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Jerusalem: The heart of Israel, the heart of the Jewish people
By Menachem Z. Rosensaft
We all have our lines in the sand. One of mine is the insidious historical revisionism - akin to Holocaust denial - that seeks to undermine and negate Jewish claims to and rights in Jerusalem. This campaign is part and parcel of a broader international campaign to delegitimize the State of Israel whenever and wherever possible.
In yet another step in the attempted political and spiritual dejudaization, for lack of a better term, of Jerusalem, Al-Mutawakel Taha, a senior official in the Palestinian Authority's Ministry of Information, writes in a recent study that the Western Wall "was never part of the so-called Temple Mount," but rather "is in fact the western wall of Al-Aksa Mosque." Jews, Taha contends in the study posted in Arabic on the Ministry's Web site, have no claim on the Western Wall which he unilaterally seeks to convert into "a Muslim wall and an integral part of the Aksa Mosque."
In Taha's fallacious rewriting of history, the Jewish religious attachment to the Western Wall only dates back to the 1917 Balfour Declaration. Never mind the overwhelming archaeological evidence that the Western Wall is indeed a retaining wall of the Second Temple, and that the Al-Aksa Mosque was built atop the Temple's ruins. Never mind that according to Christian sources, Jews have regularly come to the Temple Mount to mourn the Temple's destruction and have prayed at the Western Wall since at least the third century of the Common Era.
Never mind that, as Karen Armstrong wrote in Time magazine in 2001, "In the 16th century, Ottoman Sultan Suleiman the Magnificent permitted the Jews to make the Western Wall their official holy place and had his court architect Sinan build an oratory for them there." Never mind that less than 100 years later, according to a contemporaneous account by a Jerusalem Jew, "The City of God contained more of our people than at any time since the Jews were banished from their country. Many Jews came daily to live in the City, apart from those coming to pray at the Western Wall." Never mind that in his 1837 book, Incidents of Travel in Egypt, Arabia Petraea and the Holy Land, American explorer John Lloyd Stephens described how "the chief rabbi of Jerusalem . . . accompanied by a Gibraltar Jew who spoke English" took him to "what they call a part of the wall of Solomon's temple . . . . I saw that day, as other travelers may still see every Friday in the year, all the Jews in Jerusalem clothed in their best raiment, winding through the narrow streets of their quarter; and under this hallowed wall, with the sacred volume in their hands, singing in the language in which they were written the Songs of Solomon and the Psalms of David."
Just so that we all sing from the same hymnal, the Western Wall is not the only vestige of the Temple. In September 2008, archaeologists announced the excavation of remnants of the Southern Wall on Jerusalem's Mount Zion. And Robinson's Arch, located near the Western Wall and where non-Orthodox Jewish groups are allowed to pray, is another very concrete Temple relic.
But the Jewish people's attachment to Jerusalem far transcends its archaeological dimension. During an 1891 visit to Palestine, the Zionist thinker and theoretician Ahad Ha-Am wrote to his family that: "I am now in Jerusalem. I cannot express to you, even in a small way, my emotions at being here. Every step, every stone speaks to me of our history. Mount Zion, the Temple Mount, the Mount of Olives. Only when one is here does one realize how foolish it is of our opponents, the Arabs, to think that we will ever give up on Jerusalem. It is the heart of the Land of Israel, the heart of the Jew."
Ethereal visions of Jerusalem have permeated the Jewish consciousness throughout almost two millennia of exile and persecution. "City of kings," wrote the 12th century Spanish Jewish poet Yehuda Halevi, "My heart longs for you from the far-off west. . . . If I could fly to you on wings of eagles, I would soak your soil with my tears."
Jewish inmates in the Nazi death and concentration camps dreamed of and yearned for Jerusalem. When my mother escorted 1,000 Jewish orphans to Palestine in April 1946, she went to the Western Wall to say Kaddish, the mourner's prayer, for her murdered parents, first husband, 5-and-a-half-year-old son, and siblings.
In his novel, A Beggar in Jerusalem, Nobel Peace Prize laureate Elie Wiesel described Jerusalem as "the face visible yet hidden, the sap and the blood of all that makes us live or renounce life. The spark flashing in the darkness, the murmur rustling through shouts of happiness and joy. A name, a secret. For the exiled, a prayer. For all others, a promise." More recently, upon being presented with the Guardian of Jerusalem Award by the World Jewish Congress, Wiesel said: "The purest zone in my memory is the zone that links me to Jerusalem."
