JERUSALEM – I PLEDGE
If I forget thee, O, Jerusalem,
Let my right hand forget [her skill].
Let my tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth,
If I do not remember thee,
If
I do not place Jerusalem above my chief joy.
-- Psalm 137:5-6
"The Arabs may try to turn their mythology
into history
but we will never let them turn our history into mythology."
-- Rabbi Haskel Lookstein
New York
rally for Jerusalem
On Monday, 400,000 Jews gathered outside the walls of the Old City and swore allegiance to Jerusalem. In doing so, those who attended the rally, along with their supporters both in Israel and abroad, joined the countless generations of our people who have affirmed our nation's abiding refusal to turn its back on that which we hold most sacred.
In every generation, the Jewish people have faced
a clear and often painful choice. While this choice has assumed many different forms
throughout our history, from conversion in the Middle Ages to assimilation in
the Modern Age, it has remained essentially the same - to be true to our faith,
tradition and people no matter what the consequences, or to escape our identity
in the hope that this would afford a measure of peace, quiet and acceptance.
We are here today as Jews precisely because our
forefathers refused to opt for "peace now" solutions, no matter how
difficult the alternative. That is why the spirit of Jews as diverse as those
who fought against Greek assimilation, rebelled against Roman tyranny, died
rather than convert, and rejected a plan to build a national home in Uganda
were all with us this week - for while they are no longer physically present,
the idea that justified their struggle endures.
In the last few weeks and months, the hostile intentions of those with whom we seek to make peace have been unmasked. No doubt it is obvious to all who are not blind that the Palestinian leadership is not yet prepared to live in peace with us and that in this environment, concessions will only lead to more violence. But when it comes to Jerusalem, this is beside the point. The Jewish people must refuse to divide Jerusalem not because our neighbors don't desire peace, but because even peace is not worth any price - and a peace that demands that we sacrifice our identity as a nation and undermine our connection as one people is a peace that must be rejected.
Jerusalem is not merely the capital of our country, but also the bedrock of our existence -- the nexus of Jewish national and religious life. For 1,000 years of life in the Land of Israel, it was here that our priests prayed, our prophets preached, and our kings ruled. For the 2,000 years of our exile, it was the source of our hopes and aspirations, symbolizing our dream to return to Zion, ingather our people, and rebuild our nation.
We are told by those who support Jerusalem's division that it is only a "symbol". But if there were ever a people of symbols, it is the Jews. We fill our days, months and years with a multitude of symbols of faith, tradition and heritage that give meaning to our lives and purpose to our history. Jerusalem, perhaps more than any other, has proven the most potent symbol of all.
I know the enormous capacity of this 'symbol' to empower those who invoke its name and believe in its force. Over two decades ago, I said the following words to a Soviet Court about to sentence me to 15 years in prison for my work as a Jewish activist.
For 2,000 years the Jewish people, my people, have been dispersed all over the world and seemingly deprived of any hope of returning. But still, each year Jews have stubbornly, and apparently without reason, said to each other, "Leshana haba'a biyrushalayim! [Next year in Jerusalem!]". And today, when I am further than ever from my dream, from my people, and from my Avital, and when many difficult years of prisons and camps lie ahead of me, I say to my wife and to my people, Leshana haba'a biyrushalayim.
And this week, together with my family, writing these words in our historic capital city as the leader of the Jewish state turns his back on the hundreds of generations that came before him and agrees to trade his nation's most sacred possession for a promise of peace, quiet and acceptance, I say to my ancient people, Leshana haba'a biyrushalayim.
Comments
on the Jerusalem rally, in excerpts from The Wall Street Journal:
That they delivered their message peacefully should not diminish but rather should increase the respect that is accorded to that message, if for no other reason than to show that violence is not the only course of action rewarded in the "peace process".
[T]he rally, which was held outside the US mission to the UN . . . was organized by the Coalition for Jewish Concerns - Amcha.
"President Clinton would never hand over the Washington Monument or the Statue of Liberty to terrorists, promote Osama bin Laden as an equal, nor tolerate shooting attacks on the White House," Rabbi Avi Weiss, national president of Amcha, said in a press release.
[. . . .] Speakers also gave the crowd a briefing on the fate of Jewish holy sites under Arab control. "I am not the prophet or the son of a prophet, but if we give away Har Habayit [the Temple Mount], Jews will not be able to walk to the Western Wall without being shot upon," said Weiss.
. . . [A]
group of Amcha supporters returned to New York after conducting a two-week
mission to Israel. Participants visited
the families of victims of Palestinian
terror attacks. "We need more public awareness," said Joan Stark, who
went on the solidarity mission. "We can't sit back and wait for things to
happen."
JERUSALEM
– HISTORY AND MYTH
Thus
said the Lord: I have returned to Zion,
and I will dwell in Jerusalem.
