O Jerusalem, What Hath Herr Drumf Finally Wrought?

31 responses to “O Jerusalem, What Hath Herr Drumf Finally Wrought?”

1. wendyedavis | December 12, 2017 at 3:31 pm | Reply

   Oh, my; and how could I have forgotten @EvaKBartlett.
   Independent writer, freelance, ample experience in Syria and occupied Palestine.

   My article,
   Abduct, imprison, repeat: Israel systematically imprisons Palestinians on false or no chargeshttps://t.co/BRIIh5jPNk

   — Eva Bartlett (@EvaKBartlett) December 12, 2017

   …and vanessa beeley?

   In Beirut with @Osman_Marwa1 ✌🏼✌🏼✌🏼🇵🇸🇵🇸🇵🇸 Hands Off Palestine! pic.twitter.com/cC7noFsri5

   — vanessa beeley (@VanessaBeeley) December 11, 2017

   and from john wight at CP:

   “Ironically, such a brazen move by Trump can only weaken rather than increase Israel’s security. It will serve to marginalize moderate Palestinian voices and allow more radical ones to come to the fore, able to point to this measure as irrefutable evidence of the futility of a diplomatic solution to the crisis, attracting support for their belief in resistance by any means necessary, including, as mentioned, physical resistance. Increasingly, it seems this is the only language these thugs in tailored suits understand.

   That Trump’s understanding of the Middle East, with all its complexities, is of insufficient breadth to fit on the back of a postage stamp, is not in dispute. Indeed it is tempting to ascribe to the 45th president the withering verdict of one of his predecessors, Lyndon Johnson – “so dumb he can’t fart and chew gum at the same time.”

2. davidly | December 13, 2017 at 7:31 am | Reply

   Everything’s always firmly framed in bullshit, even to a considerable degree Assange’s tendentious — or disingenuous (or at least ignorant) — tweet. He cites the more recent vote that, while it does, among its myriad codswallop, reaffirm the embassy act of ’95, should not be said to be a vote to move an embassy whose original act has shown zero theoretical progress in the intervening 32 years. One would do well not to tweet-jerk everything that comes down the tweet-pipe (not you, wd, I know this is just a chronicle). At any rate, the least one could do is be aware of the “nuance” involved so as to intuit the “apt” response from someone equally & opposed-ly tendentious.

   While we’re at it, let’s take the clerks’ chronicling of House on House action: I am absolutely sure the website is deliberately made to be counter-intuitive insofar is concerned a transparent accessibility to display of bills’ text vs. roll-call. The fact that you were able to do both, wd, shows I sure as hell ain’t gonna help you understand shit.

   So, anyway, Bern votes Yea on that which reaffirms that which he voted Nay on way back when. Since we know, thanks to, i.a., the likes of A. Sorkin, that members trade votes across the aisle, I’d like to see how fellow gonocaucusers schedule their respective Yeas & Nays* based upon what would be an expedient- or suicidal vote from the point of view of their respective constituencies/donor-bases. Since the outcome is rarely in question, that’s really the only thing left: political palatability. Or something.

   * I propose that Yea and Nay” be changed to “Yay!” and “Neigh!”

   • wendyedavis | December 13, 2017 at 8:21 am | Reply

     mornin’, davidly. as to assange, i really don’t know what he knew, didn’t, etc., but i will say that i knew none of the history of the “Jerusalem Embassy Act of 1995 (Public Law 104–45), which became law on November 8, 1995, states that Jerusalem should remain the undivided capital of Israel in which the rights of every ethnic and religious group are protected…”, and i was pissed that i was unable to find the text of SR 176 on the dagnabbed senate.gov website, and i really did try. so i’d had to do a general search, and breitbart news had the only partial answer, and the link to the text, which i’d added to breitbart’s account. but oh, did i blow the formatting of that whole section!

     i’ll try to repair it later, but oooof, i hadn’t taken the tie to read it after i’d posted it. but you’ve indicated that the bern had voted ‘nay’ sometime back? i do remember that he’d made a huge deal about not attending one of bibi’s three (iirc) appearances at joint sessions of congress….dunno about needing to trade votes across the aisle on a ‘resolution’, though, as those have no force in law, do they? more akin to a quaker ‘sense of the meeting’?

     but sure, whip counts are key to figuring out who can afford to vote which way in order to still come up w/ the ‘desired’ vote and keep one’s donors…happy enough for who it’s for.

     what i’d hoped y’all could teach me was stuff that keeps me runnin’ to wikipedia (although tafkiris, islamic jihad, et.al. entries just might be a little incendiary, yah?) ;-)

     but yes, i did try hard to show that herr T has only pulled the trigger of the gun that’s been loaded against palestinians AND christians, who are the third religious to whom jerusalem is sacred. jim kavanagh at CP this morning has some more examples from saint obama; after some toast and chores, i’ll bring them.

     • davidly | December 13, 2017 at 9:27 am | Reply

       Pretty good analogy there with the pulled trigger vs. loaded gun. Yeah, that was clear from your OE. Although, I suppose it’d be more accurate to say that he took the loaded gun and said he was gonna shoot.

       ‘Course, you know I wasn’t a Bern Feeler, so his vote ’95 Neigh could’ve been personal expedience. Doesn’t matter to me. My crit of Assange is his being no better in this case than anyone else who in-thoroughly presents an argument that leaves the door open to some putative opposition who’s long co-opted that half of the conversation. You know, the would-be wanks, er, I mean wonks who school everyone on “procedure” (I’ll not do that here. Shudder at the thought).

