In a Nutshell: The State Department's Jerusalem - Then and Now - by Yisrael Medad

QUESTION: So the answer to the question is Jerusalem, correct?AMBASSADOR SATTERFIELD: That’s exactly right.

Yisrael Medad..
My Right Word..
08 December '17..
Link: http://myrightword.blogspot.co.il/2017/12/the-state-departments-jerusalem-then.html





Remember this from June 8, 2015?

MR RATHKE: Not in the habit of doing victory dances. Go ahead, Matt.
QUESTION: Well, just – can you remind us all what city – or what the United States regards as the capital of Israel?
MR RATHKE: Well, since I think – to come to the – maybe the nub of the issue, since Israel’s founding, administrations of both parties have maintained a consistent policy of recognizing no state as having sovereignty over Jerusalem. So we remain committed to this longstanding policy, and this decision today helps ensure that our position on the neutrality of Jerusalem remains – it remains clear.
QUESTION: That applies to both West Jerusalem and East Jerusalem?
MR RATHKE: Again, no change to our policy to announce.
QUESTION: Well, but I mean the contested part of Jerusalem is just the east part. Not even the Palestinians claim the west part.
MR RATHKE: Again, Matt, I’ve got no change to our policy to announce.

What a difference. From yesterday's briefing:

The State Department's Israel End-Run

Dr. Daniel M. Zucker
American Thinker
16 January '11

Under Barack Obama, America's relationship with Israel has taken on the character of a petulant teenager dealing with a parent.

Early on January 2, 2011, Israel's liberal newspaper, Haaretz, reported that U.S. President Barack H. Obama and Secretary of State Hilary R. Clinton were furious with Israel's Minister of Defense Ehud Barak. Apparently Barak did not deliver on his promise to convince Israeli Prime Minister Bibi Netanyahu to agree to the proposed three-month extension of the building moratorium for East Jerusalem and the West Bank. Not twenty-four hours later, Israel's centrist paper, The Jerusalem Post, reported a denial of the first story on the part of the State Department's Spokesman, P.J. Crowley. The Jerusalem Post story informs us that the author of the Haaretz story, writer Barak Ravid, stated that he had five independent sources for his story and that "Even after the publication of the story, and during my conversation with P.J. Crowley, I received e-mails from different sources in Washington saying the complete opposite of what was being said by the State Department spokesman."

Anyone conversant with the standard operating procedure of governments in general and Foggy Bottom in particular knows that denial of a potentially embarrassing news leak is totally expected. However, what this story demonstrates most graphically is the current American government's inability to conduct a reasonable foreign policy. That America and Israel may disagree about the right of Israel to undertake construction in all of Jerusalem (its reunified capital), as well as in the West Bank, is to be expected. That the United States would try to influence Israel to accept a position closer to America's is also to be expected -- that's international politics, like it or not. But for the current administration to negotiate with a defense minister rather than the prime minister or his designated foreign minister, with the purpose of having the defense minister convince the prime minister to accept the U.S. position in spite of the known position of the prime minister to the contrary, is -- in short -- insanity! It's not only insanity, but it's foolish and childish as well. A child tries to circumnavigate a parent who refuses a request by going to the other parent and requesting help in convincing the first parent to change his position. But for a sovereign state to act like a spoiled child and pull this end-run game is nothing short of ineptitude, and in this case, a delusion.

(Read full "The State Department's Israel End-Run")


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Hizballah, a threat to the USA

Fresnozionism.org
10 August '10

Hizballah, second only to al-Qaeda in the number of American citizens murdered, is the most powerful terrorist group in the world today. Hizballah effectively controls Lebanon — thus finally putting an end to the idea of a state in which Muslims and Christians could share power — and will soon doubtless fight yet another war with Israel.

Hizballah has tentacles in numerous countries, and is especially powerful in Latin America. Originally financed from Iran, Hizballah now is also funded by drug operations in both hemispheres. It also receives contributions from Islamic charities around the world.

The degree of autonomy exercised by Hizballah is unclear, but its connection to Iran is close enough that it’s been called “the Foreign Legion of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards.” It’s fair to say that one of the major factors that deters the US and Israel from military action against the Iranian nuclear program is the threat that Hizballah would both strike Israel with tens of thousands of rockets as well as unleash a wave of terror against American interests at home and abroad.

Hizballah is a tremendous threat to the US — probably more so than al-Qaeda — especially since it could easily infiltrate terrorists through our porous Mexican border.

So you would think that our foreign policy would be aimed at weakening it. You would think we would be doing our best to help keep weapons out of its hands.

You would think that if we knew that major parts of the Lebanese Armed Forces were controlled by Hizballah, we wouldn’t train them and give them advanced weapons.

(Read full post)

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Absurd US position on Jerusalem isn’t constructive

FresnoZionism.org
21 November 09

Here’s a perfect example of the misleading use of the settlement issue, from a Palestinian source. Ma’an News tells us that,

According to the [Israel channel 10] report, the US administration suggested, and Israel was preparing to allow, the following in exchange for a guarantee from Abbas that the PLO would re-enter talks.

• Weapons for Palestinian Authority security forces
• Release of 400 Fatah prisoners from Israeli jails before the Muslim holiday of Eid
• Extending the PA’s West Bank jurisdiction in Area B to full control and Area C to partial control

Channel 10 reported that Abbas rejected all of these offers, sticking instead to his insistence that there be no negotiations while Israel’s borders continue to expand.

One doesn’t need to be a Ph.D like Mahmoud Abbas (Patrice Lumumba U., Moscow) to know the difference between building some apartments — more correctly, talking about building some apartments — in a Jewish neighborhood in Jerusalem, and ‘expanding borders’. But this is the Palestinian excuse for refusing to return to negotiations with Israel.

The real reason, which is a quite good one and one with which I agree, is that they don’t want to negotiate since they know that their bottom line and Israel’s are so far apart. The PLO won’t — can’t — recognize Israel as a Jewish state, and will not accept a demilitarized Palestine. And they’ve also sold the idea that a ‘two-state solution’ includes the right of return. It really doesn’t matter if Abbas is ready to compromise on these issues or not, since he wouldn’t survive politically or physically if he did. So he prefers to blame it on Israel.

What I find particularly upsetting is our president and Secretary of State taking the same line. And they do, every time they use the highly misleading phrase ’settlement construction’ to refer to any building activity — or even planning activity — in the area that was occupied by Jordan in 1948, especially Jerusalem.

There is a consensus in Israel that Jewish neighborhoods of Jerusalem are not settlements, regardless of where the cease-fire line happened to fall in 1949.

Recently there’s been some excitement over the fact that a US passport issued to a citizen born in Jerusalem — any part of it — will not say ‘Jerusalem, Israel’ but rather only ‘Jerusalem’ for the place of birth. This is consistent with the American point of view.

The UN and the US in point of fact, do not recognize that Israel has anyrights in Jerusalem, East or West. But in this view, neither do the Palestinians! The original UN partition resolution of 1947 and UN Security Council Resolution 303 of 1949 call for all of Jerusalem to be internationalized, and the US State Department still holds this position.

It’s easy to forget that in 1967 Israel did not capture Judea and Samaria and Jerusalem from the Palestinians. These were part of the Palestine Mandate, which included the Balfour Declaration — the charter for a Jewish national home. The Jordanian occupation of this area was illegal, the product of a war of aggression. Israel annexed Jerusalem in 1980, when it declared that “Jerusalem, complete and united, is the capital of Israel.”

(Read full article)

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