Fake Muslim graves in Jerusalem

All the ideological screeching aside, there is a jostling for real estate in the Middle East.  Israel, being about the size of New Jersey, rather desperately needs it — being surrounded by Arab countries that have repeatedly invaded it with intent to destroy it, and a divided Palestinian entity that, on the one hand (Gaza), reviles Israel, denies its right to exist, and lobs bombs into Israel cities, and on the other hand (West Bank), thankfully, merely teaches their children that Jews are bent on world domination, the proof of which, incorporated into Palestinian high school textbooks, is the discredited forgery, The Protocols of the Elders of Zion.

Real estate jostles have been common among Middle Eastern neighbors for millennia.  Biblical Israel itself suffered the jostling of the Assyrians, the Babylonians, and the Persians.  What makes this modern real estate jostling profoundly unique is the standard applied by the international community to minor jostling by Jews versus minor jostling by Muslims.

When a minor Israeli official announced renewed building in a Jewish neighborhood of East Jerusalem, a neighborhood never conceived by either side as negotiable, the Obama administration went bizarrely ballistic, and the international community, doubtless puzzled, said, “um, okay, what he said.”

When Muslims build fake Muslim graves in East Jerusalem with no one buried in them, for the sole sake of expanding Muslim territory from which Jews are excluded, no one went ballistic.  No one said anything, certainly no one in the Obama administration.  That was okay.  In fact, the Waqf, the Muslim entity in charge of the fake graves, petitioned the Israeli courts to let it continue, to stop Jerusalem from removing the fake graves.  Such are the liberties of Muslims in Israel.

Whatever happens in that case — oral argument is imminent — it bears noting that oral argument is imminent.  Muslims in Israel are allowed to make the case in a court of law that they should be allowed to build fake Muslim graves without interference by Israeli authorities.  Would that Jews had been treated with such solicitude in Muslim countries.  What has happened to Jews in Muslim countries over the last fifty years — the pogroms, the persecutions, the expulsions — let’s just say the UN Human Rights Council hasn’t been perturbed.

The UN Human Rights Council has been most perturbed about Israel.  Indeed, it has adopted more resolutions and decisions condemning Israel than all other 191 U.N. states combined (including 20th and 21st century perpetrators of genocide).

Honestly, whatever one’s thoughts about what Israel does, can it be doubted that Israel is under siege?  Can it be doubted that the very United Nations that created Israel under international law in 1948 now slyly repents that decision and commits its American-contributed resources relentlessly to undermining Israel?

It’s simple arithmetic.  There are 46 Muslim countries, and 50+ countries with substantial Muslim minorities.  There is one Jewish country.  Not surprising that the Jewish country routinely loses in the court of international opinion.

The United States has honorably supported Israel, still the lone democracy in the Middle East.  Supporting Israel and supporting surrounding Arab regimes are not mutually exclusive.  When Arab regimes sincerely countenance peaceful co-existence, peace is possible.  When the Palestinians drop their bombs, accept Israel, and truly desire statehood, it will be theirs.