{"id":49043,"date":"2016-12-21T17:05:10","date_gmt":"2016-12-21T15:05:10","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/?p=49043"},"modified":"2016-12-20T08:27:43","modified_gmt":"2016-12-20T06:27:43","slug":"21-05-11","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/?p=49043","title":{"rendered":"The False Controversy About Jerusalem"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"<\/a>The False Controversy About Jerusalem<\/a><\/strong><\/span><\/h5>\n

by Morton A. Klein and Daniel Mandel<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

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\"The The US Embassy in Tel Aviv. Photo: Wiki Commons.<\/em><\/span><\/p>\n

The media is abuzz with reports that President-elect Donald Trump intends to honor his pre-election promise to implement the 1995 Jerusalem Embassy Act and move the body from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. The law\u2019s implementation has been deferred by successive presidents, most recently last week by President Obama.<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

Why has the act, which passed by massive majorities in the Senate (93-5) and House (374-37), remained a dead letter for 21 years?<\/span><\/p>\n

Fear of enraging the Arab street and the Muslim world \u2014 most of which has reconciled neither with Israel\u2019s existence nor even the peoplehood of the Jews \u2014 is the short answer.<\/span>
\n The clamor and fixation on Jerusalem, which is quite recent in Muslim history, has led many to conclude that the city is holy to Islam, and therefore moving the US Embassy before a peace settlement is obtained would be premature.<\/span><\/p>\n

As it happens, however, it is propaganda and a lie that Jerusalem is holy to Islam or central to Palestinian-Arab life. Though Jerusalem does possess Muslim shrines, including the Dome of the Rock and Al Aqsa Mosque, history shows that the city itself holds no great significance for Islam.<\/span><\/p>\n

Jerusalem is not mentioned even once in the Quran. References in the Quran and hadith to the \u201cfarthest mosque,\u201d an allusion that some claim is to the Al Aqsa Mosque, clearly doesn\u2019t refer to a mosque that didn\u2019t exist in Muhammad\u2019s day.<\/span><\/p>\n

Indeed, the site of the biblical temples is called the Temple Mount, not the Mosque Mount, and \u2013\u2013 in contrast to innumerable Palestinian Authority statements today \u2013\u2013 was acknowledged as such for decades in the Jerusalem Muslim Supreme Council\u2019s publication, A Brief Guide to the Haram Al-Sharif. This publication states on page four that \u201cits identity with the site of Solomon\u2019s Temple is beyond dispute.\u201d (After 1954, all such references to the biblical temples disappeared from the publication).<\/span><\/p>\n

During the illegal annexation and rule of the historic eastern half of Jerusalem by Jordan (1948-67), Amman remained the country\u2019s capital, not Jerusalem.<\/span><\/p>\n

Under Jordanian rule, Jews were entirely driven out; the Old City\u2019s 58 synagogues were destroyed; and Jewish gravestones were used to pave roads and for latrines. Jewish access to the Western Wall was forbidden, in contravention of Article 8 of the 1949 Israeli-Jordanian armistice.<\/span><\/p>\n

Indeed, the eastern half of the city became a backwater; infrastructure like water and sewage were scanty or non-existent and its Christian population, which was denied the right to purchase church property in the city, also declined. No Arab ruler, other than Jordan\u2019s King Hussein, ever visited east Jerusalem. As Israeli elder statesman Abba Eban put it, \u201cThe secular delights of Beirut held more attraction.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Significantly, neither the PLO\u2019s National Charter nor the Fatah Covenant, drafted during Jordanian rule, even mention Jerusalem, let alone call for its establishment as a Palestinian capital.<\/span><\/p>\n

This would never be obvious from the tenor and content of Palestinian, Arab and Muslim pronouncements on the city today.<\/span><\/p>\n

Conversely, Jerusalem, the capital of the biblical Jewish kingdoms, is the site of three millennia of Jewish habitation \u2014 hence the \u201cJerusalem 3000\u201d celebrations initiated by the government of Yitzhak Rabin.<\/span><\/p>\n

The holiest of Judaism\u2019s four holy cities, Jerusalem is mentioned 669 times in the Bible and alluded to in countless prayers. Major Jewish rituals, including the conclusion of the Passover Seder and Yom Kippur service, end with the age-old affirmation, \u201cNext year in Jerusalem.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Jerusalem is the only city in the world in which Jews have formed a majority since the 1880s. Today, Jerusalem, in addition to being home to Judaism\u2019s greatest sanctuaries, is the seat of the Knesset, the Supreme Court, the National Library and the Hebrew University. Its population is two-thirds Jewish.<\/span><\/p>\n

And it was only under unified Israeli rule since 1967 that the city as a whole has been revitalized, enjoyed stunning growth and, at last, full freedom of religion for its mosaic of faiths \u2014 precisely what would be threatened by its re-division, as is already obvious in the Christian exodus from Palestinian-controlled Gaza and Bethlehem.<\/span><\/p>\n

Transferring the US Embassy to Jerusalem would acknowledge the reality of the city as Israel\u2019s capital and ultimately help consign to oblivion the fiction that Israel can be detached from it. Whatever the contours of any future peace settlement, there is no good reason for President-elect Trump to defer implementing the Jerusalem Embassy Act any longer.<\/span><\/p>\n

Morton A. Klein is National President of the Zionist Organization of America (ZOA). Dr. Daniel Mandel is Director of the ZOA\u2019 s Center for Middle East Policy and author of H.V. Evatt & the Establisment of Israel (Routledge, London, 2004).<\/span><\/p>\n

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The False Controversy About Jerusalem by Morton A. Klein and Daniel Mandel The US Embassy in Tel Aviv. Photo: Wiki Commons. The media is abuzz with reports that President-elect Donald Trump intends to honor his pre-election promise to implement the 1995 Jerusalem Embassy Act and move the body from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. The law\u2019s […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[6],"tags":[26,24],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49043"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=49043"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49043\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":49055,"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49043\/revisions\/49055"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=49043"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=49043"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.reunion68.se\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=49043"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}