Elder Of Ziyon - Israel News

Tuesday, November 04, 2014

11/04 Link Pt1: Obama’s Campaign Against Israel; Hamas opposes UN role in Gaza reconstruction

From Ian:

Alan Dershowitz: Why is the Obama Administration Provoking Israel?

Beyond the damage done with regard to Iran, is the damage done to United States-Israel relations by the insulting and demeaning words used by senior Obama administration officials to describe the Prime Minister of a close ally. Benjamin Netanyahu fought bravely for his country in one of Israel’s most elite and dangerous military units. He has rescued hostages, defended his country against terrorists and lost a brother at Entebbe. To call him a “chickenshit” or a “coward” is beneath contempt. Having seen the heavy cost of warfare, he has always been cautious and prudent about committing Israeli troops to battle. For this he should be praised rather than condemned.
Netanyahu may soon have to make an existential decision about whether to allow Iran to develop nuclear weapons that might be used against Israeli citizens or to authorize a dangerous military attack designed to destroy and delay Iran’s capacity to develop such weapons of mass destruction. This decision would be difficult for any leader, and it is even more difficult for a leader of a tiny country surrounded by enemies and isolated by much of the international community. To trivialize and reduce this decision to name-calling words like “chickenshit” and “coward” demonstrates extraordinary bad judgment on the part of those who used the words and those who may have authorized their use.
There are legitimate and important differences between the Obama and Netanyahu administrations over issues such as building in Jerusalem and the stalled peace negotiations. Each side has criticized the others position on their merits and demerits. But scatological name-calling on the record has no place in an alliance between friends. Those responsible for these provocative and dangerous ad hominems and for the unwarranted disclosure of classified intelligence assessments must be held accountable by the American public and by all those who care about peace in the Middle East.

Caroline Glick: Obama and the definition of 'Islamic'

Moreover, Obama had befriended radical Islamic leaders who openly support terrorism, including Turkish dictator Recep Tayyip Erdogan and the emir of Qatar, Hamad bin Khalifa Al Thani.
And of course, as we see more and more clearly each day, the centerpiece of Obama’s foreign policy has been appeasing the Islamic Republic of Iran in the hope of achieving détente with the nuclear weapons pursuing state sponsor of terrorism.
The likes of IS, with its love of the video camera, discredit Obama’s narrative that radical, terror- supporting Muslims are peaceful. Since IS is openly evil, it is un-Islamic.
On the other hand, despite the fact that it is nearly as barbaric as IS, the Iranian regime is Islamic, because as far as Obama is concerned, it is good. And it is good because he wants to make a deal with the mullahs.
In other words, Obama is neither an expert on Islam, nor a man moved by moral indignation.
He opposes IS because IS makes it hard for him to defend Islam from bad public relations. And he coos about the “Islamic Republic of Iran” because he is dedicated to his mission of whitewashing and mainstreaming the regime born of an Islamic revolution.

Hamas opposes UN involvement in Gaza reconstruction

Hamas is opposed to UN involvement in the reconstruction of the Gaza Strip following Operation Protective Edge and has requested that the Palestinian unity government, rather than the international organization, carry out building projects, a Hamas official said late Sunday night.
Deputy head of Hamas’s political bureau Moussa Abu Marzouk claimed that Hamas was never shown the “Serry plan,” named for United Nations Special Coordinator for the Middle East Peace Process Robert Serry, insisting that reconstruction work estimated at billions of dollars remain in Palestinian hands.
“A number of officials have claimed that Abu Marzouk agreed to the plan, which is a bald-faced lie, so I say the following: during the indirect negotiations in Cairo we rejected the UN as a recognized party to construction,” Abu Marzouk wrote on his Facebook page, referring to the Egyptian-mediated ceasefire talks between Israel and Hamas in August. “Everyone insisted that the Palestinian Authority, through the national unity government, is to be responsible for construction.”
“The international envoy’s plan was never presented to us,” he added.

Deafwashing: IDF women "sing" Hatikva in sign language (video)

You just know that stuff like this makes anti-Israel "progressives'" heads explode.

This apparently happened at a graduation ceremony. Original here.

