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Jerusalem Denial Complex

(New York Times) Bret Stephens - Pretending that Jerusalem isn't what it is, is a formula for continued self-delusion. What Jerusalem is, is the capital of Israel, both as the ancestral Jewish homeland and the modern nation-state. When Richard Nixon became the first American president to visit the country in 1974, he attended his state dinner in Jerusalem. It's where President Anwar Sadat of Egypt spoke when he decided to make peace in 1977. It's what Congress decided as a matter of law in 1995. When Barack Obama paid his own presidential visit to Israel in 2013, he, too, spent most of his time in Jerusalem. So why maintain the fiction that Jerusalem isn't the capital? Recognition of Jerusalem as Israel's capital belatedly aligns the U.S. with the country toward which we are constantly professing friendship even as we have spent seven decades stinting it of the most basic form of recognition. Recognition also tells the Palestinians that they can no longer hold other parties hostage to their demands. Nations pay a price for the foolhardiness of their leaders.
2017-12-11 00:00:00
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