Comments on: U.S. Supreme Court: Jerusalem is not a foreign policy issue

By: Leen

Leen — Thu, 29 Mar 2012 09:51:40 +0000

XYZ – Can you back this up with evidence? You seem to be really be pedantic about specific terms, rather than contextualizing it. So let’s contextualize it (I’m not going to argue for ro against capital of Jews because Judaism is not my area of expertise).
Jerusalem used to be the first qibla, secondly you are ignoring the fact that Islam is also an abrahamic faith, therefore it is strongly important to Muslims because it is strongly associated with the biblical prophets David, Solomon, Elijah and Jesus. Thirdly, Muhammad travelled to the Al-Aqsa mosque, it was the first time he prayed and it was a miracle. Therefore it is important to Muslims and Islam.
And how can all other religions be protected?

If anything goes, the Israeli government is currently doing a s*** job guaranteeing equal religious rights in Jerusalem.
By the way where did you get the argument that I wanted to divide Jerusalem? I said grant it autonomy and case solved. You do know what autonomy means, don’t you?

Once more, you are preferring one religion over the other, which is what is problematic if it was under Israeli control. Judaism is preferred over every other religion….

Oh and of course it was important to the Jews first….. You do know Judaism came before Christianity and Islam, don’t you? Do you also know that many Christians and Muslims were also Jews? Do you also know that many Palestinians have ancestry linked to the Israeli tribes?

Actually the village my ancestors come was from the biblical times, it had quite a big synagogue during the biblical times as well.

Therefore, I can’t for the life of me see why does a Jew whose been out of the country for over 2000 years (and probably was a convert if we are going by Shlomo Sand’s argument here) has more of a right to this Jerusalem than I who has ancestry to the Israelite tribes, Jewish ancestors, Christian and Muslim relative, and most importantly someone who identifies as a Palestine. Please enlighten me, do I have to convert to Judaism to seal the deal?

By: Hostage

Hostage — Thu, 29 Mar 2012 06:29:43 +0000

All of the Judges in the lower courts, except one, refused to address the merits because they felt it touched on political matters the Constitution left to the discretion of the political branches.

Chief Justice Roberts noted there was one exception: “Reaching the merits, Judge Edwards determined that designating Israel as a place of birth on a passport is a policy “in furtherance of the recognition power.” Id., at 1243. Because in his view the Constitution gives that power exclusively to the President, Judge Edwards found §214(d) unconstitutional. For this reason, he concluded that Zivotofsky had no viable cause of action, and concurred in affirming the dismissal of the complaint.”

The fact is that the Supreme Court and Judge Edwards only have appellate jurisdiction and the lower court with original jurisdiction failed to rule on the merits. It’s likely that the lower courts will simply cite Supreme Court decisions like United States v Belmont, 301, US 324, 57 S Ct. 758, 81 L.Ed. 1134 (1937); which say that the President has exclusive authority to recognize or not to recognize a foreign state or government and to recognize foreign sovereignty over territory.

That would mean that the statute was unconstitutional in the first place.

By: XYZ

XYZ — Thu, 29 Mar 2012 05:49:35 +0000

Regarding the cultural repression that Vicky mentioned regarding the immigrants to Israel in its early years, this was a real, tragic phenomenon. However, it was not done to strip away a supposed Arab national identity and install a new Jewish one (that already was the case) but rather a way of: (1) moulding society in the way the ruling MAPAI-MAPAM-Left General Zionists wanted it, and (2) maintaining the political hegemony of those political parties by use of cultural “education” (indoctrination?).
Prior to the modern era, the thing that bound the Jews around the world together as a people was Judaism-The Torah and the connection to Eretz Israel. The Leftist group that controlled the political system in Israel was militantly secular and they sought to replace traditional religious identity with a European Socialist culture. Also recall that many Jews were traditionally merchants, businessmen, independent artisans and the such. The ruling political clique wanted to break down these values and install an awe or respect for those of this groups, which as I said was a European socialist model. Thus, religious observance and education was discouraged for both Ashkenazim and Sefardim (but not abolished), traditional music of the eastern communities was also discouraged by refusing to play it on the state radio which was the only media that existed, in the schools students were taught to not respect their parents who were “old fashioned” but to follow the new cultural and politcal leaders who were pushed by the ruling clique..
This indeed was tragic, causing a “kulturkampf” and much resentment which is still felt today. The SHAS movement is one manifestation of the rebellion against this state-imposed cultural hegemony. However, the ousting of this political clique which began with the victory of Begin and his Likud party in the 1977 election did bring about a process of opening up the country culturally and making it much more pluralistic.