       • wendyedavis | December 13, 2017 at 10:14 am | Reply

         yes, herr T notes/noted that moving the embassy is a long-term procedure. others note that any empty buildings could be used as an embassy, yada, yada, still others note that The Next Prez could change it back to ‘tel aviv’.

         but it’s the ‘jerusalem univided as the capital’, but all faiths ‘respected and protected’ that’s utter nonsense, as bibi full-well knows, that’s firing the middle east into fury, or ‘Trump’s Jerusalem Decision Risks Uniting the Entire Arab World Against the US‘ by patrick cockburn, CP

         but he calls this a likely mis-calculation, and explains much further in his essay, inclding bin laden and the occupation of palestine, even to hezbullah (nasrallah).

         you may be entirely correct about assange’s coyness, though. and thanks for making me look up ‘tendentious’ again. ;-) wish i thought i’d remember for next time, but…alas….

         oh and so much else i’d had to look up, including arrrrg, maps of israel showing gaza, the west bank, the golan heights, the gaza flotilla in 2010, afterward the palmer and goldstone reports, and goldstone’s ‘amended’ (under pressure) version… …and the eva bartlet tweet shows a mondoweiss mostly approved map of the land grab since 1948.

   • wendyedavis | December 13, 2017 at 9:44 am | Reply

     December 13, 2017
     ‘Zionism in the Light of Jerusalem’, by Jim Kavanagh CP, Dec. 13

     he begins by noting many of those who whould have been embarrassed, including ‘Arab monarchs and the Palestinian Authority functionaries’…same compliance to big daddy amerika….

     “It was Obama, too, who (after becoming first American President to give bunker-buster bombs to Israel. He did that secretly, because he didn’t want it to be known that his really brave and progressive and highly-publicized peace-process demand that Israel stop settlement construction in exchange for such gifts, which Israel of course ignored, was another empty American bluff. And it was Obama who, in 2013, became the first American President to demand that “Palestinians must recognize that Israel will be a Jewish state.” That was a new, gratuitous and excessive demand at the time, foisted on everyone by Netanyahu and AIPAC because they knew it would be unacceptable to the Palestinians. Obama’s adoption of that requirement, which has become locked into American policy, was no less damaging to the ostensible peace-process, with its infinitely-receding goalpost, than Trump’s Jerusalem declaration, and perhaps more contemptuous of the Palestinians. It’s the equivalent of demanding that “Native Americans must recognize that America is a White Man’s state.”

     he’d also chronicled a bit of what he’d written here during the 2012 convention.

     upon further reflection on assange’s tweet, there were several different iterations of that in the twittersphere #hashtags i’d featured in the OP, also labeled #zionism, and my guess that they may have been reflecting the fact that obeisance to israel is a joint red/blue project. some ask if israel is a client of amerika, or is amerika a client of israel? that five Rs, 5 D’s didn’t vote on the resolution…did that mean anything?

     and i did like ‘Yay!’ and Neigh‘. (smile)

     • davidly | December 13, 2017 at 11:04 am | Reply

       Sure some o’ th’ 5-&-5 who abstained’d be down to a “damned if they ‘Yay’d’, damned if they ‘Neigh’d'” situation, I’m guessin’.

       Re. the the Native American comparison in JK’s CP piece: Sure, if the 17th-to-18th century were 1948. Come to think of it, I’m pretty sure founding fatherhood included just such demands, at least by the default of the shifting sands of the manifest destiny’s loaded gun.

       • wendyedavis | December 13, 2017 at 11:46 am | Reply

         you know my memory, but a couple who didn’t vote were sponsors; go figure. but holy hell, yeppers, i tracked down the original house and senate version votes for the Jerusalem Embassy Act of 1995, the bern indeed had vote neigh, but look at the ‘statistically notable‘ house neighs. all but two dems, and the bern. it turns out it was a bob dole vote, those senate names were a major flash from da past!

         and..
         ‘About ‘Sense of Congress’ Resolutions; While Not Laws, They Have an Impact’

         on edit: and yep, add in the vile ‘doctrine of discovery’, as well.

3. TarheelDem | December 13, 2017 at 3:08 pm | Reply

   This crisis is a diplomatic crisis because the international order beginning after World War I sought diplomatic ways to avoid wars and conflicts. And important one (Thanks Woody Wilson) was the notion of self-determination of nations (which means the whole concept of nations was completely understood, right?

   Well not if someone has already made a declaration of what should happen with that land – the British and a letter dated 2 November 1917 from the United Kingdom’s Foreign Secretary Arthur Balfour to Lord Rothschild, a leader of the British Jewish community, for transmission to the Zionist Federation of Great Britain and Ireland. The text:

   “His Majesty’s government view with favour the establishment in Palestine of a national home for the Jewish people, and will use their best endeavours to facilitate the achievement of this object, it being clearly understood that nothing shall be done which may prejudice the civil and religious rights of existing non-Jewish communities in Palestine, or the rights and political status enjoyed by Jews in any other country.”

   January 9, 1918 (2 months later) Woodrow Wilson in adding the US to the Alliance stated Fourteen Principles, one which went square up against the Balfour Declaration:
   “V. A free, open-minded, and absolutely impartial adjustment of all colonial claims, based upon a strict observance of the principle that in determining all such questions of sovereignty the interests of the populations concerned must have equal weight with the equitable government whose title is to be determined.”

   The UK’s claim as to what happened in Palestine was just such a colonial claim. Of course, Lord Rothschild is adequately attended to in time of war.

   “According to historian Norman Rose, the chief architects of the declaration contemplated that a Jewish State would emerge in time while the Palestine Royal Commission concluded that the wording was “the outcome of a compromise between those Ministers who contemplated the ultimate establishment of a Jewish State and those who did not.”

   Get this. For almost a hundred years, the Zionists have acted to create a Jewish state in name and reality and the Palestine Royal Commission did not recognize what Britain had done and thought there was a compromise.

   And yet, Palestinians were not at all ignorant of what was afoot.

