Thursday, August 13, 2009
Obama's Apartheid Plan For Jerusalem
By: Steven Plaut / The Jewish Press
Thursday, August 13, 2009
http://www.jewishpress.com/pageroute.do/40384
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South Africa comes to Israel at the President's hand.
When Barack Obama was elected president, many around the world saw it as
the culmination of decades of successful efforts by the American civil
rights movement. How ironic, then, that the Obama administration has been
conducting a campaign against Jews who wish to live in certain Jerusalem
neighborhoods.
The administration has a real problem with Jews seeking to live in two
neighborhoods of Jerusalem, the Sheikh Jarrah section, at the foot of Mount
Scopus, and the Simon the Righteous neighborhood, located close to the
pre-1967 cease-fire lines that once separated Israel from Jordan. The latter is
an area whose Jewish roots go back at least two millennia. It was Jewish
when the Arabs were still moon worshippers and London just a field of mud.
Even worse, the Obama people are promoting an arbitrary, selective
apartheid for Jerusalem directed only against Jews - Arabs, including Arabs from
the West Bank, who do not hold Israeli citizenship should be free to live in
any predominantly Jewish n_eighborhood in Jerusalem (as well as in Jewish
neighborhoods in Haifa, Tel Aviv, Beersheva and elsewhere).
During World War II, Hitler's main agent for recruiting Muslims to the
Nazi banner was Mohammed Amin al-Husseini, the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem. A
terrorist leader, he fled Jerusalem when the British attempted to arrest him
and spent part of the war as the guest of honor of the Nazis.
The Mufti had owned some property in what is now the East Jerusalem
neighborhood of Sheikh Jarrah. That property was legally purchased by American
businessman Irving Moskowitz_
(http://www.moskowitzfoundation.org/favicon.ico) , who has owned the property for 20 years now and has a permit to
construct an apartment building there in place of the current structure on the
site, the Shepherd's Hotel.
The Obama administration is claiming that since the property once belonged
to the Grand Mufti and is now in a predominantly Arab neighborhood in East
Jerusalem, Israel should freeze and halt all Jewish building there.
Evidently, under Obama's new affirmative apartheid policy for Jerusalem, only
Arabs should be permitted to build in East Jerusalem.
Now, Obama happens to lives not far from Arlington Cemetery, which sits
on land confiscated from Confederate General Robert E. Lee during the Civil
War. Israel has at least as much right to use the property taken from the
Grand Mufti as the U.S. has to fill up Gen. Lee's plantation with graves.
The idea that Israel should prevent Jews from building in East Jerusalem
because Palestinians claim some sort of right to it is as absurd as
suggesting that all construction in the District of Columbia be frozen because the
British once claimed rights over it.
Obama's people are also up in arms because Israel removed some illegal
Arab squatters from land they did not own in Jerusalem's _Simon the Righteous
neighborhood_
(http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1173879090351&pagename=JPost/JPArticle/Printer) . This was a Jewish neighborhood until the
Jordanians conquered it and evicted all the Jews there in an act of ethnic
cleansing. The Israeli Supreme Court _has repeatedly ruled_
(http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/132338) that the land in question belongs
legally to Jews.
The United Nations Partition Plan of 1947 called for the creation of a
Jewish state and an Arab state alongside it. The Arab state never arose
because the land that had been set aside for it was gobbled up by the Arab
countries that sent their armies to annihilate the Jews.
The UN partition granted Jerusalem's Mount Scopus, with its hospital and
university facilities, to Israel. Access by Jews to the area was
supposed to be free and unfettered. But Arab terrorist militias placed Mount
Scopus under siege and attacked any vehicle trying to reach it. The _Mufti
himself planned_
(http://www.zionism-israel.com/his/Hadassah_convoy_Massacre.htm) the massacre that followed.
On April 13, 1948, a large convoy consisting mainly of Jewish doctors and
nurses tried to reach the hospital on Mount Scopus. It was attacked in
Sheikh Jarrah at the mount's foothills. The Jewish vehicles were hit by mines
and strafed by gunfire and other weapons.
Some 79 Jews and a British soldier were murdered by the terrorists of
Sheikh Jarrah. The bodies were so badly burned that most of them could not be
identified. The victims included the head of Hadassah hospital and the head
of its medical school.
In recent years, Arab-occupied Sheikh Jarrah has again been the frequent
scene of terrorism and violence against Jews. During the recent Gaza
campaign, Arab thugs attacks Jews driving or walking near Mount Scopus.
Obama is concerned about the potential for unrest and violence if Jews
move to the property they own in Sheikh Jarrah and other Arab neighborhoods in
Jerusalem. But of course he would never propose removing the Arab
residents of those areas in order to restore tranquility. His Klan Plan consists
only of preventing Jews from moving in and ruining the neighborhood.
Jews have exactly as much right to Sheikh Jarrah as the U.S. government
had to the Lee Plantation that became Arlington Cemetery. And the rights in
both cases were won in exactly the same way - through bloodshed.