Jerusalem
will be called the City of Faithfulness,
and the Mount of the Lord of Hosts the Holy
Mount.
– Zecheriah 8:1
"Mecca
is holy to Muslims, Jerusalem is holy to Jews."
-- Yakut, 13th-century Arab geographer
One of the many fanciful claims about the Mideast
crisis is that Jerusalem has always been an Arab city. The latest official
rhetoric from Yasser Arafat's Palestinian Authority even goes to far as to
suggest that there never was a Jewish Temple in Jerusalem. Such
characterizations are hardly worthy of addressing, yet as long as one of the
principals involved in the dispute adamantly denies the historical facts, they
must be addressed.
The truth is that it is the Arab presence in the land before the nation of Israel was re-formed by the United Nations mandate in 1948 that is being exaggerated – particularly in Jerusalem.
A travel guide to
Palestine and Syria, published in 1906 by Karl Baedeker, illustrates the fact
that, even when the Islamic Ottoman Empire ruled the region, the Muslim
population in the city was minimal. The book estimates the total population of
the city at 60,000, of whom 7,000 were Muslims, 13,000 were Christians and
40,000 were Jews. "The number of Jews has greatly risen in the last few decades,
in spite of the fact that they are forbidden to immigrate or to possess landed
property," the book states.
Even though the Jews were persecuted, still they came to Jerusalem and represented the overwhelming majority of the population as early as 1906. Why was the Muslim population so law? After all, we're told that Jerusalem is the third holist city in Islam. Surelyt, if this were a widely-held belief in 1906, more of the dvout would have settled there.
The
truth is that the Jewish presence in Jerusalem and throughout the Holy Land
persisted throughout its bloody history, as is documented in Joan Peters’
milestone history on the origins of the Arab-Jewish conflict in the region, From
Time Immemorial. First published in 1984, Peters’ book was a best-seller
-- and for good reason. It shatters many of the Middle East myths that are
still shaping international public policy and the so-called “peace
process.” A vicious disinformation campaign followed publication of the
monumental book. That’s one reason you’ll be fortunate if you can
find one dusty, old copy today tucked away on the shelf of a large used book
store. It is absolutely must-reading for anyone interested in understanding the
conflict that threatens nearly every day to escalate into a world war. The
truth is sometimes hard to accept. But truth is the only reliable foundation
for peace.
The
Muslim claim to Jerusalem is based on what is written in the Koran.
Unfortunately, the city is never mentioned by name. The closest it comes to a
reference is in Sura 17:1, which refers to the “furthest mosque.”
Today, many Arabs claim this is a reference to the Al Aqsa Mosque -- the place
where Allah supposedly took Mohammed for a journey and the site from which the
prophet of Islam reputedly ascended into heaven. The current Arab uprising in
Jerusalem is called the Al Aqsa Intifida and centers around this claim. But is
it legitimate?
Mohammed
died in 632 AD. At the time, Jerusalem was a Christian city. It was captured by
Khalif Omar six years after Mohammed’s death. Prior to the capture, the
Church of Saint Mary of Justinian stood on the Temple Mount. There was no
mosque in the entire city. The Dome of the Rock was built in 691. Twenty years
later, the Church of Saint Mary was converted into a mosque with the familiar
dome on top. It was named Al Aqsa, so it would sound like the “furthest
mosque” mentioned in the Koran.
That’s
the basis of the Islamic claim to Jerusalem and the Temple Mount.
JERUSALEM AND THE JEWISH PEOPLE
In
the year 701 BCE, during the reign of King Hezekiah of Judah, the mighty and
aggressive King Sennacherib of Assyria laid siege to Jerusalem. The siege
failed, and he withdrew. The story is told in three places in the Bible: II
Kings 18-19, II Chronicles 32 and Isaiah 36-37.
For
those academics and pseudo-academics who dismiss the ancient historical records
of the Bible as late fictions, there is another record of this event they
cannot dismiss. It is a record in the archives of King Sennacherib himself, written
in the very same year of 701 BCE: "Hezekiah, the proud Jew, would not
bow down to my yoke, so I shut him up in Jerusalem, his royal city, like a bird
in a cage." Thus, by the very
testimony of an enemy, it is known that Jerusalem was the capital of a Jewish
kingdom more than 1300 years before the birth of Islam in distant Arabia.
President Clinton proposed last
week that Israel surrender the eastern half of Jerusalem, including most of the
Old City and the Temple Mount, as part of a final peace plan with the
Palestinians. To the dismay of Israel's friends the world over, Prime Minister
Ehud Barak agreed to accept Clinton's scheme as the basis for new talks. Barak
has spent his brief tenure as prime minister trying to appease Israel's
enemies, but even for him this was a shocking departure.