   A delegation of the Muslim-Christian Association, headed by Musa al-Husayni, expressed public disapproval on 3 November 1918, one day after the Zionist Commission parade marking the first anniversary of the Balfour Declaration. They handed a petition signed by more than 100 notables to Ronald Storrs, the British military governor:

   We have noticed yesterday a large crowd of Jews carrying banners and over-running the streets shouting words which hurt the feeling and wound the soul. They pretend with open voice that Palestine, which is the Holy Land of our fathers and the graveyard of our ancestors, which has been inhabited by the Arabs for long ages, who loved it and died in defending it, is now a national home for them… We Arabs, Muslim and Christian, have always sympathized profoundly with the persecuted Jews and their misfortunes in other countries… but there is wide difference between such sympathy and the acceptance of such a nation… ruling over us and disposing of our affairs.

   Then came World War II and the Shoah. The standard description of the Shoah goes something like this and affects the emotional force which non-Jews are expected to take the Shoah and Zionism.
   “In Teaching the Holocaust (2015), Michael Gray offers three definitions of the Holocaust. The first refers to the persecution and murder of Jews by the Nazis and their collaborators between 1933 and 1945; this definition views, for example, the events of Kristallnacht in Germany in 1938 as an early phase of the Holocaust. The second focuses on the systematic mass murder of Jews by the Nazis and their collaborators between 1941 and 1945; this acknowledges the shift in German policy in 1941 toward the extermination of the Jewish people. The third and broadest definition embraces the persecution and murder of several groups by the Nazis and their collaborators between 1933 and 1945; this includes all the Nazis’ victims, but it fails, Gray writes, to acknowledge that only the Jewish people were singled out for annihilation.”

   The Jewish people were singled out (in Mein Kampf among other places). Jews need a homeland to be secure from attack. Zionism of course says that that homeland must be Ancient Israel/Contemporary (in 1920) Palestine.

   “Lloyd George stated in 1937 that it was intended that Palestine would become a Jewish Commonwealth if and when Jews “had become a definite majority of the inhabitants”,[aa] and Leo Amery echoed the same position in 1946.[ab] In the UNSCOP report of 1947, the issue of home versus state was subjected to scrutiny arriving at a similar conclusion to that of Lloyd George.

   There has been intentional ambiguity verging on a lie from Britian and then from the US about their intention to create a settler colonial state in Palestine under the British Empire and then the UN because so many Christian followers in Britain and the US were propagandized to Zionism in their Sunday School lessons. James Hagee is just the most recent useful idiot with his Millennialism and “Jews for Jesus” ministry.

   But first we have a major post-World War II crisis and Harry Truman’s diplomacy.

   And the Palestinians have a diplomatic weakness in approaching the UN in negotiations. Amin al-Husseini, the Grand Mufti (a British position) of Jerusalem had allied with Italy and Germany during World War II. Not the best position for resisting a policy that amounted to ethnic cleansing and was witnessed as such by western intelligence agencies. After the 1947-1948 Arab-Israeli War, the first wave of refugees swept north to Lebanon and south to Jordan and Egypt and east to Syria. As a matter of policy in building the Jewish State, those refugees became then and still are stateless persons awaiting another country to grant them visa status or Israel to allow them the right of return to Israel. Millions of stateless people have been settled for up to 70 years as a result.

   Egypt, Jordan, Syria, Iraq, and Lebanon have sought diplomatic means of returning refugees and military means of forcing the issue on Israel. They have failed at every turn, the worst failure being Moshe Dayan’s pre-emptive Six-Day War of 1967 in which Israel physically expelled Jordan’s military from the West Bank, Egypt’s military from Gaza, and Syria’s military from the Golan Heights. The Camp David Agreement wound up setting those boundaries close to permanently in promise of a final agreement some day, soon, really soon, yes you know how soon. It’s just shy of 40 years since all the stakeholders signed the agreement and got their trip to Oslo for the Peace Prize.

   From 1948 until 1967, West Jerusalem was in the Israeli sector and East Jerusalem. The partition happened like this: The war of 1948 resulted in the division of Jerusalem, so that the old walled city lay entirely on the Jordanian side of the line. A no-man’s land between East and West Jerusalem came into being in November 1948: Moshe Dayan, commander of the Israeli forces in Jerusalem, met with his Jordanian counterpart Abdullah el-Tell in a deserted house in Jerusalem’s Musrara neighborhood and marked out their respective positions: Israel’s position in red and Jordan’s in green. This rough map, which was not meant as an official one, became the final line in the 1949 Armistice Agreements, which divided the city and left Mount Scopus as an Israeli exclave inside East Jerusalem.[197] Barbed wire and concrete barriers ran down the center of the city, passing close by Jaffa Gate on the western side of the old walled city, and a crossing point was established at Mandelbaum Gate slightly to the north of the old walled city. Military skirmishes frequently threatened the ceasefire.

   East Jerusalem was in the Jordanian sector and ran to the Jordan River, the crossing was the Allenby Bridge from Jerusalem to Jordan. The al Aqsa Mosque and Dome of the Rock was in the Jordanian sector; the wall portion of the Hebrew temple (the “Wailing Wall”) was in the Israeli sector of West Jerusalem.

   When Israel occupied the West Bank, Gaza, and Golan Heights, it intially recognized these boundaries, but as Israelis erected illegal settlements the boundary lines became mofe arbitrary.

   So the nut of the issue is that Zionist Israel seeks a Jewish State with only Jews as citizens and no civil rights for others. (An apartheid state with two classes of citizens). And yet, Israel seeks not to have to recognize the rights of a conquered territory and its obligations under the Geneva Conventions. Gaza and the West Bank in a lot of respects are like Guantanamo, a place of arbitrary Israeli rule in which the populace is collectively punished for the actions of the resistance to Israeli rule. There cannot be a one-state solution without an automatic fifth column without full citizenship for everyone, including the ability to select the government. But that means that the state can never be a Jewish state without being also an apartheid state. And that is before going to the disposition of religions in Jerusalem in a single state that is a religious Jewish state. If that Jewish state is dominant, what guarantees do other religions have that their rights will be respected?

