You may view the 5 minute update this week via audio:
In this week’s 5 minute update, we focused on:
1) The US Supreme Court ruling that permits the President of the United States to not recognize Israel’s sovereignty over Jerusalem
The US Supreme Court struck down a US congressional attempt to allow Americans born in Jerusalem to list Israel as their birthplace on passports. The court was considering a 2002 law that instructed the US State Department to “record the place of birth as Israel” in the passports of American children born in Jerusalem if their parents requested the designation. The case, Zivotofsky v. Kerry was brought by the parents of Menachem Zivotofsky, who was born not long after Congress enacted the law. At the time, President George W. Bush said he would not allow the State Department to honor the request and President Obama has continued the practice. The law was meant to take a symbolic stand on the political status of Jerusalem.
Zivotofsky’s attorneys argued that the case was not about formal recognition of Jerusalem, but merely a matter of how an American is identified on his or her passport. The Court ultimately disagreed. The vote was 6 to 3, with the court’s three Jewish justices — Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Stephen G. Breyer, and Elena Kagan voting with the majority to not recognize Israel’s sovereignty over Jerusalem. The president, rather than Congress, must determine national policy on the status of Jerusalem, the majority said.
Justice Anthony M. Kennedy, writing for five justices, said: “Jerusalem’s political standing has long been, and remains, one of the most sensitive issues in American foreign policy and indeed it is one of the most delicate issues in current international affairs.” Justice Kennedy said the Constitution gave the president exclusive authority to determine the nation’s stance. “Put simply,” he wrote, “the nation must have a single policy regarding which governments are legitimate in the eyes of the United States and which are not.” The nation must speak with one voice, he said, and “that voice must be the president’s.” Justice Kennedy based his opinion on provisions of the Constitution authorizing the president to receive foreign ambassadors, to appoint American ones and to make treaties.
Chief Justice Roberts responded that receiving ambassadors is a presidential duty rather than a power. “The president does have power to make treaties and appoint ambassadors,” the chief justice added. “But those authorities are shared with Congress, so they hardly support an inference that the recognition power is exclusive.”
Furthermore, Chief Justice Roberts said the majority had taken a bold step. “Today’s decision is a first,” he wrote. “Never before has this court accepted a president’s direct defiance of an act of Congress in the field of foreign affairs.” Furthermore, he said that the decision was “based on the mere possibility that observers overseas might misperceive the significance of the birthplace designation.”
Justice Scalia announced his dissent from the bench saying. “A principle that the nation must have a single foreign policy, which elevates efficiency above the text and structure of the Constitution, will systematically favor the president at the expense of Congress,” he said. “But it is certain that, in the long run, it will erode the structure of equal and separated powers that the people established for the protection of their liberty.”
Justice Kennedy wrote that some observers had interpreted passport provision as altering United States policy, leading to “protests across the region.” Chief Justice Roberts responded that giving legal weight to such mistaken reactions “is essentially to subject a duly enacted statute to an international heckler’s veto.”
Justice Kennedy wrote that Congress was not free to contradict the president’s determination about the status of Jerusalem even in a notation in a passport. “This is not to say Congress may not express its disagreement with the president in myriad ways,” Justice Kennedy added. “For example, it may enact an embargo, decline to confirm an ambassador, or even declare war. But none of these acts would alter the president’s recognition decision.”
Ari and Naomi Zivotofsky, the parents of their son Menachem, spent 12 years fighting for their son to be listed as a citizen of “Jerusalem, Israel” instead of merely “Jerusalem,” said, “We expected the courts in the United States to be about more than politics. Perhaps the result shows that this assumption is not correct but we thought that the legal system is unrelated to the political system [there]. A passport is just a symbol of the central problem here, which is very large, due to the United States not recognizing the sovereignty of the State of Israel over any part of Jerusalem.”
