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Passports Aside, Jerusalem Is in Israel

(Bloomberg) Jeffrey Goldberg - In 2002, an American citizen named Naomi Zivotofsky gave birth in Jerusalem to another American citizen, Menachem Zivotofsky. When the Zivotofskys received Menachem's U.S. passport, they were disturbed to see that his birthplace was listed as simply "Jerusalem," not "Jerusalem, Israel." It is the belief of the executive branch of the U.S. government that Israel's claim of sovereignty to any part of Jerusalem is in dispute, even though Congress enacted a law that demanded that the executive branch record such births as taking place in "Jerusalem, Israel." My question is: Why does the U.S. acquiesce to the fiction that Jerusalem - in particular, western Jerusalem, which has been the seat of the Israeli government since 1948 - may not actually belong to Israel? U.S. presidents visit Jerusalem and speak before parliament. They even visit Judaism's holiest site, the Western Wall, which, unlike the hospital where Menachem was born, is on land that was captured from Jordan in the 1967 war.
2014-04-24 00:00:00
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