"Only one who does not understand the depth of the
total emotional bond between the Jewish nation and Jerusalem," Barak had
avowed just seven months ago on the 33nd anniversary of Jerusalem's
reunification, "only one who is totally estranged from the legacy of
Jewish history . . . could possibly
entertain the thought that Israel would concede even a part of Jerusalem. Only
one who does not understand that Jerusalem has been intertwined with the souls
of our ancestors for 3,000 years . . .
could demand that we turn our backs on it."
[….] Slicing up Jerusalem will no more lead to
Arab-Israeli peace than slicing up Cairo or Damascus would. Arafat's object is
not sovereignty in a state next to Israel with East Jerusalem as its capital.
It is sovereignty in a state that used to be Israel with all of Jerusalem as
its capital. And as the last seven years have made clear, territory ceded to
the Palestinians soon becomes a staging area for new attacks on Israel.
"Land for peace" has proven a deadly hoax; the more land Israel has
yielded to the Palestinian Authority, the more violence and bloodshed it has
reaped.
To whom should Jerusalem belong? Arafat speaks of
al-Quds, as it is called in Arabic, as if the Islamic attachment to the city is
ancient, overwhelming, and self-evident. . . . . Journalists routinely describe
Jerusalem as Islam's 'third-holiest city,' and identify the Temple Mount as
'sacred to both Jews and Muslims.'
But the Jewish and Muslim claims to Jerusalem are not
remotely comparable. The bonds of loyalty and love that bind the Jews to
Jerusalem are without parallel. For three millennia, Jerusalem has been central
to Jewish self-awareness. Since the time of King Solomon, Jews have turned
toward Jerusalem in prayer -- and Jewish prayer is replete with remembrances of
the holy city.
"Only those who do not understand the depth of the total emotional bond of the Jewish people to Jerusalem, only those who are completely removed from any connection with their historical legacy and who are estranged from the vision of the nation, from the poetry of that nation's life, from its faith and from the hope it has cherished for generations--only persons in that category could possibly entertain the thought that the State of Israel would actually concede even a part of Jerusalem."
Those words
. . . were spoken by Ehud Barak, on the eve of his election as prime minister
in May 1999. But he accepted a hand-up to high office from President Bill
Clinton. If things go as Mr. Clinton now hopes, Mr. Barak will in a few weeks
ask the voters of Israel to approve a deal under which Jerusalem is divided and
some of the holiest sites in Judaism are turned over to Israel's Palestinian
Arab enemies. Given the past record of the Arabs as custodians of Jewish holy
sites, Israel may soon have to beg to get back the stones that will be torn
from the graves of Jewish heroes on the Mount of Olives.
This turnaround has burst onto the Jewish consciousness during an astonishing interregnum, in which a lame duck American president has maneuvered frantically to manipulate the Israeli scene to his ends. But it has been under incubation for months, aided and abetted by left-wing factions within the Jewish community. One of them, the Israel Policy Forum, is boasting this week that it has ;transformed the conventional wisdom on how American Jews view the peace process, helping to provide [Mr. Clinton] with the political support he has needed to broker agreements over the course of the peace process.
That language is from a wire the Israel Policy Forum is sending out with an invitation to a January 7 "tribute dinner" -- call it a feast of appeasement--at which it will honor Mr. Clinton and those who have helped grease the skids under the concept of sole, eternal Israeli sovereignty over an undivided Jerusalem. This, incidentally, is a principle in which Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin believed right up until the moment he was killed. It is a principle that has been embedded in U.S. law by overwhelming bipartisan vote of Congress.
ARCHAEOLOGICAL
TERRORISM
This is the term often used for the obliteration of Hebraic and Judaic sites and artifacts on Temple Mount, carried out by the Wakf (Muslim religious authority). In 1967. Moshe Dayan permitted this body to retain administration of the mosque on Temple Mount. It has, instead, taken over the entire Mount and is assiduously destroying all relics of the First Temple and the Second Temple, while denying any Jewish or Christian link to this historic and most holy of sites.
Some
of the ongoing destruction is cited in excerpts from an editorial in The
Jerusalem Post, 29
June 2000.
For the past 33 years, since Mordechai (Motta) Gur emotionally declared 'the Temple Mount is in our hands,' Israel has in fact delegated almost all authority over the Temple Mount to the Moslem Wakf. The reason for this was to scrupulously uphold Israel's commitment to respect each religion's authority over its own holy places. Accordingly, Israel distilled its entire connection to the site that was Judaism's crucible into one peripheral spot, the Western Wall, leaving the actual site where the Temples stood to the Moslem shrines and mosques that were subsequently built there.
