A Biblical and Historical Case for the Jewish Capital

By Jay Sekulow

In Leviticus, God said to Moses:

“[I]f they will confess their sins and the sins of their ancestors … then when their uncircumcised hearts are humbled and they pay for their sin, I will remember my covenant with Jacob and my covenant with Isaac and my covenant with Abraham, and I will remember the land. .. . Yet in spite of this, when they are in the land of their enemies, I will not reject them or abhor them so as to destroy them completely, breaking my covenant with them. I am the LORD their God. But for their sake I will remember the covenant with their ancestors whom I brought out of Egypt in the sight of the nations to be their God. I am the LORD” (Lev. 26:40–42, 44-45, emphasis added).

Here, God makes it clear that, although the Israelites may forget Him, He will never forget them and never break the covenant. Notice how He not only says He would remember the covenant but specifically says He will remember the land. The land is always tied to the covenant.

Scripture is filled with similar promises. In Deuteronomy 4:31, Moses said to the Israelites: “[God] will not abandon or destroy you or forget the covenant with your ancestors, which he confirmed to them by oath” (emphasis added). In Deuteronomy 4:40 he continued: “Keep his decrees and commands, which I am giving you today, so that it may go and your children after and that you may live long in the land the Lord your God gives you for all time.”

(Sekulow 2018, 88)

When I’m preparing and presenting a case before a judge or jury, I’m always focused on a narrative. The story is important. All too often, in fact, the way you frame the evidence can be more important than the evidence itself. It would be easy to bring in an endless string of expert witnesses to drone on and on about facts and figures, but all the facts in the world won’t help you if the jury falls asleep. That’s why you always need to put the facts in context, showing the jury how the puzzle pieces fit together into the bigger narrative you’re telling.

(Sekulow 2018, 93)

The international legitimacy of the State of Israel was confirmed when, on May 11, 1949, Israel was admitted as a full member of the United Nations. Despite Israel’s entry into the UN, a state of war continued between Israel and its Arab neighbors. The Arab states had insisted that the lines separating Israeli and Arab armed forces at the time of the respective ceasefires be proclaimed armistice lines rather than internationally recognized national boundaries. An armistice line is simply a “geographically defined line from which disputing or belligerent forces disengage and withdraw to their respective sides following a truce or cease fire agreement.” It does not signify a legal border. The Arabs demanded the lines be designated armistice lines because none of the Arab states wanted to convey any sense of national legitimacy to the Jewish State of Israel—something that the recognition of armistice lines as international boundaries would have done.

(Sekulow 2018, 169)

The sudden recapture by Israel of the West Bank and Gaza Strip led to a number of questions about how to classify these two territories, as well as how to deal with the areas’ Arab inhabitants until the situation was resolved. 

Israel rightly rejected calling the areas “occupied” la term from the “law of armed conflict” that connotes controlling land that belongs to a foreign sovereign), because doing so would contradict Israel’s claim of sovereignty over them. By definition, a state cannot occupy its own territory.?” Additionally, saying the territories were occupied by Israel “could be taken by some as acceptance of the cease-fire lines from 1949 as accepted international borders.” That was something Israel was not prepared to do in light of its continuing claims to those territories and because it was not required by UNSC Resolution 242 and successive legal resolutions dealing with the issue.

The international debate around whether Israel was the “sovereign” or “occupier” of the West Bank and Gaza Strip did not, however, impact Israel’s commitment to treat the Arab inhabitants well. As such, Israel declared its intention to act in accordance with (not pursuant to) customary international law and the humanitarian provisions of the Fourth Geneva Convention. This intention seems consistent with the view of Israeli law professor Yehuda Z. Blum:

The conclusion to be drawn from all this is that whenever, for one reason or another, there is no concurrence of a normal “legitimate sovereign” with that of a “belligerent occupant” of the territory, only that part of the law of occupation applies which is intended to safeguard the humanitarian rights of the population.

So, regardless of how one viewed Israel’s claim to the land, Israel held itself to higher standards of treatment than it was obligated to do under international law.

(Sekulow 2018, 184-185)

Jerusalem’s political standing has long been, and remains, one of the most sensitive issues in American foreign policy, and indeed it is one of the most delicate issues in current international affairs. The debate in the United States over Jerusalem’s status as Israel’s capital isn’t just a political issue; it has spilled over into the American legal arena as well. Questions about the constitutional powers given to the president, Congress, and our courts have driven this debate for decades. These legal debates matter because they cut to the core of our discussion here, identifying which players on the world’s stage acknowledge Israel’s right to determine its own eternal capital as Jerusalem.

In 1948, President Truman-over the U. S. State Department’s objections-recognized Israel’s statehood in a signed statement of “recognition,” but that statement did not acknowledge Israeli sovereignty over Jerusalem. Recognition is a “formal acknowledgement” that a particular “entity possesses the qualifications for statehood”or “that a particular regime is the effective government of a state.” This acknowledgment could also extend to the determination of a state’s territorial bounds. Recognition doesn’t have to be an overt statement, either; it could be implied-for example, by concluding a bilateral treaty or by sending or receiving diplomatic agents.

(Sekulow 2018, 231)

Israel’s independence in 1948 presented Jewish tradition with all-new challenges and unprecedented opportunities. Having wandered in exile and at the mercy of conquering nations since their crushing defeat by the Romans, it had been almost two thousand years since the Jewish people had a state to call their own. Amid the euphoria of their biblical homecoming and against the backdrop of war, the Jewish people set out to create a system of government that ideally melded their faith-based values with the law. Unlike many secular systems, Jewish law does not stop at merely determining what is legal or illegal; Jewish law also aims to regulate what is ethical. One big challenge for the new nation, then, was to honor ancient Jewish law, such as the Talmud, while still translating it for modern times through an ongoing process of deliberation, debate, and development.

Israeli lawmakers quickly realized that this would not be an easy task. While some of the classic works of Jewish law-most notably the Talmud and the legal works of Maimonides (1135-1204)-do include some scattered references and a few brief guidelines about how to run a country, it became abundantly clear that Jewish law had never fully developed its own laws of state. And so, when the 1948 Israeli Declaration of Independence affirmed that the state and its laws would “be based on freedom, justice and peace as envisaged by the prophets of Israel,” there was room to wonder what exactly that lofty ideal would mean when translated into practice.

It’s only natural for Israel, in its quest to find and revive a corpus traditional Jewish national values, to begin by returning to safer hallowed grounds. The lawmakers believed that advancing the ideal of the Jewish legal spirit could be as simple as translating and extending Judaism’s highly developed moral code. In terms of living, dealing, and relating with each other, the Jews had long followed the biblical principle of Leviticus 19:18, “Love your neighbor as yourself.” So, when seeking a guiding principle for their burgeoning legal system, they sought to expand the Jewish principle of loving your neighbor onto a national and even international scale.

In the waning days of the Obama administration, then secretary of state John Kerry thought this to be an impossible task. He said in 2016, “Israel can either be Jewish or democratic—it cannot be both…” I already told you at the start of this book that I vehemently disagree with that sentiment. More important, so does the nation of Israel. The truth is, Israel has already shown that it is possible to be both democratic and Jewish at the same time. It is what they have done for the last that the doctrine of loving your neighbor is at Seventy years, and what they continue to do today.

(Sekulow 2018, 242-243)

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References

Sekulow, Jay. 2018. Jerusalem: A Biblical and Historical Case for the Jewish Capital. N.p.: Center Street.

ISBN 9781640880771