Townhall Review | Commentaries

Jerusalem is now the home of the United States Embassy in Israel, as it should be.

But our first diplomatic presence in Jerusalem began in 1844, when we established a one-man consulate in the holy city. Why a mere consulate, and not an embassy? Because Jerusalem at the time wasn't the capital of anything-no separate Palestinian state had ever existed, and Jerusalem wasn't even a provincial capital in the Turkish Empire that ruled the area.

The population of the destitute village was only 15,000, with more than 7,000 Jews and scarcely 5,000 Muslims. In other words, more than a hundred years before the rebirth of the modern Jewish state, Jerusalem was already a predominantly Jewish city - and still is, now that the population has multiplied to nearly a million.

As a world class center of culture and technology, the truth about Jerusalem is more compelling than any of the propagandistic myths.

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There have been a number of releases of late where we are seeing substantive investigative works of journalism on the 2016 election that blindsided the pundit and the political classes and gave us President Trump.

Salena Zito and Brad Todd in their remarkable book titled “The Great Revolt” have shifted the focus from candidate Trump to the voters who elected him president, creating the electoral earthquake of 2016. So did Dan Balz in the Washington Post.

All of this on the seismic shift in Pennsylvania, Michigan, Iowa, Wisconsin and yes, Ohio.

We’re starting to get a more nuanced picture of the “why” behind this quake. The key theme is status—a fundamental conviction that elites of LA, Silicon Valley, Manhattan and Washington wore a collective, fixed sneer toward their “lessers” between the coasts. Midwestern swing voters felt, to use the cliché from sports, “disrespected.”

This is the real story of 2016.

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With the U.S. embassy finally moving to Israel’s capital of Jerusalem, media narratives on the city’s history promote distortions, half-truths and outright lies.

According to one common claim, Jerusalem thrived for centuries as a Palestinian center before Israel seized the city in 1967. Such false claims are easily exposed by checking widely accepted census figures. In 1967, before Israel’s victory in the Six Day War, 196,000 Jews lived in Jerusalem, compared to only 55,000 Palestinian Muslims. In the next 51 years, it’s true that the Jewish population tripled, but the Muslim population grew even faster—exploding by an astounding 600 percent.

Far from pushing out Palestinians, Jerusalem’s economic development and enlightened governance drew them in by the tens of thousands, raising their living standards and educational level in the process.

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A shockingly stupid proposal has outraged the business community here in Seattle, illustrating the topsy-turvy values of contemporary liberalism.

The City plans to enact a punitive “head tax” on every business with revenues of more than 20 million dollars. These companies would be forced to pay a special tax for each of their full-time employees, with the money providing more services for the homeless.

A decent government ought to encourage beneficial behavior, while discouraging self-destructive and damaging conduct. But here, Seattle leftists mean to reverse the equation: punishing job creation—good behavior that benefits everyone—while rewarding dysfunctional and destructive behavior, like camping out in public parks or under freeways. This folly demonstrates the twisted thinking that characterizes progressive ideology.

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Over the course of the past few months, Iran has escalated their military presence inside of Syria, building many many missile sites.

Israel has struck at these sites repeatedly, and then this week Iran fired twenty missiles into Israel. And Israel responded with great force and with severity that destroyed almost all of the military infrastructure of Iran inside of Syria.

If Iran continues its provocations and if Tehran’s mullahs think they can calculate Israel’s reaction to any use of weapons against the Jewish state, well those Mullahs are very mistaken.

Like most Americans, I know Israel through the prism of the leadership of  Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.  If Iran sets off a battle, there is no one else who Israelis and Americans would want at the top of the Israeli government if this turns into a real war.

Watch closely.

This is Netanyahu’s moment.

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A recent article in the New Yorker decried the opening of a 4th Chick-fil-A restaurant in Manhattan. The author called it a “creepy infiltration” because of what he calls the company’s “pervasive Christian traditionalism,” evidenced by the fact that the headquarters in Atlanta features a statue of Jesus washing His disciple's feet, and that the stores are closed on Sunday.

Hmmm … pretty creepy stuff.

The New Yorker certainly has the right to publish articles with a secular point of view, but New York was founded by Dutch Calvinist merchants, and some 60 percent of New Yorkers still self-identify as Christian.

The foot washing episode inspired John Locke to teach the doctrine of religious liberty, which influenced our own 1st Amendment. So: the scene which offends the New York press today is what led to the freedom which enables that same press to deride it.

Maybe it’s the New Yorker that’s kind of creepy.

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Gina Haspel has been selected by President Trump as the new Director of the Central Intelligence Agency after serving the agency effectively for 32 years, under two Democratic and four Republican presidents.

But Democrats still oppose her confirmation because CIA policy after 9/11 called for enhanced interrogation techniques and she followed her orders in executing that policy. After Congress pressed to eliminate tactics like water-boarding, she accepted that decision too, and executed it without complaint.

For Democrats, in other words, it’s her loyal service to the agency, under both Republican and Democratic leadership, that disqualifies Haspel.

In fighting this patriotic, richly qualified nominee the Democrats are placing political gamesmanship ahead of national security.

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The US Department of Education recently released national test scores for American 4th and 8th grade students in math and reading.  They call it the “Nation’s Report Card.” I call it a dismal failure, no better than a D. 

Only about a third of American 8th graders scored as proficient in reading and math, along with around 40% of fourth graders.  And despite massive expenditures and countless reform efforts, there was essentially no improvement over the scores reported in the last tests 4 years ago. It’s been almost a decade since there was significant growth in the scores.

The new Secretary of Education is advocating more parental choice through charter schools and vouchers.  In the face of these results, it would be hard to argue that it isn’t time to try something new.  As Albert Einstein said, “Insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results.” 

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Amazon Corporation is looking for a site at which to build a 2nd headquarters, and they've narrowed the list down to 20 American cities. But a group which calls itself 'No Gay, No Way' is pressuring the company to knock Austin; Dallas; Nashville; Atlanta; Columbus, Ohio; Indianapolis; Miami; Raleigh, North Carolina; and Washington, D.C off the list. The problem is that the red states which are less likely to embrace special protections for sexual identity also tend to be low tax.

This is not about protecting gay Amazon employees. This is about power, about using economic intimidation to punish cities and states which have not yet submitted.

But if the management knuckles under to activists and rejects cities with better business climates, it does so at the expense of owners, employees and customers.

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There’s a fine line between compassion and foolishness when it comes to public policy impacting the homeless.  Unfortunately, a whole host of cites cities—particularly in California—have crossed that line. 

In San Francisco, liberal policies and neglectful elected officials have enabled disorder.  The homeless are camped out on sidewalks, public drug use is soaring, and some streets are littered with waste. In 2017, over 7,000 homeless people were found during a one-night count. And this year, there have already been over 8,000 requests to clean up human waste and another 3,700 to pick up needles left on the street. 

We should be a compassionate society, but we also must recognize when our leaders have failed in their fundamental responsibility both to help those in need and to promote public safety.  The time for action is long past due.

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