Of Trump and Jerusalem

"Trump can mess with America, but should stay out of our business," says Amal

Amal Habibi is an owner of a hotel near Jerusalem’s ‘al Quds’. I stayed there when I was in Israel-held Jerusalem. Her recent email to me laments how Donald Trump has forever killed their hopes of having East Jerusalem as the capital of Palestine. “He’s converted our Holy Land into a war zone,” she writes. Many American tourists stay in this hotel. They tell Amal that they are ashamed of their president whose latest target is a female senator in the US Congress just because she supports the 16 Trump accusers of sexual harassment and that he must resign. Trump retaliates with a ‘slut-shaming’ tweet about the senator. The USA Today hits back with a scathing editorial, “A president who would all but call Sen Kirsten Gillibrand a whore is not fit to clean the toilets in the Barack Obama Presidential Library or to shine the shoes of George W Bush.” The president’s press secretary, a woman, defends her boss by calling everyone who objects to the sexually suggestive tweet as having their ‘minds in the gutter’.

The daily gaali galoch Trump gives and gets keeps the world mightily amused. Is this morality’s new normal? Many, including Amal, wonder. The president of the ‘free world’ greets the daybreak each morning with an abusive, name-calling tweet reserved for his ‘enemy’ of that day. He’s counter-punched with equally insulting tweets. “Trump can mess with America, but should stay out of our business; also get his son-in-law Jared Kushner off our backs,” Amal says. “We don’t need these people to be our mediators,” she adds, while insisting that America can no longer be an honest broker in Israel-Palestine dispute. “Already the Arabs living under Israeli occupation are suffering. Our businesses are being affected. Tourism is taking a big hit.”

Amal reminds me: “You were fortunate to visit the Holy Land when things were relatively calm.” She takes me back to the time when we sat on a bench looking straight at the grandeur of al Aqsa Mosque. It was sunset. A heavenly breeze made the evening even more beatific. We looked to heaven and silently prayed for peace. “Today, peace appears a pipe dream.”

A History of God by Karen Armstrong explains how Jews, Christians and Muslims, over the centuries, have laid claim to Jerusalem as their holy place, and how these three monolithic religions have “shaped and scarred” the city for thousands of years. The battle for Jerusalem’s ownership continues, and may well do for years to come. The history of violence and death at al Aqsa Mosque is proof how Jews and Muslims have warred with each other. I notice the bullet holes on one of the pillars inside the Mosque. Amal tells me that in 1951, King Abdullah of Jordan was gunned down here. His grandson Prince Hussein, who later became the King, survived due to the medals he was wearing over his chest. The late King Hussein donated the gold that we see covering the Dome of the Rock.

Turkey’s President Erdogan vows to “annul” Trump’s plan to accept Jerusalem as the capital of Israel while addressing a crowd in the holy city of Konya, south of Ankara. I was in Konya several years ago to pay homage at the tomb of Sufi saint Jalaluddin Rumi. The sight that has stayed in my mind is the whirling dervishes in Konya. They whirl ecstatically, overpowered by the beauty of the world that fills the heart with love and opens the mind to cosmic relations. “We Muslims are proud of our Islamic heritage, be it Jerusalem or Konya,” says Amal. “Let America and Trump deal with ‘slut-shaming’ and ‘mind in the gutter’ garbage that dominates their conversation today. Hands off our affairs!” But arrogantly dismissive is the US ambassador to Israel who said, “President Trump does not intend to reverse himself, despite the various condemnations and declarations.”

Published in The Express Tribune, December 17^th, 2017.

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