No, Ehud, Jerusalem Belongs to ALL Jews

Just before the Annapolis travesty, Ehud Olmert basically told Diaspora Jews to shut up and mind our own business, he will decide to do whatever he wants about Jerusalem without outside interference. Jeff Ballabon director of the Coordinating Council on Jerusalem has written a brilliant response to Prime Minister Comb-over below:

No, Ehud, Jerusalem is Ours As Well
by Jeff Ballabon
The justification for the modern State of Israel is Jewish history both glorious and grim and there has long been a compact between the Jews in Israel and the Diaspora. Israeli Jews were on the front lines and Diaspora Jewry was a vital home front and source of economic and political strength. The Jews of Israel bore the lion’s share of the pain, but also reaped the bulk of the benefits. There have been rifts - many times in Israel’s history where Jews of one stripe or another took issue with a government’s policies. And at times, vulnerable Diaspora Jewry became front line victims of terror or violence from Israel’s enemies. But our bond withstood all because Israel’s leaders ensured it remained a Jewish state. The issue of Jerusalem, the 3000 year-old Capital of the Jewish People reunified in 1967 under Israeli sovereignty is, perhaps more than any other, evidence of that commitment.

Many Jews in the Diaspora therefore were troubled by Prime Minister Olmert's recent comments essentially trying to deligitimize us as true stakeholders in Jerusalem. It is good that he already has started backtracking.

On the eve of Annapolis, in response to questions about the rising tide of resistance among major US Jewish groups to negotiating the potential redivision of Jerusalem, Olmert bluntly declared, "The government of Israel has a sovereign right to negotiate anything on behalf of Israel."

In that he wasn't wrong; but his formulation missed a corollary truth that no Israeli government has the unilateral or unfettered right to negotiate anything on behalf of the Jews when it comes to the eternal Jewish verities or heritage, such as our Capital. As such, Olmert's statements were not merely disappointing to Jewish sensibilities; they were dangerous to Jewish interests.

As Israeli prime minister of the moment, Olmert can try to negotiate anything he wants with Palestinians - including whether Jerusalem is a redivided war-zone and even whether Israel itself remains a Jewish state or is transformed into a "democratic state of all its citizens." He just has no right to expect or demand that Jews acquiesce.

Nor do Jews in America - the nation whose influence is most strongly felt in Israel and which also holds the largest and most powerful Diaspora community – require Olmert’s permission to exercise our political clout in accordance with our best moral, religious and political assessments.

Jerusalem unites Jews across religious and ideological lines as well as across geographical ones. This is not a struggle of Diaspora Jewry v Israeli Jewry; it is a struggle which unites Jewry. Jerusalem’s mayor is opposed to dividing the city and he is working with American Jews. A majority of the Knesset opposes negotiating Jerusalem and they too are working with American Jews. Dozens of Israeli organizations are working with American Jews. And, pace those who characterize this as a “right-wing religious” or an “anti-peace” bloc, the groups in the US and in Israel range all along the religious and secular spectrum and are fully committed to peace and security. They simply are mindful of the deadly consequences of previous “peace processes” and current realities. According to the city’s mayor, even Jerusalem's Arabs fear the idea of doing in Jerusalem what was done in Gaza - the threat of transfer to Palestinian control already has led 70,000 Arabs to move from behind the security fence into Jerusalem and Israeli talk of ceding sovereignty has begun to stir radicalization and unrest among those on the other side.

In short, as Ehud Olmert has himself done many times and is doing even now, Israeli citizens and leaders are working together with Diaspora Jews for that which affects us all.

It surely is awkward for Olmert to be on the other side of an issue which so unites Jews, and to find such tepid support for his own position, but it is important that he not let his frustration erode core principles on which Israel’s existence always hinges. We recall Olmert's own adjuration that every Jew is obligated to speak out regarding Jerusalem’s fate, because “Jerusalem is not only the city of those who live in Jerusalem, it’s not only the city of those who live in the state of Israel - it is the city of every Jewish person no matter where he lives”. In uttering those words, Olmert ratified personally that which every Israeli prime minister has declared and which Jews have believed since long before the modern State of Israel came into being.

By floating a division of Jerusalem, Olmert started down the path of severing the link between his government and the core principle that the Land of Israel is by right the Jewish Homeland. It should serve as a red flag to him that, as an immediate consequence, he found himself undermining the relationship between Jews everywhere and the State of Israel. Olmert should backtrack not only on his unfortunate comment, but on the policies he seems set on pursuing.

Our right to work with our brethren in Israel for the preservation of our eternal and indivisible Jewish Capital is one that no prime minister of any party can ever deny, and Ehud Olmert was wrong ever to challenge it.


Jeff Ballabon, a political consultant, is directing the Coordinating Council on Jerusalem, www.ccjer.org.