   The Israeli Jewish state won’t even go there, much less providing equality of opportunity for Palestinian identity in a multicultural society.

   There was out of Camp David supposed to be that final agreement that would settle all of the details instead of thrashing through each detail one-by-one. The disposition of embassies (and not just the US embassy) was one of those details. There was no negotiation; Trump just decided. That has implications for the US diplomats working in that embassy and the reaction from the locals. At least the Israeli dupliicity and US shuffle are over.

   • wendyedavis | December 13, 2017 at 4:50 pm | Reply

     lol, you said a mouthful, amigo! i’d invited margo schulter over to comment, remembering that at firedoglake she really seemed to know a hella lot more than most tere on I/P history. dunno why she hadn’t put all she had to say in comments, but she emailed them to me, said i could plop them in, ascribe them to her. i wrote back that i hoped she’d do so herself, but please, please, break all of this into several comments so we (really meaning ‘I’, could absorb, respond, question, a bit at at time. but your long comment is far longer, so i’ll have to break up my responses a bit as i’m able. ;-) and yeah, others, if anyone else surfaces, may not need the time….

     first yes, what a con by loyd george, eh? ““Lloyd George stated in 1937 that it was intended that Palestine would become a Jewish Commonwealth if and when Jews “had become a definite majority of the inhabitants”,[aa] and Leo Amery echoed the same position in 1946.[ab] In the UNSCOP report of 1947, the issue of home versus state was subjected to scrutiny arriving at a similar conclusion to that of Lloyd George.”

     i’d put up (then taken down for more space as no one had noticed it) jonathan cook’s nov. 3 ‘Balfour Declaration: Britain Broke Its Feeble Promise to the Palestinians’ (cook writes from nazareth), but he extrapolates the bs much as you do.

     “Israel learnt two lessons from Britain that guided its subsequent struggle to quash Palestinian attempts at liberation.
     First, Israel continued the draconian measures of British colonial rule. In the early 1950s, Menachem Begin, leader of the pre-state Irgun militia and a future Israeli prime minister, famously called Britain’s emergency regulations “Nazi laws”.

     Nonetheless, they were incorporated into the military orders Israel uses against Palestinians under occupation. Significantly, the regulations are also still in force inside Israel against the country’s large minority of Palestinian citizens, one in five of the population. Israel has yet to end its seven-decade state of emergency.”

     did most of this come from wikipedia, or other sources as well? or your memory? the 2 paragraphs beginning with “And the Palestinians have a diplomatic weakness in approaching the UN in negotiations” are fascinating new history to me, as is what you say came out of the camp david (or didn’t) accords.

     more as i can; dinner to make, cleanup post-mr.wd cleaning the woodstove, etc., and a chanukah candle to light, almost sundown. can’t hurt, can it? sigh.

   • wendyedavis | December 14, 2017 at 7:38 am | Reply

     the wording of the petition handed to the british military gov is too poignant, and was a portent of what was to come, and so much more violently. i read the wiki on the first and second intifadas this a.m., and along the way discovered the many op-eds stating why there won’t be a third one…yet.

     correct me if i’m misremembering, but weren’t gypsies and homosexuals weren’t singled out for disposal by the third reich?

     i watched a vimeo w/ jonathan cook explaining the farcical two-tiered non-democracy of both right of return and citizenship, oy and veh. thanks for the lengthy historical narrative on thee partitions, players, etc. ariel sharon under idf guard walking to the temple mount in 2000…wasn’t meant to be provocative, was it? just trying to show solidarity and peace, no? Q: i was at haaretz this a.m. and tried to click into ‘trump’s peace plan’, but got blocked out. cripes, what peace plan?

     it’s always difficult to guage the truth of the casualty stats, say like this at da wiki, or at the times of israel. their version story about the idf blowing up a another tunnel from gaza last week sure sounded like agitprop to me.

     oh, and this is quite a story, partially because iirc in some areas orthodox jews were some of the most violent in defense of total zionism, down to helping bulldoze palestinian houses.

     “We Will Not Serve in Your Army!” Orthodox Jews in Jerusalem Beaten, Arrested for Refusing Draft; Countless videos posted on social media demonstrate the discipline with which the Hareidi community has been protesting and engaging in civil disobedience. Police violence, on the other hand, resulted in many injured and requiring urgent medical attention, miko peled, mintpressnews.com, dec. 8

     “JERUSALEM — While U.S. President Donald Trump’s announcement to move the Israeli embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem has dangerously fueled an international powder keg, another keg is burning in the heart of that city.
     In an ongoing act of principled civil disobedience, the Ultra-Orthodox community in Jerusalem is standing strong in its resistance to serving in the Israeli army. Even as they are met with shocking police brutality, thousands of members of this community, known as the Hareidi community, chant and hold signs saying “we will not serve in your army.” Rabbi Hirsh in Jerusalem told me that the IDF is seen by the community as an army of occupation that wages needless wars and oppresses the Palestinian people.”

     • TarheelDem | December 14, 2017 at 5:09 pm | Reply

       Ariel Sharon at al Aqsa was running for prime minister by triggering an intifada while the current prime minister was at Camp David with Bill Clinton trying to wring out a peace agreement before W came to power. Do you see the play there?

