On the day that Jerusalem-born, Academy Award-winning actress Natalie Portman is due to deliver a “surprise” address to the Democratic National Convention (DNC) in Charlotte, NC, delegates roundly booed party leaders who amended the Democrat platform to include support for Jerusalem as Israel’s capital city.
Los Angeles mayor Antonio Villaraigosa failed–three times in a row–to earn the support of a two-thirds majority of delegates to amend the platform to include Jerusalem and a reference to “God,” which had been omitted. In the end, he merely deemed that the convention had passed the motion–though it clearly had not–and adopted the amendments as written, at which point angry delegates booed, shouted, and shook their heads in anger.
Portman is outspoken about her support for Israel, and speaks fluent Hebrew with an impeccable Israeli accent. While studying at Harvard University, she worked as a research assistant for famed law professor and liberal pro-Israel advocate Alan Dershowitz, who spoke out yesterday against the removal of pro-Israel language from the Democratic Party platform: “My goal is always to keep support for Israel a bi-partisan issue…I don’t think it is a good thing that the Republican platform seems to be more pro-Israel than the Democratic platform.” Portman contributed critical research for Dershowitz’s highly successful 2003 book, The Case for Israel.
Update: Portman’s rep, per a report in The Huffington Post, says the actress will not be attending the DNC.
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