NYT New Jerusalem Bureau Chief Passes Along Embassy ‘Speculation’ - by Ira Stoll

...The phrase “predominantly Arab East Jerusalem” is itself tendentious. When Israel recaptured it from Jordan in 1967, east Jerusalem was indeed “predominantly Arab” — but only because the Jews who had lived there for the previous thousands of years had been violently expelled or otherwise extinguished by Arabs in the 1948 war. Mr. Fisher might consult his own newspaper on this point.

NY Times new Jerusalem
bureau chief Ian Fisher

Ira Stoll..
Algemeiner.com..
23 January '17..

The newly arrived New York Times bureau chief in Jerusalem, Ian Fisher, has a dispatch reporting:

The Israeli news media was filled with speculation on Sunday that the Trump administration would immediately announce the embassy move — as a de facto recognition of Israel’s annexation of predominantly Arab East Jerusalem, which it captured from Jordan during the 1967 war.

There’s no hyperlink, so it’s hard to know to what Mr. Fisher is referring. But as a Times reader, my hope is that its journalists will try to help assess whether “speculation” is accurate or not before passing it along.

In this case, the statement’s logic leaves a lot to be desired.

If President Trump moves the American embassy to west Jerusalem — which has been under Israeli control since the establishment of Israel in 1948 and is the location of the Knesset, the Prime Minister’s Office, the Israel Museum, the Jewish Agency for Israel and a host of other institutions that have been there since before the 1967 war — how does that say anything about, let alone constitute “de facto recognition” of, Israel’s annexation of “predominantly Arab East Jerusalem”?

The phrase “predominantly Arab East Jerusalem” is itself tendentious. When Israel recaptured it from Jordan in 1967, east Jerusalem was indeed “predominantly Arab” — but only because the Jews who had lived there for the previous thousands of years had been violently expelled or otherwise extinguished by Arabs in the 1948 war. Mr. Fisher might consult his own newspaper on this point.

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