RUTHFULLY YOURS

https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2021/11/biden_straining_relations_with_israel_over_plans_for_east_jerusalem_consulate_.html

President Biden’s announced intention to reopen a U.S. consulate in East Jerusalem for outreach to Palestinians looms as a significant point of contention between the administration and Israel.  A look at the Vienna Convention on Consular Relations, 1963, is a logical starting point to analyze the problem.  The Convention provides in Article 2.1.:   

“The establishment of consular relations between States takes place by mutual consent.” 

Article 4.1 provides:

“A consular post may be established in the territory of the receiving State only with that State’s consent.”

What, then, is the problem? President Trump recognized Jerusalem as the capital of Israel and relocated the U.S. Embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, later closing the consulate in East Jerusalem, merging it into the Embassy. 

It would seem clear, then, that as the U.S. recognizes undivided Jerusalem as part of the territory of Israel, a consulate in Jerusalem may be opened (or re-opened) only with the consent of Israel as the receiving State.

But thus far, Biden intends to proceed with reopening the Jerusalem consulate for outreach to the Palestinians.   Will he proceed over Israel’s objections?  If he does so, it seems to this observer that he could only justify such a move by declaring that the United States does not consider East Jerusalem (the apparent venue of a reopened Jerusalem consulate) Israeli territory.  And that would be a HUGE thorn in the side of the relationship between Biden administration and the Bennett government in Israel. 

On the other hand, Prime Minister Naftali Bennett could back down from opposition to a reopened U.S. consulate in Jerusalem, and give the Consular Convention’s Article 4.1 consent to the Biden move, consent that, from the Israel point of view, would still be consistent with Israel’s claim of sovereignty over an undivided Jerusalem.  Biden, of course, could go along with this face-saving approach to the issue, on Israel’s behalf.  

If Biden, or Secretary of State Antony Blinken, were to declare that Israel’s consent was not required, relations between the allies would suddenly become so frigid as to cause unsettling reverberations in the Middle East.  Why?  Because Biden establishing a consulate in East Jerusalem without Israel’s consent would be signaling that American no longer accepts Israel’s sovereignty over an undivided Jerusalem.

International law, however, is not the only factor in consideration of the question of reopening a U.S. consulate in East Jerusalem.   There is the matter of U.S. law to consider, specifically, the Jerusalem Embassy Act of 1995 (Public Law 104-95) cited in the November 1, 2021 letter to the president signed by 200 House Republican members.  (Twelve GOP members did not sign, but the signers included such disparate Republicans as Reps. Cheney and Kinzinger, on the one hand, and Reps. Taylor Greene and Gosar, on the other.)

https://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2021/11/american_perfidy_against_jews_is_never_a_good_thing.html

The Balfour Declaration was signed on November 2, 1917, at a time when Britain and its allies were driving the Turks and Germans out of Palestine, a barren region of a decayed and defeated Ottoman Empire.

The Palestine Campaign turned the tide of World War One. It was won by allied troops, including a large fighting contingent of Palestine Jews. No Arabs fought on the west side of the Jordan River, part of which is called, by ignorant activists and politicians, “the West Bank.”

America remained neutral until April 1917 and didn’t get into the fight until the summer of 1918, by which time the Palestine Campaign was over. The Allied Powers met in San Remo in 1920 to decide the future of the defunct Ottoman Empire. The United States participated only as observers.

Arabs were rewarded with independence in Syria, Lebanon, and Mesopotamia (today’s Iraq). Jordan was created later as a reward for Arab participation in the Palestine Campaign on the East Bank of the Jordan River. This part of Palestine was given to the Hashemite tribe, a minority in Jordan. The majority of Jordanians are Palestinians, as is the queen.

This fact has been conveniently forgotten by those physically and verbally fighting against Israel. Those with an aversion to history have held back peace for decades with a two-state non-solution that demands Israel give up its ancient historic homeland and divide Jerusalem, its eternal capital.

The Allied Powers gave Britain the mandate for Palestine based on the principle of the Balfour Declaration, which had become official British policy: It called for establishing Palestine as the national home for the Jewish people while protecting the civil and religious rights of all its citizens, which Israel has diligently done.

This was reaffirmed at the 1922 League of Nations Conference on the Mandate for Palestine. (The League of Nations was the forerunner of the United Nation.)

The world celebrated the return of the Jews to their ancient biblical…and then things went wrong.

British officers arrived in Jerusalem to administer British policy but instead turned against their own government policy by encouraging a raging anti-Semitic Arab leader to incite the murder and expulsion of Jews in Jerusalem, Hebron, and throughout pre-state Palestine.

The notorious Haj Amin al-Husseini was the architect of anti-Jewish terror that has lasted a century. After fleeing Jerusalem, he joined Adolph Hitler to plan the Final Solution of the Jewish Problem in the Middle East.

https://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/316346

The Anti-Defamation League’s upcoming international conference on combatting hate will include a speaker who has publicly accused Israel of perpetrating “ethnic cleansing” against the Palestinian Arabs.

Was she the only speaker available in the whole world? Couldn’t the ADL find anyone else?

The ADL says that the conference, titled “Never is Now” and scheduled to take place (via Zoom) on November 7-9, will be “the largest annual summit on antisemitism and hate” ever held.

If the event will indeed be that large, that makes it all the more urgent that the featured speakers not include anybody who has engaged in smears against Israel.

Yet Dr. Sara Yael Hirschhorn, who has repeatedly circulated anti-Israel slurs, will be one of the featured speakers. Hirschhorn, who teaches at Northwestern University, has repeatedly criticized Israel on Twitter.

One particularly extreme and troubling string of accusations appeared in a series of Hirschhorn tweets this past January 12:

— Hirschhorn wrote: “The Palestinian case shares some common features with South Africa—population transfer/ethnic cleansing, restriction of movement, lack of citizenship rights (beyond the Green Line), continued second class citizenship and technocracy.”

Isn’t it remarkable to hear Israel accused of “transferring” and “ethnic cleansing” of an Arab population which has constantly grown over the years? Where were the Palestinian Arabs all “transferred” to, exactly?

— Hirschhorn declared that Israel is guilty of “daily violations of human rights.” That’s the kind of vicious smear I would expect from Arab propagandists, not from a speaker at an ADL conference.