Ivanka called "Daddy's Little Ghoul" by NY paper for being all cheery smiles at embassy opening, as Israeli soldiers were killing dozens of Palestinian protesters.

President Trump's controversial, tone-deaf decision to move the U.S. Embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem had its official opening Monday to the delight of Netanyahu, the Israel First crowd, and their wealthy supporters from the U.S., like megadonor, casino boss, Sheldon Adelson.

Trump himself is either willfully ignorant of the history behind past presidents' decisions to hold off on the move -- or he is stubbornly flaunting his ability to create even more chaos in a land and people who have little hope of ever being free, the Palestinians.

All three major Abrahamic religions (Islam, Judaism, and Christianity) have major holy sites in Jerusalem, which is what makes it so fraught to have the city claimed by any one faction.    The partition into East Jerusalem and West Jerusalem was supposed to be a stop-gap measure decades ago, leaving the final decisions to be part of the peace negotiations between Israel and Palestinians.

But Israel has now asserted its control over the entire city, and this decision by Trump is an endorsement of that.   This act solidifies what has been becoming obvious since Trump's inauguration:   that the U.S. can no longer be an honest broker of peace in the Middle East, given its increasingly obvious tilt toward Israel. 

The Palestinians -- and their allies in the Arab world -- will not trust us.  Jared Kushner does nothing to dispel that notion -- in fact, he makes it worse, and then complicates it even more by his selectively cozying up to Saudi Arabia, as well as the Kushner family's complex financial dealings with Qatar.   The Saudis and Emiratis blockade of Qatar on land access complicates these complex relations, since our largest airbase in the region is in Qatar.

Trump was not in Jerusalem at the embassy-opening ceremony, but he spoke via satellite video to the happy crowd of (mostly white) people at the Embassy.   Ivanka and Jared were there, and each spoke.

Meanwhile, minutes away from this happy, celebritory event, Palestinians were kept out of the fenced off and heavily defended area in Gaza;  but about ten thousand gathered at the border to protest.  With little left to lose, some began throwing rocks as their only available weapons.   In what sounds like excessive show of force, Israeli soldiers returned their attacks with gun fire.   Over 50 Palestinians, including children, were shot and killed, while over 2,000 more were wounded.

NBC correspondent Richard Engle, reporting from Jerusalem, said it reminded him of the old British colonial times in India, where the British privileged rulers would be served their tea and crumpets, while starving Indian people were just outside the heavily guarded gates.

A White House spokesman rejected any idea that this was brought on by the provocation of the embassy decision.   He said that Hamas was behind it, stirring up trouble in order to make a "propaganda" spectacle.   The spokesman presented no evidence of that, and news reports sound like ordinary protests by a people who have been displaced, virtually enslaved in their own land, and forced to give up their homes to a superior power.

If you want to look for the roots of this particular, poorly timed decision, follow the money.    Look for the aging billionaire Sheldon Adelson toodling around the new embassy digs in his wheelchair looking like his entire casino empire just hit the jackpot.    Figure up how much money he and his ilk have given to politicians in Washington and to the Jewish-American organizations that promote an Israel First and Only "solution" to the mid-East conflict.

When you virtually imprison a whole people, as the Israelis do to the Palestinians in Gaza, there is little hope for them -- and they resort to rock throwing and other means of the powerless against the powerful.

It becomes even worse if this power differential is compounded by religious zeal and protection of holy sites.   The long-promised, two-state system, with Israel controlling West Jerusalem and Palestine controlling East Jerusalem, could have been one solution.   But now that Trump has endorsed Netanyahu's usurpation of the entire city for Israeli control, that -- and the whole peace process -- seems DOA. 

And yet, the cheery, white people from America (yes, Jared and Ivanka, I mean you) piped away in their faux optimism that this will help advance the peace process between Israel and Palestinians.   Obviously no one is listening to the ones on the other side of the barriers -- so they resorted to rock-throwing out of their hopeless desolation.

And the New York Daily News, noted for its provocative headlines, proclaimed, above Ivanka's front-page picture:  "Daddy's Little Ghoul."     Zinger !    It did seem quite ghoulish -- the contrast between blond, model-beautiful, vapid Ivanka speaking into a mic before well-dressed billionaires and powerful politicians -- and the darker-skinned, street-hardened, crowd of dissenters,  robbed of their land, largely without any means of livelihood, and limited in their ability to obtain necessary goods and supplies across Israel's borders.   Their voices were long ago muted, and now their access to their most holy site is in jeopardy.

All they had left were rocks to throw.   But the Israelis had guns -- and shot over 2000 of them, killing more than 50.   Meanwhile, the celebrating at the embassy went right on, with Americans and Israelis -- either oblivious or not caring.

Ralph