What happened
On May 14, 2018, the United States opened its embassy in Jerusalem. The ribbon was cut that afternoon. Moving the embassy was a top goal for AIPAC, the big Israel lobby in Washington.
The change started five months earlier. On December 6, 2017, the president signed Proclamation 9683. It said Jerusalem was Israel's capital.
The same afternoon as the ribbon-cutting, people died at the Gaza border. We show both halves. We tell you how to feel about neither.
The receipt
This is promise #74 in the SEALED 2016 audit. It is graded KEPT.
For twenty years before this, four presidents kept the embassy in Tel Aviv. The law let them sign a waiver every six months to delay the move. Each one signed it, over and over. Then one president stopped signing it.
Five months before the ribbon-cutting, the United Nations General Assembly voted on the capital decision. The vote was 128 to 9 against it. The move went ahead anyway.
Why the grade is narrow
KEPT only grades the move. It does not grade the afternoon.
The death toll that day is hard to pin down, so we give you the real range. The UN aid office (OCHA) counted 55 people killed at the Gaza border that day. A later UN Commission of Inquiry counted 73 who died of wounds from that day. The number 60 was reported as the count rose. We hold all three numbers honestly.
Why this matters
A promise can be kept and still leave you with a hard question. The move was a clear promise, and it was kept. The same afternoon carried a death toll that the headline never showed.
We are not telling you what to think. We are showing you the promise, the public record, and the same date on both.
If the promise was kept, what do you call the same afternoon? That is the question to sit with.
Watch the video
- Long-form video: https://youtu.be/ihnYXzqIwUQ
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Read the SEALED 2016 audit at https://sealed2016.com.
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