מי כעמך ישראל

(h/t Ibn Boutros)

From Al Arabiya:

U.S. actress Angelina Jolie, along with Laureate Archbishop Desmond Tutu, backed the United Nation’s global campaign to end statelessness, a situation at least 10 million people around the world suffer from, according to the Reuters Thomson Foundation.

The U.N. refugee agency (UNHCR) estimates that a child is born stateless every 10 minutes, and has launched the “I Belong” campaign in an effort to end the plight of those without citizenship.

“Statelessness makes people feel like their very existence is a crime,” UNHCR head António Guterres said. “We have a historic opportunity to end the scourge of statelessness within 10 years, and give back hope to millions of people.”

Jolie, Guterres, and Tutu are leading the campaign calling for “10 million signatures to change 10 million lives” on an open letter.

Stateless people are denied the rights and benefits most people take for granted. These “legal ghosts” often live in destitution and are at high risk of detention and exploitation, including slavery.

“This is absolutely unacceptable. It is ... an anomaly in the 21st century,” Guterres said.

Statelessness exacerbates poverty, creates social tensions, breaks up families and can even fuel conflict.

The largest stateless population is in Myanmar where more than 1 million ethnic Rohingya are refused nationality.

Other countries with high numbers of stateless people include Ivory Coast, Thailand, Nepal, Latvia and Dominican Republic.

Isn't it fascinating that this high-profile initiative is being launched - and it is ignoring at least 1.5 million Palestinians who live stateless, by law, in the Arab world!

UNRWA claims that there are over 450,000 stateless Palestinians in Lebanon (actually, it is about half that number.) There were 472,000 stateless Palestinians in Syria before the war. About 240,000 live in Saudi Arabia without citizenship rights. About 150,000 live in Jordan without citizenship (those that fled from Gaza in 1967 and their descendants.) As many as 50,000 Palestinians are without any rights in Egypt. There may be as many as 100,000 in Dubai. More are living in other Gulf countries, as well as tens of thousands in Tunisia and Libya.

The only Palestinian Arabs who aren't stateless are those who live in Israel and most of those who live in Jordan. Besides that, the few times that some were offered citizenship in Egypt and Lebanon tens of thousands applied. (The ones who live in the West Bank and Gaza have some benefits of citizenship in the PA, and cannot be considered refugees by any real definition. )

Clearly, a large percentage of these stateless people would be eager to become citizens of the countries that they are living in and were often born in.

But the UN is not including them in this initiative.

This is because this project is from UNHCR - the only UN organization that actually is tasked with helping settle refugees. Palestinian Arabs (except for a tiny number) do not fit under UNHCR's domain, but under UNRWA's, and UNRWA is actively interested in increasing the number of stateless Palestinians and prolonging their statelessness, not solving the problem.

Someone should tell Angelina Jolie that some 1.5 million stateless people are being purposefully excluded from her humanitarian initiative. If she would prioritize pressuring Arab nations to treat Palestinian Arabs with equal rights and to offer citizenship to those born on their soil, it could help bring peace to the Middle East - because the "refugee" issue has been kept purposefully alive, and millions of Arabs kept in misery, simply to cynically use them as a weapon against Israel.

Arab nations have been systematically discriminating against Palestinians since 1948, and their primary means of discrimination has been to ensure that they remain stateless and miserable.

UNRWA and other NGOs claim that Palestinians in Arab countries do not want citizenship. History proves that this is a lie. But don't believe me - no one is saying that they should be forced to become citizens, only that they be given the choice. UNRWA and Arab leaders know very well what they would choose and that freedom is what they want to take away from the Palestinians they pretend to love.

If Jolie would have the guts to publicly speak out against UNRWA's and Arab leaders' sickening agenda to promote statelessness, she could do more for peace than any politician or diplomat could.

2010:

US Vice-President Joe Biden has condemned Israel's approval of 1,600 new homes for ultra-Orthodox Jews in East Jerusalem (Ramat Shlomo).

2012:

Israel is continuing to take retaliatory measures in wake of the United Nations decision last week to accept Palestine as a non-member observer state. In two weeks the Jerusalem District Planning and Building Committee will discuss a controversial plan to build 1,700 homes in the East Jerusalem Jewish neighborhood of Ramat Shlomo, in the north of the capital.