       • wendyedavis | December 14, 2017 at 5:24 pm | Reply

         ha, no; i hadn’t twigged; thank you for that. and for the happy birthday as well.

         here’s trump’s alleged ‘peace plan’, at least according to jerusalem online. fp had a variation, but i’d forgotten to save the link. haaretz reported that it’s on hold till tempers cool, but that site i behind a paywall.

         i kinda wanted to create a separate post, but i need some down time, and most have likely seen the news: Happy christmas from ajit pai and friends (fiends?): ‘‘FCC Chairman Ajit Pai Explains Net Neutrailty Decision: Removing “Heavy Hand Of Government” From Internet’, real clear politics today

         “What is responsible for the phenomenal development of the internet? It certainly wasn’t heavy-handed government regulation. Quite to the contrary,” Pai explained. “President Clinton and a Republican Congress agreed that it would be the policy of the U.S. to ‘preserve the vibrant and competitive free market that exists on the internet, unfettered by federal and state regulation.’ This bipartisan policy worked.”

4. wendyedavis | December 13, 2017 at 8:04 pm | Reply

   i’m zonked, and i hope i hadn’t offended margo schulter, but…i frequently offend, i guess. i’m zonked for tonight, but this should resonate as a song for the resistance:

   morning edit:

   the ghosts of ariel sharon:

   Under armed escort by #Israeli security , a group of Israelis right wing activist and settlers visits #AlAqsa mousqe in #Jerusalem. #Trump video by Firas Dibs pic.twitter.com/p1fcqWdJv9

   — Nasser Atta (@nasseratta5) December 14, 2017

   can anyone explain the significance of this to me?

   #Israeli security forces closes damascus gate in the old city of #Jerusalem and #Palestinian insist they will leave the old city , and they did . pic.twitter.com/74PhUxK4pY

   — Nasser Atta (@nasseratta5) December 14, 2017

   al-aqsa mosque on wiki. my stars, the history.

   today’s my birthday. fancy this: i’ve outlived both my parents by over forty-five years already. whooosh.

   • TarheelDem | December 14, 2017 at 5:10 pm | Reply

     Happy Birthday, wd

5. juliania2 | December 14, 2017 at 12:40 pm | Reply

   As you mention, wendye, Jerusalem is holy to three faiths, but I would submit that it is holy to each in a different way, as your heading reflects.

   I will just quote from my flawed memory, but ‘O Jerusalem’ expands into the saying of Jesus- “O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, slayer of prophets and…(don’t remember the second attribute) “…how many times would I seek to gather you under my wings as a hen gathers her chicks, and you would not.”

   A second remembered saying of his is to the Samaritan woman that neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem is the Father to be worshipped, since he seeks to be worshipped in spirit and in truth.

   I would liken Jerusalem for Christians to Chaco Canyon for the Pueblo people.

   • wendyedavis | December 14, 2017 at 3:25 pm | Reply

     quite differently it does seem, at least biblicaly.

     Matthew 23:37: ‘O Jerusalem, Jerusalem, you that kill the prophets, and stone them which are sent to you, how often would I have gathered your children together, even as a hen gathers her chickens under her wings, and you would not!’ (American king james version)

     John 4:21-24: “Woman,” Jesus replied, “believe me, a time is coming when you will worship the Father neither on this mountain nor in Jerusalem. 22 You Samaritans worship what you do not know; we worship what we do know, for salvation is from the Jews. 23 Yet a time is coming and has now come when the true worshipers will worship the Father in the Spirit and in truth, for they are the kind of worshipers the Father seeks. 24 God is spirit, and his worshipers must worship in the Spirit and in truth.” (new international version)

     while true, the key holder of the church of the holy sepulchre had vowed not to allow mike pence thru the door, and (as above) the pope of egypt’s coptic christian church refused to meet with him. not fans of the administration’s proclamations. ;-)

     i’m not getting your analogy to chaco canyons and the pueblo people.

     is it as dry in cochiti as here? mr. wd looked it up, and over the past two and a half months, we’ve had .71 of an inch precipitation.

     on edit:and a good christmas to you and yours on jan. 7, i believe you’d said. we’re hanging christmas decorations a bit at a time here, mainly things i’ve sewn and crocheted over the decades. our daughter is hinting that he an her family *may* come the weekend after christmas, but i’m trying not to get my hopes up, it’s that unlikely given…everything.

     • juliania2 | December 15, 2017 at 6:55 am | Reply

       I think you inadvertently put your final comment onto my post, wendye – a good Christmas to you as well. Yes, very dry here also, and warm during the day, what there is left of it. That’s simply my personal feeling about Chaco from the one time I visited and conversations with people about the place – that it is a very beautiful, sacred and amazing place of origin, but also had been well departed from.

       • wendyedavis | December 15, 2017 at 8:15 am | Reply

         i’m not seeing what you’re seeing, juliania, but these nested comment lines can indeed be confusing. on edit: mr wd found it; i was trying to edit my comment, not yours. ;-)

         thanks for explaining your analogy, and while ‘but also had been well departed from’ might have two meanings, as in: spiritual or physical departures’, whole books have been written about the
         darker, let’s say, evidence-based speculations on the latter.

         but that the entire city was based on accurate astronomy (as well as ‘fool’s the eye’ defense) is simply mind-blowing to me. and while ii’ve never been there, i’ve been transfixed every time i’ve watched robert redford’s excellent tour. talk about ‘whoooosh’.

         and hey, ho! i just heard from margo schulter explaining that she’d gotten waylaid by life, but will stop by soon as she’s able.

6. wendyedavis | December 14, 2017 at 3:52 pm | Reply

   the following contribution is from dear margo schulter, a long-time friend from FDL days.

   “Of course, Donald Trump’s move in relocating the U.S. Embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem/al-Quds (al-Quds, “The Holy,” being the Arabic name for the Holy City) is the message that Israel should reign supreme in all of Historical Palestine, and thus a step away from any real peace process based on equal citizenship and rights for Palestinian Arabs and Israeli Jews.

