Indeed, the reactions coming out of Washington to the Arab violence in Jerusalem indicate that Israel will be hard-pressed to conduct a constructive dialogue with Washington about anything, and that this will be the case regardless of who forms the next Israeli government.
On Saturday, Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D-Mass.) published a shocking post on her Twitter account in response to the Arab riots in Jerusalem’s Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood, which started in earnest last Thursday. The progressive powerhouse wrote, “The forced removal of long-time Palestinian residents of Sheikh Jarrah is abhorrent and unacceptable. The Administration should make it clear to the Israeli government that these evictions are illegal and must stop immediately.”
Warren’s statement isn’t a demand for justice for Arabs. It is a demand for injustice for Jews. Warren has become the first senior U.S. official to call for Jews to be barred from doing something specifically because they are Jewish since Ulysses Grant barred Jews from entering Tennessee, Mississippi and Kentucky at the height of the Civil War.
The situation in Sheikh Jarrah is cut and dried. Buildings in the neighborhood that were purchased by Jews 146 years ago were illegally seized in 1948 by Jordan as its forces illegally occupied eastern, northern and southern Jerusalem in the course of the pan-Arab invasion of the nascent Jewish state. During the course of Jordan’s illegal occupation of those areas of Jerusalem, the Jordanian Registry of Enemy Property illegally leased the Jewish-owned buildings to Arab tenants.
When Israel liberated the Jordanian-occupied areas of Jerusalem in 1967, the owners of the buildings reasserted their property rights. Their ownership over the properties in Sheikh Jarrah was duly registered in Israel’s land registry in 1973. But when the owners tried to retake possession a 48-year legal battle between the owners and the squatters began, which is scheduled to finally come to an end this week. READ MORE
