(New York Times) Mark Landler - President Obama, seeking to quell a storm of criticism from pro-Israel groups, directed the Democratic Party to amend its platform to restore language declaring Jerusalem as the Israeli capital. The change, approved in a voice vote Wednesday that had to be taken three times because of a chorus of "noes" in the arena, reinstates the line, "Jerusalem is and will remain the capital of Israel." That sentence had been in the 2008 platform, but the Democrats had removed it this time. After a day of protests, however, the change was made to "maintain consistency with the personal views expressed by the president and in the Democratic Party platform in 2008," the chairwoman of the Democratic Party, Debbie Wasserman Schultz, said in a statement.
2012-09-06 00:00:00Full ArticleBACK Visit the Daily Alert Archive