   However, having Jerusalem/al-Quds as the capital of the State of Israel could make perfect sense, and be a step toward peace with justice, if one adds a critical understanding that the official “peace process” has mostly sought to avoid for 50 years: the understanding that Israel is in reality a binational or bicommunal state of two peoples, the Israeli Jews and Palestinian Arabs, and must adopt a written constitution that is nondiscriminatory in practice as well as theory. Here there are actually two issues: What shall Israel’s boundaries be? And within those boundaries, shall it be an exclusively “Jewish state,” or inclusively “a state of all its citizens, including the sizable Jewish population but also the comparable Palestinian Arab population”?

   For some years, it has seemed clear that Israel’s domain runs from the River Jordan to the Mediterranean Sea. The annexation of the West Bank in 1967 has been confirmed, however illegally, by factors ranging from the many Jewish settlements to strategic interests in the Jordan Valley. Interdependence seems unavoidable between two inextricably intertwined peoples.

   Given this reality, demands for “a Palestinian state” have amounted essentially to a demand for a kinder and gentler bantustan. While the various economic advantages of Israeli Jews as compared to Palestinian Arabs may be difficult to alter even by the most just political solution, at least a just solution can eliminate some glaring legal inequalities and move toward a measure of reconciliation.

   Under such a solution, Israel could remain a “Jewish state” in the nonexclusive sense defined, interestingly enough, in United Nations General Assembly Resolution 181 (29 November 1947). That resolution, while establishing a “Jewish state” in a portion of Palestine considerably smaller (56% of Historical Palestine) than the “Green Line” armistice boundaries that became Israel’s borders in 1949-1967 (77% of Historical Palestine), required that this state protect the rights of a very large Palestinian Arab minority — more than 40% of the population — and enact a written constitution prohibiting discrimination by “race, religion, or sex.”

   Sadly, while people tend to remember that the 1947 resolution specified two states, they tend to forget the civil and human rights guarantees which were to apply to both states. That omission can explain much of the tragedy of
   the last 70 years.

   What is needed now, above all, is movement toward a solution that recognizes Israel as a land and a state of both peoples. Where the concerns of Israeli Jews are most forceful are in areas of national security: an understandable fear lest ha-Shoah, the Holocaust, might ever be repeated. Continued Jewish control over the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) may be the price for peace.

   However, what Palestinian Arabs need is a sense of political and social
   autonomy and equality. A binational or bicommunal State of Israel, possibly
   with two legislative bodies to address the needs of each people as well as a
   common legislature, may be the logical solution. Also, recognizing all
   current residents of Israel (including the West Bank and Gaza) as Israeli
   citizens would solve at least a considerable part of the 1948 refugee
   question. All Palestinian Arab and Israeli Jewish residents would be free to
   live anywhere in the country.

   In order to address the demographic diversity of the country, creating something like 12-15 federal districts or cantons, with the right of free motion and relocation between these units for all citizens, would add an element of decentralization. It is important to recognize that the complexities of Israeli/Palestinian ethnicity go beyond the existence of two peoples in one land: groups such as Kurdish Jews, and Bedouin Arabs, add to this variety.

   An additional fact complicating the situation in a creative way is the false dichotomy between the “Jewish” and “Arab” population. Much of the population of Israel comes from a culturally Arab tradition, sadly devalued because of the deadly logic of war and violence over the last seven decades. But a binational or bicultural solution might well lead to a positive celebration of the intersection between Jewish and Arab identity, a celebration that could promote a sense of solidarity between the two peoples making up the land of Israel/Palestine.

   Once one focuses on the solution of a binational or bicultural State of Israel, the idea of Jerusalem/al-Quds as its capital seems only natural. A binational or bicultural solution — with the latter term sometimes preferred in part because many people regard “binationalism” as a dated term implying irrelevance to the present — would likely require at least as much diligent and difficult bargaining as the South African solution of 1994. And the example of South Africa cautions that peace is not synonymous with utopia — likely because Israeli Jewish privilege (and more especially Ashkenazi or Central and Eastern European Jewish privilege) may prove as resistant as European or “white” privilege in South Africa to merely legal
   proclamations of equality.

   However, peace is a noble goal in itself, and can bring drastic improvement in the well-being of both Israel Jews and Palestinian Arabs. Thus Trump’s misadventure can and should be taken as an occasion for us to think adventurously and constructively about a State of Israel as a binational or bicultural state of all its citizens.

   As a final historical footnote, I might note that the United Nations resolution of 1947 actually defined Jerusalum as a separate entity with a special international regime, including democratic government by the Holy City’s residents, known as “Citizens of Jerusalem.” Today, a binational or bicultural Jerusalem/al-Quds in a binational or bicultural State of Israel may be the best way to implement the values of that resolution.”

   a fascinating and aspirational take, margo; thank you,
   wd

   on third edit: oddly, i can’t get margo’s comment to format correctly. it’ll look okay in edit, then reformat itself. even tried ripping it, pasting in a word doc, tra la la. dinnae work.

7. TarheelDem | December 14, 2017 at 5:21 pm | Reply

   I always found Margo’s comments at FDL clarifying. This one as well. The parallel with South Africa points to why boycott, divest, sanction (BDS) has become and activist tactic and why Israel is so interested in other nations passing laws preventing their nationals from exerting that pressure in their countries. Watch what our Congress is up to on this score, in spite of the fact that it is clearly unconstitutional under the First Amendment.

   • wendyedavis | December 15, 2017 at 11:01 am | Reply

     yes, at least in july, ‘A bill that would criminalise boycotts against Israel has been signed by 45 US senators and 237 congressman.

     The so-called “Israel Anti-Boycott Act” would impose fines of up to $250,000 (£192,000) on any US citizen “engaged in interstate or foreign commerce” who supports a boycott of Israeli goods and services.’

