#886 12/24/17 – Philly Inquirer Headline This Morning: Trump [not Arab violence] “Wrecked” Palestinians Christians’ Tourist Season

Philly Inquirer Headline This Morning:  Trump [not Arab violence] “Wrecked” Palestinian Christians’ Tourist Season

The Philadelphia Inquirer’s long-serving house foreign affairs columnist, Trudy Rubin, took up the top half of that paper’s page A3 this erev-Christmas Sunday, writing therein as a “Staff Report” from Bethlehem:

     “Trump’s unilateral move on Jerusalem gained nothing for Israel, whose capital is and will remain in the Holy City.  It served only to stir up religious tensions and disturb the Christians whom Pence claims he cares for.”

 I beg to differ.  President Trump saying out-loud what Ms. Rubin herself acknowledges has been, is and will remain the reality of Israel’s capital’s location did gain something for Israel – a modicum of recognition of the Jews’ Jerusalem link.

But only a modicum, which makes the hysteria of, e.g., the United Nations Security Council, the United Nations General Assembly, and Ms. Rubin’s own 23 paragraphs on the Inq’s page A3 this morning that much more striking.  Neither the President nor Ms. Rubin went beyond minimal recognition (though in the President’s case, that meant a great deal to us) of that reality.

Had a Bethlehem Christian shopkeeper (whose tourist season this morning’s Inq’s sub-headline lamented was “wrecked” by Trump’s statement) asked Ms. Rubin where’s America’s capital, she’d have said “Washington,” not “in Washington,” as though there are likewise incompatible things there.  But Ms. Rubin, a wordsmith by trade, wrote in this morning’s Inq that Israel’s capital “is and will remain IN the Holy City” (emphasis added, a little).

Similarly, President Trump included in his December 6 Jerusalem statement:

“We are not taking a position on any final status issues, including the specific boundaries of the Israeli sovereignty IN Jerusalem ….” (emphasis added)

The Philadelphia Inquirer’s headline and sub-headline to Ms. Rubin’s page A3 article this morning did great injustice to Israel and Jews.  The Inq headlined:

“Trump and Pence unnerve Holy Land”

“The president’s stance on Jerusalem has wrecked the tourist season key to Palestinian Christians”

The President didn’t take any stance on who owns Jerusalem.  He just acknowledged what Ms. Rubin, in that very article that was so-headlined acknowledged herself – that Israel’s capital is “in” Jerusalem.  What “wrecked” Palestinian Christians’ tourist season, if that is what happened, was their fellow Arabs’ violent reaction to the American President’s mere statement of Inq house world affairs columnist-acknowledged fact.

In blaming “the president’s stance on Jerusalem,” his mere statement of fact, expressly disclaiming the drawing of any overall Jerusalem equity claims from that fact, for having “wrecked the tourist season key to Palestinian Christians,” the Inq and Ms. Rubin went beyond shamefully absolving Arab violence from a hand in causing such wreckage.  They would shamefully impose on the American president a vow of silence not just on saying, as he should, that “united Jerusalem is Israel’s eternal capital,” but even merely the reality “Israel’s capital is in Jerusalem.”  Sha-shtil gone berserk.