Riots in Jerusalem : The West Lacking Courage and Conviction

"Canada is a steadfast ally and friend of Israel and friend to the Palestinian people. Canada's long-standing position is that the status of Jerusalem can be resolved only as part of a general settlement of the Palestinian-Israeli dispute."
"We are strongly committed to the goal of a comprehensive, just and lasting peace in the Middle East, including the creation of a Palestinian state living side-by-side in peace and security with Israel. We call for calm and continue to support the building  of conditions necessary for the parties to find a solution."
Canada's Foreign Minister Chrystia Freeland

Violent clashes have been seen across Gaza and the West Bank since President Trump’s announcement   Associated Press

This boilerplate excuse for a lack of commitment in recognizing the capital of a country is one echoed in its near entirety by all well-meaning and craven national administrations eager not to run afoul of Arab/Muslim sensitivities with respect to the presence of a Jewish state in their midst, sacrificing genuine concern for democracy and international justice for a 'progressive' liberalism that equates self-appointed victimhood with with a deserving campaign to champion an alternate vision of justice, where those rejecting a Middle East Jewish presence are justified in unspeakable violence to make their emphatic argument.

As long as Arab Palestinians  distinguish themselves as victims of an unfair conspiracy to wrench a geography they identify as theirs which has been unjustly cast as an internationally legal state by usurpers to the  region, portraying themselves as original  inhabitants and the very people who were the authentic indigenous people as upstarts, the illogic seems to appeal to the sympathies of the West who were themselves in fact colonialists  who occupied foreign lands and who now discern descendants of original Zion as unfairly advantaged over Palestinians.

Back in 1969 when there might still have been hope, despite the violence unleashed in the region by Yasser Arafat, the Palestine Liberation Organization, its Fatah and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine that a peace agreement might be possible in the near future an earlier Canadian government briefly under  Prime Minister Joe Clark had promised while electioneering to move Canada's embassy to Jerusalem. The reaction was as predictable then as it is now, and a hail of threats and complaints met his pledge.

Leading him to finally abandon his plan, saying that such a move after all -- to move Canada's embassy from Tel Aviv to the ancient Judaic capital of Jerusalem "could be seen as prejudging negotiations among parties in the Middle East and might in fact work against progress towards a just and lasting peace settlement" -- he explained at that time, reasoning that has remained popularly current, dredged up whenever any question arrives over whether the time to recognize Jerusalem as Israel's capital hasn't arrived, given the obvious, that there is no atmosphere wherein a peace agreement could be attained.

In 1949 a year following the UN vote for Partition in the creation of a Jewish and an Arab state out of 'Palestine', the nascent Jewish state was attacked by combined armies of its neighbours, and a year later Jerusalem was declared by Israel its capital. In 1967 another attack, and the Six Day War concluded with Jordan losing its illegal occupation of East Jerusalem. In 1993 the Oslo Accords initiated the modern peace process. A peace process which went nowhere. In 2000 the Camp David talks resulted in hopeful negotiations but again the Palestinians rejected peace.

Palestinian leaders demonstrated their faith in the peace process by launching the first Intifada. A second one followed, and a third one is threatened now and again in between incitements to maim and murder Israeli Jews. Canada's hypocritical stance as a 'friend' to both Israel and the Palestinians causing it to reject a nation's legitimacy while continuing to financially support a violent, viciously slandering would-be nation places it in the company of Germany, France, Britain, the European Union, the United Nations, the Holy See, all of whom see no profit in identifying the world's longest-running fraud.

With the Trump administration finally seeing fit to leave the habitual waiver of the 1995 Congressional law to move the U.S. embassy to Jerusalem unsigned, and his declaration that henceforth Israel's designation of Jerusalem as its eternal capital will be duly honoured by the United States, and the American embassy moved to Jerusalem, the world has erupted in condemnation. And Palestinians have been given the green light by their authorities to rampage and  riot, exercises in victimhood, hatred and rage they are well practised in.

A protester in Ramallah, in the West Bank, aims a stone at Israeli police yesterday     Mohamad Torokman/Reuters