Wednesday, June 01, 2011
A Peace Plan for Jerusalem
this: No, they Can't Have it!
(first run in 2010)
by Steven Plaut
No sooner did the Obama Administration denounce Israel for its
building activities in Jerusalem when hordes of violent Palestinian
thugs took to the streets of holy Jerusalem. As always, the Arabs
show the world how sacred Jerusalem is to them by filling it with
violence.
They rioted to demand that Jews be prohibited from opening a synagogue
that had been destroyed by Arab troops, a synagogue located smack in
the middle of the Jewish Quarter in an area having no theological
significance for Moslems. Was it a coincidence that the Arab riots
followed so closely the Obaman bile hurled against Israel? Well, if
you believe that, I have a nice bridge I'd like to sell you that goes
into Brooklyn.
Vice President Biden, who sometimes likes to call himself "Zionist
Joe," had trouble containing his rage at the Jews. On an official
state visit to Israel, his Kodak moments were interrupted when an
Israeli official announced that Israel has plans to build a lot of new
housing in East Jerusalem. The Vice President was aghast at the
chutzpah. Secretary of State Clinton issued a series of shrill
verbal attacks against Israel. Talk about a "disproportionate
response!"
How dare the Jews construct housing in their own capital? Just
because Washington builds housing in the District of Columbia without
asking its allies for permission does not mean that the Israelis can
build the same way in THEIR capital! Don't those Israelis realize
that the United States has plans to transfer East Jerusalem to the
terrorists of the Palestinian Authority or its Hamas overlords?
To put the Obama Administration's temper tantrum over Jerusalem into
perspective, one has to try to imagine the following scenario:
Try to imagine the allies of the United States condemning the
displacement of the Japanese population in Guam shortly after Guam was
liberated by the United States in 1944. Guam, after all, had been
conquered fair and square by the Imperial Japanese military the day
after the attacks on Pearl Harbor. Japanese troops and civilians had
lived in Guam throughout most of the war. The American presence
there, which was eradicated on December 8, 1940, was itself of recent
and dubious creation. The United States became occupier of Guam only
in 1898 as part of the Treaty of Paris ending the Spanish-American
War. The Yanks then built a series of settlements on the island.
Now try to imagine the Allies of the United States hectoring and
condemning America about displacing the Japanese already living on
Guam after 1944, replacing them forcibly with American citizens. How
dare the Americans move their own civilians into homes they legally
own?
If you can imagine all that, you will have a pretty good understanding
of the Obama-Biden assault against Israel for building homes for Jews
in Jerusalem. Many of these homes are within inches of Mount Scopus
and the Old City of Jerusalem.
The State Department is soiling itself in rage over Israel allowing
Jews to move into the Shimon Hatsadik (Simon the Righteous)
neighborhood in East Jerusalem, also known as Sheikh Jarrah. You may
recall that Sheikh Jarrah was where a horrific massacre of a convoy of
Jewish medical personnel headed for the Hadassah Hospital on Mt.
Scopus took place in 1948.
79 Jews were murdered in cold blood and their bodies mutilated. When
East Jerusalem was liberated from its illegal Jordanian occupiers in
1967, Sheikh Jarrah should have been emptied entirely of its murderous
residents and turned over to the families of the victims of that
massacre as compensation!
East Jerusalem was made Judenrein, with its Jews ethnically cleansed,
in Israel's 1948-49 war of independence. Before that Jews had lived
in East Jerusalem almost without interruption since King David
conquered it. Those attacking Israel are insisting that she leave
that crime of ethnic cleansing intact, un-redressed. Their demands
are equivalent to demands upon the United States to leave the Japanese
presence on Guam unchanged after 1944.
To put this another way, let's ask just why the State Department
objects to Jews moving into homes in East Jerusalem, homes they
legally and legitimately own. The answer is that the State Department
plans to force Israel to turn East Jerusalem over to some future
Palestinian terror state, and that will be harder to do if East
Jerusalem is filled up with Jews. But that is precisely the reason
why Israel SHOULD build housing in East Jerusalem!!
If Bibi Netanyahu had any sense of Jewish history or an ounce of
courage and self-respect, he would answer the complaints coming from
Clinton and the Biden delegation thus:
"We understand that you want East Jerusalem preserved as an area
unpolluted by the presence of Jews so that it can be transferred in
the future to the terrorists. And that is why we refuse to agree to
your calls for a building freeze anywhere in Jerusalem. We will build
like the dickens to prevent anyone transferring Jerusalem to any
'Palestinians' from any political movement. And if the result of that
is for the war between Israel and the Arabs to continue for another
thousand years, then we choose that over giving up Jerusalem."
Israel's position should be simply that if the Arab world refuses to
come to terms and make peace with an Israel controlling all of
Jerusalem, then we do not believe that they will come to terms or make
peace with any Israel that has relinquished Jerusalem either. The
Arabs can threaten Israel all they want about the dire consequences if
Israel refuses to turn Jerusalem over to them. Israel's response
should be, "You can't have it, period."
And if there were any doubts as to who has the moral and legal right
to control East Jerusalem, they were removed in the violent rioting by
Palestinians over the opening of the rebuilt Hurva synagogue this
week. Tradition has it that it stands on the site of synagogues going
back to the second century AD. One synagogue standing there in
the1700s was destroyed, leading to the nickname of the site, the
"Hurva" or "the Destruction."
A later synagogue was constructed on the site in 1864. It remained
there until Jordanian soldiers, who were illegally holding the Old
City after 1948, demolished it. Yes, those same soldiers of the
Kingdom of Jordan, which is so often proclaimed moderate and peace
seeking, carried out unprecedented crimes against humanity, by
systematically demolishing almost all the Jewish shrines in the Old
City.
Under Arab rule (by Jordan), the religious shrines of Jerusalem were
systematically demolished, profaned and violated. Under Israeli rule,
every religious group is free to practice its religion in Jerusalem
and its shrines are protected. End of story. The Arabs forfeited any
moral claims they might have once had to govern the city when they
trashed the Jewish shrines of the city. Any questions?
The Hurva synagogue is nowhere near the Mosque of al-Aqsa or any other
Islamic shrines in Jerusalem. It is located close to the Ramban or
Nachmanides synagogue, which was converted by the pro-Nazi Grand Mufti
into a mosque in 1948 and used as a factory under the illegal
Jordanian occupation. The Arabs have absolutely no legitimate claims
to the site. Indeed, the reign of intentional destruction carried out
by Jordan after 1948 should nullify altogether once and for all any
claims the Arab world has to East Jerusalem.
If the Arabs take to violence when Jews open a synagogue, then there
is only one conclusion that Israel can draw: there is nothing to
negotiate with these savages. The only way to respond to their
violent opposition towards Israel building in Jerusalem is with
disproportionate force!
