JustASC

The Jewish Week’s Jim Besser gets past the sanctimony (“Are you saying, Mr. Obama, that an Israeli Jew doesn’t have right to live anywhere in his own capital?”) to ask some important strategic questions about Netanyahu’s tussle with the White House:

This week’s U.S.-Israel diplomatic dustup over building additional Jewish housing in east Jerusalem may have as much to do with domestic politics in the Jewish state – and a desire to mobilize American Jews to oppose additional U.S. pressure – as with any shift in Obama administration policy.

Publicly raising its disagreement over Jerusalem may “focus the American Jewish community, which is mostly opposed to settlements, on the fact that when the U.S. demands Israel cease building settlements that includes Jerusalem,” said Anti-Defamation League National Director Abraham Foxman.

And touching the Jerusalem nerve may help galvanize Evangelical Christians, many of whom have a growing commitment to preserving Jerusalem as Israel’s unified capital, to oppose new administration peace pushes.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, July 22nd, 2009 at 3:05 pm and is filed under JustASC. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.