From London to New York to Jerusalem - Thank you for making the launch of my Balfour book a success

From London to New York to Jerusalem (last night) - Thank you for making the launch of The Balfour Declaration 67 Words: 100 Years of Conflict a success

...Now it's back to work!

Britain and Zionism: Balfour to Thatcher

Start time:

Tuesday, 27.02.18 (19:30)

Doors open:

19:00

Address:

Mishkenot Sha'nanim Guest House, ירושלים, ישראל

Britain and Zionism: Balfour to Thatcher

The Balfour Declaration committed to fostering a Jewish national home but British ambivalence continued even under Margaret Thatcher, a 'friend' of Israel. Why?

Book launch and discussion with

Azriel Bermant

Margaret Thatcher and the Middle East (Cambridge)

Elliot Jager

The Balfour Declaration: Sixty-Seven Words – 100 Years of Conflict (Gefen)

The number of places is limited. The program is subject to change.

https://www.eventer.co.il/1fq93

100 Years Since the Balfour Declaration - Let's place today's headlines into context

I'll be speaking about my book 

The Balfour Declaration: Sixty-Seven Words - 100 Years of Conflict  

Please join me.

Register at this link.

or copy and paste from here:

http://ebiz.jccmanhattan.org/PersonifyEBusiness/Default.aspx?TabID=416&pid=648196076&_ga=2.29753023.1056014840.1510908606-1115567384.1510671940&_gac=1.79932901.1510908606.CjwKCAiArrrQBRBbEiwAH_6sNBITfGSjY9f7RWz7OQurS7uRBACOq_Xjzql-Wpt2hOwbLCJ4EJp7_BoCjLgQAvD_BwE

WHERE:  JCC MANHATTAN

334 AMSTERDAM AVE AT 76TH ST, NEW YORK, NY 10023

DATE:  Jan 09, 2018   -  Tue

TIME:  7:00PM 

Cost     

Public Price        $ 15.00

Member Price   $ 10.00

JCC members receive discounted prices.

Registrations are processed on a first-come, first-served basis.

Please contact the JCC Registration Desk at 646.505.5708 for additional information.

Books will be available for purchase and signing.

Ten (or so) snap judgments on Trump’s Jerusalem pronouncement

1. What Korean Peninsula? Trump has a knack for diverting attention from issues he'd rather you not focus on.

2. What Mueller investigation? What Russian/WikiLeaks/campaign collusion? You get the idea. Diversion is key to Trump's maddening Modus operandi.

3. What Russian entrenchments in Syria? What bad deal for Israel on the Syrian side of Golan Heights? What Iranian takeover of Iraq?

Forget all those -- focus onTrump's "recognition" of Jerusalem.

4.  BTW. The Russians already recognized west Jerusalem as Israel’s capital in April 2017. Trump, in practice" didn't even recognize west Jerusalem (even as a start).

4.  * Passports of US children born in Jerusalem will not be marked “Jerusalem, Israel.”

- Do you really think Washington needs three years or more to begin the process of building an embassy? How about putting a plaque: “Embassy of the USA” on the wall of the newly-built and well-fortified US Consulate in Talpiot, Jerusalem?

6. Nothing in Trump's statement changes the status quo, as the president himself said. By the way, I think he did a good reading job without going off on a tangent about, say, the size of the inauguration audience.  But if you actually watch his announcement all the way through you can see it took a toll.

7. Trump signed the very same waiver presidents before him signed (that didn’t make it into the speech).

8. He may have set the stage for a new tidal wave of Palestinian Arab violence.

9. Worse: His big empty gesture sets the stage for the "great" deal-maker to exact a steep price for “recognizing” Jerusalem.

The administration will supposedly unveil its proposed deal in early 2018.

Funnily, tragically, the Arabs don't see this and neither do the Trump-supporting Jews in the US and in Israel.

Or maybe...

If I’m right that Trump’s “recognition” of Jerusalem was intended to pave the way for heavy-handed pressure on Israel to make dangerous territorial concessions to the PLO – it might (counter-intuitively) explain Abbas’s violent reaction. Because, actually, Abbas does not want to make a real and lasting peace in which the Palestinian Arabs would have to come to terms with a Jewish national home in some part of “Palestine.” This situation recalls Ehud Barak’s go-for-broke offer to Yasser Arafat at Camp David II. Rather than take the best deal the Palestinian Arabs had ever been offered – he launched the second intifada.

10. Keep your eye on the ball: US policy since 1967 is to push Israel back to the hard-to-defend 1949 Armistice Lines (give or take) and Trump’s pronouncement doesn’t change that. Read the text.

So, what we have is, in principle, the right idea delivered ineptly by the Wrong Man at the Wrong Time in the wrong way.

With all that, it is sadly not surprising that Europe is again siding with the Arabs and that the Arabs -- following their 100-year script -- are turning to violence.


(*) h/t to IMRA for helping me crystallize this.