Caroline Glick: US has plunged its relations with Israel into crisis
In light of the reactions from Washington to the Hamas and Fatah-inspired Arab violence in Jerusalem, it is hard to see how Israel will be able to maintain a constructive dialogue about its relations with the Palestinians with the Biden administration or more broadly, with the Democrat Party. Indeed, the reactions coming out of Washington to the Arab violence in Jerusalem indicate that Israel will be hard-pressed to conduct a constructive dialogue with Washington about anything, and this will be the case regardless of who forms the next Israeli government.
Saturday, Democrat Senator Elizabeth Warren published a shocking post on her Twitter account in response to the Arab riots in Jerusalem's Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood, which started in earnest last Thursday. The progressive powerhouse wrote, "The forced removal of long-time Palestinian residents of Sheikh Jarrah is abhorrent and unacceptable. The Administration should make it clear to the Israeli government that these evictions are illegal and must stop immediately."
Warren's statement isn't a demand for justice for Arabs. It is a demand for injustice for Jews. Warren has become the first senior US official to call for Jews to be barred from doing something specifically because they are Jewish since Ulysses Grant barred Jews from entering Tennessee, Mississippi, and Kentucky at the height of the Civil War.
The situation in Sheikh Jarrah is cut and dry. Buildings in the neighborhood that were purchased by Jews 146 years ago were illegally seized in 1948 by Jordan as its forces illegally occupied eastern, northern and southern Jerusalem in the course of the pan-Arab invasion of the nascent Jewish state. During the course of Jordan's illegal occupation of those areas of Jerusalem, the Jordanian Registry of Enemy Property illegally leased the Jewish-owned buildings to Arab tenants.
When Israel liberated the Jordanian-occupied areas of Jerusalem in 1967, the owners of the buildings reasserted their property rights. Their ownership over the properties in Sheikh Jarrah was duly registered in Israel's land registry in 1973. But when the owners tried to retake poss. Their refusal instigated a now 48-year legal battle between the owners and the squatters which is scheduled to finally come to an end this week.
In countless court decisions, judges found time after time that the Jewish owners were the legitimate owners and the Arabs were illegal squatters. The Arab squatters admitted this was the case in 1982. And yet, 39 years later, the children and grandchildren of the squatters from 1982 still refuse to leave the buildings.
This document is a very helpful corrective to the misrepresentations of the Sheikh Jarrah dispute. https://t.co/uFyAILQ4Ly pic.twitter.com/tDw4CnjjXN
— Elliot Kaufman (@ElliotKaufman6) May 10, 2021
Melanie Phillips: Accessories to evil
During the administration of former US president Donald Trump, Palestinian violence declined as a result of Trump’s refusal to pander to Palestinian blackmail. Not only did Trump move the US embassy to Jersualem, he empowered a rapprochement between the Gulf states and Israel which left the Palestinian cause abandoned. He also cut funding to the Palestinian Authority as a consequence of its continued incitement and support of terrorism against Israeli Jews.
The Biden administration, which is stuffed full of officials with a baleful record of hostility to Israel, immediately restored funding and diplomatic recognition to the Palestinian Authority, started to try to drive a wedge between Israel and Saudi Arabia and made clear that it would give Israel short shrift and empower its genocidal foe, Iran.
This US shift in support effectively gave a green light to the Palestinian Arabs to renew their murderous onslaught against the Jews of Israel.
And so what’s been the response by the Biden administration and the EU and various European states to this co-ordinated campaign of incitement, murder and other attacks on Israeli Jews? Far from condemning these Palestinian aggressors and inciters, the EU and US have instead condemned their victim, Israel. They have warned against its planned evictions in Sheikh Jarrah, and repeated their habitual and historically illiterate lie that Israel is in illegal occupation of Jerusalem, the ancient historic capital of the Jewish people — the only people for whom it was ever their capital city.
But hey — the Bidenites, EU states and western “liberals” promote the Holocaust-denying Jew-hater Mahmoud Abbas as a statesman; declare that his terrorism-supporting, Jew-demonising, Israel-exterminating Palestinian Authority deserves to run a state; give it the funds which enable it to continue its incitement and support for terrorism; require Israel to compromise its security to facilitate the creation of an entity which aims to destroy it; parrot the false narrative of Israeli illegality while conniving at the Palestinians’ attempt to hijack both international law and Jewish history; and label murderous Palestinian attacks on Jews as “resistance”.
And then they have the sheer gall to urge a return to “calm”. They are themselves accessories to evil.