I woke to sun, blue skies, and a light breeze here in Jerusalem today. My first appointment was with Daphna Golan, a veteran leader of the Israeli peace movement who runs human-rights education programs at the Hebrew University. We met in the cafe linked to the Wise auditorium at the university’s Givat Ram campus in West Jerusalem. “Come to where you hear the piano playing,” she said; and indeed I heard the lovely chords of the piano as I approached the building.
What a beautiful idea: a university cafe with a huge grand piano in the middle! Given that the music school is right nearby, Daphna said there’s always someone who wants to sit down and play. As the kippa-ed young guy got his hands around those flowing arpeggios, a security guard by another door was swaying back and forth saying his prayers. The cheerful Palestinian guy behind the counter served me a large cappucino, and Daphna and I sat in a sunny spot and talked.
Like most of the conversations and interviews I’ve conducted since I came here, the tenor of this one was very gloomy. She was reading a couple of Hebrew-language newspapers as I arrived, and informed me that Avigdor Lieberman would almost certainly be in the government, where he was asking for (though might not get) no fewer than five seats… With for himself, either the foreign affairs or finance portfolio.
She talked a little about whether Livni is just hanging tough in the coalition negotiations to try to get a better deal for herself and her part– or whether she would be happy ending up in the opposition, instead.
“Not that it makes much difference,” Daphna said. “Sure, Livni talks about a two-state solution. But what she means by it is not what you or I mean.”
I asked about what had happened to the Israeli left. “There is no Israeli left any more,” she said bluntly.
She noted that Meretz seemed to have shot itself in the foot in the recent elections, in a number of ways. Firstly, it had come out in favor of the war– “So people on the left were asking, ‘So why is Meretz any different from anyone else?” Meretz had also tried to present itself as “new and improved”, but had completely failed to do so. As for the Labour Party, she said that though it still probably has a stronger core of support than Meretz, that support is ageing and is seen as linked to much earlier generations when kibbutzes were still important in Israeli life.
The one good thing about Israeli public life is that people seem to want to vote for women, she said, adding that she thought that was a big reason for the amount of support Tzipi Livni got. “But then, look at Labour and Meretz: no women made it high enough onto those parties’ lists to get elected. What are those parties of the so-called ‘left’ thinking of?”
The only portion of the left that she saw as having much good life left in it is Hadash, the former Communist Party. Though Hadash has been mainly supported by Palestinian Israelis in recent years, she noted that one of their most interesting new MKs will be Dov Chanin, an explicitly anti-Zionist Jewish Israeli who ran for mayor of Tel Aviv last November and amazed everyone by winning one-third of the votes there– more than Meretz.
Golan talked a bit about how isolated she and her pro-peace friends had felt during the Gaza war. She recalled there had been huge pro-war mobilizations on many Israeli campuses. One day during the war she had arrived at the Ramat Gan campus of HU and found large, very belligerent posters calling for the bombing of all of Gaza hung up around the entrance. (She tried to tear them down, herself, right then, and was then threatened by a group of young students who stood around her and called her filthy names. Perhaps some of the same nasty, misogynistic names that get thrown my way from time to time…)
I was deeply moved and personally delighted to catch up with Daphna. She needed to bring the interview to a halt and invited me to walk with her to her home in a leafy nearby neighborhood, where she was engaging in an ingenious bit of civil disobedience. A while ago someone she knows started a project to import organic produce into Jerusalem from the West Bank– defying the whole forest of administrative and financial obstacles with which the Israeli occupation authorities try to prevent or minimize that from happening. So Daphna knows a group of people who form one of the distribution nodes for this cross between a regular veggie coop and a CSA (Community Supported Agriculture) project. When we reached her front yard the friends had nearly finished the sorting. Before us were a dozen produce boxes brimming with beautiful veggies: cabbage, lettuce, green onions, spinach, peppers, tomatoes, etc., all ready to be distributed to the members of this node.
