John Kerry: Kyrzakhstan and Palestine

John Kerry. Photo: wiki commons.

On John Kerry’s first international trip as U.S. Secretary of State he made a gaffe worthy of Joe Biden. The headline of London’s Telegraph read “John Kerry invents country of Kyrzakhstan” and the Daily Mail asked “Where’s that exactly, Mr Secretary of State? John Kerry makes up new country ‘Kyrzakhstan.”

But more than just fodder for the British press Kerry’s blunder exposes the truth that he is not the expert on international affairs that the mainstream media, Obama Administration and J Street all vehemently claimed.

And at this time, when Kerry created Kyrzakhstan out of thin air, there is no time like the present to remind Kerry and the rest of the denizens of Foggy Bottom that “Palestine” and “East Jerusalem” are just as mythical as “Kyrzakhstan.”

Let’s recall what actor, comedian and pundit Larry Miller (Pretty Woman, The Nutty Professor and The Princess Diaries) wrote in an April 2002 essay titled “Whosoever Blesses Them: The intifada and its defenders” for The Weekly Standard (it went viral and by mistake was almost always credited to Dennis Miller):

“The Palestinians want their own country. There’s just one thing about that: There are no Palestinians. It’s a made up word. Israel was called Palestine for two thousand years. Like “Wiccan,” “Palestinian” sounds ancient but is really a modern invention. Before the Israelis won the land in war, Gaza was owned by Egypt, and there were no “Palestinians” then, and the West Bank was owned by Jordan, and there were no “Palestinians” then. As soon as the Jews took over and started growing oranges as big as basketballs, what do you know, say hello to the “Palestinians,” weeping for their deep bond with their lost “land” and “nation.” So for the sake of honesty, let’s not use the word “Palestinian” any more to describe these delightful folks, who dance for joy at our deaths until someone points out they’re being taped.”

(Miller’s original essay can be found here)

Another lesson important for Secretary Kerry to hear before he visits Israel is that “East Jerusalem” does not actually exist.  “East Jerusalem” is what the Bible means when it refers to Jerusalem.

Words, and especially names, have meaning. Especially in today’s ever changing Middle East.

So, just what is “East Jerusalem” and why is adding the word “East” to describe part of Judaism’s holiest city and Israel’s capital of any serious magnitude?

East and West in Israel are not simple geographic terms as they are in the U.S. Northeast Philadelphia, the Upper East Side in Manhattan and East L.A. are used to denote neighborhoods and sections of a city. In Israel, where Judea and Samaria have been labeled as the West Bank, things are different. The term West Bank was created by Arab propagandists to de-emphasize the area’s inherent Jewishness and to disassociate the land from the State of Israel. East Jerusalem was similarly invented.

What is “East Jerusalem”?

In the Christian Bible every single instance when a specific location in Jerusalem is mentioned it refers to an area that many at the State Department would now like to see given to the Palestinians. The term “East Jerusalem” cannot be found in a Christian Bible. And that is because “East Jerusalem” is about as real as Santa Claus.

The prayer “Next Year in Jerusalem!” that Jews recite at the close of the Yom Kippur service and at the highpoint of the Passover Seder refers to  ancient parts of Jerusalem that the State Department Arabists include as part of this mythical creation of “East Jerusalem” in its unholy Palestinian state. There is no “East Jerusalem” in Judaism.

According to Wikipedia: “East Jerusalem refers to the part of Jerusalem captured by Jordan in the 1948 Arab-Israeli War, and subsequently by Israel in the 1967 Six-Day War. It includes Jerusalem’s Old City and some of the holiest sites of Judaism, Christianity and Islam, such as the Temple Mount, Western Wall, Al-Aqsa Mosque and the Church of the Holy Sepulcher.”

So, “East Jerusalem” is Jerusalem’s Old City and its surrounding neighborhoods. The original and oldest parts of Jerusalem are in this “East Jerusalem”.

There has never been in history an independent municipal entity known as “East Jerusalem” just as there has never been an independent national entity known as Palestine just as there has never been a Kyrzakhstan.

When anti-Israel extremists created the term “East Jerusalem” it was for one reason. They wanted to rip Israel’s capital apart in order to defeat Israel. This effort tragically gained full force with the Oslo Accords. This was fully explained in the B’tzedek Online Journal on December 30, 1996 in an 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. This was something that Bible believing Americans of all faiths in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries were taught. See Hitchcock’s Bible Names Dictionary (1869) and Easton’s Bible Dictionary (1897) for more on the fascinating derivation of the name Jerusalem.

A Jerusalem that is not complete is just not Jerusalem.

As Secretary of State Kerry can do much to show he understands what Jerusalem really is. The U.S. government has failed to relocate the American Embassy to Jerusalem from Tel Aviv for over ten years. The Jerusalem Embassy Act was passed by the U.S. Congress on October 23, 1995 and the law reads that “Jerusalem should be recognized as the capital of the State of Israel; and the United States Embassy in Israel should be established in Jerusalem no later than May 31, 1999″.

“For Zion’s sake I am not silent, and for Jerusalem’s sake I do not rest,” reads Isaiah 62:1. For Jerusalem’s sake contact your Congressperson today and demand that they pressure John Kerry and the Obama Administration to honor the Jerusalem Embassy Act.