BY JONATHAN S. TOBIN, COMMENTARY
Palestinians try to demolish part of Joseph’s Tomb in October 2000. AP Photo/Lefteris Pitarakis
In the West Bank city of Nablus, Arabs rioted on Thursday. Were they complaining about Jewish settlements or the lack of a Palestinian state? No. Their issue was the fact that a group of Jews had entered the city, and as is their right under agreements concluded with the Palestinian Authority, sought to pray at the Tomb of Joseph, an ancient Jewish site of worship.
Palestinians threw rocks and burned tires. But Israeli troops defended the pilgrims and, thanks to the army’s efforts to prevent injuries on either side, no Palestinians were reported hurt. This wasn’t the first time Palestinians sought to prevent Jews from praying at the tomb. There was a similar incident in February. Prior to that, the tomb and the synagogue that encompasses it were burned last October as well as in 2000 in a bloody riot at the start of the second intifada.
Why can’t the Palestinians accept the site of Jews praying at an ancient site? It has nothing to do with arguments about borders, settlements or statehood. It’s the same reason they treat Jewish prayer on Jerusalem’s Temple Mount — the holiest site in Judaism — to be a declaration of war on Islam. It’s a function of a narrative in which the presence of Jews in any part of the country is seen as offensive and a challenge to national pride. It’s also the reason why the Palestinians and their allies managed to get UNESCO to pass a resolution that denied any connection between the Temple Mount and the Western Wall and Judaism or the Jewish people.
As Yossi Klein Halevi noted in an insightful article published last week in the Los Angeles Times, the whole point of this campaign is to deny Jews not only a state but also the right to their own history and faith. If Passover, which concludes this weekend, is the annual festival of freedom, in which the story of the Exodus from Egypt commemorates the birth of the Jewish people, the purpose of the anti-Zionists and anti-Semites that deny Jews rights in Jerusalem, Nablus or anywhere in the holy land, is to erase the entire Jewish story. They do it because only by denying the narrative of Jewish history that validates the rights of Jews to sovereignty in their ancient homeland can you achieve their goal of delegitimizing the modern state of Israel. If you accomplish that goal, you can not only convince a credulous world that a democratic Jewish majority nation is an “apartheid state,” but also deny Jews self-defense and allow hate-driven terrorists to be glorified as heroes and martyrs fighting for human rights.
One doesn’t have to agree with Jewish settlements or even think it wise for Jews to want to pray on the Temple Mount or even at a shrine inside an Arab city like Nablus to understand that defending those rights involves more than just religious issues or the desires of some to act in a manner that some think is provocative. The current Palestinian campaign of hate has its origins in canards about Jews harming Muslim holy sites but what is at stake is not a question of defending mosques but denying the Jewish connection to Jerusalem or any spot in Israel as well as the West Bank.
Liberals who sympathize with Israel wish that Jews would stop praying in Nablus and shut up about the Temple Mount, just as they would like to see West Bank settlements removed. But the Palestinian goal isn’t different rules for prayer at holy places or even a state with a border that might conform to the pre-June 1967 reality when Jews were denied the right to pray at the Western Wall. It is, as both Hamas and PA leader Mahmoud Abbas have both said, reversing the “occupation” that began in 1948, not 1967.
Keeping the peace in Jerusalem and Nablus is a serious problem and Israeli authorities are working to do just that even if it means adhering to rules that discriminate against Jews like the prayer ban Israel enforces on the Temple Mount. But as the UNESCO vote and the Nablus riots remind us, the issue isn’t where Jews may pray. It’s whether Jews have any rights at all. And that is a fight from which all decent persons who claim to oppose anti-Semitism should not shrink from.
@ keelie:
He has the patience of Job.
@ honeybee:
Nevertheless, Ted is one great guy… We need many more like him…
@ keelie:
Ted gave up on me long time ago.
Thanks honeybee. She sounds just like the kind of person we sorely need nowadays. A kind of antithesis of Hillary Clinton.
(I hope Ted’s not tearing his hair out – what he has left of it – because of our off-topic conversation.)
