THINK-ISRAEL

JERUSALEM IS ISRAEL'S CAPITAL — AND THAT'S A FACT

by Jose V. Ciprut

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY: There was a time when the world united against Galileo, who had defied holy teachings by stating that the Earth is neither flat nor the center of the universe, but revolves around the sun. President Trump's acknowledgment that Jerusalem is Israel's capital was also a plain statement of fact, one that Arabs and Muslims insist the West must simply wish away. "Eppur si muove," said Galileo: the earth moves whether one acknowledges it or not. The same applies to the fact that Israel's capital is Jerusalem.

"UNGA Item 5 draft resolution A/ES-10/L.22" was triumphantly hailed as "passed" to the applause of the beneficiaries, despite its being a hair short of a two-thirds majority (66.32% instead of 66.67%, to be exact — but who's counting?).

In addition to the nine countries that voted against and the 35 that abstained, as many as 21 were absent. Better, they judged, to be far from the proceedings than to risk being bullied, blamed, or blasted by those whom they either admire but would have had to betray, or by those they despise but to whom they cannot confess their true sentiments.

Prophet Muhammad's dream of a totally converted, entirely Islamized universe lives on. Yet, in real life, neither empires long dismantled nor modernday worldwide compacts posing as leagues, solidarity organizations, or conferences have been able to attain that reductive utopia. Even violent true believers who, as self-assigned protectors of the fundaments of Islam, slaughter human beings in the name of the Merciful and Compassionate have failed to turn these obsessions into reality. Claims are built on denials (Ibrahim, not Abraham; Haram ash-Sharif, not the Temple Mount; Al-Quds, not Jerusalem) and reprisals (against Kurds of all walks, as well as all "miscreants" — Copts, Christians, Jews, atheists, and everyone else who has managed to survive the fate of Armenians, Greeks, Bahais, Yazidis, and the like). Survivors of reprisals might still be making do in Islamic polities, but it must be remembered what "reprisals" can entail under Islamic "rule;" and how easily and ruthlessly they can resurface without notice.

Economically motivated migration to, demographic proliferation in, and political participation in the governance of host countries, the more effectively to force change from within, are but some of the institutionalized patterns that have gradually replaced invasion, forced conversion, massacres instigated by false rumor, and other ethnic cleansings of yesteryear. Islam is working to promote its own interests and priorities in the bosom of Western civilization, using atavistic mentalities and depleted worldviews to endogenize claims that are not only historically and geographically false but also rhetorically misleading.

The recent migration flows, motivated sometimes by economic problems and sometimes by ulterior motives as well; the externally subsidized fundamentalist indoctrinations dispensed from "centers" to "peripheries;" and the increasingly vociferous segments of formally if often only nominally naturalized migrant communities are only some of the factors that contribute to the diffusion of homegrown prejudices, politicized preferences, and ad hoc priorities, not least with the complicity of politicians visiting from the old country. The priorities exported by the sender countries were vividly exemplified by recent incidents in which Ankara attempted to address "naturalized bi-national" Muslim Turkish minorities in the Netherlands, Germany, the US, and Greece.

What was the "humanitarian" Mavi Marmara initiative about, if not a dual-use tactical weapon guided by a flammable propellant capacitated to spark a military clash between longtime allies and friends Turkey and Israel?

The urge to Islamize world politics manifests itself in a wide array of non-Islamic structures, functions, processes, and contexts. The very authenticity of the OIC, and the legitimacy of the roundabout claim to sovereignty by the "State of Palestine," whatever and wherever that may be, merits closer scrutiny.