     (smile) and as per your ‘keep chanting emmet till and anita hill’, tarheeldem,

     “a little bit nutty and a little bit slutty” https://t.co/8QWTkttfP0

     — Club des Cordeliers (@cordeliers) December 14, 2017

     not unexpected, i reckon:

     #OICSummit 57 countries in the OIC have unanimously declared #Jerusalem as capital of #Palestine & have proclaimed #Israel as a terrorist state. Hope these words result into political & diplomatic action. Also, very proud that Pakistan does not recognise Israel as a country!

     — Hamza Ali Abbasi (@iamhamzaabbasi) December 13, 2017

8. wendyedavis | December 15, 2017 at 9:01 pm | Reply

   me, i cannae think of one encouraging note to sing, much less hum. sorry; maybe tomorrow will look better as we bless the sunrise w/ corn pollen or prayer.

   In 2017, U.S. Special Operations forces were deployed to 75% of the countries on the planet, a new record https://t.co/S8YDiRwDsU by @nickturse

   — TomDispatch (@TomDispatch) December 15, 2017

9. Margo Schulter | December 16, 2017 at 1:27 am | Reply

   First, wendyedavis, many kudos for your astute and artful interweaving of sources in your original post, something I’m now in better shape to appreciate and admire. As always, your presence and witty observations themselves are an element of hope even when it might seem otherwise in short supply, to say the least.

   On the Roma and Sinti, often known as “Gypsies,” I would regard them as by 1941, like the Jews, marked for extermination in the emerging “Final Solution” of the Third Reich. Here’s a site that develops the parallels.

   juliania2’s comment about Chaco Canyon and the Pueblo people engages and intrigues me. My first knowledge about Chaco Canyon emphasized the site as a center of cooperative community housing, with sophisticated equivalents of apartment complexes or the like, but what I get here also is something at a spiritual level that does remind me of Jerusalem/al-Quds. That is “sacred ancestral homelands” for the Pueblo Nations “who maintain oral accounts of their historical migration from Chaco and their spiritual relationship to the land.” (“Chaco Culture NHP’, wikipedia) At least, that’s my impression of what juliania2 might mean, entirely subject to her correction or revision.

   Of course, I agree with TarheelDem that freedom to support Boycott Divestment Sanctions (BDS) may be as important to the struggle against anti-Palestinian oppression in Israel as to the struggle against apartheid in the old South Africa. The equivocation in the Balfour Declaration between a “Jewish homeland” in Palestine (certainly an accomplished fact) and the oft-understood objective of a “Jewish state” (a term tending to suggest Jewish rule over Palestinian Arabs) is critical. One concept that may lead in the direction of peace is “a Jewish cultural center in Palestine,” which implies a Jewish presence without the element of Jewish hegemony and oppression over others that has applied since 1948. This is the binational or bicommunal Zionism of Albert Einstein and the Rabbi Judah L. Magnes that leaves room for Palestinian Arab equality and human dignity, elements notably absent from the “political Zionism” that has guided the policy of Israel’s founders and their successors for seven decades.

   Finally, for now, a humorous quibble really irrelevant to the grim reality we’re addressing here. While “What Hast Drumf Finally Wrought?” loses none of its ironic merriment from this small glitch, I can’t help pedantically observing that in Early Modern English (e.g. from Shakespeare’s time), the third person form here sought would be “What Hath Trumf Finally Wrought,” with “hast” as the second person singular: “What hast thou wrought?” Well, wendyedavis, thou has wrought a most skillfully crafted narrative of this diplomatic misadventure serving as the centerpiece for a feast of comments, bringing hope for the holidays even where despair might otherwise seem sovereign. That is a most precious gift to us all, my sister.

   • wendyedavis | December 16, 2017 at 8:15 am | Reply

     Ta, margo shulter, and many ta’s for your large contribution, not all of which i understand, admittedly. and ooof! i appreciate your correction of my title, Thou spongy reeling-ripe flax-wench!

     ha; believe it or not, i’d even looked up which i should use, but obviously failed to grasp; i keep swearing i’ll learn to read one day soon!. (and i changed it.) ;-)

     i fixed your link, dunno what sort of code you’d sent in your email, but in general, if you just stick in the url, i can usually find the time to edit comments to embed the link in the title, as i’ve done above.

     here’s the grisly himmlerian ‘solution‘ to the ‘homosexual problem’, more hard reading, as was your roma link, including the mengele experiments,but is this the equivalence of ‘the bnality of evil’? ” In this respect, however, it would be wrong to paint these doctors as inhuman demons of an isolated cabinet of horrors, as such a point of view only increases simplistic and essentialist tendencies of dehumanisation and tabooing. Doctors, as well as members of the SS and the armed forces basically acted according to a general ideology of science, in the name of “the people”.

     but as my memory and mind degrade further, i have to rely more on what others posit, and i have learned to love the immediacy (and images) of the (creepy, really) twittersphere.

     more in a bit, but chores and toast are calling my name. i made 11 dozen cookies for our chirren and grandchirren yesterday, a few dozen more to go this morn. love to you, darlin’ dear.

   • juliania2 | December 17, 2017 at 2:56 pm | Reply

     Thanks fir the mention, Margo, and welcome! While it’s difficult to know exactly, I think its,generally agreed that the earliest occupants of Chaco Canyon went from being hunter gatherers to farming on a subsistence level (baskwt weavers are in there somewhere as well. There later developed what could be called the intelligencia class as also the canyon became a trade hub, coastal and to South American civilizations. As wendye referenced, astronomical wisdom attained sophisticated heights, and gave power to those organizing the construction of great houses and kivas orientrd to cycles of the sun snd moon – but not a large number of people lived permanently in these. Nor were they long part of the Chaco story but built very near its sudden abandonment.

     A fascinating study is David E. Stuart’s “Anasazi America”.

10. cynicalseeker | December 16, 2017 at 4:05 pm | Reply

    Hello wd and happy birthday! Your birthday is one day before my late mother’s, she would have been 101 this year.

