President Donald Trump celebrated an \u201cespecially special\u201d Hanukkah at the White House on Thursday, a day after declaring Jerusalem Israel\u2019s capital and setting off criticism and clashes.<\/p>\n
\u201cRight now I\u2019m thinking about what\u2019s going on and the love that\u2019s all over Israel and all about Jerusalem,\u201d Trump said in the White House East Room. The president was flanked by his daughter Ivanka, who converted to Judaism when she married her husband, Jared Kushner, and their three children.<\/p>\n
The president broke with decades of US policy with the Jerusalem announcement, putting the United States at odds with most other countries. The European Union, Germany, Britain, France, the Pope and key Arab allies have denounced the move.<\/p>\n
But inside the White House Thursday, Trump got only applause, cheers and thanks from the crowd, which included Vice President Mike Pence, Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, Holocaust survivor Louise Lawrence-Israels and Orthodox Rabbi Meir Soloveichik.<\/p>\n
Israelis spoke of standing up to hate. And Soloveichik recited a traditional prayer that he said has additional meaning this year.<\/p>\n
\u201cFor the first time since the founding of the state of Israel, an American president has courageously declared what we have always proclaimed, which is that Jerusalem is the capital of Israel,\u201d Soloveichik said.<\/p>\n
Trump struggled with the pronunciation of Soloveichik\u2019s name. \u201cHe\u2019s so happy with yesterday, that he doesn\u2019t care if I get it exact,\u201d the president said.<\/p>\n
He also remarked of the holiday, \u201cI think this one will go down as especially special.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Palestinians equally lay claim to Jerusalem and want the eastern part of the city as capital of a future state. In response to Trump\u2019s announcement, thousands of Palestinian protesters clashed with Israeli forces in east Jerusalem and the West Bank and demonstrators in the Gaza Strip burned US flags and pictures of Trump.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
President Donald Trump celebrated an \u201cespecially special\u201d Hanukkah at the White House on Thursday, a day after declaring Jerusalem Israel\u2019s capital and setting off criticism and clashes. \u201cRight now I\u2019m thinking about what\u2019s going on and the love that\u2019s all over Israel and all about Jerusalem,\u201d Trump said in the White House East Room. The […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":12307,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[87],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-12306","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12306","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=12306"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12306\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12308,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12306\/revisions\/12308"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/12307"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=12306"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=12306"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blastingskyhawk.com\/english\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=12306"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}