“Drive them out from where they drove you out,” says the Qur’an (2:191), and that’s why Muslims throughout the world believe that Israel has no right to exist, and that they have a responsibility before Allah to do everything they can to destroy it. That’s why every negotiated settlement to bring peace between Israel and the “Palestinians” has failed, and why Trump’s attempt will fail as well. In fact, the very idea of attempting a negotiated settlement with forces that have openly and repeatedly vowed to stop at nothing to destroy Israel is fantasy-based policymaking at its worst. It assumes that the maximalist, genocidal rhetoric of the “Palestinians” is just that, rhetoric, that they don’t really mean it, and can be bought off with a few concessions. This is a fundamentally and fatally false assumption.
“Shalom! Trump lands in Israel in pursuit of elusive peace deal and vows to make the Middle East a place where children can ‘grow up free from terrorism and violence,'” by David Martosko, Dailymail.com, May 22, 2017:
Donald Trump landed in Israel late on Monday morning in advance of a whirlwind two-day visit to Jerusalem and the West Bank.
He arrived from Riyadh, Saudi Arabia on Air Force One – flying direct, as no other planes are permitted to do – following a 48-hour lovefest with leaders from dozens of Arab nations.
The second leg of Trump’s nine-day excursion will put a spotlight on his vaunted efforts to bring about peace between Israelis and Palestinians – a prospect that the billionaire businessman has called the ‘ultimate deal.’
He said alongside Israeli President Reuven Rivlin in a Jerusalem photo-op that even challenges like a belligerent Iran with nuclear ambitions can be an ‘opportunity’ as Tehran’s saber-rattling ‘has brought many other parts of the Middle East toward Israel.’
‘You have a great opportunity right now,’ Trump told him. ‘There’s a great feeling for peace throughout the Middle East. I think people have just had enough. They’ve had enough of the bloodshed and the killing.’
The president will face tough questions, though, from an Israeli government that had been aligned with him during his campaign – even after pledging upon his arrival that he would ‘reaffirm the unbreakable bond between the United States and the state of Israel.’
‘The people of Israel are excited by your arrival – and have great expectations,’ Rivlin told him during an arrival ceremony on the tarmac at Ben Gurion International Airport.
‘The world needs a strong United States. The Middle East needs a strong United States. Israel needs a strong United States,’ Rivlin said, each crescendo outdoing the last.
‘And may I say, the United States needs a strong Israel.’
Monday’s arrival couldn’t have been more different from Saturday’s spectacle in Riyadh, in one major respect: The uniformed Israeli Defense Forces soldiers included many women who held machine guns next to their skirts.
In Saudi Arabia, the only females visible on the airport tarmac were two small girls holding bouquets and a single U.S. Secret Service agent.
Cultural schisms aside, Trump warmed to the Saudis over the weekend, praising their hospitality and assuring the Arab world in a landmark speech that despite his past advocacy for a ‘ban’ on Muslims, America is not in a terror war with all of Islam.
That hasn’t sat universally well with Israelis who see Islamist theocracies as existential threats.
But Prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu clung Monday to Trump’s anti-terror message.
‘Yesterday in Saudi Arabia you delivered a forceful speech of clarity and conviction,’ he said. ‘You called on all nations to drive out terrorists and extremists. … For 69 years Israel has been doing precisely that.’
He thanked Trump for the ‘powerful expression of your friendship to Israel’ that his trip represents.
And he made what, for him, has become an ordinary but plaintive entreaty toward Palestinians.
‘Israel’s hand is extended in peace to all our neighbors,’ he said, but only in the services of ‘a genuine and durable one in which the Jewish state is recognized, security remains in Israel’s hands and the conflict ends once and for all.’
Trump has become adept at playing to Netanyahu’s lifelong tensions, the same ingrained historical fears of a repeated Holocaust that preoccupy Israel to the point where its national anthem – played Monday and sung by everyone on the tarmac except the Trumps – is the only such song on earth written in a minor key.
On Monday he promised Israelis that he would work toward ‘a future where the nations of the region are at peace and all of our children can grow – and grow up strong, and grow up free from terrorism and violence.’
And Trump has, since taking office, made a 180-degree turn away from his campaign position that Jews should continue to build settlements in the contested West Bank region….