    Excellent article. I especially liked Margo’s comments. I used to think I knew a lot about the history of Israel-Palestine but like you, the more I read the less I feel I know. All I can conclude is that Drumpf is trying really, really hard to start World War III.

    I had some good news in that I got my Obamacare back, so I’ll be able to get hernia surgery in January. My policy is 0 premium and 0 deductible, with ridiculously low co-pays. Thank God! I’m so sick of being confined to my bed.

    Oh, and E decided she wants to take our relationship to the next level. When I have a double hernia! What timing!

    • wendyedavis | December 16, 2017 at 4:31 pm | Reply

      good news on both counts, c seeker. but E may have simply thunk that taking your relationship to ‘another level’ means sharing the cost of your copays, no? j/teasing…

      thanks for the birthday wishes, and i corn-fess i’d thought that w/ your being bed-ridden, we might have seen more of you. yah, margo helped the thread a lot, as did tarheeldem, and good on them. i wish all parties could listen to margo’s take, especially about cultural palestine. i read a few things about it, but one featuring uncle albert did make my IE go crazy, dunno i gleaned a hella lot more that he changed his mind a lot, and wanted a world govt. based on peace. talk about aspirational.

      but i’ll add this interview from consortium news on dec. 12: ‘President Trump has won praise from Christian Zionists and many staunch supporters of Israel for declaring Jerusalem Israel’s capital, but critics say it only makes peace a more distant goal, reports Dennis J Bernstein.

      Professor Francis Boyle, who teaches international law at the University of Illinois College of Law and served as a long-time legal adviser to the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), calls Trump’s announcement a “symbolic but still critical step in Israeli designs to control not just Jerusalem, but all of historic Palestine.” I spoke with Boyle on Dec. 6.” [big snip]

      “If you look at the recently leaked so-called peace plan that was presented to
      [Palestinian President Mahmoud] Abbas in Saudi Arabia, he was basically given an ultimatum to either accept some tiny bantustan or forget it. It is very clear that they want all of Palestine, all of the West Bank, all of Jerusalem. They want the Golan Heights and maybe even some more of Syria.”

      from the comments: Yahweh: “I have all branches of government in the United States by the balls. I squeeze them for my pleasure. The real capitol of Israel for now is DC. My chosen always wins. I’m sure you’ve noticed by now. Sit back . Watch. Behold the Glory.” yay-uss…and wide grin. is this the ‘plan‘? or this? “Trump’s peace initiative team, which includes a number of lawyers, seem to view the Israeli-Palestinian conflict as a real-estate dispute that can be solved with money.” does it matter already?

      ‘Abbas confidante: Riyadh backs PA president on reconciliation, peace efforts’, jpost.com dunno how popular abbas is; i’ve seen his name besmirched by different palestinians.

      keep your gut together, son!

11. wendyedavis | December 16, 2017 at 8:01 pm | Reply

    surely there’s a far, far better way that our rulers could run the world. at times i muse about whassup in the parallel universes posited in theoretical physics. no matter; a couple tweets. sleep well if you’re able to.

    (click in for images_
    @nasseratta5 Dec 15: “Talking to many #Palestinians tonight they say killing of Ibrahim, who is double amputees as a result of #Gaza war, will be the beginning g of the start of a third intifada, they compare him to Mohammed al Dura killed in the second Intifada.” (he was evidently shot in the head while crawling to plant a flag)

    @MiddleEastEye Dec 15 “This disabled Palestinian was shot dead today by Israeli forces while protesting Trump’s Jerusalem declaration”
    @nasseratta has many more atrocious stories.

    James J. Zogby‏ @jjz1600 Dec 6 “Here’s the letter from the Patriarchs & Bishops of all the #Christian churches in #Jerusalem pleading w/ #Trump not to recognize #Israel’s control of the city. It’s a Christian & Muslim concern. But politicos in the US don’t care.”

    and a tour of al-aqsa mosque, al jazeera.

    • juliania2 | December 17, 2017 at 3:29 pm | Reply

      On Friday after shopping I sat on a bench in the sun, waiting for the bus home. I was joined by a tall homeless man and we chatted a while. He said he was in his sixties, looked younger, had worked for high pay on oil rigs and in the uranium mines. And he had been a marine. A buddy came along, also ex-marine, and we were formally introduced, and off they went. On parting both insisted if I would ever need protection to call on them.

      Plato’s guardians they no doubt had not been, but then, with nothing to their name, they were. I wonder what happens to those Israeli soldiers as they reflect down the road on what they have been and what they have done.

      Happy birthday belatedly, wendye, and best wishes on your surgery, cynical one!

      • wendyedavis | December 18, 2017 at 8:01 am | Reply

        what a kind offer, juliania, informed by their recent suffering, perhaps? i suppose some of the IDF po-po might have epiphanies later in life, but the prompt would have to be awfully stark, i’d think. male and female seem equally vicious in the videos i’ve watched. even against chirren, of course. seeing so many in dog-kennel sized cages was almost too much to witness.

        and ta for the b-day wishes; it was a good day. ;-) i’ll add:

        ‘UNITED NATIONS (Reuters) – The United Nations Security Council is due to vote on Monday on a draft resolution calling for the withdrawal of U.S. President Donald Trump’s decision to recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, diplomats said, a move likely to face a Washington veto. The one-page Egyptian-drafted text, seen by Reuters, does not specifically mention the United States or Trump. Diplomats say it has broad support among the 15-member council, and while it is unlikely to be adopted, the vote will further isolate Trump on the issue. To pass, a resolution needs nine votes in favor and no vetoes by the United States, France, Britain, Russia or China.’

        well, nikki loves the idea, but what’s important is isolating Herr Drumf./s ah, hell, it can’t hurt, i reckon.

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