Jewish Groups Split On Trump’s Jerusalem Recognition
The United States Embassy building in Tel Aviv, Israel. Image by JACK GUEZ/AFP/Getty Images
(JTA) — Jewish groups expressed both disappointment and pleasure at the expected announcement by President Donald Trump that the United States will recognize Jerusalem as Israel’s capital.
The Reform Jewish movement, the largest in the United States, called Wednesday’s announcement “ill-timed but expected.”
The announcement, said Union for Reform Judaism President Rabbi Rick Jacobs on behalf of the organizations of the movement, “affirms what the Reform Jewish movement has long held: that Jerusalem is the eternal capital of the Jewish people and the State of Israel. Yet while we share the President’s belief that the U.S. Embassy should, at the right time, be moved from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem, we cannot support his decision to begin preparing that move now, absent a comprehensive plan for a peace process.”
Jacobs also said that the White House should not undermine efforts toward making peace between Israel and the Palestinians by “making unilateral decisions that are all but certain to exacerbate the conflict.”
The Republican Jewish Committee praised the president for his announcement of a “significant change in U.S. policy” by recognizing Jerusalem as Israel’s capital and announcing a plan to begin the process of moving the U.S. Embassy to Jerusalem from Tel Aviv.
“President Trump is doing what he does so well: recognizing the reality on the ground. No more false news — Jerusalem is Israel’s capital,” Norm Coleman, the RJC’s national chairman and a former Minnesota senator, said in a statement.
The RJC will run a full-page ad in Thursday’s edition of The New York Times thanking Trump for his decision.
The American Israel Public Affairs Committee, or AIPAC, tweeted: “It is our long-held position that undivided #Jerusalem is the historic, current and future capital of Israel. We continue to believe that the United States should recognize Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, and implement the Jerusalem Embassy Act of 1995.”
The left-wing pro-Israel group J Street said in a statement that the change of U.S. policy on Jerusalem will undermine Middle East peace efforts and could lead to violence.
“Israel’s capital is in Jerusalem and it should be internationally recognized as such in the context of an agreed two-state solution that also establishes a Palestinian capital in East Jerusalem,” J Street said. “In the absence of that final agreement between the parties on the city’s status, blanket recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital is premature and divisive. “That is why, since 1967, all administrations have maintained that the final status of the entirety of Jerusalem is to be decided by negotiations, and have avoided any actions that could be interpreted as prejudging their outcome.”
J Street said the decision “could seriously undermine the administration’s stated commitment to resolving the Israeli-Palestinian conflict while potentially threatening Israel’s security and alienating Arab regional partners.”
Mort Klein, head of the Zionist Organization of America, told Jewish Insider on Wednesday, “I am pleased that after 22 long years since the embassy bill passed that Trump is going to be finally recognizing the obvious. I am disappointed that he is signing a waiver two days after the deadline. I would have preferred he take the existing consulate or another government-owned building, put a sign on it and say this is the embassy, immediately.”
The Simon Wiesenthal Center said that with his announcement, Trump “will right a historic wrong.”
The New Israel Fund, which channels funds to progressive Israeli NGOs, called the president’s decision to begin the process of moving the U.S. Embassy to Jerusalem “a dangerous, reckless, and irresponsible move by a dangerous, reckless, and irresponsible American president,” adding that “Israelis will be the ones to pay the price.”
IfNotNow, an anti-occupation and anti-Trump organization, condemned the decision to recognize Jerusalem as Israel’s capital.
“Trump and Prime Minister Netanyahu both know that any change to an already untenable status quo in Jerusalem has the potential to spark deadly violence. Yet they continue to capitulate to the political whims of the far right, advancing extremist policies, with no care about the impact on the lives of everyday Israelis and Palestinians,” the group said in a statement. “Trump’s choice to recognize Jerusalem as the capital plays right into the hands of these extremists who support the indefinite and violent occupation of millions of Palestinians.”
Malcolm Hoenlein, president of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, said Trump was doing “the right thing.”
“When President Trump visited the Western Wall and made a declaration recognizing Jerusalem as holy to the Jews after the denunciation of UNESCO, there was not even one warm-up, not one demonstration, because when you do the right thing, you do not have to ask questions, you just do it,” Hoenlein said Wednesday in an address at the launching of the Lobby for the Protection of the Mount of Olives in the Knesset.
Rabbi Yechiel Eckstein, founder and president of the International Fellowship of Christians and Jews, called the announcement “a bold, courageous move that is long overdue, and is especially significant coming from Israel’s closest ally. Both Jews and Christians around the world have prayed for this day, which rights a historic wrong by affirming to the world that Jerusalem is the eternal capital of the Jewish people.”
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