Wednesday, May 16, 2007

Jerusalem Embassy Act

In honor of the fortieth anniversary of our liberation and reunification of our eternal capital, Jerusalem, in a battle that took two days to accomplish in a major war that lasted only six days, after a gap of about 1,900 years, I would like to mention something that has been bugging me. There is rampant anti-Semitism that does not allow Jerusalem to be recognized as the eternal united capital of Israel and the Jewish people. While the Palestinians and their lackeys are blowing themselves up and murdering innocent civilians, the world has it in for the Jews who have supported the rights of all (which is why we haven't knocked down anything on our Temple Mount as we respect other cultures). However many appeasements we make, it is not good enough. The specific thing that is bugging me is that there are few or no nations that recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel. Every country has their embassy in Tel Aviv since Costa Rica and El Salvador moved from Jerusalem a couple of months ago. The UN is anti-Semitic as is Jimmy Carter (sorry, had to throw that one in there.

About 12 years ago the United States congress voted to relocate the embassy back to Jerusalem, in what is known as the Jerusalem Embassy Act. The act explicitly declares Jerusalem to be the capital of Israel and demands that the embassy be moved to Jerusalem no later than 1999. The penalty for not doing this (unless the president signs a postponement waiver every six months) is severe, as seen in Section § 3.3.b
Not more than 50 percent of the funds appropriated to the Department of State for fiscal year 1999 for "Acquisition and Maintenance of Buildings Abroad" may be obligated until the Secretary of State determines and reports to Congress that the United States Embassy in Jerusalem has officially opened.
Presidents Clinton and Bush II have postponed this every single time. I talked to my congressman about this and he said that his top priority is Iran but that this is important too. Let's see what happens, but it's probably going to be just a whole bunch more years of red tape. Sigh...

For those who don't want to actually read the legalese, there is brief synopsis of the law that can be found here.

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