2013:

Seeking to provide a counterbalance to the release of 26 terrorist murderers under US pressure, official sources said that Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu and Minister of Interior, Gideon Saar, have agreed to immediately approve four housing plans in different parts of Jerusalem.

One of the plans involves the immediate approval for construction of 1,500 new housing units in the Ramat Shlomo neighborhood. In addition, residents of Ramat Shlomo will be allowed to add rooms of up to 50 square meters to existing housing units.

June 2014:

Ministry of Housing and Construction issued today tenders for 1466 new housing units at the West Bank (1066) ...The 400 new housing units at East Jerusalem are located at Ramat Shlomo neighbourhood.

Yesterday:

An Israeli government committee has advanced plans for 500 settler homes in East Jerusalem, an official says, in the face of disapproval from the United States at construction on occupied Palestinian land.

Each of these events have something in common:
1. They provoke incredible international outcry over "Israeli settlements" and the death of a two state solution.
2. None of them have resulted in a single house being built.

From the NYT today:

But for all the international outrage that Ramat Shlomo has engendered, not a single new home has been built there in a decade.

The NYT article also mentions how incredibly crowded the neighborhood is, and how it is impossible to get building permits to even expand houses - the exact same problem that causes headlines when Arabs cannot get approvals.

No one seriously thinks that Ramat Shlomo will become part of a Palestinian Arab state. All of these news stories cause huge amounts of angst, and give the impression of ever-expanding Israeli encroachment on Arab areas - and it simply isn't so.

It is obvious that most reporters have no interest in reporting the truth about how incredibly little Israeli settlements have expanded in the past 30 years.

It is equally obvious that the successive Israeli administrations have done an incredibly poor job of telling the world what has been going on, instead letting Peace Now send press releases to the media as many as eight times for each new apartment planned as if it is a huge new terrible development that puts the peace process in crisis.

ISIS now on another border of Israel

From Reuters:

Ansar Bayt Al-Maqdis, Egypt's most active militant group, has sworn allegiance to Islamic State, a statement from Ansar said Monday night.

Ansar had previously told Reuters that it sought inspiration and advice from Islamic State, the radical Al-Qaeda offshoot that has taken over swathes of Iraq and Syria, drawing US-led airstrikes as it tries to remake the map of the Middle East.

"After entrusting God we decided to swear allegiance to the emir of the faithful Abu Bakr Al-Baghdadi, caliph of the Muslims in Syria and Iraq and in other countries," the statement said.

It could be that they are trying to gain more support with the Egyptian army going after them. They don't seem to have the charisma to attract a wide range of Muslims like ISIS does. One can only imagine that Ansar Bayt al-Maqdis is jealous of the publicity and worldwide recruiting expertise of the Islamists in Iraq and Syria when it can't get large numbers of Egyptians to be interested in their cause.

11/03 Links Pt2: Muslim-German students threaten to kill Jewish spokesman; US Army Buys Iron Dome

From Ian:

After Gaza war, Muslim-German students threaten to kill Jewish student spokesman

The student spokesman for the city of Offenbach’s school system, Max Moses Bonifer, resigned his post because German Arab and Turkish students attacked him and threatened to kill him.
The German daily FAZ reported on Wednesday that Bonifer said young Muslims have threatened him over the last few weeks because he wore a kippa with a Star of David and yelled at him: “We spit on your people. We’ll find you and kill you.”
Bonifer told the weekly German Jewish paper Jüdische Allgemeine that “since the Gaza conflict in the summer, youths of Arab and Turkish origin have regularly insulted me, spat at me and attacked me.”
Bonifer said he could no longer represent students who wish death for him and the Jewish people.
Offenbach is a small city in the state of Hesse, with a population of roughly 122,000, and borders the financial capital Frankfurt am Main. More than 16,000 German Muslims live in Offenbach. (h/t Gastwirt)

If Not You, Then Who?: An Open Letter to the Pro-Israel Campus Community

Earlier this semester, my international affairs professor referred to Israel (in the context of its relationship with the United States) as “the tail that wags the dog.” Little did she know; a dog depends on its tail for balance. A dog without its tail could not stand steadily.
In the next lecture, we were presented with maps of Gaza prior to the 2005 withdrawal and told that these settlements remain in place to this day. We spent nearly a quarter of another lecture watching a Mearsheimer and Walt interview that echoed anti-Semitic undertones and narrow-minded bias. There has been no mention in class of a pro-Israel narrative or anything that resembles it.
The course is titled, “Intro to International Affairs: A Washington Perspective”. Considering a recent 401-1 congressional vote on the US-Israel Strategic Partnership Act with overwhelming bipartisan support, I can confidently say that the information presented in class did not reflect a Washington perspective.

