Obama and Romney won’t state this basic fact
BY RICK SANTORUM / NEW YORK DAILY NEWS
There is, sadly, a huge divide between the Obama administration’s position and that of the government of Israel with regard to Jerusalem.
For thousands of years, at the end of the Passover Seder as well as at the end of Yom Kippur, Jews around the world conclude their holiday by reciting, “Next Year in Jerusalem.”
To Jews, Jerusalem is the holiest city, and has the holiest site, the Temple Mount, which includes the Western Wall. Jews praying outside of Jerusalem face toward Jerusalem. When Israel became a state more than 60 years ago, Jerusalem, though it was divided at the time and the Western Wall was in Jordanian hands, was declared Israel’s capital.
Recently, the U.S. Supreme Court decided a case brought by an American Jewish family, the Zivotofskys, whose child was born in West Jerusalem in 2002. The Obama administration, following the Bush administration’s policy, opposed listing “Jerusalem, Israel” as the birthplace on the child’s American passport — despite a U.S. law requiring such a listing.
The U.S. Supreme Court, by an 8-1 margin, decided that the State Department could not wantonly break such a law and prevent the judiciary from reviewing that breach. I agree with that decision.
Even more startling than this refusal to list “Jerusalem, Israel” as the birthplace on an American passport was an exchange at a March 2012 Obama State Department press briefing. In an exchange with Associated Press reporter Matt Lee, the spokeswoman made it clear that even Jerusalem’s western part, the Jewish side of the city, controlled by Israel since 1949, is not recognized as part of Israel.
The question was asked repeatedly:
Q: “What is the capital of Israel?”
A: “Our policy with regard to Jerusalem is that it has to be solved through negotiations. That’s all I have to say on this issue.”
The conversation continued:
Q: “Is it your — is it your position that all of Jerusalem is a final-status issue, or do you think — or is it just East Jerusalem?”
A: “Matt, I don’t have anything further to what I’ve said 17 times on that subject. Okay?”
And again:
Q: “All right. So hold on. So I just want to make sure. You’re saying that all of Jerusalem, not just East Jerusalem, is a final-status issue.”
A: “Matt, I don’t have anything further on Jerusalem to what I’ve already said.”
The Obama administration is thus saying that it does not even recognize Israel within its indefensible 1949 borders but that somehow it will protect Israel’s security?
It has been longstanding U.S. policy not to officially recognize any part of Jerusalem as part of Israel — and it is dead wrong.
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Never has Israel ever offered Western Jerusalem in a negotiation, so why would the administration keep this totally Jewish section of the city in question?
The Israeli Gaza withdrawal and the missiles that are launching from there into Israeli cities demonstrates that any Israeli withdrawal from any part of Jerusalem would leave Israel without defensible borders. Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has stated, as have other Israeli prime ministers, that he will never divide Jerusalem.
Unfortunately, I cannot say that my opponent for the Republican Presidential nomination has a different position from that of the President. He has not expressed his opinion about the Obama administration’s position on Jerusalem.
When asked about recognizing Jerusalem as the capital of Israel and moving our embassy there, Mitt Romney is undecided, and said he would consult with the government of Israel. He has been running for President for six years, and I think that is long enough for him to get up to speed on foreign policy and make a decision on this crucial issue.
There is no daylight between my position and the government of Israel’s on the issue of Jerusalem. I voted for the Jerusalem Embassy Act of 1995, I support recognizing a united Jerusalem as the capital of Israel and I will move the U.S. Embassy to Jerusalem in compliance with that act.
It is actually not well known that the Jerusalem Embassy Act of 1995 made it U.S. law to recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel, and that the waiver provision of the act only applied to moving the embassy to Jerusalem. A letter to President Bill Clinton — signed by 84 U.S. senators, including me — articulated this point.
We know the Obama administration is not complying with U.S. law. We do not know what a potential Romney administration would do. A Santorum administration would mean that next year, there will be a Passover Seder at the new U.S. Embassy in Jerusalem — and when Jews say, “Next Year in Jerusalem,” that will actually be the case for the U.S. Embassy.
Santorum, a former U.S. senator from Pennsylvania, is running for the Republican nomination for President.
@ CuriousAmerican:
Quite so.
So while a congressional term of office may end at some point
— a Foggy Bottom bureaucrat is a permanent fixture till he retires
by which time he’ll have been able to decide who all else will be hired, promoted, etc., to take his place whenever he does retire.
@ CuriousAmerican:
You Supply Wrong Sources!!!
Futuristic Map Based on the Torah
“To your descendants I have given this land, from the Egyptian River as far as the great river, the Euphrates.”
Bereshit (Genesis) 15:18
The speculative map above is mostly based on the commentaries of Rashi and Malbim about the boundaries of the future described in the Book of Ezekiel, chapters 47-48. The details of the future map of the Land of Israel are mentioned only cryptically in the Tanach and various Talmudic sources.
@ CuriousAmerican:
The problem is that some people are too easily satisfied. Even worse, they forget what they wanted in the first place. “Next year, in Jerusalem!”
Are you made because he wants a Jewish Jerusalem?
What would make you happy? He already agrees with you.
Ease up on the sarcasm.
Some people are never satisfied.
The Congress voted in a law to make Jerusalem the seat of our Embassy. The Jerusalem Embassy Act
The State Department blocked the implementation of the move.
The Congress is elected. The State Department is not.
AIPAC remains as influential as ever when it comes to elections.
Thank you, James B – Montreal.
I love it too. I’ve been writing and talking as honestly as I can most of my long life. Other people frequently smile at me and tell me that I couldn’t really mean what I say.