By: XYZ

XYZ — Thu, 29 Mar 2012 04:31:32 +0000

Regarding Jerusalem’s status in the 3 “Abrahamic faiths” it is important to remember that Jerusalem is subordinate to Mecca and Medina in Islam. It is never mentioned by name in the Qur’an . It was never the capital of any indigenous Christian or Muslim population (the Crusader “Kingdom of Jerusalem” was not indigenous). It was never the headquarters of any Christian Church.
The ONLY people for whom Jerusalem was a capital for was the Jews. Jerusalem and its Temple Mount have special halachic (legal) religious significance which does not exist in the other two religions. Finally Jerusalem was holy to the Jews FIRST.
Only under Jewish rule will the rights of ALL religions be guaranteed. Under British rule, Jewish rights in Jerusalem were severly restricted in order to placate the Muslims.
Division of the city would be viewed as a massive defeat of Judaism and Christianity by the now ascendent radical Islam and radical Muslims would continually try to harrass and reduce Christian and Jewish presence in their part of the city, even challenging Palestinian Authority rule if it is not under HAMAS.
(When Pope John Paul II attempted to conduct an open air mass in Bethlehem, Muslim radicals turned on the mosque loudspeakers in order to drown him out.-this is what would happen in Jerusalem under Muslim-Palestinian rule).
To divide Jerusalem is to DESTROY it. This must never happen again.

By: XYZ

XYZ — Thu, 29 Mar 2012 03:50:15 +0000

The Arabs rejected the term “Palestinian”. They said they were “Arabs” and the country was “Southern Syria”. The term “Palestinian” before 1948 meant “Jew”. The term “Nakba” was first used in the Arab media to refer to the division of the region by the British and French after World War I when Palestine was separated from Syria, because the Arabs viewed it all as one country.
I am not saying there is no such thing as a “Palestinian people” today, if that is what they want to call themselves. I am just trying to set the record straight.

By: Leen

Leen — Wed, 28 Mar 2012 23:41:57 +0000

And XYZ, they were Palestinians. Jerusalem Post was called Palestine Post. Socialist Zionist used to put out posters saying ‘Help him build Palestine’. Denying the word or term ‘Palestine’ or ‘Palestinian’ only works if you are a Republican presidential candidate or someone who knows nothing about the region. For those who studied the British Mandate, the region, and Zionism know that claiming that ‘term’ didn’t exist is BS.

By: Leen

Leen — Wed, 28 Mar 2012 23:38:56 +0000

@XYZ, I just checked the link you provided me and…
the issue here is contentious, and as wikipedia put it, ‘Writing in 1841, the biblical scholar Edward Robinson noted the conflicting demographic estimates regarding Jerusalem during the period, stating in reference to an 1839 estimate by Sir Moses Montefiore: “As to the Jews, the enumeration in question was made out by themselves, in the expectation of receiving a certain amount of alms for every name returned. It is therefore obvious that they here had as strong a motive to exaggerate their number, as they often have in other circumstances to underrate it.”

Therefore, as it was put, a lot of the statistics are unreliable. However I still fail to see how this means that Jerusalem is the undivided Jewish capital because as I pointed out before it is special for all 3 Abrahamic religions and I personally do not support religious supremacy and building on from historical mistakes, it seems any time one of the Abrahamic religions tried to control the holy city, it spelt disaster for the others. Which is why I do support Autonomy on religious basis.

