WHILE YOU STAND ON ONE LEG: Secretary of State Blinken stated this week that the U.S. will proceed with opening a consulate to Palestinian Arabs in Jerusalem, over Israel’s objections. Philly ZOA rightly warned its members this is a step toward redividing Jerusalem. But beyond that, it’s a loud statement denigrating our Jewish people’s three-millennia claim to our homeland’s historic capital and holiest sites.
This Week: Threatened US Consulate in Jerusalem Must Be Actively Opposed Not Just By Israel But Us
“’If I forget you, O Jerusalem ….’ These verses from Psalm 137 illustrate how central and sacred the city of Jerusalem is to the Jewish People…. For those of you who remember when the Israel Defense Forces liberated the eastern sections of the city including the Har Habayit, the Kotel and the Mt. of Olives cemetery (and other holy and integral sites) in 1967, the rejoicing at having the city reunited is a memory that you still hold dear. For those too young to remember: Imagine the Temple Mount and Western Wall and other places could again be off-limits to Jews. We never want Jerusalem to be torn apart again.”
Those are the opening words of an appeal made this week by the Greater Philadelphia Chapter of the Zionist Organization of America in its weekly newsletter to its members. This ZOA chapter’s appeal came this week because “Secretary of State Blinken announced this week that the administration is moving forward despite strong objections from the new Israeli government” with reopening a consulate in Jerusalem to Palestinian Arabs that President Trump had closed as redundant in moving the U.S. Embassy to Israel to its capital in Jerusalem.
In appealing that “we must work to try to prevent this from happening” by individually personally emailing or phoning the White House and Congressional Foreign Relations Committee chairs, ZOA warned:
“The United States does not have a separate consulate in any city where the U.S. has its Embassy. A U.S. Consulate in Jerusalem would be the first step in dividing the city, the eternal capital of Israel and the Jewish People.”
Certainly, I agree we must do this (and did), but I think we have a further task, closer to home. We have to get through to all American Jews the depth of disdain much of the world, including powerful forces here in America, has for our Jewish claim to historic Jerusalem.
Never mind that in the past three thousand years three native states – Judah, Judaea and Israel, all of them Jewish – have had Jerusalem as their capital, and never mind that Jerusalem has had a renewed Jewish majority since pre-Zionist 1800’s Ottoman Turkish foreign empire rule. In the eyes of much of the world, including here in the US, the status of Jews in historic Jerusalem today is summed up in one contemptuous word: “Settlers.”
We need to drive home to American Jews the immeasurable importance of all of us – even believers in a western Palestine “two-state solution” – objecting vehemently to Jews, of all peoples, in historic Jerusalem – Temple Mount, Western Wall, City of David and all – being denigrated as “settlers.” So here are three writings – an unambiguous such statement of an international body, an especially inappropriate instance of mainstream western media mocking of Jews as Jerusalem settlers, and an answer by a pair of grassroots American Jews that got a little notice – that bear on the issue.
*** Here’s what it says in United Nations Security Council Resolution 2334, adopted 14-0-1 with U.S. abstention, in the Obama administration’s way out the door. The Security Council
“[1] Reaffirms that the establishment by Israel of settlements in the Palestinian territory occupied since 1967, including East Jerusalem, has no legal validity and constitutes a flagrant violation under international law and a major obstacle to the achievement of the two-state solution and a just, lasting and comprehensive peace;
“[2] Reiterates its demand that Israel immediately and completely cease all settlement activities in the occupied Palestinian territory, including East Jerusalem, and that it fully respect all of its legal obligations in this regard;
“[3] Underlines that it will not recognize and changes to the 4 June 1967 lines, including with regard to Jerusalem, other than those agreed by the parties through negotiations; ….” [emphasis added, a trifle]
*** Of all the mainstream western media’s mockings of Jews as Jerusalem “settlers,” the Mother of all has long seemed to me this: Ten times in a 3/15/04 Philadelphia Inquirer-carried Knight-Ridder article on Jews attempting
“to reestablish a Jewish presence in what had been a Yemenite Jewish village in the Silwan neighborhood [of Jerusalem] until Arab riots in the 1920’s and ‘30’s drove the Jewish residents out ” (emphasis added)
the article called those Jerusalem Jewish community-reestablishing Jews “settlers.”
*** A few years ago, at its 1200-attendee annual indeed Gala in New York, the national ZOA kindly gave Lee and me a little table in the reception room during the cocktail hour to offer our book, Pressing Israel: Media Bias Exposed From A-toZ, which Mort in its inside cover had generously called worth the read. A young man came up to us and we got into quite a discussion about an issue about which I forget. But I said to him, “What you’re saying is just what I just read in an article on Algemeiner.” “What did you think of that article?” “I agreed with it completely.” “I wrote that article.” He introduced Lee and me to his editor, and we wrote maybe a dozen Algemeiner articles on the anti-Israel loaded lexicon’s poisoned pejoratives. Some of them drew quite a few comments, and one to our own astonishment got mentioned in the dispatches of Elder of Ziyon and made the Conference of Presidents of Major Jewish Organizations’ Daily Alert. Here’s how the Daily Alert summarized what it said on Jerusalem:
“Daily Alert
“Friday, December 27, 2013
“. . . .
“Observations:
“. . . .
“Media’s Lexicon Poisons Public Perceptions of Israel – Lee S. Bender and Jerome R. Verlin (Algemeiner) ….
“East Jerusalem: The Jewish connection with ‘East Jerusalem’ extends back to King David. Over the ensuing 3,000 years, the city has been the capital of three native states – Judah, Judea and Israel. The two Jewish temples stood as Jerusalem centerpieces for a millennium. Throughout two millennia of foreign rule, Jews relentlessly returned to Jerusalem whenever the foreign invaders exiled them, again becoming Jerusalem’s majority during nineteenth century Ottoman rule. Throughout those millennia, nobody called Jews in Jerusalem ‘settlers.’”