@ keelie:
Mrs. Christianberry, long gone to her reward, was Ranch Lady from Yancy, Texas. She was full of old time phrases and sayings, a Texas mama lochen. She lived a of grief, poverty and difficulty, but always trusted in the Lord and greeted every one with a warm ,loving smile.
@ honeybee:
LOL!!! Who?
@ keelie:
” What ever makes you happy tickles me plumb to death” Mrs Christianberry Yancy, Texas.
@ honeybee:
Thanks honeybee; much appreciated…
They came 3rd and last. On their way up the ladder they want to kill everybody else!
actually their narratives are merely a fig leaf for their perceived self interests. The Israeli left are comfortable and dont care about the rights of other jews to live in the Jewish homeland. They are like the jews of europe who just wanted to fit in and the non jews who didnt want any trouble… so its easier to come up with narratives which remove the problem for them. the same with the anti zionist religious who use the Torah to cover their selfish desires for comfort, perks and privilege…. echoing the past in europe where they lived “peacefully” in their ghettos and shtetls…. they say “its those jews causing trouble not us”. Politics and Torah have nothing to do with it… those are the narratives invented by greedy self serving folks to serve their personal interests….
@ keelie:
You might like this Artist. He was born in Northern NM, the name Chavez is Sephardic.
http://www.lorenzochavez.com/index.html
what we should be reminded of is that Unesco and jew killing muslims are the same …. and that includes the French who support UNESCO and the lie that the Jews have no connection to their ancient temple. France is as much an enemy as fatah. That is what the Jews need to be reminded of to get their head out of the sand.
It is not the muslims who are denying the Jews a right to pray… it is the government of Israel… always has been. Instead of protecting Jewish rights of prayer and Jews praying at Jewish holy sites they instead incarcerate and demonize Jews with every opportunity….and this is a “right wing” government.
the gov cannot point to the muslims as the problem… the muslims would also like to deny the jews the right to live but Israel prevented them from doing that through war and force. Israel simply needs to enforce or cancel non functioning agreements with Jordan. The muslims will do no more than they have always been doing, trying to kill the Jews. They are not at war because they would be killed so they exploit the Jewish weakness of giving them freedom.
First, every jewish national or religious site which has been subject to violence should by eminent domain create a buffer zone of a necessary distance for security like the egyptians did with the demolishing of gaza border houses.
Second, the muslims should be informed that there will be a progressive series of steps leading to permanent bans if problems continue, especially at the Mount. All muslims should be banned at the Mount if they continue to abuse Jews.
Third, anti semitic speech and activity should result in mandatory deportation to gaza, area a or across borders of states who have no peace treaty with Israel. This should apply to all the immediate family as it should be assumed that the family brought the child up to treat Jews as sons of apes and pigs.
There is no rocket science here. What is the argument for allowing muslims to abuse Jews in the Jewish homeland? What is the argument for allowing in the Jewish homeland more muslim anti semitism and abuse than in france? Is the argument that the muslims will get angry and riot and go to war…. ? Well we already know that they would do that without provocation if they get a capability. if they go to war then use the opportunity to drive them out of all lands under Israeli control or to kill all the dangerous elements without mercy.
In the end, there is only one culprit who is the criminal preventing Jews from praying, facilitating muslim anti semitism and abuse of Jews, incarcerating Jews praying, demonizing Jews settling Judea and Samaria, refusing to stamp out the same anti semitism in the Jewish state which slaughtered Jews for millenia. If the status quo of “stability” facilitates anti semitism and abuse of Jews then that idol should be struck down and chaos and suffering brought to the perpetrators like in syria and iraq. Currently Israel has leaders who use stability as the excuse to continue to facilitate the abuse of jews by muslims.
The government of israel have become the guards of the euro designated Jewish ghetto who keep the jews in line for their euro masters. It is despicable and nauseating to see that the only Jewish homeland is becoming a concentration camp for Jews run by kapos masquerading as their opposite. A man is judged by what he does and NOT the bullshite which he utters. The guards of the concentration camps were not allowed to use excuses like the current GOI for their crimes against the jews. Whether a muslim abuses a Jew or whether the GOI facilitates that abuse… it is the same crime.
Hmmmmmm…