In response to its possibly unparalleled act of enlightened restraint, Israel has not only received little recognition, but is denied a modicum of reciprocity. Incredibly, the Moslem Wakf denies any Jewish connection to the site where tradition holds that Abraham almost sacrificed his son Isaac, King David established his capital, and his son Solomon built the First Temple. Just to make sure, the Wakf has prevented archeologists from plumbing one of the world's most prominen ancient treasures for its secrets.
. . . It is one thing, however, to prevent exploration and quite another to bulldoze through ancient structures without any archeological supervision. . . . [T]he Wakf opened what it called an "emergency exit" to the mosque it had built in the chambers under the Temple Mount surface known as Solomon's Stables. By now this exit has expanded into a gaping hole 2000 square meters in area and up to 12 meters deep. . . . Thousands of tons of fill from the site, subsequently found by archeologists to contain First and Second Temple artifacts ,were unceremoniously dumped into the Kidron Valley.
An urgent open letter sent to the prime minister warns that "a serious act of irreparable archeological vandalism and destruction is being carried out without archeological supervision, while abrogating the Antiquities Law and Antiquities Authority remains inactive." This public effort is notable for its political diversity . . . Indeed, it should not be surprising that Israelis of all stripes are appalled that the law requiring almost every road and building site to submit to archeological supervision is brazenly suspended on the Temple Mount, potentially one of the richest archeological sites in the world.
.
. . The Wakf's history of outrageous disregard for the archeological patrimony of
all three faiths to whom the Mount is holy is reason enough not to perpetuate
its current degree of authority in the context of a final-status agreement. If
Israel is considering enshrining the Wakf's authority by agreement, now is the
time to enforce international standards of preservation and respect for ancient
sites.
* * * * * * * * * * * *
ARABS
WHO DWELL IN JERUSALEM
The
neighborhoods of East Jerusalem, where Arabs reside, is too often miscalled
"Arab Jerusalem". These neighborhoods were built after the Jewish
restoration of normal life in a Jerusalem long left to fall into decay. That
Arabs then moved into these neighborhoods does not make them "Arab
territory" any more than New York's China Town is Chinese territory.
The
situation and prospects of Arab residents of East Jerusalem are reported in
these excerpts from the Israeli newspaper Ha'Aretz, 29 December 2000:
The
Al Aqsa Intifada, and Israel's response to it, have caused untold damage to
Abed al-Razak Abed. The 30-year-old Silwan resident has five children, and his
wife is pregnant. The Palestinian-Israeli conflict has stopped him from going
to work: He's been unemployed for months as the drop in tourism led to
cut-backs in the West Jerusalem hotel where he had worked. He also has no way of
claiming unemployment.
East Jerusalem's Employment Service bureau shut down when the violent clashes started, and one of two local National Insurance Institute branches (a site where two Israeli security personnel were murdered) has also been closed for weeks.
But the worst is probably still ahead. If there's anything that might further aggravate Abed's personal woes, it could be a hasty, head-long consummation of the PA-Israel peace deal now being discussed. "They don't care about people," Abed says . . . Arab residents in Jerusalem [are entitled] to the social benefits Israelis receive. . . . social services are provided to East Jerusalemites. "Who can promise me that such services will be provided under the Palestinian Authority?" Abed asks. "Look at what's happening in Ramallah, Hebron and the Gaza Strip. Are residents well off there?"
"People are in a panic," says Husam Watad, director of the Beit Hanina community council. "Statistics show that more than 50 percent of [East] Jerusalem residents live below the poverty line, and you can imagine how the situation would look if residents did not receive National Insurance Institute payments."
Many social service professionals, Arabs and Jews, believe that if authority over East Jerusalem neighborhoods is transferred to the Palestinian Authority . . . thousands of local residents could literally go hungry. . . . . On the other hand, he notes, local residents had the small consolation of knowing that they wouldn't go hungry, because of social service entitlements. "It's no wonder," Watam adds, "that many [Arabs] are afraid of the Palestinian Authority."
"Were someone to conduct a secret poll, it would clearly show that most residents prefer the continuation of Israeli power,"' says an academic and social activist who lives in Umm Tova. And a physician who works for the Kupat Holim Clalit health maintenance organization, says that "most of my patients still want me to send them to Hadassah [University Hospital] . . . [they] have more trust in medical services provided by Israelis."
East Jerusalemites' . . . fears concern more substantive irregularities and abuses: corruption, lack of justice, the over-turning of fundamental democratic rights. "There [in the PA], money goes exclusively to those who have power," says Abed. "Here [under Israeli control] I at least know that I'll receive what other unemployed persons get. Here I can at least articulate complaints. Over there, if I were simply to open my mouth, they'd put me in prison."
* * * * * * * * * * * *
Ten measures of beauty descended on the world. Nine are for
Jerusalem,
and
one for the rest of the world. – The Talmud
END