It is safe to assume that you have never heard of Menachem Zivotofsky. In fact, there is no particular reason for you to know the name of the boy born 10 years ago in Jerusalem, except that his parents filed a lawsuit against the US State Department.

The family’s demand that it be allowed to identify Menachem’s birthplace as “Jerusalem, Israel” has far broader implications than the boy’s personal status and that of some 50,000 additional American citizens born in Jerusalem. It was also intended to affect US foreign policy by forcing the US president and his administration to recognize both parts of Jerusalem as a city in the state of Israel and as its capital. This week, on July 23, however, after a lengthy legal process, three judges on a US federal court of appeals ruled that "the President exclusively holds the power to determine whether to recognize a foreign sovereign.” President Barack Obama, as we know, has not yet changed the traditional US view of Jerusalem's status.

It should come as no surprise that the court decided to refrain from intervening in what has been US policy on Jerusalem since Israel was founded in 1948. If anything, it is a wonder that Israelis are surprised that the United States is sticking to its position. This case, it appears, is the latest in a series of reminders Israel has been getting that as far as the world is concerned, the conflict that began in 1948 is not yet over. The issue of Jerusalem’s recognition is forcing Israel to deal with the reality that the unilateral steps it takes are not binding or acceptable to other countries.

International law, which is not dissociated from the diplomatic and political views of nations, cannot serve Israel only when it is convenient, such as the certain amount of success it enjoyed this week in causing the European Union to list the military wing of Hezbollah as a terror organization on July 22. The rules of the international community dictate that it must heed decisions made by its official bodies, as long as these rules have not been changed. The binding decision regarding Jerusalem was, and still is, UN General Assembly Resolution 181, adopted November 29, 1947. The resolution determined that the city be declared “corpus separatum,” an international zone on neutral ground run by a special UN authority.