President Donald Trump is the first American president to visit the Western Wall as a sitting president; the first to fly directly from the capital of Saudi Arabia to Israel; and the first to include Israel in his initial overseas trip.
Most significant here is Trump’s visit to the Western Wall. This sends a strong message not only to the world, but to his own State Dept.: Jerusalem is part of Israel, and the Western Wall is part of Jerusalem. Formally, the US has still not recognized Jerusalem, any part of Jerusalem, including West Jerusalem, as belonging to Israel. With Trump’s visit, we hope that the formal recognition will follow.
There are other notable achievements of Trump’s trip. First, he identified Iran as the enemy of the US, of Israel and of the Sunni Arab countries. Trump stressed this. He is right. He reversed Obama’s inexplicable tilt toward Iran, which just held another phony election, which continues to test intercontinental ballistic missiles, and which, by any account, has not reduced its hostility to the West as a result of the much vaunted diplomatic outreach: the nuclear agreement.
Second, Trump identified extremists within the religion of Islam as a source of worldwide terrorism. He did so in an Arab capital and challenged Islam itself to rid itself of this scourge.
Third, Trump renewed the American alliance with Saudi Arabia, which has always been a moral hold-your-nose proposition (see editorial below). But in the realm of bad choices, Saudi Arabia, which no longer threatens to destroy Israel, is a better choice than Iran, which threatens to destroy not only Israel but all of the Sunni governments in the Middle East.
We remain skeptical of Trump’s identification of the Israel-Palestinian conflict as the key to a broader Middle East peace; and we remain skeptical of his optimistic reading of the Palestinians’ desire for peace. But on balance, Trump’s first foray into the ageless thicket of the Middle East showed strong support for Israel and American interests, and a welcome, straightforward, courageous approach to terrorism.
Copyright © 2017 by the Intermountain Jewish News
