By SHOULA ROMANO HORING, YNET—
It is disgraceful that the United States, Israel’s best ally and friend, has never recognized Jerusalem as Israel’s capital even though it recognizes the claimed capitals of numerous brutal dictatorships and enemy nations.
It is also shameful that the Europeans still call the eastern part of Jerusalem a “settlement” and part of the “ occupied territories” when that part of the city was the location of the capital city of ancient Israeli kingdoms for over 1000 years and was home to Judaism’s two Holy Temples.
But the ultimate shame for the distorted world view of Jerusalem is on successive Israeli governments, starting with Rabin and Peres, who agreed to put Jerusalem on the negotiation table as a final status issue of the Oslo Agreement, thus, giving legitimacy to the Arabs’ revisionist history of lies and myths that Jerusalem was ever the capital of an Arab state.
Of course, Jews’ rights were jeopardized again when the governments led by Barak in 2000 and Olmert in 2008 were willing to give specific offers to Arafat and Abbas respectively to re-divide the city and waive most rights to the Temple Mount, the holiest site of the Jews. Thankfully both offers were rejected by our enemies.
The slippery slope of giving away our rights in Jerusalem began immediately after the Six Day War in 1967, in which Israel in a war of self-defense routed the Jordanian Army and captured eastern Jerusalem. Then Israeli Minister of Defense, Moshe Dayan apologetically sacrificed Israeli’s sovereign and religious rights by handing total administrative control over the Temple Mount to Jordan’s Islamic Waqf. The same Jordanians who during their previous 19 year control of eastern Jerusalem, destroyed many Jewish synagogues and denied Jews access to their holiest sites, including the Western Wall and Temple Mount.
Prime Minister Netanyahu should share part of the blame, even though he also should be credited for working tirelessly for four years to slow down Obama’s obsessive pursuit of establishing a Palestinian state and dividing Jerusalem.
In 2010, Netanyahu repeatedly apologized when President Obama was personally involved in orchestrating a harsh public confrontation with Israel over its announcing of plans to build new housing units in north Jerusalem during a visit by Vice President Biden. Moreover, in June, data released by the Central Bureau of Statistics showed that not a single new project was started or planned in the Jewish neighborhoods in eastern Jerusalem since the start of 2013. Jerusalem’s deputy mayor confirmed that it was on a direct order of the prime minster.
So now we reap the sour fruits of our own ambivalent past actions and decisions about our beloved capital.
The European Union on July 17 issued a new directive that its bodies and member nations will no longer be a party to any economic, social or academic cooperation and agreements with Israeli institutions operating beyond the pre- 1967 borders, which includes Judea, Samaria and east Jerusalem. Thus the EU is in effect demanding that Israel deny any rights to the Western Wall or the Jewish Quarter of the Old City and erect a border in the middle of Jerusalem, which has been the Jewish capital much longer than any city has been the capital of any European nation.
On July 23rd, a US federal appellate court found unconstitutional a 2002 law that gives thousands of Americans born in Jerusalem the option of listing Israel as their birth place on US passports. The judge stated in the decision that Congress intended to force the State Department to deviate from its decades-long position of neutrality on what nation or government, if any, has sovereignty over Jerusalem. The court said that it found the State Department‘s position compelling that a reversal of US policy could provoke uproar throughout the Arab and Muslim world and severely damage relations.
Now, Netanyahu seems to have given in to Obama at the worse time, when the Middle East is more unstable and dangerous than ever. US Secretary of State John Kerry announced that Netanyahu and Abbas have reached an agreement that provides the basis for the final status negotiations which includes discussing the status of Jerusalem.
As Abbas demanded as a precondition to reviving talks that Israel release prisoners with Jewish blood on their hands and that Israel agree to start negotiations on the basis of the 1967 borders, Israel should have demanded that Jerusalem will never be physically divided again and the Temple Mount will always stay under Israel sovereignty. Putting Jerusalem on the negotiating table without setting red lines first will guarantee its division.
Since the US administration was so desperate to restart the negotiations in order to claim some foreign policy success after its dismal record in Egypt, Syria, and Iran, Israel must create its own uproar and demand that the US move its embassy from Tel Aviv to western Jerusalem, which both the US and the Europeans claim they do not consider part of the “pre-1967 occupied territories.”
Historically, Jerusalem has only been the capital of a Jewish state. For thousands of years Jews swore not to forget her. What will you say to future generations when they ask you what did you do when they were negotiating to divide Jerusalem?
Seems to me that God is testing Israel one more time. Will you fail again?
As I see it, there won’t be any “Future Generations”.
These News Nerds seem to think this lunacy is going to keep going. How many times have we seen this “Peace Talk bs come up? In the mean time banks pile up more money, oil companies get richer and Iran just keeps cranking out weapons grade uranium – and the world just sleeps!
By the time these clowns get finished carving up the Apple of God’s Eye, I’m seeing the Hammer come down on all of them.
Keep your eye on Damascus – It’s next to go!
My authority? Good ‘ole Zeke – go ahead and look it up, near the end of the O.T.
NO!
Jerusalem is the Capital of Israel and as Jerusalem goes, so goes Israel. True children of the one and only will stand now and surrender nothing that belongs to only heaven to give.
This stops now. The end time is coming and it is time to make your stand known and unambiguous. Choose the proper side and be with the one and only or choose the wrong side and bear the wrath. It is better to do what you feel is right and just and battle against man on the side of the one and only than to stand against heaven and dam your eternal soul. A man can take your life but he cannot control your souls destiny, that is controlled by you and the one and only.
It has been told millennia ago and written for you to see. It has been passed down verbally for those who cannot read. The choice is yours, choose well children, choose well. The time has come.
I will be standing at your side along with the all of the power of the One and Only who is and will always be. I will not give my life without standing with my creator. You have been given a second chance at the land given to you by all that is Holy. Show that you are worthy to be the children of the One. My life belongs to this end and will be given in its service to the One True.
I will be there soon to take up the Sword with you in defense. Prepare for this as nothing else.
The time for evil is short. Those who attack you are without right and are based upon lies, deception and evil at their core. Destroy the evil that is their souls and send them to their judgment. This is your task as righteous children.
The Mufti of Jerusalem the Palestinian Arab Chief Cleric declared to his followers that Jerusalem has absolutely no connection with the Jews. (He should have stated Jewish people but he is an avowed Jew-hating son of a bitch)he went on to say that the Wall (The kotel the last remaining wall of the 2nd Temple (Beit-Hamigdash) destroyed by Rome in AD 70) had absolutely nothing to do with the temple, this was where the Muslims in the time of Mohammed tied up their horses etc) This piece of slime is trying to re-write Jewish history and his ignorant followers believe every word of all his lies he sprouts forth from his poisonous mouth. Let him try and prove what he has stated in an international court of law, then see what happens. Unless he retracts all his lies concerning the right of Jews to be in Jerusalem, by telling all his followers that he lied because he knows the truth about Jerusalem and what it means to the majority of World-Jewry, he should be thrown out of the city never to return.