Dachau’s ‘Work sets you free’ sign stolen

Part of a wrought-iron gate, bearing the Nazis’ cynical slogan “Arbeit macht frei” or “Work sets you free,” was stolen from the former Dachau concentration camp, police said Sunday.
Security officials noticed early Sunday morning that the gate section measuring 190 x 95 centimeters (75 x 37 inches) was missing, police said in a statement. Whoever stole it during the night would have had to climb over another gate to reach it, they added.
Police said they found nothing in the immediate vicinity of the camp and appealed to anyone who noticed any suspicious people or vehicles to come forward.
Dachau, near Munich, was the first concentration camp set up by the Nazis in 1933. More than 200,000 people from across Europe were held there and over 40,000 prisoners died before it was liberated by US forces on April 29, 1945. The camp is now a memorial.

UNRWA school deputy principal is a fan of Hamas terrorists

Last week, I noted that the last Arabic UNRWA school website that was taken down (rdus.sch.unrwa.ps) after I discovered it contained antisemitism had been partially resurrected. Naturally, I found another damning article there, about how UNRWA teaches first graders to call for Israel's destruction.

After that post, it has been taken down again.

Meanwhile, Facebook is a great place to find UNRWA school teachers and administrators who espouse views that the UN - and UNRWA's own standards - supposedly disagree with.

Earlier, I found an UNRWA teacher who embraced terrorists and encourages children to take up weapons.

Now we have an UNRWA deputy school principal namded Jehan Muhammad who includes these tributes to Hamas terrorism on her photo stream:

So tolerant!

I'm getting quite a portfolio showing UNRWA support for terrorists and support for destroying Israel. How many more are needed before the world takes notice?

Don't rest easy tonight, Chris Gunness. More coming tomorrow.

Reason #6901 why peace is impossible

A companion piece to yesterday's post on this topic. From NPR:

When the Israelis and the Palestinians were trying to make peace back in the 1990s, one of the buzzwords was "normalization," the attempt by both sides to learn to live together.

But in these days of ceaseless friction, normalization has become something of a dirty word, particularly for Palestinians. [Only for Palestinians - EoZ] Nearly 50 Palestinians from the West Bank encountered these bitter sentiments when they went to Israel for an unusual one-day trip last week.

Their itinerary included visits to Israeli-controlled crossings into Gaza and conversations with Israelis who live nearby. Mustafa Hbub, a Palestinian living in Israel who dreamed up the trip, says he wanted West Bank Palestinians to visit Israeli communities and take home this message of peace.

"The war caused destruction for both Israelis and Arabs. Let's stop this. Peace is done by people, not leaders," says Hbub, referring to the seven weeks of fighting this summer between Israel and Palestinians in Gaza.

Hbub doesn't equate the damage in Israel to the vast destruction in Gaza. But he wanted Palestinians get a peek into the experience of ordinary Israelis. Hbub got help from Buma Inbar, a Jewish Israeli involved in all sorts of efforts to bring Israelis and Palestinians together.

Inbar says he knew this effort would fail the moment he saw Israeli TV cameras out the bus window at their first stop.

"Something like 10, 12 cameras of TV stopped there. And I see the Palestinians. I say, 'You want it or no?' They cry, 'No, no, no,'" Inbar says.

It turns out that a different Israeli involved in planning the trip had tipped off the Israeli media.

But why would that be an unpleasant surprise for the Palestinian visitors?

"Honestly, it's complicated. Even in Palestine, it's complicated," says Alin, a young Palestinian woman on the trip who only gave her first name. "People don't want anyone to understand something in the wrong way, that's it. And also maybe people are afraid."

Afraid exactly of what, she wasn't sure. But she knew she didn't want to find out.

"When you say Israelis and Palestinian are together, it's not nice and it's not acceptable. I don't know what's going to happen, but for me, no, I will not put myself in that situation, OK?" she says.

