A recent news article by the Jewish Telegraphic Agency reported that the Israeli government intends to build thousands of homes for Jews "in predominantly Palestinian eastern Jerusalem." In fact, the neighborhoods in question are not predominantly Arab and are not in east Jerusalem.
A glance at any map of the city shows that the neighborhoods, Givat HaMatos and Har Homa, are in the capital's south. In fact, they are further west than numerous parts of western Jerusalem, such as Talpiot Mizrach, Abu Tor, and Yemin Moshe. Har Homa has 20,000 Jewish residents; Givat Hamatos, which is largely undeveloped, has only a few hundred. Neither area is "predominantly Palestinian."
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The term "east Jerusalem" is an artificial construct that supporters of the Arab cause use in their propaganda in order to make it appear as if that part of the city is an intrinsically Arab area that Jews are illegally entering. In reality, there are Jewish neighborhoods throughout the eastern, western, northern, and southern parts of Jerusalem. It's a pity when Jewish news outlets inadvertently play along and use such geographically inaccurate, and politically loaded, language.
When anti-Israel extremists created the term "east Jerusalem" it was for one reason: They sought to rip Israel's capital apart in order to defeat Israel. This effort tragically gained full force with the 1993 Oslo Accords. This was fully explained in the B'tzedek Online Journal in a Dec. 30, 1996 editorial titled The War Has Just Begun:
"The Oslo Accords are indeed the fulfillment of the PLO "salami" strategy. That is to say, Israel shall be destroyed not through overt military action of Arab nations, but through the whittling away of Israeli resolve and slow but determined territorial expansion of a Palestinian state. Slice by slice Israel will be carved away by the knife of terrorism and world opinion, both deftly handled by the Israeli created Palestinian entity."
The very name Jerusalem means "city of peace," "city of completeness," and "city of perfection." In fact, there is no "eastern" or "western" when we talk about Jerusalem. There's just one Jerusalem.
American policy on Jerusalem had veered horribly off course until President Trump followed US law and upheld the Jerusalem Embassy Act of 1995 by relocating the US Embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem.
The late US Senator Jesse Helms wrote in 1996 that "Israel is the only nation in the world denied the right to choose its own capital. This second-class citizenship among nations must end."
Helms was right. It is up to friends of Israel in the US to make sure that the embassy stays put. One way is to keep news outlets like the JTA honest when the report on Jerusalem and her residents.
