Trump and Titus: 2000 Years of the Jews in Europe:
Yesterday when Trump was making a speech on the White House steps about his tax cut and congressmen and senators were standing on the stairs, it was reminiscent of the days of ancient Rome when generals had triumphs. In particular I am thinking of the famous triumph of Titus who was then the son of the Emperor Vespasian in the year 70 BC. He defeated the Jews in the First Jewish Roman War and sent them off into the Diaspora from which they did not return until after World War 2 almost two thousand years later. The famous Titus’s Arch which still stands in Rome today depicts this event.
Today the UN took a vote whether to condemn the US for recognizing Jerusalem as Israel’s capital. All of the membership of the EU, the western European countries, voted to condemn the US and Israel. Western Europe is showing its long, long tradition of anti-Semitism. Japan also voted to condemn showing that it was once part of the Axis Powers in World War 2, allied with the Nazis and Hitler.
America is trying to right the historic wrong that has gone on for two thousand years. Not that the Diaspora did not contribute greatly to Jewish civilization in making them the democratic country they are now today. But it is time to let them go home again after two thousand years.
The great mystery in the vote was England. All the other Anglo countries either voted with the US or abstained. But England voted to condemn the resolution to make Jerusalem the capital of Israel and to have the US put its embassy there. Yet it was England who promulgated the Balfour Declaration one hundred years ago, starting the movement that ended up creating the modern state of Israel. England has been in decline for a century from the power it once was, but this shows that it is slipping into the orbit of Germany and other continental countries and losing its own ideals that once made it great.
But at least Trumps stands on the White House steps looking like a Roman of old. Now that the Jews are no longer fractious and rebellious the way they were two thousand years ago, he is saying to go home again.
Cheops Books LLC will soon publish an historical thriller involving Titus. It is called Pliny: A Novel. The encyclopedia writer Pliny was a friend of the Emperor Titus and his father Vespasian.