They gave me a crunchy little cucumber to snack on, and I went on my way. I love walking around Jerusalem. My next walk took about 40 minutes: back past the HU campus, up around the new Foreign Ministry building, along Rabin Boulevard to a little park, then up the steep and intimate confines of Bezalel Street, across King George V Blvd, along to the Government Press Office at Beit Agron.
There the cheerful young English-Israeli, ‘Jason’, who’s been sitting on my application for a press card for four days now, told me once again that he’s “on top of it”… But that for some reason The Nation, who have commissioned some of my writings from here, has never applied for a press card here before, so the Israeli consulate in NYC has to do a bit of additional paperwork… Or something. Most strange: I mean, I am in their computer already from the last time I was here, in 2006. On which occasion, yes, they did let me into Gaza.
I asked Jason whether there are any particularly interesting press conferences or other media opportunities coming up. He said no, but tried to sell me on doing a story about the horrors of the “politicization” of many western-based NGOs. I took the brochure he was handing out about this, and proceeded on my way.
I usually enjoy the Jaffa Road/ Ben Yehuda shopping and pedestrian area, but there was ways too much construction there today, so I didn’t linger. I made for Helena Ha-Malkha Street, one of my favorite ways to go– and not only because of the name. (Actually Queen/Saint Helena is a bit of an embarrassment to Quakers and members of other peace churches. It was through her possibly lunatic importunings that her son the Emperor Constantine became a Christian… and a large chunk of Christianity became transformed into the state religion of a huge empire… Among other distortions of the old faith, that whole theory called “Just war” was thereafter introduced. Heck, maybe I should even change my name…)
On the right as you walk along HHM, the ghastly bricked-up windows of the cells in the Moscobiya prison in which the Israelis hold– or certainly have held, in the past– many longterm Palestinian political prisoners. I made a point of singing cheerful songs in English about liberation as I walked past, so maybe people inside those cells could hear me through the few tiny holes they have for ventilation and know that someone was thinking about them.
On the left, the “Sergei Court”, a beautiful large courtyarded structure built by the Russian royal family in the late 19th century to serve as a hostel for high-class Russian pilgrims visiting the city.
After the communist takeover of Russia, the Brits expropriated all the Russian state’s holdings in the city; and after the Brits left the Israelis took them over in their stead. But in recent years the post-Communist Russian state has been working hard to regain control of these lovely pieces of Jerusalem real estate. (Which include, as I’m assuming from the name, the Moscobiya itself?) Anyway, I see from today’s paper that the Israeli government has greed in principle to let the Russian government regain control and ownership of the Sergei Court, though its actual control will start in the first instance with only one wing of the building.
The paper (J. Post? Haaretz? I forget which) said the Israeli government had been reluctant to accede to the Russian demand for its buildings since it was afraid that other countries might also seek the return of city buildings expropriated from them. H’mmm…
Anyway, on down Helena Ha-Malkha to Nevi-im, past the Nablus Road “Arab” bus terminal, and back to my hotel. Made a few calls; and now here I am.
(I have to say I have so much material from the past three weeks that it’ll take some time to sort it all out and write it up. Tuesday I did an interview with Salam Fayad which was pretty interesting. And yes, I’m still hacking away at a broader “mood” piece about Ramallah but it ain’t ready yet… )
17 thoughts on “A walk in West Jerusalem”
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“Sure, Livni talks about a two-state solution. But what she means by it is not what you or I mean.”
If this is true, then Livni is what I describe as a cynical-two-statist. Someone who understands that a two state solution that is acceptable to both Palestinians and Jewish Israelis is inherently unreachable, but who continues to present it as an goal Israel needs the illusion of an ongoing negotiation process which will yield peace shortly to justify the misery Zionists are inflicting upon the Arab and Muslim world in order to secure a Jewish state.
Livni knows two-states will not be reached, but is careful not to break naive-two-statists out of their delusion because between the status quo, a zionist one state or a post zionist one state, most Westerners would choose a post-zionist one state.
By pretending there is an available two-state solution, Livni, a cynical-two-statist is helping to manipulate naive-two-statists into supporting the status quo.
