As part of the Providence POV series, the editors reached out to friends and colleagues in the region—including Palestinians and Israelis, Jews and Christians—to share their points of view on the new US embassy in Jerusalem.

David Ben-Gurion, who declared the establishment of the State of Israel 70 years ago this week, once mused that “God left one commandment out of the Bible. Perhaps the Almighty delivered this commandment to Moses, but Moses forgot to bring it down from the mountain. That commandment is No. 11: ‘Be strong.'”

President Trump’s purported remarks about “s—hole countries” have echoed off the UN’s Office of the High Commissioner on Human Rights—an echo being the usual response of a hollow institution.

The Palestinian national movement is an illusory empire. Constructed on poetry and prejudice and generations of fantasy, it too must come crashing down so that it can be rebuilt, this time on a more solid basis.

As a broad set of ethical principles, the just war outlook is vital to civilized society. However, errors come—and they can be dangerous ones—when proponents of just war take their categories too narrowly and apply their axioms without historical context.