Why is President Trump declaring Jerusalem the capital of Israel?
This seems incredibly insane on so many different levels. Can someone please help me to understand why he is doing this?
Observing members:
0
Composing members:
0
61 Answers
Response moderated (Unhelpful)
He hasn’t done it yet. He may possibly do it on Wednesday. Every President has to renew the embassy’s location in Tel Aviv every six months. Clinton and Bush both promised to move the embassy to Jerusalem, but didn’t when they saw what the political repercussions might be. Trump also didn’t move it when he had the chance in June. So I suspect he may not do it this time either.
Both Israelis and Palestinians see Jerusalem as their capital. Because of this dispute, the U.S. has opted to keep its Israeli embassy in Tel Aviv. Moving it to Jerusalem would placate the Israeli government but enrage the Palestinians.
And it’s all about religion. All the war and death and destruction is all about an invisible man who doesn’t exisit.
Everything Trump does is to please the shrinking number of people who will praise him. Normal people know he cannot be trusted to act in a rational manner.
He’s getting more extreme and its going to get worse, because he is listening to the worst people with the loudest mouths.
His Israeli “policy” is driven by two groups – hard-right Israelis and their supporters who have made Israel the moral equivalent of apartheid South Africa, and the insane American evangelicals who believe war in the Middle East will bring the Second Coming.
It is to keep Israeli right wingers (the anti peace ones) and the US Evangelicals happy.
Evangelicals believe the Temple in Jerusalem must be restored in order for the Apocalypse to begin.
The israeli-palestine mess is not really so simple. My guess is Trump is indeed giving this lip service and won’t change a thing.
Response moderated (Unhelpful)
I understand the option to move the US Embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, although I don’t understand what the advantage would be.
The question is more about why Trump would “declare” Jerusalem the capital of Israel. Isn’t that up to Israel?
Because he’s a straight up fool
I would guess is that he is getting his info from the bible? In real life it is a mess to understand. At least to me.
Israelis and Palestinians both claim Jerusalem as their capital but neither claim is recognised internationally and a resolution of the conflicting views was supposed to be part of the peace process. It is an extremely sensitive situation that Trump is blundering into. Fools rush in where angels fear to tread.
He’s doing it this week to get peoples’ minds off the Flynn/Russia investigations.
Because it’s a really divisive, and inflammatory, declarative statement…
I’m believing the Russia thing more each day. Russia wants division, and chaos in the US, to distract us from his actions. Trump, is their perfect, polarizing figure. Trump is so stupid, he just might not understand his role. Like G W. Bush. Bush, wasn’t so bad, he just trusted Chaney… Chaney, of course, manipulated Bush, and others, to his profit. Lots of people die, when stupid people are in power, and are manipulated by their “advisors.”
Disturbing…
Is it possible to be an anti-Semite but be pro-Israel? Absolutely
Has anyone warned Trump’s daughter and son-in-law about these nefarious plans, or that Trump has ties to the “alt right”? That ethnic cleansing is to come and all Jews will be deported to Israel, as the article states?
What about Jay Sekulow, who has defended Israel in so many international legal affairs and is Trump;s attorney—what about the Jewish members of Trump’s legal circle—? Should we warn them of Trump’s sinister plans?
Should any of my Jewish neighbors who voted for Trump be concerned?
I wasn’t aware that Trump supported David Duke or white nationalists—I do remember that he supported those who were protesting the removal of a confederate statue but they were not necessarily white nationalists How did antisemitism get shifted from historic Democrat endeavors and cast on American conservatives?
I’ll go warn my neighbors to expect swastikas and nights of broken glass.
It’ll piss off Muslims, right? Trump should be all for it, then. It will cause international turmoil. Putin should be all for it…
Trump said he wants to make America great again, but everything he is doing is moving in the opposite direction. He has exited from trade agreements and from the climate change accord. With that move on Jerusalem, he has removed the U.S. as a possible broker for peace in the Middle East. The Arab countries will no longer accept the U.S. as a disinterested third party. The U.S. under Trump is squandering social capital, which could lead to loss of economic capital.
As to the reason why Trump is naming Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, it is to play to his anti-Semitic pro-Israel base of supporters.
He’s bragging about how he’s doing something that no other president could get done (declaring Jerusalem the capital of Israel.) The thing is, the other presidents thought deeply about the impact it could have. They talked to many, many people about it, and for intelligent reasons, hesitated to make such a claim.
Trump is just a big baby wanting to say “Nanny nanny poo poo! Looky what I did and you didn’t!” That’s as deep as his thought processes go.
I don’t understand what it’s supposed to accomplish, though. Can I just declare Wichita the capital of Kansas, instead of Topekachu? (That’s how my two year old pronounces it..mixes up Topeka and Pikachu. It is SO cute!!)
