National Public Radio takes a nice look at the issue of relocating the US embassy to Jerusalem. Unfortunately, Daniel Estrin’s dispatch assumes Jewish ties to eastern Jerusalem only began in 1967.
The western part of Jerusalem is almost entirely Jewish. The eastern part of the city was entirely Arab when Israel captured it in the 1967 Arab-Israeli war. Many Israeli Jews have moved into the eastern part of the city, and Israel claims all of Jerusalem as its capital, though no other country recognizes this.
Talk about twisted context.
Jerusalem was a unified city. There were no distinctions between “East” and “West” Jerusalem until Jordan captured the city’s eastern neighborhoods and Old City. The only reason it was “entirely Arab” when Israel reunified the Jerusalem during the Six-Day War was because the Jordanians expelled the Jews from its jurisdiction, systematically destroyed synagogues, and generally made its half of the city judenfrei.
In this video, survivors of the 1948 war shared their stories of living in eastern Jerusalem and their expulsion.
Memo to NPR: The 19 years that Jerusalem was divided are a mere blip in the city’s and Jewish people’s thousands of years of history.
We contacted NPR about a clarification. Watch this space.
© Divuach Ne’eman R”A, 2025
