Trump Puts Fact Ahead of Fiction in Israel

By Jonah Goldberg The most exhausting thing about the Middle East -- except for the bloodshed poverty tyranny etc. -- is that it refuses to conform to how its described in the West. Its like journalists diplomats and politicians want to announce a football game but the players keep insisting on playing rugby. The field looks similar. The scoring isnt all that different. Its just a different game. But dont tell the gang in the booth. They get furious when you point out that the facts dont line up with the commentary. Consider President Trumps momentous (though for now mostly symbolic) announcement that the United States will recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel. Before you can debate whether this was a good move you must acknowledge one glaring fact that the chatterers want to ignore or downplay: Its true. Jerusalem is the capital of Israel. The Knesset Israels parliament convenes there. Israelis call it their capital for the same reason they claim two plus two equals four. Its just true. What makes the decision controversial is that everyone had agreed to pretend it wasnt the capital in order to protect the peace process. Thats another term that doesnt quite correspond with reality. There is no peace process. Mahmoud Abbas the Palestinian president finishing the 12th year of his four-year term has refused to meet with the Israelis to discuss anything since early in the Obama administration. Part of the blame for that of course belongs with Obama who built an entire foreign policy around what he wanted to be true rather than what was actually going on. Obama sought to distance the U.S. from Israel on the assumption that Israel was the unreasonably stubborn party in the peace process. Thats why on the way out the door the Obama administration broke with precedent and opted not to veto a U.N. Security Council resolution declaring East Jerusalem occupied territory. This implied that as a matter of international law the Western Wall and the Jewish Quarter of Jerusalem itself really belongs to the Palestinians -- which is an insane fantasy. But denying reality is how this game has long been played. In his speech after Trumps announcement Abbas talked at great length about Jerusalems history as a Muslim and Christian city. He made no mention of the fact that its also a famously Jewish city having been established as the capital of ancient Israel 1000 years before Jesus was born. Trump called his decision a recognition of reality. People invested in irreality insist the move will worsen the Middle East conflict. Here too we have mislabeling. Whole books are dedicated to the Middle East conflict as if the Israel-Palestinian issue is the only conflict in the region. Tell that to the hundreds of thousands of dead Syrians or the millions displaced by the civil war there. Tell it to those dying in Yemen site of a proxy war between Iran and Saudi Arabia. Its been this way for decades. The Palestinians and their Arab patrons insisted to gullible Westerners that the Israel-Palestinian conflict was the source of all the regions problems. Was the Iran-Iraq war which cost more than a million lives a fight over Palestinian statehood? What about the Lebanese civil war? Turkeys campaign against the Kurds? The only people who bought the idea that the Middle East conflict began and ended with Israel were those guys in the control booth describing the wrong game -- i.e. Western experts and activists deeply invested in the peace process. In a sense thats understandable. If youve dedicated your entire professional life to a moveable feast that covers your airfare and lodging in Paris or Geneva while you discuss grave matters its probably hard not to cling to fictions. But those fictions are losing their hold ironically thanks in large part to the Obama administration. By working on fantasy rather than facts Obama threw the balance of power in the region heavily in Irans favor lifting sanctions and giving Iran hundreds of billions of dollars. He thought the Iranians would join the community of nations or some such twaddle. Instead they pocketed the money and are now on a surer path to a nuclear bomb. As a result of this new reality the old fictions are a luxury that Irans regional adversaries can no longer afford. Thats why Saudi Arabia a longtime Palestinian patron has been moving steadily closer to Israel: because Israel is a more valuable friend in the new Middle East conflict than the Palestinians are -- or Obama was.