print“Make Jerusalem Safe Again” is the current column, now on The Daily Caller. (And, yes, the column does briefly address the “land” issue, which libertarians can’t skirt.) An excerpt:
RELOCATING the American Embassy to Jerusalem, as President Donald Trump has pledged to do, is more than symbolic. It’s what Christians should be praying for if they value celebrating future Easter Holy Weeks, in the Church of the Holy Sepulcher, located in Jerusalem’s Old City. With such a forceful gesture, the Trump Administration will be affirming, for once and for all, the undivided Jerusalem as the capital of the Jewish State.
There’s a reason Muslims living in Israel proper—1.5 million of them—don’t migrate to the adjacent Palestinian Authority. They’re better off in Israel. Should Jerusalem, East and West, be recognized formally as the capital of Israel only, under Jewish control alone; Christianity’s holiest sites will be better off. Judaism’s holy sites will be safer. And so will Islam’s.
Jerusalem is no settlement to be haggled over; it’s the capital of the Jewish State. King David conquered it 1000 years Before Christ. The city’s “Muslim Period” began only in the year 638 of the Common Era. “Yerushalaim,” and not Al Quds, is the name of the city that was sacred to Jews for nearly two thousand years before Muhammad. Not once is Jerusalem mentioned in the Quran. And while Muhammad was said to have departed to the heavens from the Al Aksa Mosque, there was no mosque in Jerusalem. The Dome of the Rock and the Al Aksa Mosque were built upon the Jewish Temple Mount. Muslim theologians subsequently justified this usurpation by superimposing their own chronology—and relatively recent fondness for Jerusalem—upon the existing, ancient sanctity of the place to Jews.
Essentially, this amounts to historical identity theft.
It’s bad enough that Bethlehem—the burial site of the matriarch Rachel, birthplace to King David and Jesus and site of the Church of the Nativity—is controlled by the Palestinians. But, as one wag wondered, “How would Christians react if the Muslim theologians aforementioned had chosen to appropriate the Church of the Holy Sepulcher, rename it and declare it Muslim property?”
There is nothing Solomonic about splitting up Jerusalem, which—it bears repeating—was sacred to Jews for nearly two millennia before Muhammad and is not in the Quran. “The Muslim Claim to Jerusalem,” notes Dr. Daniel Pipes, is political, not religious or historic. As such, it’s also a recent project. “Centuries of neglect came to an abrupt end after June 1967, when the Old City came under Israeli control,” explains Pipes. “Palestinians [then] again made Jerusalem the centerpiece of their political program, [when, in fact] Mecca is the eternal city of Islam, the place from which non-Muslims are strictly forbidden. Very roughly speaking, [Mecca is to Islam] what Jerusalem is to Judaism.”
East Jerusalem was not annexed in June of 1967. Rather, Jerusalem was unified. …”
… Read the rest. “Make Jerusalem Safe Again” is now on The Daily Caller. If you’d like to feature the Mercer weekly column in your publication, print or pixels, please contact me at ilana@ilanamercer.com.
UPDATED (1/29):
Global Right of Return to US:
Lefty Jews, @JustinRaimondo, reject Muslim right-of-return to Israel proper, but say The World has a global right of return to the US. https://t.co/I3JkIB6OQk
— Ilana Mercer (@IlanaMercer) January 28, 2017