“Tuesday I did an interview with Salam Fayad which was pretty interesting. ”
About time!!
Arnold,
While we come at this from very different perspectives, you are quite correct that there is no settlement to this dispute, at least any time soon.
Of course, the difference in perspective here is important. My take is that the Israelis have harmed themselves by being altogether too reasonable, too willing to offer the olive branch. That leads Arabs to believe that Jews hold a weak hand, notwithstanding that Jews just now have a military advantage. Were Jews to take a view as obstinate as Hamas, their might be a way to settle the dispute, at least in shorter time than seems possible just now.
Of course, as for Hamas, I think they are sincere in their rejectionism. That is especially true for the more religiously ideological members. The late Nizar Rayyan comes to mind with his view that “Israel is an impossibility. It is an offense against God.” Moreover, according to him, “You are murderers of the prophets and you have closed your ears to the Messenger of Allah.” And then there are these words from him: “Jews tried to kill the Prophet, peace be unto him. All throughout history, you have stood in opposition to the word of God.” [Source]
To note, the theme that Jews are the murderers of prophets appears in numerous Hadiths. The same for the allegation that Jews close their ears to Allah’s words. And, there are Hadiths in which Jews attempt to kill Mohamed – one being the story of a Jewish woman who attempted to poison him and another being the story of Jewish men who were to drop boulders on him from above a house. These are the stories that, evidently, were in Rayyan’s mind.
One does need to examine these vehemently Antisemitic views to understand at least some – albeit not all – opposition by Arabs to Israel. In my mind, to ignore such is to ignore quite an important reason why peace is so difficult.
In any event, Helena seems particularly unwilling to explore the irrationality of one who is willing to say such things. And, to my way of thinking, she is willing to all but ignore the violence by Arabs against Jews, rationalizing it away when, if there is to be peace, it must be understood on its own terms – including its more irrational, Antisemitic elements – and somehow undermined.
But, of course, undermining views coming from religious upbringing is rather impossible. That is a project that will take generations. And I do not expect it from Helena and, on top of that, even if she did choose to delve into that vault of hatred, it would not impact on the Arab side in the short term.
That said, I agree with you that there is no two state solution. There is, instead, the status quo. Jews are not going to give in either. Nor should they. They have done nothing worse than any other group in history that is determined to survive.
“By pretending there is an available two-state solution, Livni, a cynical-two-statist is helping to manipulate naive-two-statists into supporting the status quo.”
What else would you expect from these tricky Jews?
N:
Well White South Africans are determined to survive, but they live in a majority Black country.
B:
I know you feel threatened by attacks on Israel’s legitimacy. You perceive them as anti-Semitic, and therefore me as anti-Semitic. I do not now, and have never believed that Jews are unusually “tricky” or bad in any way. But it is possible for someone who is Jewish to act in a way that is manipulative.
You’re factually wrong, but your feelings are valid.
Arnold,
The analogy to South Africa is weak. Jews are a small, hated group. That is not the case with the Whites in South Africa. The Black South African’s movement did not include – as the Arab Muslim movement includes – a group dedicated to the massacre of Jews for the sin of being Jewish.
Recall, if you will, that the primary sin of modern Jews, to those of the more extreme version of Muslim Brotherhood point of view, is that Jews supposedly secretly pushed Attaturk into eliminating the Caliphate (or, in the minds of some, that Attaturk was secretly a Jew). Hence, Jews are accused of trying to destroy Islam. And, Israel is supposedly part of that process.
On top of that is the classical view among Muslims that only Muslim rule is legitimate. Hence, Jews do not have the right to be rulers, even over other Jews.
So, Jews and Muslims will not live together in peace in historic Palestine – not with all the hatred that emanates from the Muslim Brotherhood/Hamas types, not in our lifetime anyway. Their fever is not limited to the nation Israel but is directed against Jews qua Jews who, in the Muslim Brotherhood’s warped way of thinking, have eternal flaws. It is rather reminiscent of Christian hatred of Jews.
The issues that divide Whites and Blacks in South Africa are, by comparison, minor.
