This is a big difference from having the embassy in Jerusalem, which Donald Trump finally moved after U.S. law stated was supposed to happen. This has the chance of causing big problems, and simply shows that Democrats hate Israel and Jews, and love the terrorists who attack Israel civilians. Of course, it’s surely Biden’s people pushing him to do this, because Joe has little clue what’s going on
Biden reiterates plan to reopen Jerusalem consulate despite Israeli objections
President Biden told Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennett during their White House meeting that he will not abandon his plan to reopen the U.S. consulate in Jerusalem, setting up a major point of contention between the administrations.
Why it matters:Â The consulate handled relations with the Palestinians for 25 years before being shut down by Donald Trump. Senior officials in Bennett’s government see the consulate issue as a political hot potato that could destabilize their unwieldy coalition.
Between the lines: Several right-wing ministers, including Interior Minister Ayelet Shaked and Justice Minister Gideon Sa’ar, say the reopening of the consulate would be an infringement on Israeli sovereignty in Jerusalem. It’s also a prime point of attack for Benjamin Netanyahu, who is now opposition leader.
The Israeli government would have to give its approval for the consulate to be reopened. And if even one member were to defect over the issue, the government could collapse.
“If the Biden administration wants to see Netanyahu abandoning his Pilates classes and going back to the Prime Minister’s Office, this is the best way to do it,” one senior official quipped to me.
Why the need for a consulate when the embassy is right there? A consulate is “a satellite office to an embassy located outside the capital city of a country, one that exists almost exclusively to provide visas and passports to people for whom a trip to the embassy is too far a distance.” That’s from this piece by Ambassador David Friedman, who writes
Former Secretary of State Mike Pompeo closed the Jerusalem consulate in 2019 for several reasons, one of which is foundational and unrelated to policy. With the opening of the U.S. Embassy in Jerusalem in 2018, there was no basis for a consulate to exist. The Jerusalem embassy provides consular services on a non-discriminatory basis to all Israelis and Palestinians — equal treatment for Jews, Christians and Muslims. The consulate thus became obsolete and a waste of taxpayer dollars. I know of no other country where the United States maintains an embassy and a consulate in the same city.
Some argue for the reopening of the consulate in Jerusalem just for the purpose of engaging in diplomacy with the Palestinians and signaling a willingness by America to recognize, in the future, a Palestinian capital in Jerusalem. That would be illegal and unwise.
It would be illegal because the Jerusalem Embassy Act of 1995, passed overwhelmingly by both the U.S. House and the Senate, provides that “Jerusalem should remain an undivided city.†A U.S. consulate in Jerusalem to a foreign body clearly runs afoul of American law.
It would also cause a lot of friction and cause confusion with U.S. policy, but, we know this really is all about pandering to the Palestinians, who are run by Hamas, who’s stated goal is to wipe Israel off the map. As if Joe didn’t have enough problems right now, he wants to create more. Seriously, he didn’t cause enough problems with giving Afghanistan to the Taliban, along with all the weapons?
Mayim Bialik: “Today’s Final Jeopardy category is ‘Foreign Affairs,’ and the answer is, ‘Yes.’ You have thirty seconds to write down your response, and be sure to put it in the form of a question.”
Jeopardy jingle music plays.
Mayim Bialik: “And now we come to our defending champion, Elwood. What did he have?”
Screen reveals, “Is Joe Biden stupid or senile?”
Mayim Bialik: “That’s correct!”
Our esteemed host wrote:
Actually, what it shows is that liberalism is just plain stupid. There is a natural tendency to favor the plucky underdog, but that tendency is something which has to be tempered with a realistic assessment of just who the underdog is. Who could have imagined that the homosexual, transgender supporting American left would want to see an ‘LGBTQIA+’ supporting Israeli government defeated by an Islamic, if not completely Islamist, movement which disparages, beats, injures, and sometimes just outright kills homosexuals and ‘transgenders,’ but that’s what we have today. Who could have imagined that an American Democratic Party, the second most loyal voting demographic of which are Jews, would favor a group the stated intention of which is to conquer the Jews and push them into the sea?
We’ve just seen the takeover of Afghanistan by the Taliban, and our State Department has expressed dismay that there are no women in the Taliban 2.0 government, when the original banned women from leaving the house without a responsible male escort, and barred girls from being educated.
American liberalism has a collective pair of thick, foggy, rose colored glasses, glasses through which the left see the world not as it is, but the way that they believe it should be. The Taliban, Hamas, Hezbollah, al Fatah, these groups all tell us what they want to do, but today’s left just blithely ignore it, seeming to think that if we are just nice to them, they’ll behave like good, Western liberals.
Joe Biden is both senile and stupid. The rest of the left? Perhaps not senile, but certainly stupid.
[…] In noting the Biden Administration’s plans to reopen the American consulate in Jerusalem, where we already have our embassy to Israel, William Teach wrote: […]
The US should have left 10s of thousands of US troops in Afghanistan in hopes that by 2040 the highly trained Afghan troops would be able to hold the talibani scheisse at bay for a month!!
Opening the US Consulate in Israel will not lead to the end of Israel. After all, the consulate was open until 2019 when trump closed it as part of his Global War on Muslims. The consulate gives Palestinians a point of contact to the US.