Restricting where Jews can live is quintessential antisemitism, just like restricting where blacks can live is quintessential racism. Throughout the centuries, Jews have suffered from being constrained to Nazi-, European- and Muslim-imposed squalid, overcrowded, impoverished ghettos (and worse). In the United States in the early-to mid-20th century, restrictive covenants prevented Jews and blacks from buying homes and living in many neighborhoods.
This all should have been behind us.
But outrageously, on Sept. 23 in the midst of the Jewish High Holiday season, 19 Democratic senators, led by Elizabeth Warren of Massachusetts, Chris Coons of Delaware, Ron Wyden of Oregon and Ruben Gallego of Arizona, introduced a proposed bill (S.5476) to drastically penalize and prevent some 3,400 Jewish families from building and living in a tiny 4.6 square-mile enclave (smaller than many airports) called E1, located between Jerusalem and the nearby Jewish Jerusalem suburb of Ma’ale Adumim.
The legislation is thus quintessential antisemitism.
This discriminatory bill also violates international law. A long series of binding international agreements, including the San Remo Resolution, League of Nations Mandate, Anglo-American Convention and U.N. Charter, guarantees this area for the Jewish homeland and Jewish settlement. In addition, the bill violates the Oslo Accords (agreed to and signed by the Palestinian Authority), which assign this area to full Israeli control. It also threatens Jewish rights, safety and dignity.
And it violates and attempts to reverse U.S. policy. In August 2025, the U.S. State Department supported the E1 building project and stated that it was in line with American policies of assuring stability and achieving peace.
The bill also ignores desperate housing needs due to Jerusalem’s overcrowding; a severe housing shortage (tiny Israel needs an estimated 200,000 apartments to meet current demand); the Hamas-led invasion and decimation of southern Israeli communities on Oct. 7, 2023, which drove thousands of Israelis from their homes—many of which were burned to the ground or badly damaged—and the Hezbollah rocket attacks that decimated northern Israeli communities and displaced tens of thousands of Israelis.
If this legislation were to pass, it would only enable more anti-Jewish violence. The absence of Jewish homes in E1 has led to Arab terrorists using E1 to stage attacks on Jews commuting between Ma’ale Adumim and Jerusalem. For instance, in February 2024, three Arab terrorists opened fire on innocent Jewish commuters, murdering one and wounding at least eight innocent Jews.
The 19 Senate Democrats’ bill targets only Israel, only the Jews. There is no similar U.S. bill prohibiting building or living in any place in any other country on the planet, even places that actually discriminate. For instance, no U.S. bill sanctions building or living in Mecca, which prohibits entry to non-Muslims. By the way, metro Mecca is 108 times larger than E1.
And there is no U.S. bill sanctioning the illegal building by the Palestinian Authority (financed by Europeans and others) of more than 100,000 structures on the lands assigned to Israel under the Oslo Accords. The P.A.’s violations of its agreements are being ignored. There is no bill restricting Arabs from building in Judea and Samaria.
Further, the claim that building homes in E1 “threatens the viability of a future Palestinian state” is false. There is no conceivable future Palestinian state for which Israel would abandon the suburb of Ma’ale Adumim (population 40,000) and the E1 corridor connecting it to Jerusalem, the eternal Jewish capital of Israel. In the last 80 years, on each of the eight or more occasions that the Arabs were offered a side-by-side state on land designated for the Jewish homeland, the Arabs rejected it.
Instead, they went to war or started murderous campaigns against Jews. That’s because their real goal was and continues to be Israel’s destruction, not a state.
After Oct. 7, with Fatah (Palestinian Authority’s governing party) terrorists gleefully participating in perpetrating the horror of that day, no decent person should suggest creating a Palestinian-Arab state. It would wind up being a larger Gaza terrorist enclave.
P.A. chief Mahmoud Abbas, who will turn 91 in November, publicly praises the atrocities done to men, women and children on Oct. 7, as do other such officials. The P.A. also continues its heinous “pay for slay” program—providing $400 million in lifetime pensions per year to Arab terrorists to maim or murder Jews. That sum includes compensating the 6,000 or so Arab terrorists who slaughtered 1,200 people at the Nova music festival and in southern Israeli communities on Oct. 7. A Palestinian state would only serve as a springboard for similar pogroms.
If these Senate Democrats truly cared about peace and security, then they should be joining the U.S. State Department in supporting the E1 building project.
Instead, despicably, the 19 Senate Democrats’ bill imposes draconian mandatory sanctions on a long list of ordinary Jews, businesses, and even Israeli government officials and employees deemed to be responsible for, complicit in, directly or indirectly engaged in, or attempting a long list of activities related to Jews building or residing in E1. The list further sweeps up plumbers, road workers, mortgage lenders, electricians, water- and sewage-treatment workers and companies, and other individuals that support a community.
The legislation’s mandatory sanctions are imposed by reference to the severe penalties of the International Emergency Economic Powers Act, 50 U.S.C. §1705. These include civil penalties of up to $250,000 or twice the amount of the transaction, as well as criminal penalties consisting of fines of up to $1 million and up to 20 years’ imprisonment—or both. Moving a friend’s couch into an apartment in E-1 or working for a road-building company could result in financial devastation.
To put things into perspective, many of the senator sponsors and co-sponsors hypocritically own multiple homes, living in the lap of luxury in the United States. And now, they are trying to deny a few Jewish families the right to one apartment in a tiny corner of the tiny Jewish homeland.
No one told any of those 19 Democratic senators: “You can’t live here.” No one sanctioned their builders, movers, plumbers or electricians. How dare they try to do this to Jewish residents living in their lawful and biblical homeland.
