Lt. Gen. (ret.) H.R. McMaster reveals in his new book that as President Donald Trump's national security adviser, he warned that there would be terrible consequences if the US embassy was moved from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem.
Well, guess what? The embassy was moved, and there weren't any terrible consequences. So what does that tell us about all the "experts" – and there were many – who made those kinds of predictions? According to McMaster's new memoir, "At War With Ourselves", President Trump was ready to announce the relocation of the embassy when he visited Israel in May 2017.
But McMaster and then-Secretary of State Rex Tillerson pushed to delay the move, because they thought there would be a massive, violent Arab reaction. Their advice succeeded, for a time: Trump held off on the relocation for another seven months before finally proceeding with it in December 2017. Looking back to see who else got it wrong is important – not because of the I-told-you-so opportunity, but because so many of those people are today still in positions of influence, or are still being quoted by the major news media as "experts."
Ilan Goldenberg, for example. He's a senior Middle East adviser to Vice President Kamala Harris and serves as her liaison to the American Jewish community. Many media outlets are reporting that he would have a major role in US Mideast policy if Harris becomes president.
Moving the embassy to Jerusalem would be "playing the role of arsonist throwing more fuel on the flames instead of calming things down," Goldenberg told Politico. A Jewish ex-State Department official likewise invoked the dramatic danger of Arab wildfires if the embassy was moved. "It's hard to come up with a single act that would make the Middle East burn more than it is burning right now," Aaron David Miller declared.
Miller's colleague Daniel Kurtzer, a former ambassador to Israel, spoke and wrote extensively against moving the embassy to Jerusalem. He predicted it "will likely spark protests, some possibly violent, in Palestine and throughout the Arab and Muslim world."
Ex-Ambassador Martin Indyk claimed the Embassy move would "make everybody very angry." US Senator Bernie Sanders said it would "exacerbate tensions in this highly volatile region." Pundit Peter Beinart asserted it would "provoke Muslim violence" by "deepening Palestinian despair."
The New York Times interviewed eleven former US ambassadors to Israel. Nine of them predicted mass Arab violence. William Harrop (who was ambassador from 1992 to 1993) said the decision to move the embassy was "reckless" and even "masochistic." Richard Jones (2005-2009) said it would "cost lives in Israel and the region."How did all these so-called experts, with all their years of experience, manage to get it so wrong? Some got it wrong because they simply don't understand the Palestinian Arabs. They assume that the Palestinian Arabs are as if they are children who are incapable of doing anything but rioting when they're mad about something. Such an immature view of Palestinian Arab strategy and policymaking inevitably leads to simplistic and wrongheaded expectations.
But it's likely that some of these "experts" were not simply wrongheaded but downright cynical. Privately, they didn't really believe there would be substantial Arab rioting; they were just hoping that highlighting that alleged danger might stop Trump from moving the embassy to Jerusalem. Either way, the fact that these policy wonks and ex-diplomats were so wrong on such an important American foreign policy issue should disqualify them from being treated as experts on Israel or having any role in future US policy toward Israel and the Palestinian Arabs.