As a long-time active supporter of the Israeli-Palestinian peace process, I recognize that Israel may eventually have to give up control over some areas of Jerusalem as part of a comprehensive peace agreement. At the same time, while Israelis and Jews may not minimize or disregard either the religious or the psycho-political significance of Jerusalem to its Muslim and Christian inhabitants, we cannot countenance the efforts on the part of Israel's enemies to deny the Jewish people's symbiotic interconnectedness with Jerusalem. Peace, if it is ever to be attained, must be based on a mutual respect for both history and deeply rooted centuries-old emotions.
Menachem Z. Rosensaft is adjunct professor of law at Cornell Law School, distinguished visiting lecturer at Syracuse University College of Law, and vice president of the American Gathering of Jewish Holocaust Survivors and Their Descendants
By Menachem Z. Rosensaft |
November 29, 2010; 12:00 PM ET
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Posted by: benyahuda | December 1, 2010 11:51 PM
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It is not about Jerusalem, or any land; it is about Jews ruling land once ruled by Muslims, and Jews ruling Muslims which is forbidden in the Qu'ran.
Many Muslims argue that after they destroy Israel, they will reconquer Spain. Read Arab Media for insight.
Posted by: aspacia | December 1, 2010 7:24 PM
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What is now called Arab East Jerusalem had a Jewish majority from the 1840's until the late 1920-'s - when rioters drove out the Jews. Ottoman and British records attest to this.
By focusing on Jewish housing in existing Jewish suburbs of Jerusalem, while ignoring every hardline action by, and statement from, the PA, the current administration has only further reduced the chances of resolution. All the one-sided pressure on Israel has achieved is to ever more hardline stances from the PA and Arab League.
Posted by: dorn | December 1, 2010 12:39 PM
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In the past three weeks,
(1) The Palestinian Authority issued a report denying any Jewish connection to the Western wall;
(2) At the sixth anniversary for Arafat's death, Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas
(a) accused Israel of murdering Arafat;
(b) rejected ever recognizing Israel as a Jewish homeland;
(c) boasted that he had not made a single concession in all the negotiations.
Abbas is correct - he is now more hardline that Arafat. He added the precondition over "settlements". He scoffed at Israel's 10 month freeze. He delayed negotiations until the last month of the freeze, and then walked out.
The core issue remains Arab rejection of a permanent Israel, no matter how small. The Arab obsession with destroying Israel far exceeds any desire for a Palestinian state.
Posted by: dorn | December 1, 2010 12:33 PM
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The administration and media need an awakening from their "if only Israel
would" attitude. How can one-sided Israel concessions, or US pressure on Israel, bring peace, when the Palestinians and broader Arab world refuse recognition, let alone compromise on concrete issues?
Posted by: dorn | December 1, 2010 12:26 PM
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israel is delegitimizing itself by demanding that Jerusalem belong solely to israel.
Posted by: Thoughtful-Ted | November 30, 2010 7:24 PM
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For sure the demand of Jerusalem is a blatant genocidal and holocaustian aspiration, derived via Heil Hitler salutes at the UN the past 60 years.
Then again, the same applies to the corruption of the Balfour, the re-dumping of the Name Palestinian from Judea [the Jewish homeland, not an Islamic or Arab one] - onto those openly hailing another holocaust, and the calling of a deathly 3-state as a 2-state [nice math, Europe!]
It makes every Christian guilty to their cores, and they think no one is around to judge them: but Eurostan is happening too. One wonders when they will invent Muslim Zionists at the UN Madarassa. The Ve Vere not Avare was a sham.
At least the Nazis were honest about it.
Posted by: IamJOSEPH | November 30, 2010 7:21 AM
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These attachments to archaeological ruins are part of the reason why there never be peace. I realize they have a great cultural heritage, but must there be such a push and pull over it. The only thing stopping the Jews from building a new, third Temple somewhere else is themselves. The original site is quite historically important, but why can a different one not be found? You realize that the books of the Bible that deal with the Temple and its pre-eminence were composed by leaders in Jerusalem so that it would make Jerusalem more important and detract from other temples in the North? The Torah and the other biblical books have reasonable historical reasons for expressing their preference for that particular site, but God is not one of them. By all means, venerate it if you want, but don't let an old broken wall drag down the whole of Israel into further centuries and centuries of warfare.
Posted by: Sajanas | November 29, 2010 3:34 PM
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One of mine is the insidious historical revisionism - akin to Holocaust denial - that seeks to undermine and negate Jewish claims to and rights in Jerusalem.
Jews, and many other people, are rightly indignant when Nazi and Holocaust analogies are blithely thrown around in routine political debates.
Poor-quality archaeology is not "akin to Holocaust denial."
Posted by: WmarkW | November 29, 2010 12:23 PM
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note to Sajanas
'Poor-quality archaeology is not "akin to Holocaust denial."'
Well sir. Historical revisionism is.