is not recognised as the capital by most of the international community. The decision to suddenly drop it was a strange one, not least on practical grounds. In the run-up to an election in which the Obama campaign is short of funds, why alienate potential Jewish donors? The change lasted just over 24 hours. The Democratic national convention chairman, Antonio Villaraigosa, at the start of business Wednesday proposed a vote to return to the document its past commitment to Jerusalem as the Israeli capital. He called for those in favour to the change to shout 'aye' and those against 'no'. It was a hard to tell, with the two sounding evenly-divided but the chairman called the vote in favour of the 'ayes'. In fact, the change required a two-thirds vote in favour and it definitely did not sound anywhere close to that. But Villaraigosa pushed it through anyway, determined to bring a speedy end to an awkward row. As well as reinstating Jerusalem as the capital, another reversal went through at the same time, restoring a mention of God to the document. Both Jerusalem and God were distractions from the business of winning the next election and the Democratic party moved to end them as quickly as it possibly could. One pocket of protest came from the Washington delegation, where one delegate, Majid Al-Bahadli, said, "Jerusalem is Arab and Jewish and Christian, it cannot be for one country." Mr. Al-Bahadli, an Iraqi-American who said he had spent time in a