Normalization sounds kind of nice, but actually, it's a real insult. [Only for one side - EoZ] Many Palestinians see playing soccer or even doing business with Israelis as a betrayal — accepting Israeli dominance by acting like everything is normal. This is problem for peace groups.

American Donna Stefano directs the Mideast office of Seeds of Peace, which brings Palestinian and Israeli youth together for summer camp. She says anti-normalization pressure has a real impact on Palestinians.

"When they return from camp, and they try to explain the powerful personal transformation that they've had, it just gets thrown back in their face that, 'It's normalization, it's normalization. You're a traitor talking to Israelis, you shouldn't be talking to Israelis,'" she says.

A trip conceived of, and organized by, the Arab side is very rare indeed. Practically all of these initiatives usually come from the Israeli peace camp. But as long as ordinary Palestinian Arabs are threatened for even thinking of Israelis as human beings, peace cannot happen.

And even Western-funded Palestinian Arab NGOs like Miftah are against any real peace programs that involve coexistence.

Palestinian Arab society as a whole is against real peace, and Arabs who want to make a difference are demonized and threatened if they say anything publicly. This hate is encouraged by Mahmoud Abbas' supposedly moderate government.

Nothing on the horizon suggests that things will ever get better. Without a sea change in Palestinian Arab attitudes towards Israeli Jews, there is no chance that any real peace could ever happen.

(h/t Alexi)

11/03 Links Pt1: Abbas: Glick's shooter is a martyr; UNRWA teaches Rachel’s tomb is an Islamic shrine

From Ian:

Daphne Anson: "We Are Not Occupiers & We Are Not Settlers .... ": Israel's UN Ambassador Prosor

I am here to convey one simple truth. The people of Israel are not occupiers and we are not settlers. Israel is our home and Jerusalem is the eternal capital of our sovereign state.
There are many threats in the Middle East, but the presence of Jewish homes in the Jewish homeland has never been one of them.
It says a great deal that the international community is outraged when Jews build homes in Jerusalem, but doesn’t say a word when Jews are murdered for living in Jerusalem. The hypocrisy is appalling.
Throughout history, Jerusalem has been the capital for one people and only one people – the Jewish People.

Ambassador Prosor Addresses the Emergency Security Council Session on Jerusalem

Palestinian 'Narrative'? Their Own Covenant Refutes It

In recent years, the Palestinian Arabs, broadly conceived to include the Palestinian Authority, the various political and militant factions, and their supporters abroad, have been pushing a narrative in which a flourishing Palestinian Arab national society of ancient origin was brutally attacked and overrun by an imperialist Zionist invasion intent on stealing what had been their "Palestine" since time immemorial.
Curiously, the Covenant of the Palestine Liberation Organization, initially adopted in 1964 and revised in 1968, contains an article that refutes this claim.
Article 6 of the Covenant reads: "Jews who were living permanently in Palestine until the beginning of the Zionist invasion will be considered Palestinian." That "invasion" is usually identified with the Balfour Declaration of 1917, so this article acknowledges that there were Jews in the Land before then.
Let us leave aside that Abbas's insistence that his Palestinian state be Judenrein violates this provision of the supposedly sacred Covenant and address the question: Who were these Jews?
Conceptually, they potentially fall into three categories, any one of which establishes that the Palestinian narrative is false.(h/t Alexi)

Khaled Abu Toameh: Egypt's War on Terrorism: World's Double Standards

The Egyptians have finally realized that the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip has become one of the region's main exporters of terrorism. Israel reached this conclusion several years ago, when Hamas and other terror groups began firing rockets and missiles at Israeli communities.
The Egyptians have also come to learn that the smuggling tunnels along their shared border with the Gaza Strip work in both directions. In the past, the Egyptians believed that the tunnels were being used only to smuggle weapons into the Gaza Strip. Now, however, they are convinced that these tunnels are also being used to smuggle weapons and terrorists out of the Gaza Strip.
Now that the Egyptians have chosen completely to seal off their border with the Gaza Strip, the chances of another military confrontation between Hamas and Israel have increased. Hamas will undoubtedly try to break out of its increased isolation by initiating another war with Israel.
The Egyptians, for their part, are not going to mind if another war breaks out between the Palestinians and Israel -- as long as the military confrontation is taking place on the other side of the Gaza Strip's border with Egypt.
And of course, the international community will once again rush to accuse Israel of "genocide" against the Palestinians in the Gaza Strip. Needless to say, the international community will continue to ignore Egypt's bulldozing hundreds of homes and the forcible eviction of thousands of people in Sinai.
If anything, the Egyptian security crackdown in Sinai has once again exposed the double standards of the international community toward the war on terrorism. While it is fine for Egypt to demolish hundreds of houses and forcibly transfer thousands of people in the name of the war on terrorism, Israel is not allowed to fire back at those who launch rockets and missiles at its civilians.

