IN AN EFFORT TO WIN Jewish (but not necessarily liberal) votes, presidential candidate after candidate promised to move the U.S. embassy – now in Tel Aviv – to Israel’s capital, Jerusalem.
The U.S. congress, in 1995 !, passed the Jerusalem Embassy Act of 1995.
According to The American Thinker, in an article dated June 8, 2015,
This past Wednesday, despite the Jerusalem Embassy Act of 1995 and the will of the current Congress, President Obama joined the ranks of previous feckless administrations refusing to move the American Embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem.
In all fairness to Obama, from Clinton onward, this law, which unambiguously gives full U.S. recognition of Jerusalem as the undivided capital of Israel, has been skirted by presidential order under the guise of national security interests.
NOW, the headline reads Trump pledges to recognize Jerusalem as united capital of Israel.
Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump told Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu that if elected president, he would recognize Jerusalem as the “undivided capital” of Israel, ending a long-standing US policy whih has kept the American embassy in Tel Aviv
If elected, will he or won’t he?
Candidate Clinton has suggested Jerusalem should be recognized as Israel’s capital, but her husband Bill (“I did not have sex with that woman”) made the same noises, but, according to a BBC article titled Hillary in Jerusalem controversy
Hillary, when she was seeking the Democratic nomination for the Senate seat for New York, told a Jewish leader that she considered Jerusalem to be the "eternal and indivisible capital of Israel".
She also said she believed the US embassy in Israel should be moved to Jerusalem from its present location in Tel Aviv.
Mrs. Clinton was replying to a letter from Mandell Ganchrow, president of the Union of Orthodox Jewish Congregations of America.
In 1992, Mr. Clinton campaigned for the presidency on a promise to move the embassy from Tel Aviv, but he has disappointed the Israeli lobby by not fulfilling that pledge.
He has since blocked a 1995 law that authorized relocation, citing the danger of undermining final status negotiations on the sovereignty of Jerusalem, as well as threats to US security.
Could, should anything different be expected of Mrs. Clinton given her email, Benghazi, and financial scandals, and her seemingly mixed opinions about Israel and the so-called Palestinians?
Certainly moving the embassy to the nation’s capital would have NO impact on any “peace” negations with the so-called Palestinian Authority (PA); leaving the embassy in Tel Aviv has done nothing to being the PA to the table. But then neither did the Rabin-Peres sellout of Israel at Oslo, Norway. They – and the late PLO terrorists Yasser Arafat – were given the Nobel Peace Prize in 1994 for a peace that never happened.
The question for single-issue voters who focus on Israel is simple:
DO THE CANDIDATES TELL ONE GROUP ONE THING AND THE OPPOSITE THING TO ANOTHER GROUP, must as the Muslims say one thing in English for world consumption and another in Arabic (or Farsi) for their own populace?
U.S. politicians don’t have a corner on the “tell them what they want to hear then do something else” market. Most party leaders in Israel are no better.
Once elected we are “stuck” with the new president for at least four years; typically 8 years unless a president is utterly bad (one-term Jimmy Carter comes to mind).
Effective presidents work with Congress, even when Congress is in the hands of the other party. The incumbent has antagonized Congress and, with help from the GOP, has polarized the nation to a degree last seen when Lincoln was president.
People who want the U.S. embassy in the capital must feel akin to Charlie and the MTA.