Perhaps it’s more deflection tactics. Israel was already a lightning rod. Now they have a target painted on their back, by our dear POTUS. I’m sure the middle east will take the news well…......
You want to talk about a man out of his depth.
^We can only hope, that the world sees Trump, as the idiot he is. Separate from the majority of his people. Some world leaders clearly don’t respect him, or take him as a representative of our country/culture. That’s good.
Will we have that understanding with countries like Iran? I doubt it. So much, for the progress Obama made with them. A mutual respect was finally established. Pissed that away…
Obama laid the grounds, for the next president to have decent diplomatic relationships with most of the world. Trump seems to have the opposite strategy. His bullying, “business” tactics, have NO place on the table of peace/understanding. And certainly not in such an already volatile situation. If people die, because Trump stirred the shit here, I am truly ashamed of being American…..
This was yet another time, when Trump could have simply not acted, or acted differently, to help avoid tension. Another complete failure at be a remotely competent leader…
Obama said Israel needs to go back to its pre-1967 borders
He gave billions in cash to Iran.
Almost everything he did was to support and appease Israel’s enemies.
Jews in the U.S. have long supported the left because of its historic reputation for the advocation of Civil Rights, but many Jews I know have changed their position in the wake of Obama’s second term and his position on Israel with the U.N.
I suggest you look at the angry thugs protesting Israel’s existence and calling for their death. Obama sided with them, as just about everyone in this thread. You are on the wrong side of history. Compare the faces and chants and destruction of these people with the civil and rational citizens of Israel—a very progressive democracy which has earned its place through U.N. resolutions and military conquest—which anyone can visit and become a citizen regardless of their religion.
One more caveat here. The Republican party has never been the party of antisemitism—that position belongs to the Klan and similar left-wing groups.
I can site a few alt-right groups, such as Stormfront, which are anti-semitic but they are not the Fox-News Channel, Tea-Party crowd. Those groups are historically Democrat but have changed their position over illegal immigrant issues.
I don’t think they are as dangerous as terrorists at Israel’s borders whom Obama supports.
Palestinians are not a legitimate State or Nation, They are anti-Israeli thugs whose reason to want to exist is for the destruction of Israel and democracy in the middle east..
@Yellowdog Obama wished the best for everyone who lives their lives in the Middle East. He wasn’t a fundamentalist, just a guy with decent human values. Maybe the decent people are on the wrong side of history but at least they are decent.
@Yellowdog That’s an interesting interpretation of the facts on the ground. The truth is that it is Israel which is on the wrong side of history. Israel is in fact a colonial power stranded in an era where colonialism is no longer acceptable nor tolerated in a “civilized” world. There isn’t a nickel’s worth of difference between what is happening in Israel and the fate of Native Americans at the hands of encroaching Europeans. Let me restate that . There are 2 distinct differences which render Israel’s position untenable. The first is that unlike our own exterminated “Palestinians”, Israel’s “savages” continue to multiply and refuse to go away. The second intractable problem is that the rest of the world refuses to accept the ongoing theft of Palestinian territories with the sole exception of the United States which in my lifetime has excelled in finding itself RIGIDLY dependable in championing the wrong side of damned near everything.
@Yellowdog , The Klan is a left wing group? You can’t be serious. David Duke is a staunch Trump supporter.
the Klan was a left-wing group a hundred years ago. Now though, they’re a far right fringe group that those of us on the right would like nothing more than to disappear.
The Klan was never left wing. That’s an astoundingly ignorant claim.
Left-wing & Right-wing were very different 100–150 years ago. You could not make that claim now, that was the point I was making. This is where all the KKK is left wing banter is coming from. It’s making rounds through places like Prager U right now
The parties have flipped like an iceberg since the civil war. Abraham Lincoln was a Republican, and it was the Democrats who wanted to keep the institution of slavery.
Majority of Democrats voted pro-segregation in the 1960s
Left-wing & Right-wing were very different 100–150 years ago
No, they weren’t. There was a very strong progressive movement in the US. There were anti-imperialists and labor activists and suffragettes. The NAACP was fighting lynching while the Klan was terrorizing people and enforcing Jim Crow.
I have no idea where you’re getting this nonsense.
@SergeantQueen Those were conservative Democrats, and they fled the party after the 1964 Civil and Voting Rights acts.
You need to read up on the Southern Strategy if you didn’t already know that.