UNRWA teacher fervently supports terror on Facebook (UPDATES)

Zuhair Hindi is a teacher at the UNRWA Jabalya Prep School for Boys.

He is also a terror supporter.

His profile picture on Facebook is of Qassam Brigades terrorist Hassan Mohammed al-Hindi, who might be a brother of his or perhaps another relative, who was killed when trying to attack Israel from the sea early in the summer war.

But even before the war he showed how much he loved terrorism - and Hamas' Al Qassam Brigades:

In this cartoon on his page we get an impression of how well he adheres to supposed UNRWA standards of tolerance, peace and coexistence:

How about his opinion of the children that he teaches?

Here is a photo that reveals his view of children:

His caption is "The next generation of the elite."

Is that enough to get him fired? Come on, who are we kidding?

For those who are not offended by any of this, you have my sympathies. But maybe you are the type of person for whom this photo, that he also posted, is considered worse than incitement to murder:

Now, when Chris Gunness and UNRWA head Pierre Krähenbühl read this - and believe me, they will - what do you think runs through their minds?

1. Hindi must be dismissed immediately for violating UNRWA principles!
2. I see nothing wrong with any of this.
3. As long as the media doesn't pick up on this, we can safely ignore it.
4. If we are forced to fire Hindi because of his Facebook posts, then the other UNRWA teachers will probably go on strike and cause a much bigger problem for us.
5. I really, really hope that no reporter who is going to interview me sees this first.

UPDATE: The al-Hindi family are prominent pro-Hamas members of UNRWA. UNRWA fired one of them once and indeed relented when the other teaches threatened to strike (see 4. above.)

In 2011, the UNRWA management sacked Sohail al-Hindi, who headed the winning bloc, for his popular activities connected to Hamas. He was reinstated after protests, including strike action, by unions at UNRWA.

Al-Hindi said that his new term of office will be to the advantage of UNRWA's work and its employees in the Gaza Strip. He promised to respect the guidelines of the international agency, which is dedicated to provide vital services for Palestinian refugees.

(h/t @WarpedMirrorPMB)

UPDATE 2 (11/4) : At least some of these photos have been taken down.

UPDATE 3 (11/5): The entire page has been taken down. (h/t @YNKutner)

From Ma'an:

Companies in Gaza have stopped providing the al-Shifa hospital with food for meals in protest against not being paid for five months, a hospital official said Saturday.

Nasr al-Tatar, the general director of al-Shifa hospital in Gaza City, told Ma'an the move was dangerous as it impacts both patients and medical workers.

The hospital owes 800,000 shekels (approximately $211,000) to the companies for food.

You would think that Hamas might want to help out, offering some appreciation for having Shifa Hospital doctors and patients act as human shields for the Al Qassam Brigades and other terrorists who used it as headquarters during the summer war.

I guess genocidal jihadists aren't that nice.

I find it interesting that given all the billions of dollars being raised for Gaza in the enlightened West, both privately and from governments, no one has felt that a hospital food bills of a relatively paltry couple hundred thousand dollars is worth sending money to. If all this Western money isn't going to hospitals and the like, then what is it being used for?

Yes, that's a rhetorical question.

Supreme Court to hear Zivotofsky case today on the status of Jerusalem

From NPR:

The U.S. Supreme Court hears arguments Monday for a second time in a case that combines Middle East policy with the dueling foreign policy roles of the president and Congress. It's a political hot potato that asks what U.S. passports should say about the birthplace of American citizens born in Jerusalem.

