The prophet Ezekiel stated (5:5), “This is Jerusalem, I have set her in the midst of nations and countries are around her.”  The Talmud (Derech Eretz Zuta 9) teaches that Jerusalem is the eye of the universe. Indeed, throughout history, disproportionate focus and attention has always been placed on the sovereignty of Jerusalem.   

In their outstanding book, Because It’s Just and Right: The Untold Back-Story of the US Embassy in Jerusalem, Farley Weiss and Leonard Grunstein, have provided a compelling and irrefutable survey of the legal, historic and religious evidence that Jerusalem was, is and will always be, the undivided, eternal capital of the Jewish people and of the State of Israel.  The 2018 opening of the United States Embassy in Jerusalem was the fulfillment of legislation passed twenty-three years earlier recognizing Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, but much more than that, it was a reflection and recognition of a truth that dates back thousands of years earlier. 

Farley and Leonard don’t just tell the remarkable story of the US Embassy Opening in Jerusalem against great odds, they lived it, contributed towards it, and now, in this book they invite us to celebrate it with them.  

The authors narrate and analyze the torturous path that led to US recognition of Jerusalem as Israel’s capital and the relocation there of the American embassy. Along the way, we encounter political commitment and double-talk, good intentions and malice, fecklessness and courage. The facts – some of them new to me but all well sourced – reveal the story of modern Israel and modern Jerusalem. The authors are obviously lovers of Jerusalem – and all lovers of Jerusalem will love this book.

My daughter Malki was one of fifteen people murdered in the bombing of the Sbarro pizzeria in Jerusalem, Israel on August 9, 2001. The pain of her loss is felt every day by our family and many other families as two Americans were murdered in the attack – Malki and a young woman from New Jersey pregnant with her first child – while a third, a young mother, was in a coma for 22 years and has since passed away.

Fifteen innocents were murdered that day, seven of them children, and 130 others suffered injuries. Four Americans were among the latter.

“Because it is Just and Right”, the book by Farley Weiss and Len Grunstein deals, as its title proclaims, with the idea of a Middle East policy based on moral principles.. The authors relate how the terrorist who masterminded the Sbarro atrocity brought the human bomb – a man with an explosives-filled guitar case slung across his back and a fierce zeal to kill and be killed – to the pizzeria’s entrance in the bustling center of Israel’s capital.

The mastermind’s name is Ahlam Ahmad Al-Tamimi. She lives free as a celebrity and hero in Jordan today. A treaty between Jordan and the United States made in 1995 requires that Jordan take her into custody and hand her to the American authorities who have been waiting for this to happen since the charges became public in March 2017.

But she remains free in Jordan. She has been an FBI Most Wanted Terrorist since 2017 with a State Department reward of $5 million on her head. And yet, as the book makes clear, Jordan appears to pay no price for breaching the extradition treaty and failing to extradite her to Washington.

The book makes it clear that policies are needed that are based on justice and moral clarity. And unsurprisingly, as with the US Embassy move to Jerusalem which is where my family lives, a policy based on morality and justice is also a policy that will succeed.

— Arnold Roth, an attorney and technology business manager, serves as honorary chair of the Malki Foundation which he and his wife Frimet established in 2001. Its work honors the memory of their daughter Malki, murdered in a terrorist attack on the Sbarro pizza shop in the center of Jerusalem.