Journalists at CBS News instructed not to say Jerusalem is in Israel

A memo instructing CBS News journalists not to refer to Jerusalem as being located in the State of Israel has sparked widespread outrage.

Following a series of controversial incidents at the prominent U.S. news outlet, the Free Press leaked an email sent to all employees by Mark Memmott, CBS News senior director of standards and practices, to all employees in late August.

The email instructed staff to “be careful with some terms when we talk or write about the news,” specifically stating that when mentioning Jerusalem, “Do not refer to it as being in Israel.” The reason given was that the “status of Jerusalem goes to the heart of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.”

In a post on 𝕏 Guy Benson of Fox News wrote: “Jerusalem is not only in Israel, it is the capital of Israel. What on earth is happening at CBS?”

Oliver Wiseman of the Free Press revealed that the memo had been sent to “thousands” of employees, and included Memmott’s reasoning behind denying the geographical reality.

“Yes, the U.S. embassy is there and the Trump administration recognized it as being Israel’s capital. But its status is disputed. The status of Jerusalem goes to the heart of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Israel regards Jerusalem as its ‘eternal and undivided’ capital, while the Palestinians claim East Jerusalem – occupied by Israel in the 1967 Middle East war – as the capital of a future state.”

Wiseman responded: “Acknowledging the competing claims on different parts of the city, or declining to refer to Jerusalem as Israel’s capital, are one thing. Denying that it is in Israel at all is quite another.”

David Harsanyi, senior writer for the Washington Examiner posted on 𝕏, "Then we can stop referring to CBS employees as journalists."

Benny Gantz, leader of the National Unity Party, slammed CBS for the report. "Jerusalem’s status is clear and undisputed - the eternal capital of the Jewish people," he wrote on X.

"It has been so for millennia, and will always remain so. No attempt to distort or hide that reality will change it.

The city of Jerusalem is unique in that it holds great significance for all three main monotheistic religions. Under the Ottoman Empire, Jerusalem enjoyed a special administrative status, with Administrative Regulations of 1877-1888 recognizing the city and its environs as having an "autonomous" or "independent" status. The 1947 UN Partition Plan proposed bringing Jerusalem under international governance as a “corpus separatum.”

However, this proposal was rejected by Arabs within the land and in the surrounding nations, and after the subsequent 1948 war, the city was split between Israel and Jordan, with eastern Jerusalem including the Old City being under Jordanian control. 

In 1967, when five armies rose up against the Jewish state, Israel fought back and gained territory, including East Jerusalem, reuniting the city and bringing it under Jewish control for the first time since the Hasmonean era in the time of the Second Temple.

The legality of the annexation has been disputed, but since both 1948 and 1967 were wars of self-defense, international law recognizes the legitimacy of using military force. Moreover, the only country in the world that had recognized Jordanian sovereignty over Jerusalem was Pakistan.

Today, Jerusalem is the capital of the State of Israel, a fact recognized by the United States Congress in 1995 in the Jerusalem Embassy Relocation Act.

Former U.S. President Donald Trump moved the U.S. Embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem in line with the legislation in 2017, a move that has since been followed by several other nations.