In short, again quoting from the Jerusalem Embassy Act of 1995, “The United States maintains its embassy in the functioning capital of every country except in the case of our democratic friend and strategic ally, the State of Israel.”
As such, the BDS is sadly correct in stating that the free world, led by the United States, does not recognize Jerusalem as Israel’s capital.
However, other BDS claims are easily refutable. For instance: “In 1967, in blatant violation of international law, Israel unilaterally annexed East Jerusalem.” What international law? Australian Foreign Minister Julia Bishop recently announced that her government knows of no law rendering illegal the Jewish presence in the areas Israel won in the Six-Day War. Nor, for the record, does Australia consider any part of Jerusalem “occupied.”
Julia Bishop is not alone. The late Professor Julius Stone, a leading authority on the Law of Nations at the Universities of California and Sydney, held that Jerusalem, as well as Judea and Samaria, cannot be regarded as “occupied” for several reasons – including the fact that these areas never belonged to any other sovereign state. One cannot “conquer” a territory from someone to whom it does not belong.
In addition, international law is actually the basis for the truism that Jerusalem belongs to the Jews. So concludes Dr. Jacques Gauthier, a non-Jewish Canadian lawyer who spent 20 years researching the issue. His 1,300-page doctoral dissertation on Jerusalem and its legal history determines that no less than the League of Nations and the United Nations gave the Jewish people title to the city of Jerusalem.
And so the BDS campaign is seen for what it is: a drive founded on neither international law nor facts – but simply on the anti-Semitic tendency to undermine the national and historic roots of the Jewish people.