The OIC (Organization of Islamic Cooperation) has 57 member states, if one includes the circumstantially reified "State of Palestine." Each of these states is Muslim, if one is to trust the organization's official name. Yet, of the 57 members declared Muslim, 22 have Muslim constituencies that range from 80.3% to 6.4% of their total populations. Those countries are Albania (80.3%); Sierra Leone (78%); the UAE (76.9%); Brunei (75.1%); Kuwait (74.1%); Kazakhstan (70.4%); Bahrain (70.3%); Malaysia (63.7%); Burkina Faso (61.6%); Lebanon (61.3%); Chad (55.3%); Nigeria (50.4%); Guinea-Bissau (50%); Côte d'Ivoire (37.5%); Benin (23.8%); Cameroon (18.3%); Mozambique (18%); Togo (14%); Suriname (13.9%); Uganda (11.5%); Gabon 11.2%; and Guyana (6.4%).

On the occasion of the ludicrous "urgency to vote in favor of the Muslim-Arab motion," Togo voted against, Cameroon and Uganda abstained, and GuineaBissau and Sierra Leone were absent. One can only hope there will be more where that came from.

Two questions arise. First, what compels states that are 50%-or-less Muslim to declare themselves (or, worse, to allow themselves to be declared) "Muslim"? Why should voiceless non-Muslim constituencies in these (inauthentic) OIC member states feign indifference to official lies about their true identity? And second, is the UN's admittance of the OIC's declared (fake) identity the product of ineptitude, tacit collusion, complicit indifference, or illicit duplicity? And how many OIC members would long bear scrutiny into their records of human rights, status of unresolved borders, or standing of their leadership at the ICC?

The G-77 (a group of 77 "non-aligned" founder-nations, the membership of which had grown to 134 by 2013) generally votes in unison — too often in unquestioning support of the OIC's obsessive condemnations of Israel. Little wonder then that so many Israel-bashing UN resolutions are the godchildren of those who have recognized neitherthe Kurdish nor the Catalan nations, but have recognized the nonexistent "State of Palestine" — a state that cannot be engendered absent some form of recognition by the democratic Jewish State of Israel. After all, the State of Israel came to own the territories the Palestinians now demand only after Egypt and Jordan — which lost them unconditionally in their war of aggression — disowned and abandoned them.

One wonders how the 134 members of the G-77, including the 14 non-Arab and non-Muslim states of the OIC — which collectively exceed two-thirds of the 193- member UNGA — would have individually responded, had they been voting autonomously and authentically. (Asking the same question of the ever so fairminded Western countries — which are, of course, motivated solely by humane concerns — would require another essay, alas.)

Since its inception, the OIC has openly coveted key positions of authority at the UN and in related international organizations. The UN General Secretariat and the "mature member states," which should have been more discerning, may have found cause to regret their inattention regarding the cornering of the vote market owing to their persistent lack of due diligence, aggravated by the pernicious effects of greatly facilitated insider information.

The Palestinian people never thought of becoming (let alone fought to become) a "state" while under the yoke of a variety of "foreign occupiers," the last of which was the Hashemite Kingdom of Transjordan, a Muslim Arab entity renamed Jordan upon its arbitrary annexation of what is now called "the West Bank." The Palestinians contain rival tribal families, mentalities, guiding values, and worldviews, and they struggle to pose as a single national entity before the eyes of the world. They have managed to cobble a virtual national existence under the grandiose and implicitly irredentist name "the State of Palestine," with the collusion of the Arab League, the OIC, and complicit members inside the "non-aligned" group of (eternally) developing nations that perceive relics of colonialism, imperialism, and apartheid wherever they look. Together, they comprise two-thirds of the dysfunctional UNGA, which continues to insist that the world is flat.

The myopia engendered by an automatic majority at the UNGA has led the "State of Palestine" to be emboldened to the point of imagining that it can afford to rebuff offers of realistic peaceful coexistence at will. Encouraged to disdain Israel, it thinks it can equally write off the US. That might prove a dangerous gamble.



Jose V. Ciprut is a conflict analyst, social systems scientist, and international political economist. This article was published as BESA Center Perspectives Paper No. 708, January 5, 2018 and is archived at
https://besacenter.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/01/708-Jerusalem-Is-Israels-Capital-and-Thats-a-Fact-Ciprut-final-2.pdf. It is archived at Think-Israel as
http://www.think-israel.org/ciprut.jerusalemiscapital.html



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