Last week the New York Times and other news outlets reported on a leaked report by the European Union's diplomatic representatives in East Jerusalem and Ramallah sharply criticizing Israeli policies in East Jerusalem. The report accuses Israel of increasing illegal settlement activity in and around East Jerusalem and of using the so-called security barrier to seal off East Jerusalem from the rest of the West Bank. The report points out that these actions are reducing the chance of a final-status agreement on Jerusalem, an example of the "facts on the ground" that George Bush invoked not long ago.

Neither the EU nor the United States have recognized Israeli annexation of East Jerusalem, and for good reason. Although successive Israeli governments have declared that "all" of Jerusalem comprises the "indivisible" capital of Israel, there is no relationship between the eastern part of the city--which has always been populated by Palestinians--and anything that has to do with Israel. In making these statements about Jerusalem, Israeli governments are trying to make suckers out of everyone, and especially out of American Jews--and as an American Jew, I take exception to this.

The history of Jerusalem, especially since the founding of the Israeli state in 1948, is one of relentless annexation and expansion. Yet the references to the "indivisible" capital are cynical attempts to play on the guilt feelings of Jews who every year raise their glasses and declare "next year in Jerusalem." But at the very most, the boundaries of Biblical Jerusalem were within the area now defined by the walled old city. So what does East Jerusalem have to do with any possible claims by Israel to have jurisdiction over anything that it cares to call Jerusalem? By this logic Israel could annex the entire West Bank and call it Jerusalem as well.

Israel has always counted on American Jews to uncritically support everything it does, although there are signs (see some of my earlier posts on this subject) that this phony and "solidarity" is cracking. As I discovered in Tel Aviv a few years ago when a Jewish store owner tried to cheat me by selling me long out of date Duracell batteries, just being a Jew does not make one righteous, nor do the horrible crimes of the Holocaust make Jews above criticism. Let American Jews have truth and justice as their first loyalty, and solidarity with their ethnic brethren in Israel come second.