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President Trump, ever the master of making leftist heads explode, has once again drawn down the collective fury of everybody who's anybody by - horrors! - unilaterally recognizing Jerusalem as the capital of Israel.
To listen to the media rage, you'd think Mr. Trump had personally gifted Israel with the rightful property of Palestinians. Nothing could be more wrong: not only has Jerusalem been the official capital of Israel since its founding, and effectively under full Israeli control for many decades, but Congress overwhelmingly passed legislation calling for this recognition. That was 20 years ago and every president, until now, has simply declined to comply.
What's more, either legally or practically, Donald Trump has changed nothing whatsoever. He has simply recognized reality: as he pointed out:
Today, Jerusalem is the seat of the modern Israeli government. It is the home of the Israeli Parliament, the Knesset, as well as the Israeli Supreme Court. It is the location of the official residence of the prime minister and the president. It is the headquarters of many government ministries.
For decades, visiting American presidents, secretaries of State and military leaders have met their Israeli counterparts in Jerusalem, as I did on my trip to Israel earlier this year.
In a way, the over-the-top reaction to Mr. Trump's entirely symbolic and ultimately meaningless announcement encapsulates the incredible power Mr. Trump has wielded against the left - his absolute glee in irreverently pointing out when the Emperor is naked.
We could fill a book with all the things that Mr. Trump has said which everyone knows to be true, but which you are not allowed to say - until he dared to say them.
Our problem with terrorism is mostly caused by Muslims? More proof arrives every day, and most Americans know it to be so, yet only Mr. Trump dares say so and act accordingly, defending our country as his duty demands. Even now, many of our allies would rather fulminate over how rude he is than ask why Islam leads to such violence, much less why we should tolerate having it around.
Global warming? Scandal after scandal has shown how weak the actual scientific evidence is, yet the media and most of the world yammers on about how humanity's guilt is beyond question. Most Americans don't buy it, but only Mr. Trump had to boldness to tell the rest of the world to pound sand and include us out of self-destructing our economy.
The culture wars? Mr. Trump is still being pilloried for pointing out the objective truth that there are "good people" on both sides - as well as evil, violent people who belong in jail. For every neo-Nazi who beats up an innocent black person, there's an antifa who throws a Molotov cocktail at conservatives; both deserve the same condemnation and the appropriate criminal penalties. Yet until Mr. Trump, only one was allowed to be publicly demonized.
The media and global Great and Good claim that Mr. Trump's action in recognizing Jerusalem will destroy the "peace process." Exactly what progress has that process been making in our lifetimes - or our grandparents', for that matter? We have pushed the two-state solution ever since President Carter. It failed as totally as it is possible for a scheme to fail. When Mr. Sharon gave Gaza to the Palestinians in 2005, it had a number of ongoing businesses they could have taken over and turned it into a very prosperous enclave.
Instead of building their society, Hamas used sewer pipe to make rockets and cement to dig tunnels to attack Israel.
Every time Israel does anything about being attacked, a deafening chorus of accusations resounds across the world. Yet you never hear the same vitriol against Palestinian terrorist attacks against innocent Israeli civilians - of course they do get condemned in a pro-forma way, but you never hear about it.
Yet every sane person in the world, if forced to actually stop and think about it, would have no choice but to realize the accuracy of Benjamin Netanyahu's observation:
If the Arabs put down their weapons today, there would be no more violence. If the Jews put down their weapons today, there would be no more Israel
How do we know this? Right now, today, in the Palestinian-controlled territories, there are no Jews, no liberty, no human rights, and precious few of anything except radical Muslims. In Israel, by contrast, can be found not just Jews, but Christians, atheists, the extreme orthodox, and, yes, even Muslims - all living together mostly at peace.
This has been true for decades - yet only now is Mr. Trump acting as if it is true, and in the process, pointing out the lies and imaginary false conceptions of the establishment left. As he put it:
It would be folly to assume that repeating the exact same formula would now produce a different or better result.
That, all across the board, is why Donald Trump is in the Oval Office and Hillary Clinton is signing remaindered books at Costco. American voters are disgusted with the way our government has been run for lo these many years, and wanted Something Different.
Well, Donald J. Trump is the living embodiment of Something Different. What could be more different than recognizing the reality that Jerusalem is, in fact, the capital of the state of Israel?
No wonder the left is so infuriated! If people start expecting, nay demanding, that their leaders acknowledge reality, where will it end?