Our new President and his closest advisors firmly believe that illegal and universally condemned Israeli settlements in Palestinian territory are both "legal" and not an "obstacle to peace."

Nor, apparently, does Trump and his key Middle East advisory team believe that moving the American embassy to Jerusalem, termed by the President, "Israel's 'eternal' capital," would cause problems of any real significance.

History in general and the history of the Middle East, in particular, are not and never have been the President's forte.

Jerusalem, for example, is hardly the "eternal capital" of anything, much less "Israel."

The President himself, old, but not yet ancient, is older than the modern State of Israel

The "greater Israel" of pro-settlement fantasy ceased to exist around 930 BC when the kingdom split in two.

A series of conquests, occupations, and absorptions followed during the next 3,000 years or so.

From 1516 to 1920, following the end of the First World War, the Ottoman Empire held and ruled "Jerusalem." From 1920 to 1948 "Palestine" was governed as a British mandate. In 1939, Jewish immigrants, fleeing the Nazi conquest of Europe, raised the percentage of Jews living in "Palestine" to only around one-third of the population.

If one ignores history, the only other "Israeli" grounds for a claim to Jerusalem and the lands of "Greater Israel" are religious. Those claims have make about as much sense as those of the legendary Joshua and his shaggy band emerging from 40 years exile the desert, appearing in front of Jericho, and announcing to the residents (who had been there since Joseph and his brothers lived in Egypt, that God had given Jericho and the other cities of Palestine to the children of Israel and it was time for the current inhabitants to leave. Resistance, of course, led to the wholesale slaughter of men, women, children, and assorted livestock of perceived greater value.

For some apparently unimaginable reason Muslim and other non-Jewish inhabitants of "Palestine" still feel their claims to the land are at least as valid religiously, and arguably more valid historically, than those of the pro-settler factions of the Jewish population.

With the exception of Netanyahu's Israeli government, which would collapse without the support of the most right-wing and conservative Jewish religious parties, no other country in the developed world apparently believes that simply taking land for new settlements and the roads and other infrastructure to support them helps the cause of peace . . . not to mention no other country with a seat on the UN Security Council, hardly a band of brothers in most circumstances.

Trump, on the other hand, either believes it's true or thinks saying so is clever or useful. He also believed, you will remember, that President Obama, wasn't a citizen by birth-right.

Now, not only are the illegal Israeli settlements an obstacle to peace, so is our new President.

A sorrow and a pity.