Friday, March 16, 2012

Yedidya Atlas: Jerusalem: A Tale of One City – Part II


By: Yedidya Atlas

In 2008, then Presidential candidate Barack Obama addressed the annual AIPAC conference in Washington, DC. He received tumultuous applause for his declaration that he would not allow Iran to acquire nuclear arms, and that Jerusalem would remain the undivided capital of Israel.

Given his latest AIPAC performance and the usual next day equivocations, not to mention his administration’s machinations for the past three years on dragging out and limiting the effectiveness of those “crippling sanctions” while pressing Israel not to attack Iran, even if necessary, Mr. Obama’s credibility on Jerusalem can also be called into question.

President Obama is certainly consistently inconsistent. In 2008 he equivocated on Jerusalem the next day by saying whether or not Jerusalem remains undivided is “going to be up to the parties to negotiate a range of these issues.” In his now infamous May 19, 2011 policy speech at the State Department he merely said of the two “wrenching and emotional issues remaining” to negotiate “the future of Jerusalem” was one.

Hence, the Obama administration’s stance on Jerusalem is that at the very least, the Muslim claims to Jerusalem have equal validity to that of the Jewish State which clearly has no right to self-determine its own undivided eternal capital. In brief, Mr. Obama & Co. have bought into the Islamic Big Lie on Jerusalem.

Read the whole thing.

The author is a veteran journalist specializing in geo-political and geo-strategic affairs in the Middle East. His articles have appeared in such publications as The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Times, Insight Magazine, Nativ, The Jerusalem Post and Makor Rishon. His articles have been reprinted by Israel’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs and in the US Congressional Record.

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