JustASC

Evangelical organizer Gary Bauer, leader of the the group American Values, tells the Daily Beast:

“I continue to think it’s odd that the U.S. is suggesting to Israel that there are neighborhoods in Jerusalem where more Jews are not allowed to live. This is the first black president, and that is called segregation.”

This analogy will be less daft on the day that Israel adopts an equal opportunity housing policy that allows Palestinians, including Arab residents of Jerusalem, to live and build anywhere they wish within the Jerusalem municipality.

There is no such policy, of course. Most of West Jerusalem, like 93 percent of Israel itself, is considered “State Land.”  Under Israeli law, only citizens of Israel or Jews are able to purchase property on State Land (while Jerusalem’s Arabs are legal residents if the city, they are not citizens of Israel). As Peace Now explains in a helpful primer here (scroll down):

the ban on purchase of property on “State Lands” by Palestinian residents of Jerusalem extends to East Jerusalem. Not only are Palestinian Jerusalemites barred from purchasing property in most of West Jerusalem, but they are also barred from purchasing property in the 35% of East Jerusalem that Israel has expropriated as “State Land” since 1967, and on which Israel’s East Jerusalem settlements have been built. This means that in more than 1/3 of East Jerusalem, Israelis and Jews from anywhere in the world have a right to buy property in Israeli settlements, but not Palestinian residents of Jerusalem, including the very residents whose land was expropriated to build these settlements.

So let’s at least label this dispute for what it is — in opposing Jewish building plans in east Jerusalem, the United States is not guilty of segregation (unless you’re also willing to charge the Israelis with segregation). It is trying to create the conditions for an equitable separation of two peoples that will a/ secure Israel’s self-stated desire to be a Jewish, democratic state and b/ extend to the Palestinians the kind of autonomy and self-determination Israel currently enjoys.

You don’t need to agree with those aims or Obama’s strategy (see today’s defense of Israel’s Jerusalem housing policies by its ambassador to the United States). But at least don’t muddy the issue with false analogies.