White House press secretary Josh Earnest said: “We welcome the Supreme Court’s important decision in Zivotofsky v. Kerry, which reaffirms the long-established authority of the president to recognize foreign states, their governments, and their territorial boundaries. The court’s decision upholds the president’s long-standing authority to make these sensitive recognition determinations as part of his conduct of diplomacy and foreign policy.” Presenting its case, the Obama administration argued that recognizing Jerusalem as Israel’s capital would compromise the United States position as an objective arbiter in peace talks between Israel and the Palestinians. The decision, Earnest concluded, “confirms that the president’s recognition determinations should be accurately reflected in official documents and sensitive diplomatic communications, including passports.”
Historically, Jerusalem was divided into east and west factions following the war in 1949 that broke out after Israel’s creation. Israel has controlled the entire city following the Six Day War in 1967, eventually annexing the eastern part in 1980, in a move unrecognized by either the United States or the U.N. As a result, Jerusalem’s status remains one of the sticking points in final status peace negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians. A peace process that seems that seeks to reconcile the seemingly irreconcilable reality of Isael attempting to find a compromise solution and a faction of Arabs who refuse to recognize its Israel’s existence and/or yearn for its annihilation.
Palestinian chief negotiator in the peace proces, Saeb Erekat, praised the decision and said it “sends a clear message to the Israeli government that “Jerusalem is an occupied territory.” Erekat added that the top American court’s ruling highlighted “that the Israeli decision to annex Jerusalem to be settlements is a total violation of international law.” Nabil Abu Rdaineh, spokesman for PA President Mahmoud Abbas, hailed the “important decision” that he said runs in accordance with UN resolutions. “This is a clear message that Israel occupies east Jerusalem as well as the West Bank and Gaza Strip,” he charged.
However, Jerusalem Mayor Nir Barkat called for President Obama to recognize Jerusalem as Israel’s capital saying that it was particularly important “when anti-Semitism is trying to raise its head. Just as Washington is the capital of the United States, London the capital of England and Paris the capital of France so Jerusalem was and always will be the capital of Israel, and the heart and soul of the Jewish people.”
Nitzana Darshan-Leitner, head of lawfare NGO Shurat Hadin, said besides the specific issue just decided by the US Supreme Court, this decision involves a greater issue which involves deciding who in general decides issues of foreign affairs – Congress or the State Department. “This question could come up in other matters, such as American financing for the Palestinian Authority. Congress decided to limit the transfer of funds to the PA from the State Department, so that it may only be transferred if there is certainty that they do not go toward terrorism. The State Department has been ignoring Congress and when the matter reaches the courts, there will again be a debate over who decides foreign policy, the legislators or the State Department.”
As for the court’s decision itself, Darshan-Leitner said that it truly damages every single Israeli person: “This is a disappointment. While it is true that this is a decision that relates to the internal regime in the US, and which delimits the boundaries of the executive branch’s discretion, and who decides foreign policy, one cannot ignore the actual decision, which de facto does not recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel – and this is a real kick in the face of every Israeli citizen.”
Furthermore, a significant consequence of this US Supreme Court decision may occur when the United Nations General Assembly opens its next session on Sept 15. There has been indications that France plans to submit to the Security Council a resolution to prescribe a Palestinian state in the disputed territories of the West Bank, with East Jerusalem as its a capital with a negotiating deadline of 18 months. The US may support this proposes resolution or may allow it to pass with a US abstention. If this happens, it would contradict one of the arguments made by the Obama administration during this US Supreme Court case, when they insisted recognizing Jerusalem as the capitol of Israel “would critically compromise the ability of the United States to work with Israelis, Palestinians and others in the region to further the peace process.” In addition, “it would now be very hypocritical for the Obama administration to turn around after the arguments they made in this Supreme Court case to violate it and support a United Nations resolution specifying a Palestinian state that includes East Jerusalem as its capital.”
In addition, a long list of major American Jewish organizations expressed dismay at the US Supreme Court ruling that American citizens born in Jerusalem may only list their birthplace as Jerusalem, rather than as Jerusalem, Israel. The Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, an umbrella group representing 51 organizations, issued a statement saying that the organization’s leaders were “deeply concerned” by the ruling. “We do not believe that Jerusalem-born American citizens having Israel on their passport would impinge on future peace negotiations or compromise the role of the United States in this area,” argued Chairman Stephen Greenberg. “Tens of thousands of Americans are affected by this decision.”
