Today, the J Street Education Fund announced the placement of a full-page ad in seven Jewish weekly newspapers around the country, underscoring the need to address the demographic realities of Jerusalem as an integral part of any peace negotiations and aiming to spark a broad, robust and civil conversation in the Jewish community on this complex issue.
The ad features excerpts from an op-ed by former Israeli Minister of Education and Minister of the Environment and prominent Israeli political commentator Yossi Sarid, written in response to Elie Wiesel’s open letter that called on the United States to halt diplomatic action around Jerusalem. The op-ed originally ran in Haaretz on April 14th.
The J Street Education Fund ad will run in The Forward, The Jewish Week (New York), Chicago Jewish News, Chicago Jewish Star, j: The Jewish News Weekly of Northern California, Jewish Journal of Greater Los Angeles, and Washington Jewish Week.
A PDF of the ad is available here.
J Street believes that the single best way to secure Jerusalem as the capital of Israel – and Israel’s future as the democratic homeland of the Jewish people – is through a two-state solution under which the Jewish neighborhoods of Jerusalem would fall under Israeli sovereignty, and the Arab neighborhoods would fall under Palestinian sovereignty.
The ad comes on the heels of an open letter to Wiesel, signed by many prominent Israeli intellectuals who argue that Jerusalem must be addressed and shared in order to live up to Judaism’s values and vision. “This-worldly Jerusalem must be shared by the people of the two nations residing in it,” the 99 signatories write. “Only a shared city will live up to the prophet’s vision: ‘Zion shall be redeemed with justice.’”