Analysis/ Messianic U.S.-Israel Axis Showcased at Jerusalem Embassy Ceremony Is Gut-punch for ...

[DonViejo]

Analysis Messianic U.S.-Israel Axis Showcased at Jerusalem Embassy Ceremony Is Gut-punch for Most American Jews

Horrendous Gaza casualty count mars Netanyahu and Trump's historic day of glory

Chemi Shalev May 15, 2018 2:53 PM

The stark contrast that played out on split screens throughout the world Monday, between the Israeli celebration in Jerusalem and the Palestinian casualties in Gaza, was worthy of Charles Dickens’ immortal opening to “A Tale of Two Cities:” “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair.”

Whether one accepts the Palestinian narrative of hungry masses demonstrating for dignity, or the Israeli version of a cynical exploitation of human lives as cover for homicidal intent, there is no doubt that the scores of dead and many hundreds of wounded on the Gaza border spoiled Benjamin Netanyahu and Donald Trump’s extravaganza. The more the casualties in Gaza mounted, the more those assembled at the site of the new American embassy in Jerusalem seemed arrogant, detached and mainly devoid of compassion. As more and more reports and tweets came in about the mounting casualties in Gaza’s day of bloodshed, the worst since the 2014 Protective Edge operation, the more the claim that the embassy move could actually help achieve peace seemed both cynical and ridiculous.

The knockout to Israel’s image was built-in in the script. When a modern, sophisticated and armed-to-the-teeth army confronts unarmed masses sporting kites and stones, the propaganda debacle is inevitable. Even the best hasbara points – sorely lacking in this case, except for domestic consumption – cannot contend with so many killed and wounded. Hamas recruited the embassy ceremony as a catalyzer for its Nakba campaign, which could escalate in the coming days, and exploited the international media’s coverage of the Jerusalem ceremony to its own ends. But while Israelis told themselves that they’re dealing with a terrorist organization that is callous to the lives of its own people and rules over a territory that Israel supposedly withdrew from, international public opinion could only see strong versus weak, occupier against occupied, a heartless state confronting despair and desperation.

At the same time, the makeup and participants in the Israeli-American Jerusalem hoopla made clear – if there were any doubts – that Netanyahu and his colleagues couldn’t care less these days about international public opinion. Israel has only one king, and his name is Donald Trump. He is Israel’s salvation and his word – or at least his benefactor Sheldon Adelson’s – is the bond that fuses Jerusalem and Washington together. The participation of pastors John Hagee and Robert Jeffress in the ceremony accentuated this new axis of fundamentalist, messianic End-Times-adoring elements that increasingly dominate ties between the two countries. Hagee once described Adolf Hitler as God’s hunter and Jeffress consigned unrepentant Jews to hell, but in the era of Trump-Netanyahu, old-style aversion to Jews is cast aside for the sake of unqualified support for Israel’s rejectionist, settler-dominated agenda. A shared hostility to Islam, which Jeffress once depicted as a religion of pedophiles, underpins the ties that bind the two countries together.

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https://www.haaretz.com/middle-east-news/.premium-messianic-axis-at-jerusalem-embassy-opening-is-gut-punch-for-u-s-jews-1.6091674

[Sophia4]

1. Moving the American embassy to Jerusalem is completely unnecessary and intended

to incite violence and anger.

Typical Donald Trump. He knew the result would be horrible when he decided to move the embassy.

[MineralMan]

2. Besides, "moving" the Embassy was only a symbolic move.

The actual Embassy operations aren't going to be located in Jerusalem until a new Embassy building exists. It's all a bogus show. And people died over a "look-see" event.

Feh!

[Igel]

4. Yes.

And the rhetoric about Trump "giving" Jerusalem to Israel, like the rhetoric here at the time that the US was "deciding" this for Israel, is also a "look-see" event.

Of course, for the woke, "look-see" is racist. It's parroting--which can only mean "mocking"--pidgin English from the 19th century, principally Chinese English pidgin.

Personally, it has a life of its own. If we look for everything bad in the world, we're like some Inquisitor seeking out private sin or things that might be sin so as to punish them and feel superior. (I took a liking to the phrase "self-righteousness is its own reward", and find that the religious and the non-religious are really still quite similar in their psychologies. What's different is the bones that the meat is hung on.)

[Duppers]

3. I read that last night on their website.

Totally agree.