@SergeantQueen That wing of the Democratic Party were known as “Dixiecrats”. Many of them spouted the same inanities as Roy Moore when he recently made his incredible “even though we had slavery” quote
Basic fucking history:
Democratic Party
The Democratic Party was formed by Thomas Jefferson and James Madison in 1792 and held considerable power in the years leading up to the Civil War. The Democratic Party became divided in the 1850s over the issue of slavery, with some factions in the north supporting abolitionist causes, some northern factions supporting accommodation of the South and Southern Democrats supporting the continuation and expansion of slavery. During the elections of 1860, Southern and Northern Democrats nominated separate candidates for president. After the Civil War broke out, former Southern Democrats held considerable clout in the Confederate Congress. Northern Democrats lost much of their political power in the North during the Civil War.
Republican Party
The Republican Party was founded in the 1850s by northerners who wanted to abolish slavery. The demise of the Whig Party and the split in the Democratic Party in the years leading up to the 1860 elections gave the Republicans an opportunity to advance. Republican candidate Abraham Lincoln won the U.S. Presidential election in 1860 and Republicans gained control of Congress, leading to the secession of eleven Southern states. The Republican Party had very little support in the South before the war and virtually none after war broke out. In 1864, the Republican Party joined with Democrats who favored the war effort to form the National Union Party. Other Republicans, who were in favor of pressing the war more forcefully, left the Republican Party to form the Radical Democracy Party. The National Union Party won the 1864 presidential election.
Thanks for the pointless recitation of “basic fucking history”. No idea what you’re trying to convey.
Or maybe the point is that you think “Democrat” has always meant “left-wing”. Which is, again, astoundingly ignorant.
It isn’t basic history to the great bulk of our fellow Americans, many of whom would find it
big news if they cared at all. Then there are those who care so much they would declare the recitation fake history on the spot.
While it’s true Left-Wing and Right-Wing are more closely aligned with where political movements are headed 90% of the people on the street would not recognize the Democratic and Republican parties from the Civil War era. They are nearly 180 degrees from where they are now. What is commonly considered Left-Right now is indeed the Democratic and Republican parties in America, so much so that the words are used interchangeably and that should not even need to be pointed out to you if you live here. You can pick apart the particulars but that was not the spirit of @Yellowdog s assertion nor my response in correcting him and I think you know it unless you simply did not bother to read through the responses properly enough to see what the intent really was. Then again you appear to just want to argue for no good reason.
My assertation was that the Republicans have never been antisemitic. The Democrats have,
But you are right— there havealways been “David Duke” Republicans (these are not the Tea Party) and there have been Northern Democrats and Hollywood Democrats with Jews among their fabric.
But Trump’s family, legal, and business partners have included many Jews. He is not antisemitic.
He was also a Democrat at one time.
As far as Call Me Jay’s statement: ” The Klan was never left wing. That’s an astoundingly ignorant claim”.
Of course the Klan was left-wing
Hillary Clinton herself considers Grand Wizard Robert Byrd her mentor. See Aug 18 2017 issue of Newsweek.
Bill Clinton had a similar allegiance to another famous white supremist, J William Fullbright. Most democrat leaders of Bill and Hillary are only great because they stood on the shoulders of these giants and advanced at early ages in the party.
Some people claim that there was some kind of “switcheroo” and Satan decided he would change his name to ‘God’ and ‘God’ said, ‘Good. And I think I will call myself the Devil” and switched positions.
But the Republican party has never changed its position on race and equality. The Democratic party just started cleaning up their act where they were needed for black votes (Lyndon B Johnson’s famous proclamation about Selmer and the Civil Rights movement)—and later, accusing the Republican party of what the Dems have been establishing for a century or more—in order to claim the moral high ground.
The Republican party was never very big in the deep south until the mid-to-late 1980s, when race really wasn’t an issue anymore.
@Yellowdog …in the deep south until the mid-to-late 1980s, when race really wasn’t an issue anymore.
Don’t let the whitewashed history books fool you. Race was an issue in the Southern States, and continues to be so today. It’s very subtle. I speak from personal experience. On several occasions I was passed over for promotion, or even terminated, when an executive or owner found out I am in a racially mixed marriage.
It’s not an issue in just southern states.
To be complete about race – keep in mind that there were race riots in 1966–1970 all across the northern US – Chicago, Cleveland, Philadelphia, Milwaukee, Detroit, New York. The backdrop of those riots was that blacks had move up from the south looking for better jobs and opportunities, and were systematically discriminated against.
So race was a pretty nasty up north as well.
Yeah. Saying race isn’t an issue at any time in history, is pretty ignorant.
Claiming that the current republican party supports minorities, of any kind, is something that I couldn’t do with a straight face.
I so enjoy getting lectured on racism from someone who thinks allowing white people to use the n-word is an important civil rights issue.
Trump fans are hopeless. It’s a cult of assholery.
Most will be horribly harmed by Republican policies. The new tax bill is going to really hurt the non-wealthy. But the cultists are going to blame Obama and Hillary Clinton (who has never had a national domestic role).
