Acknowledging Jerusalem

Michael L.

People often say that the "Israel lobby" has far too much control over American foreign policy.

What I often wonder is that if Israel has so much control over the United States government, how is it possible that the U.S. refuses to acknowledge the city of Jerusalem as the capital of that country?

If Israeli interests are as powerful as we are often told then surely Washington D.C. would have recognized Jerusalem as the capital of Israel decades ago, but it has not.

Furthermore, is their any other UN recognized country on the planet that the U.S. refuses to acknowledge the capital thereof?  Not that I am aware of, so perhaps someone can enlighten me.

Today in the Jerusalem Post we read:

House of Representatives submitted a bill Monday that would enable Congress to recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel on American documents.

The bill calls for moving the American embassy to Jerusalem. It also challenges the recent Supreme Court decision that prevents Jerusalem, Israel from being written on the passport of a child born in the city.

I will be very pleasantly surprised if this bill becomes law, but it represents yet another bet that I would not take.  Certainly there will be no support for this measure from the current President of the United States who will quietly work behind the scenes to kill it.

From the comments:

jboom

This is just a publicity stunt to the American people. This will NEVER happen this is being done just so Obama can smack it down and people say hey he doesn't like israel. Israel need to go to their OWN government and work something out. Get the F out of my congress leeches

Well, you have to love this guy.

The comment is entirely incoherent, yet repeats a classic anti-Semitic theme that Jews, as "leeches," suck the blood of host nations.

This is old, old, old stuff.  This is quite literally Medieval thinking.

lightharry • a day ago

This just shows the average American how much influence the Israeli AIPAC has through it's bribing of the Congressmen. We have a congress that no lölonger represents the American tax payer but jumps every time Israel calls

jboom seems to have a like-minded friend in lightharry.

How these individuals fail to see the obvious contradiction between the actual news story and their world-view is pretty remarkable.

This is essentially a story on how friends of Israel, including friends in Congress, are requesting that the U.S. government recognize Israel's capital, Jerusalem, which it refuses to do.  Yet, somehow, against all reason, for the geniuses above it means that the Jews have too much power.

guest123 • a day ago

Jerusalem is the capital of Israel, the recognition of that fact does not alter the fact.

I could not agree more.

David Schugar • a day ago

This is a cause worth fighting for. It would be better received if Israel accompanied this effort with a program for building new & modern Palestinian cities in the West Bank. Cities that they could require background checks for residency to illustrate that those who want to lead normal productive lives (normalization) and foreswear "struggle and resistance" are welcome to participate in the land of milk and honey. Prosperous Palestinian Principalities - each with their own soccer team too. 

This is the kind of sentiment that I was raised within, so to speak.

David has the modern, contemporary, liberal, Enlightenment world-view, but it has a fatal flaw.  It requires the like-minded cooperation of other people.  If there is one thing that we have learned in recent decades it is that the Palestinian-Arabs, as a group, tend not to yearn for "new & modern Palestinian cities in the West Bank."

If they wanted modernity, autonomy, and peace, they could have had that in 1948.

Instead they chose Jihadism, dependency, and war... as they perpetually whine to the international community that the Jews are being mean to them.