I smile back, secure in the knowledge of my own self that I mean ever word of it. And few things please me more than hard-earned smug self-satisfaction.
——
I suppose that if Canada practiced what I preach, I now would be living in the Province of Wisconsin. Which would have caused me a terrible life of eating Canadian cuisine, but ameliorated by Canada’s great-looking women.
Arnold Harris
Mount Horeb WI
I see lots of Zionists clamoring for a return of Sinai.
But even if one were to take the Abrahamic Covental Geography literally, the Western Border would still only be the River of Egypt, which would be the Wadi Al-Arish, which is not too far from where you are now.
http://www.bible.ca/archeology/maps-bible-archeology-exodus-route-border-of-judah-kadesh-wadi-el-arish-river-of-egypt-brook-of-egypt.jpg
So how would you justify claiming the whole of Sinai back?
Now the Jewish nation has a patch of land, a thriving economy, an efficient and well-trained army, air force and navy — and, perhaps most importantly, the power to burn entire cities to permanently poisoned cinders
I LUV IT
That is the kind of language we need and should be seeing massively on the blogosphere.
Sadly, we only respect bullies. And the perception that Israel can be a bully if it wishes I beleive is a good thing for the Jewish people. Being studious and meak has not served us well.
Laura is bang on. THE REAL SOURCE OF INFLUENCE IS THE EVIL SAUDI LOBBY.
Laura,
Do you in fact think that de jure recognition of national rights is more important than de facto empowerment to sustain those rights?
One must assume that you know by now that I am interested solely in national power expressed in terms of the willingness and ability to utilize armed force. In practice, that gets ugly sometimes, but it works a lot better than pleading cases before courts controlled by outright enemies or a world largely indifferent to the fate of the Jewish nation.
The Jews have been leading from national weakness for more than 2000 years. You can see exactly what that got us.
Now the Jewish nation has a patch of land, a thriving economy, an efficient and well-trained army, air force and navy — and, perhaps most importantly, the power to burn entire cities to permanently poisoned cinders. And although it may sound thoroughly anti-social to write the way I do, to be utterly truthful, it doesn’t bother me one damned bit.
Arnold Harris
Mount Horeb WI
Not even Santorum himself disputes that he will not have a shot at the presidency. Why does he go on and on about what he would do if he were president? If he were really sincere about helping Israel, he would be spending more time explaining what he is going to do in either case when Obama or Romney get the presidency, because that is what needs to be faced.
Our government won’t recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel. So much for the power of the Jewish lobby represented by AIPAC. Unfortunately Santorum is not going to get the nomination and neither will Newt. Jerusalem has been Jewish for 3000 years, it is the holiest city in Judaism. There is absolutely no basis for Arab-muslim claims to Jerusalem. It was never part of any Arab-muslim state, let alone its capital, and Jerusalem is not mentioned in the koran. Yet the fact that our government would favor their claims over that of the Jews exposes the power of the Arab and muslim lobby.
Very well said. I will add that Israel should take the Sinai after Obama visits Israel – arabs will view it as Obama giving Israel the green light to do it.
But I doubt Israel will do it. Israel needs to be hit with thousands dead. Then maybe Israelis will act.
How nice of former US Senator Rick Santorum to declare that undivided Jerusalem is in fact the capital of the State of Israel.
But Santorum has about as much chance of winning the Republican nomination this year as Egypt voluntarily inviting Israel to reclaim and annex the Sinai peninsula.
The time is overdue for Israel and the Jewish nation to recognize the realities of the power of actual sovereignty over parts of Earth’s surface, as contrasted with pious-expressed good wishes from foreign politicians running for national office in the USA or other countries foreign to the Jewish state. In other words, Israel has sovereignty over undivided Jerusalem because the government of the Jewish state annexed the whole of that city and its environs, and has been steadily populating it with Jewish residents, businesses, municipal offices and functionaries, and above all, a Jewish armed force to protect it against all comers.
That is power. All the rest is bullshit.
The same standards need to be applied — and as immediately as possible — to Shomron, Yehuda, the Jordan valley, Golan, and Sinai. All these territories either are part of the historic Land of Israel or, as is the case of the Sinai peninsula, is vital for the defense of the Jewish commonwealth, or both.
The case repeatedly has been made on these pages of Israpundit that the annexation of Shomron and Yehuda, along with the lower Jordan valley, must be annexed by Israel as soon as possible. The case also has been made that the time is ripe for Israel to annex “Area C” of the Oslo Accords, which comprises some 72% of that territory, but which contains — at least according to the latest whimpering UNO report — a population that already is more than 2/3 Jewish (310,000 Jews compared with 150,000 Arabs, the UNO reports).
It should be perfectly obvious that once Area C is annexed, there never again will be any opportunity for either the local Arabs or for any UNO or other foreign meddlers to put together a viable Arab state on the lands immediately west of the Jordan River. Which is precisely what we want.
Then, as soon as practicable, as a follow-up step, would be annexation of the small but strategically important patches of lands that “Area B” comprises. Once those land patches are taken by Israel, what will be left are 8-9 Arab-populated cities and large towns fully isolated from one another and from any foreign lands.
Which, once achieved, would then mean that Israel could then negotiate separately with the leaderships of each of these Arab cities autonomy arrangements on terms equally beneficial to Israel as a whole, the growing Jewish populations of Shomron, Yehuda and the lower Jordan valley, and the inhabitants of the autonomous Arab cities.
Stick to the reality of carefully applied power, and forget the promises made by American politicians angling for a Jewish vote, most of which, as you already know, will go to Israel’s current enemy-in-chief running for an opportunity to devote four additional years to bankrupt America and punish the State of Israel.
Arnold Harris
Mount Horeb WI