Hold Israel to a Higher Standard?

In the course of an argument yesterday on Twitter someone tweeted, "Maybe the [U.N. Human Rights] council does hold [Israel] to a higher standard, I believe they should be. They are the Chosen, have been enslaved, kicked out of their homeland and stolen from their homeland for thousands of years so should know better and see wrong for what it is"

The Tweeter did an excellent job of encapsulating 2 1/2 millennia of mistreatment in a single sentence. It could be expanded into an article, a book, or an encyclopedia, and I think it is  well for us to remember the Babylonian Captivity, the expulsion from and destruction of Jerusalem by the Roman, dhimmitude in Moslem lands, anti-Semitic violence in Europe culminating in the Holocaust, followed by destruction of ancient Jewish communities in the post WWII Middle East and North Africa. Finally, we need to realize that when the State of Israel was proclaimed, with U.N.  recognition, in 1948, the immediate reaction of the Palestinians and front line Muslim states was to invade and try to destroy it.

Seventy years later, although Jordan and Egypt have made peace with Israel, the Palestinians have not, and therefore are still at war with Israel. And this is not merely a technicality, a "phony war" on paper. For decades, Palestinians have been engaging in terrorism in Israel. Israel has responded with defensive measures, some of which have been criticized as excessive. None of those, however, would have occurred if the Palestinians had chosen to live in peace with Israel.

Even apart from the history of the past 70 years, the Tweeter's suggestion strikes me as perverse. If Israel wants to say to itself, "We have Torah and the prophets, and we can't expect the other nations to be as holy as we are," that would be okay. Even that, however would not entail giving up the right of self defense. But for the rest of the world to say to Israel, "Because of all the Jews have suffered at our hands up to 1948, we are not going to tolerate actions by you that we tolerate from others," — which is what a higher standard means — is surely adding insult (and further injury) to injury.

Given the millennial history of suffering the world has inflicted on the Jewish people, the world should, if anything, be cutting Israel some slack in its current situation, not holding it to a higher standard.

Next Year in Jerusalem -or- Trump Follows the Law

In 1995 Congress overwhelmingly passed a law requiring that the US Embassy in Israel be moved to Jerusalem. In announcing that he would finally put the law into effect, President Trump clearly stated that Jerusalem remains subject to negotiation between Israel and the Palestinians.

It seems to me that Trump hasn't made any substantive change. But he has made it clear that the Palestinians will get nothing they want except through a peace agreement with Israel. This should not be an impediment to negotiations, as many are saying, but a strong encouragement to negotiate. If the Palestinians think it through and act rationally, that is what will happen.