On Judea/Samaria, Trump defies the world again
On Judea/Samaria, Trump defies the world again

President Trump continues to surprise, pleasantly. Mark him a friend of Israel because he knows what it is like to be Israel.

His Secretary of State, Mike Pompeo, has announced that Israel’s “West Bank” (Judea and Samaria) “does not, here, and here, violate international law.”

This is a big fix and will have the usual naysayers once again shrieking Gevalt.

But calmly, now, it will be up to Israeli courts to decide the ins and outs…through Israeli Law.

The territory, steeped in biblical history, and home to some 550,000 Israelis, was captured by Israel in the 1967 War, and Jewish settlements there were deemed “inconsistent with international law,” according to the US State Department, under President Jimmy Carter, never a friend.

Now Israel has a friend…in case anyone needs to be reminded that Trump is the first president to recognize Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, followed by the US Embassy move to Jerusalem.

That stirred the usual hecklers, since subsided…but here he goes again.

Trump has always been a maverick, that is, true to himself, only more so these days when he feels, correctly so, that nearly everybody is out to get him. 

Therefore, so far as he is concerned, all bets are off. Trump is dealing from a fresh deck. The cards are all his, and if they don’t like it, they can leave the table.

They’ve been dealing from the bottom of the deck anyway. This is his time, his chance, to square things with the cheats.

So let them howl, he figures, as they would anyway, regardless of what he says or does…and howl they will. 

The New York Times already has Trump’s dramatic policy shift as an impediment to the “peace process” and immediately to follow is the rest of the world, surely the UN.

We can only assume – and it is a good bet – that Trump timed it for Pompeo in response to the EU’s labelling boycott...
At this point, Trump does not give a damn. 

He is still the president, as much as the Democrats keep trying to take it away from him, by any and all means. As for the UN, recall Security Council Resolution 2334, which Obama/Kerry let slip through by abstaining, but passed 14-0, on claiming all that land for the Palestinian Arabs, while charging Israeli settlements as “flagrant violations of international law.”

Goodbye that…and Flagrant? Trump can also do flagrant. 

We can only assume – and it is a good bet – that Trump timed it for Pompeo in response to the EU’s labelling boycott, only days ago, against Israeli goods from Judea and Samaria. 

That’s Europe going antisemitically rogue again. But Trump can also do rogue, but in favor of Israel, and against her enemies.

So on Judea/Samaria, Trump reacted measure for measure. Let them eat their boycotts and Resolutions.

Earlier, he cut to shreds US aid routinely headed for Mahmoud Abbas’ “pay to slay” Palestinian Authority, and he shut down the PLO’s DC offices.

He signed the Taylor Force Act against “pay to slay.”

It is no wonder that Trump, more so each day, takes up for Israel. Now, more than ever, he knows what it is like to be the target of baseless hatred. 

He is experiencing it himself. Yes, no wonder he identifies with the Jewish State.

New York-based bestselling American novelist Jack Engelhard writes regularly for Arutz Sheva.

He wrote the worldwide book-to-movie bestseller “Indecent Proposal,” followed by his coming-of-age classics, “The Girls of Cincinnati,” and, the Holocaust-to-Montreal memoir, “Escape from Mount Moriah,” for which contemporaries have hailed him “The last Hemingway, a writer without peer, and the conscience of us all.” Website: www.jackengelhard.com

(For an explanation of the legal status of Judea and Samaria click here and here.)