Abraham Foxman, the national director of the Anti-Defamation League, described the US government’s approach regarding Jerusalem as “hypocritical.” The ADL had spearheaded an effort signed by 12 Jewish organizations which argued that Americans born in Jerusalem should be able to identify their country of birth on their passport in the same way other American citizens born abroad may do.
“The question for the Supreme Court in this case involved a simple and ministerial act – whether or not US citizens born in Jerusalem should be allowed to list their birth place as Israel,” Foxman wrote after the ruling. “The answer to that should have been an easy yes. And the court did not have to issue a sweeping decision about executive power to reach that conclusion.” Foxman called on the administration to “step up,” asking “how long will the US government continue to have this hypocritical approach?”
“It is sad and unfortunate that Israel – as a sovereign nation – is the only country in the world whose capital comes under such scrutiny and has to defend its right to determine where its capital city exists,” Foxman continued. “It’s time for the Executive Branch to face the reality: Jerusalem is the capital of Israel” he concluded.
Similar expressions of disappointment came from across the Jewish religious spectrum. Rabbi Jonah Pesner, director of the Religious Action Center of Reform Judaism, said that his organization was “disappointed” by the decision, which he described as “circumscribing the right of Americans born in Jerusalem to lawfully and accurately identify their birthplace as Israel.”
The Religious Action Center was one of the organizations that signed on to the ADL brief, and Pesner noted that “the Reform Movement has long called for US recognition of Jerusalem as the capital of Israel and that Israel should not be subjected to legal disadvantages under US law that are not applied to other nations.”
America’s largest Orthodox umbrella organization, the Union of Orthodox Jewish Congregations of America, also expressed disappointment with the the US Supreme Court in the Jerusalem passport case. Nathan Diament, executive director for public policy of the Orthodox Union, wrote in a statement that while the organization was “of course, disappointed” by the ruling, “we are more disappointed by the persistent policy of the United States government – carried out by successive presidents – to treat the capital city of Israel with less respect than that accorded to capital cities of virtually every other nation. Jerusalem is unquestionably the capital of Israel,” he added. “Even after this court decision, it is high time for the US administration to acknowledge the reality of Israel’s capital – Jerusalem.”
The Orthodox Union, like the Religious Action Center, was also a signatory on the ADL friend of the court brief that urged the justices to uphold Congressional legislation requiring the State Department to write Jerusalem, Israel, on US-issued passports. Other organizations signing the brief included the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), B’nai B’rith International, the Central Conference of American Rabbis, Hadassah, the Jewish Council for Public Affairs, the National Council of Jewish Women, the National Council of Young Israel, the Rabbinical Assembly, the Union for Reform Judaism, Women of Reform Judaism, and the Women’s League for Conservative Judaism
An agreement to divide Jerusalem and establish a PLO state is a tribulation event.
The link to these articles are as follows:
1) Supreme Court says president’s powers prevail on foreign borders
2) Supreme Court Backs White House on Jerusalem Passport Dispute
3) White House welcomes Jerusalem passport ruling as upholding president’s authority
4) ‘The US Refuses to Recognize Israel’s Sovereignty’
5) Supreme Court ‘Kicked Israelis in the Face’
6) US Jewish groups slam administration’s ‘hypocritical’ view on Jerusalem
7) PA: US court ruling sends ‘clear message’ that Israel occupies east Jerusalem
8) PA: Ruling on Jerusalem Proves Israel is an ‘Occupier’
9) The Consequences of Obama’s Jerusalem Passport Supreme Court Win
From a Biblical prophetic perspective, the reason why the God of Israel would allow these events to happen is because it will result in the end of the exile of the house of Jacob and the reunification of the 12 tribes of Israel (Ephraim and Judah).
We will to be “watchmen on the walls of Jerusalem” and we will not rest until the God of Israel makes Jerusalem a praise in the earth (Isaiah 62).
Shalom in Yeshua the Messiah,
Eddie Chumney
Hebraic Heritage Ministries Int’l