Before I start, I apologize!
I hate using this space and the time of anyone kind enough to read what I write, again writing about the “clear and present danger” donald trump presents to all Americans but his actions, not my interests, cause me to do it. While I offer my apology to all I do it with a great deal of sadness because of the peril in which we all find ourselves.
It’s been estimated that almost a quarter of a billion ( 195,035,000 ) human beings have been killed in the name of religion, just in a period of time we can comprehend. Yet donald trump decides to escalate one of the most contentious issues in the heart of “God’s territory”, the Middle East. Trump officially recognized Israeli sovereignty over the Golan Heights March 25, 2019 in a ceremony with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
Last year trump broke with decades of U.S. foreign policy and announced the U.S. would recognize Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, effectively endorsing Israeli control of the city. On May 14, 2018, the U.S. relocated its embassy from Tel Aviv, where the embassies of all other nations with diplomatic relations with Israel are located, to Jerusalem.
These maps illustrate the sheer madness of trump’s decisions. Tel Aviv has always been a capital situated in recognition of the volatile society that is Israel. It’s location was chosen by level headed Israeli leaders who were more concerned with living in peace than they were “sticking their finger” in the eyes of their Palestinian neighbors. Jerusalem, on the other hand has been a religiously divided city for thousands of years and any threat from one religion is a threat to all religions.
The Golan Heights is the area captured from Syria and occupied by Israel during the Six-Day War. It is territory which Israel effectively annexed in 1981.Since the 1967 Six-day War, the western two-thirds of the Golan Heights has been occupied and administered by Israel, whereas the eastern third had remained under control of the Syrian Arab Republic. The geography is of particular strategic significance to any military that controls it because it enables very defensible bombardment of the surrounding territory but just like the issue of the Israeli capital, the Golan has remained a manageable through a policy of peaceful coexistence among Israel and its neighbors.
Much like trump in a bid to retain power as he faces mounting political pressure and legal woes Benjamin Netanyahu has formed an alliance with a far-right ultranationalist political party that experts say is Israel’s version of the Ku Klux Klan. Donald Trump, facing his own political jeopardy, is playing directly into Netanyahu’s hands hoping to garner support from American/Israeli nationalists by going farther in his support of Netanyahu and his far right supporters than even Netanyahu expected.
This time, however, trump is in way over his head. His hallmark strategy of creating chaos among his competitors and allies and then helicoptering-in to appear like he’s controlling the chaos may have worked in the relatively mundane world of American politics where no one his carrying a weapon but will not likely work in the hate-filled, overly weaponized middle east.
Trump has already antagonized Iran by withdrawing from the arrangement Iran made with the U.S. and six other nations. Iran doesn’t need to fire one shot from an Iranain-labeled weapon to attack Israel. All it needs to do is unleash it’s terrorist partners like Hezbollah , Hamas and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine to cause death and destruction in Israel on a scale that many Isralies have never experienced. That’s when the politician in Netanyahu is likely to make a call to trump and say;
“Our romance is growing flat,
But oh, if we ‘call the whole thing off’ Then we must part
And oh, if we ever part, then that might break my heart.”
Let’s hope Donnie breaks Bennie’s heart before the shooting starts. If Netanyahu is smart he’ll remember what trump said about Senator John McCain:
“I like people who weren’t captured”
Both Tel Aviv and Jerusalem are a hell of a lot closer to Tehran than Washington D.C. and even Mar a Lago.