Ever since the founding of Israel in 1948, the U.S. has taken the position that no country has sovereignty over Jerusalem until its status is negotiated in a Middle East peace deal. Israel's supporters in Congress, however, have tried to force a different policy, passing legislation that would move the U.S. embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem and require the State Department to allow U.S. citizens born in Jerusalem to list Israel as their place of birth on their passports.

The Bush administration and the Obama administration both refused to do so, contending that the passport mandate unconstitutionally infringes on the president's foreign policy powers.

Enter Menachem Zivotofsky, born in Jerusalem 12 years ago to American parents who emigrated to Israel and now maintain dual citizenship. The Zivotofskys want their son's place of birth on his passport to say Israel — not just Jerusalem. So they sued to force the State Department to let them do that.

Three years ago, when the case first went to the Supreme Court, the justices did not issue a definitive ruling, instead opting to send the case back to the lower court for further action. But now, the case is back. And a look back at the 2011 argument gives some clues about the justices' thinking.

A look at the questions raised in 2011 seems to indicate that the Supreme Court may be more inclined to back the President's opinion on the status of Jerusalem over that of Congress, meaning that the Zivotofsky lawyer has an uphill battle.

Back in 2011, a couple of months ahead of the SCOTUS ruling to send the case back to a lower court, a Weekly Standard article noted that the White House website itself referred to Jerusalem as being in Israel:

A couple of hours after that article was posted, the White House webmaster methodically went through the entire website and scrubbed nearly all mentions of "Jerusalem, Israel:" (with one example overlooked):

I just looked at the site again, and the webmaster seems to have only overlooked one additional mention of the term since then:

S. Fitzgerald Haney is Director of Business Development and Client Services at Pzena Investment Management, a position he has held since 2007. From 2002 to 2007, he was Director for Strategic Planning and New Business at the Depository Trust & Clearing Corporation. From 1999 to 2001, Mr. Haney was a senior associate at Israel Seed Partners, a venture capital firm in Jerusalem, Israel.

But you can't erase statements made by the President or Vice President themselves.

In 2010, Vice President Joe Biden released a statement datelined in Jerusalem slamming Israel's announcement of new building, but he clearly indicated that he was in Israel at the time:
"I condemn the decision by the government of Israel to advance planning for new housing units in East Jerusalem. The substance and timing of the announcement, particularly with the launching of proximity talks, is precisely the kind of step that undermines the trust we need right now and runs counter to the constructive discussions that I’ve had here in Israel."

Similarly, President Obama said that he was "here in Israel" when speaking from Jerusalem a number of times on his most recent trip to Israel in March 2013: at the Prime Minister's residence, Yad Vashem and twice at the Jerusalem Convention Center.

State Department officials also often acknowledge that they are in Israel when they speak in Jerusalem. For example, Undersecretary of State Wendy Marshall earlier this year said,"It’s wonderful to be here in Israel, to be here in Jerusalem." John Kerry has said similar things at least once. Previous Secretaries of State have also: Albright, Clinton, Rice.

The President and the State Department know quite well that Jerusalem is in Israel. But they want to hang onto this old relic of a never-implemented UN decision to recognize Jerusalem as a "corpus separatum" in 1947 as having legal validity. It is sort of pathetic, actually.

Interestingly, US officials stationed in Jerusalem as late as 1962 had the phrase "Jerusalem, Palestine" used on their passports, and this practice was protested by Israeli officials. I'm not sure exactly what date that practice was dropped. The State Department rationale at the time was:

On February 15, Crawford reported to Bar-Haim that in response to Israel's request he had checked as to whether the Department of State might stop using the term, "Jerusalem, Palestine" in the passports of U.S. Consular Officers assigned to that city. The answer was that the U.S. current practice was consistent with U.S. policy on Jerusalem and that Jerusalem, part of the former state of Palestine, had not since passed under the sovereignty of any other state in a de jure sense.

Of course, by my mentioning this here the anti-Israel idiots will be most happy, since they like to pretend that the "Palestine" of 1947 - a government that was run by Zionists - is the same "Palestine" that they pretend exists today. This is why they come up with stupid arguments based on currency and stamps and sports teams of the 1930s and 1940s that were run by Palestinian Jews as being proof of a previous state of "Palestine" - even though the Palestinian Arabs were against the use of "Palestine" currency, for example, currency that in Hebrew gave the initials of Eretz Yisrael.