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Friday, July 27, 2012

Washington still can't decide where Jerusalem is

This video of White House Press Secretary Jay Carney dodging the question of what the capital of Israel is has been exploding all over the Internet:



This recalls the even more uncomfortable press briefing from March of Victoria Nuland, spokesperson for the State Department, spending a full two minutes avoiding the question of whether Jerusalem or Tel Aviv is the capital of Israel:



It will be remembered that last year, when Daniel Halper noted that the White House website had photo captions that identified Joe Biden in "Jerusalem, Israel" - but within two hours of his publishing that, the White House scrubbed all mentions of "Israel" together with "Jerusalem" on its website.

Earlier this month, Hilary Clinton seemingly accidentally referred to herself being "here in Israel" when speaking in Jerusalem.

This article is invaluable in seeing how the US position on Jerusalem evolved from 1967 to 2006. However, for the most part, the idea that the parts of Jerusalem within the Green Line are not even a part of Israel to begin with has only been emphasized in more recent years, possibly as the result of more specific questions by reporters.