Trump’s Decision to Move US Embassy to Jerusalem and the Fallout

As a supporter of Israel, I welcomed the news that President Donald Trump-as promised- has decided to move the US Embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. After all, Jerusalem is, in fact, the capital of Israel. I knew that the Muslim world would take to the streets, burn flags, scream to the heavens, and whatever else they do when they feel offended. I don’t really care.

I was particularly struck that in many cities, Muslim protesters featured calls to kill Jews. This weekend, I spent a few hours translating Swedish news reports of protests in Malmö and Gothenburg that went far beyond opposition to Israel. In Malmö, the mob was chanting the old Muslim refrain, “Khaybar, Khaybar, O Yahud (Jew)-The armies of Mohammad are returning”. (Khaybar was an ancient town in the Arabian peninsula populated by Jews but defeated by Mohammad and his army.) Also reported by Swedish media (surprisingly) was the report that someone was crying, “Give us our freedom back-We will shoot the Jews”. Meanwhile, in Gothenburg, a gang of about a dozen or so men threw Molotov cocktails into a synagogue where people were having a party.

Also in New York City, Muslims were protesting Trump’s decision by reciting the Khaybar phrases. Similar protests went on in many Muslim countries from Pakistan to Iran to Indonesia. It was downright ugly.

Then I asked myself after dutifully posting reports on these outrages: When do Israelis and Jews in general around the world act like this?

For example, do Jews riot in Israel or New York every time the UN passes some biased resolution against the Jewish state?

Do Jews riot, burn buildings, destroy things, and kill people when an Israeli is murdered by an Arab?

Did Jews in the US or Israel or anywhere riot and scream death to fill-in-the blank when then-President Obama insulted Bibi Netanyahu or favored the Palestinians and the Arab world over Israel?

The answer is clearly no. Now I know some wise guy reading this will drag out some incident somewhere in time, perhaps involving the Jewish Defense League, to inform me that I have this all wrong. But I think I have illustrated my point pretty well.

First of all, there is no room in America or any other civilized country for mobs chanting a call to kill Jews-which the Khaybar chant clearly is. I don’t hold all Muslims accountable for this behavior, especially Sufi and Ahmadiya Muslims, who have a pretty clean slate when it comes to terrorism. (As I write, we have had an attempted suicide bomb attack in New York City.) Yet, when do you hear the so-called moderate Muslim leaders condemn this kind of rhetoric? And I have not even spoken about actual terrorists yet. I am talking about mobs of hundreds of people standing on Western street corners and calling for the deaths of Jews.

Frankly, I am fed up with it. We have fought hard to combat anti-semitism in this country as well as racism, a noble change I have witnessed in my own lifetime. And yet, we are supposed to tolerate immigration of people who would chant such poison on our streets? I ask myself: What is wrong with our leaders over the past generation that they have allowed this to happen? Who are these leaders in Europe who are destroying their entire continent with this insane immigration policy, which has now led to mass Jewish emigration because they are no longer safe-just as they were not safe in the 1930s? Of course, I must repeat time and time again that my own wife is an immigrant and that until recently, immigration had been great for our country. Not this.

What we Westerners are doing, both in North America and Europe, is tolerating intolerance in the name of tolerance. It is time to stop.