Vice President Mike Pence declared Tuesday that President Trump and his administration will “always stand with Israel,” adding that the president was considering when to follow up on his campaign promise to relocate the US embassy in Israel to Jerusalem.
The Vice President’s comments were made during the keynote address at an event in the old United Nations General Assembly hall in New York Tuesday.
The Israeli mission to the United Nations the event, which marked the 70th anniversary of the historic vote by the international body to endorse the establishment of a Jewish state in the Land of Israel.
On November 29th, 1947, the United Nations General Assembly voted 33 for, 13 against Resolution 181, with 10 member states abstaining.
The resolution was non-binding, but nevertheless significant as a symbol of international support for the State of Israel, established less than half a year later, in May 1948.
Resolution 181, which called for the partitioning of the British Mandate for Palestine, endorsed the establishment of narrow Jewish state spanning roughly half of the 24% of the Mandate which remained open to Jewish settlement, after Britain stripped the Mandate of roughly three-quarters of its territory to establish the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan.
During his address, Pence stated that Israel’s right to exist was not established by the historic 1947 vote, but predated it as the “self-evident” right to exist.
“Israel didn’t need a resolution to call for its existence, because its right to exist is self-evident, and timeless.
"While Israel was built by human hands, it's impossible not to see the hand of heaven here too.
"The horrors of the Holocaust reminded the world that the safety and security of the Jewish people could not be assured without an independent state.
“Israel is a testament to the unbreakable spirit of the Jewish people.
Pence praised President Trump’s handling of the US-Israel relationship, saying that he had made clear his administration’s support for the Jewish state.
“As President Trump said: ‘If the world knows nothing else, let them know this - that America stands with Israel’.
“Under our administration, America will always stand with Israel.
"America stands with Israel because her cause is our cause, her values are our values and her fight is our fight."
Pence added that the president, who during the 2016 election campaign pledged to move the US embassy from Tel Aviv to Israel’s capital, was “actively considering” both “when and how” to undertake the move.
"President Donald Trump is actively considering when and how to move the American embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem," Pence said.