I wish I could take consolation in the schadenfreude of watching poor conservatives suffer, but I’m don’t share the conservative trait of taking joy in hurting others.
An entire thread has been misdirected by someone misquoting me (or quoting me and applying another meaning to it, opposite the meaning of the quote),
The Republican Party was never big in the South, or had much influence, until the 1980s—in the1980s and after, Race hasn’t had much significance.
I know that many of you get energy from the anger you feel when you imagine the South differently, but the cities and towns are racially calm and all races are equal under the law. There are even gangs in the South, There have been black teachers, administrators, businesses, for decades.
The South is mostly Republican, but balanced, as is most of America.
When the South was majorly Democrat, when Jimmy Carter was president, most people in the South were Democrat and racists. This is not to blame the Democrats except maybe those called Dixiecrats—as the Democrats of the North I don;t think were this way.
I’m just sayin
—don’t go typecast the Republicans because they are not the bringers of Racism and have never been the party of racism, slavery, or Jim Crow. Those are solidly Democrat and best kept in the past by all parties.
@Yellowdog . Regardless of your assessment of racism in the past, the Republican party is %100 the party of racists now.
Speaking from my experience in the south, where I’ve lived for most of my life, racism is still very much an issue. I too thought that we were going in the right direction, until Obama was elected. Then, everything was his fault. Nothing he could say, or do, would ever change some of the old white men here. I worked at a gun counter(part time), for the last 2 years of Obama’s term. The things that I heard, from white men there, were pathetic. Racism is still very alive down here. There are plenty of older black men, that are racist AF too.
It has improved. No question about that. But it is still a giant hole that needs fixing. Trump, and the alt-right, are reversing ALL progress, in regards to race relations. You can point fingers at the dems of the past all you want. The Republicans are destroying this country, in almost every way. They aren’t being subtle about it either.
You can speak for yourself all you’d like. I think you’re a good man, and don’t consider you a bigot.
But your party does not have the right, to try and obscure their bigotry. If this is how they intend to do things, they need to have the guts, to be seen as what they are. If they don’t like being viewed as bigots, they need to change.
@Yellowdog I’ve lived in the Deep South and was a bit taken aback by the racism that still exists down there. The city where I lived was racially calm and all races were equal under the law but they were certainly not equal in practise and what I saw I would describe as a kind of apartheid. I’m sure things have greatly improved but they still have some way to go and the ruling Republicans down there are in no hurry for that to happen.
^Here in Charleston SC, I believe whites are not the majority. There have been several real estate developments, that seem to be trying to be white only.
There was a place called Cainhoy. It was a marshy island, mainly inhabited by older black people. It was eventually cleared of the previous residents. Now it is called Daniel island. The condos, and houses, are built for the upper class. They have their own downtown area, stadium, etc. The message is loud and clear, to me. All the greatness of Charleston, without the minorities. The situation on that island could easily be described as apartheid.
@Yellowdog You weren’t misquoted. I was called out your insane dishonest claims.
The idea that the Democrats are the party of the Klan is ridiculous, and typing that makes you look like a fool. Clinton won 88% of the black vote.
Because they are brainwashed and have no idea who they are voting for.
^Incorrect. Bill was exactly the best candidate for the average citizens trying to move the country in the right direction. Certainly, he was the best for minorities. Many Americans still opine that Bill was the first “black” president, not Obama…
Under Bill’s tenure, the world saw the most thriving times, in human history. When he left office, even the national debt was in a steady rate of decline. The arrow was pointed WAY up, before G.W. took office ,with Cheney’s hand up his gullible ass…
Trump is definitely a racist. There was a deliberate murder perpetrated by a white supremacist in Charlottesville, and Trump never called it out. He said that both sides misbehaved. Give me a frickin’ break. You don’t have to be a canine to hear that dog whistle.
@Yellowdog, here is the Aug 18th, 2017 issue of Newsweek. Would you be so kind as to point out the article where Hillary said she considered that Grand Wizard Robert Byrd her mentor?
Why do I have a feeling my question is going to go unanswered.
See this for something a little more accurate.
”It’s…true that Robert Byrd was a member of the Ku Klux Klan in the 1940s… However, in 1952 Byrd avowed that “After about a year, I became disinterested [in the KKK], quit paying my dues, and dropped my membership in the organization,” and throughout his long political career (he served for 57 years in the United States Congress) he repeatedly apologized for his involvement with the KKK:”
”“I know now I was wrong. Intolerance had no place in America. I apologized a thousand times … and I don’t mind apologizing over and over again. I can’t erase what happened.””
Answer this question 
This question is in the General Section. Responses must be helpful and on-topic.
Composing members:
0
