Why Doesn’t the U.S. Recognize Israeli Sovereignty over West Jerusalem?

In a recently decided case, the Supreme Court ruled that a Jerusalem-born U.S. citizen’s passport could not indicate “Israel” as his birthplace. Avi Bell notes that the citizen in question was born in west Jerusalem—that is, in the part of the city under Israeli control since 1948:

The Obama administration has explained that refusing to recognize Israeli sovereignty in any part of Jerusalem is necessary to avoid interference with the “peace process.” Jerusalem, says the White House, must be dealt with solely in negotiations between the parties. But this justification falls apart upon the slightest examination.

The current PLO territorial demands, repeated often and in every forum imaginable, are for Israeli withdrawal from the West Bank and “east Jerusalem.” No senior PLO figure has demanded in recent years that Israel also withdraw from “west Jerusalem.” . . .

The U.S. position on Jerusalem also contradicts the Obama White House’s own . . . stance on the peace process. The White House has endorsed a Palestinian demand that the 1948-1967 ceasefire line that separated sovereign Israeli territory from the Jordanian-occupied West Bank and “east Jerusalem” should serve as the presumptive border of a new Palestinian state in all negotiations. . . . But when it comes to Israel and Jerusalem, says the White House, the ceasefire line should be forgotten and presumptive Israeli sovereignty should be erased.

Historically, the U.S. position on Jerusalem developed without any connection to the Israel-PLO peace negotiations that began in 1993. The U.S. never recognized Israeli sovereignty in Jerusalem, even in 1948, when Israel’s war of independence left parts of Jerusalem in Israeli hands. . . . As time has passed, U.S. hostility on Jerusalem has remained constant, while the excuses for the hostility have changed.

Read more at Jewish Week

More about: Israel & Zionism, Jerusalem, Peace Process, Supreme Court, US-Israel relations

It’s Time for Haredi Jews to Become Part of Israel’s Story

Unless the Supreme Court grants an extension from a recent ruling, on Monday the Israeli government will be required to withhold state funds from all yeshivas whose students don’t enlist in the IDF. The issue of draft exemptions for Haredim was already becoming more contentious than ever last year; it grew even more urgent after the beginning of the war, as the army for the first time in decades found itself suffering from a manpower crunch. Yehoshua Pfeffer, a haredi rabbi and writer, argues that haredi opposition to army service has become entirely disconnected from its original rationale:

The old imperative of “those outside of full-time Torah study must go to the army” was all but forgotten. . . . The fact that we do not enlist, all of us, regardless of how deeply we might be immersed in the sea of Torah, brings the wrath of Israeli society upon us, gives a bad name to all of haredi society, and desecrates the Name of Heaven. It might still bring harsh decrees upon the yeshiva world. It is time for us to engage in damage limitation.

In Pfeffer’s analysis, today’s haredi leaders, by declaring that they will fight the draft tooth and nail, are violating the explicit teachings of the very rabbis who created and supported the exemptions. He finds the current attempts by haredi publications to justify the status quo not only unconvincing but insincere. At the heart of the matter, according to Pfeffer, is a lack of haredi identification with Israel as a whole, a lack of feeling that the Israeli story is also the haredi story:

Today, it is high time we changed our tune. The new response to the demand for enlistment needs to state, first and foremost to ourselves, that this is our story. On the one hand, it is crucial to maintain and even strengthen our isolation from secular values and culture. . . . On the other hand, this cultural isolationism must not create alienation from our shared story with our fellow brethren living in the Holy Land. Participation in the army is one crucial element of this belonging.

Read more at Tzarich Iyun

More about: Haredim, IDF, Israeli society