By: XYZ

XYZ — Wed, 28 Mar 2012 21:28:00 +0000

The existence of a Jewish_Egyptian nationalist group is not surprising, there have always been Jews who have tried by bending over backwards to prove they were good citizens of whatever country they lived in out of a feeling of an inferiority complex, just as Christians led extremist Palestinian and other Arab movements (e.g. Michel Aflaq of the Ba’ath movement) in order to prove their loyalty to the Arab nationalist cause and to bypass Muslim influence. Writer for Iraqi-Israeli writer Sami Michael waxes nostalgic of the days in Baghdad when Jewish Communists sat with Arab communists in the coffeehouses there and planned the revolution that never came. Count Anton Arco Valley killed Jewish Bavarian Prime Minister Kurt Eisner after World War I in order to prove he was a “good Aryan” even though he had Jewish blood. These anecdotal cases do not prove that Jews were accepted as good Arabs as a group.

I most certainly have the right to “pinpoint” certain times in history because that is typical of the way things have always been regarding Jewish-Arab relations (and Jewish-gentile relations in Europe over the centuries)….good times always eventually ended by bad times.
Jack doesn’t understand…to pretend that history is not important, and to say “why don’t we all be friends from this time forward” by having Jews give up their sovereign rights is a recipe for disaster. We can not escape the lessons of the past.

By: Vicky

Vicky — Wed, 28 Mar 2012 19:57:47 +0000

XYZ,
You have linked to a Wikipedia article dealing specifically with Egypt post-1919, and it doesn’t disprove my point. It pinpoints the mid-1930s as the time when anti-Jewish sentiment emerged in Egypt, which begs the question of what relations were like in earlier periods. You can’t use Egypt from the mid-twentieth century onwards as a snapshot of Jewish identity and belonging across the Middle East in all times and places.
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Secondly, I have never claimed that Arab Jewish existence was marvellous everywhere and at all times. It varied throughout history. In any case, the question you raised is one of identity, not overall wellbeing. Catholics in England under the Penal Laws still considered themselves to be English even when they were perceived as aliens by their neighbours and subjected to persecution, and the evidence we have suggests that it was the same for Arab Jews – the short Wikipedia segment that you linked to even contains a reference to an Egyptian Jewish youth movement operating under the banner ‘Egypt is our homeland, Arabic is our language’. And that’s just in the modern period. There’s a wealth of information in the Cairo Geniza that provides fascinating insights into how the Cairene Jewish community perceived themselves over a thousand-year period.
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I’ve been lucky enough to have access to the Geniza manuscripts at Manchester and Cambridge Universities. I don’t think I know everything there is to know about Arab Jewish history; it’s a huge topic. I don’t think that I alone ‘know the truth’. I try to read widely and to be thorough in my research. The views of Abba Eban (a prominent statesman) form only a small slice of what I could have written about the treatment of Mizrahi Jews in the early years of Israel and before. Do you dispute that these things happen, or that they had a profound effect on shaping modern Mizrahi identity?
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You misunderstood my meaning when I wrote about pawns of nationalism. I was referring to the anti-Zionist charedim whom Aristides mentioned, who lived in Jerusalem prior to 1880. Their presence is sometimes invoked by present-day political Zionists in support of retaining full Israeli sovereignty over Jerusalem. But the charedi residents of 1800s Jerusalem were not themselves Zionists and they didn’t see themselves as making a political statement by being in Jerusalem, so using their memory to advance a nationalist position is treating them as pawns. I’m not saying that living breathing people can’t think for themselves. These ones happen to be dead.
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You’re also misconstruing what I wrote about identity not being rigid. I didn’t say that Jews had never perceived themselves as a distinct people historically. I just said that identity isn’t monolithic, and it’s possible to feel a sense of kinship with more than one group. Historically it was not a question of either-or.

By: Jack

Jack — Wed, 28 Mar 2012 18:26:29 +0000

XYZ,

The statement about citizenship wasnt sourced.
I always find it weird that some people WANT to see conflicts, always look back on how bad it WAS. It seems like these people doesnt want a solution to the conflict.