It is time for each of us to make an unprejudiced opinion if we
honestly can and persuade our leaders to act in accordance.