The untricky Jews have more than demonstrated they are capable of looking after themselves vis a viz Israel, so don’t need outsiders to feel “threatened” on their behalf.
Regarding SA. I am not aware that SA was ever established by a two thirds vote of the UN specifically as a “white state” in a painstakingly demarked area that comprised a majority “white” population? Unless you can show otherwise, what is the comparison?
N is therefore correct to say the jews have done nothing worse than any other group in history that is determined to survive.
And will no doubt continue to do what is required to ensure their survival.
btw – I don’t see attacks on the existence of Israel or the jews coming from believing christians or muslims as anti semitic as such, more as judophobic. This is logical, in that both the latter great monotheist religions were forced to plagiarise judaism. Mohammed, of course, had to plagiarise christianity as well, his revelations coming as they did some 600 years after the birth of christ. Therefore it was incumbent on christianity and islam to denounce and deny the jews as the montheistic god’s chosen people and patronise, convert or, if deemed necessary, kill them.
as the Arab Muslim movement includes – a group dedicated to the massacre of Jews for the sin of being Jewish.
This is showing sort of mindset who is sick and outrages propaganda.
Jews lived side by sides with Muslims for centuries, they never ever been massacred by Muslims or Arabs like what happened to Jews in other part of world where the Christians and Orthodox countries like in France, Spain and Russia and lastly in Germany.
When people like you read the history well with facts what recorded instead of inventing these lies.Stop and wakeup these rhetoric lies over again and again.
Grownup man.
Now Jews in Iran did they massacre them, Jews in all over Arab countries and Muslims countries are they in danger of massacre.
Turkey have a large number of Jews did they have troubles to live side by side with majority of Muslim in that country.
When this sick mind stop these lies.
Listen to Dr. Jürgen Todenhöfer, author of “Why do you kill, Zaid?”, to remind you your real facts of your history here and here
Here is a very significant article for two reasons, firstly it’s written by an Israeli citizen secondly this man served in Israeli army which tells you from inside what real Jews telling about their Jewish State:
Avi Shlaim is a professor of international relations at the University of Oxford and the author of The Iron Wall: Israel and the Arab World and of Lion of Jordan: King Hussein’s Life in War and Peace.
N:
I really can’t trust Zionists’ explanations of the motivations of Arab anti-Zionists. But to listen to White South Africans in the 1970s, they were also in a uniquely vulnerable situation.
No Arab opponent of Zionism I’ve ever come across has been motivated by hatred of Jews, or believed that Jews should be killed because they are Jews.
But take the last word. I’ve made my points for this comment thread.
B: The UN around that time painstakingly decided that Vietnam should be a French colony, along with Algeria, the UN was a deeply racist organization at the time.
The Arab refusal is exactly what any other people, including Jews, would have done in that situation.
But take the last word.
Mostly I agree, the Arab refusal was what other people would have done in the same situation; although the muslims demanded, and got, partition in India at the same time by the same “racist” UN, and only (so far) dispute Kashmir.
That was not my point. The point was that South Africa was not (legally) established as a specifically “white” nation state and on an area specifically demarked to have a “white” majority.
It should also be noted that Israel was not carved out of an existing state, either. Otherwise the resolution would not have been carried. (On the other hand, Pakistan was, so maybe it would have been).
Ergo your comparison to South Africa does not stand up.
Salah,
There were massacres of Jews all over the Muslim and Muslim Arab regions over the course of Muslim rule. Nothing like the Holocaust occurred but major massacres did occur, in Andalusia, in Morocco, in Iraq, etc., etc.
Ottoman Turkey is another matter. At times, the treatment in places like Salonika and Istanbul was better than in Europe but that changed, especially in the last centuries of the Empire.
Egypt, in the time of Saladin, treated Jews better than at any time under Muslim rule but, in fact, that was by rulers who were only nominally Muslim. Even there, when clerics wanted something, they stirred up riots against Jews and Jews were killed in large numbers.
In any event, by today’s standards, Arabs in the West Bank are better treated today than Jews were treated during most, if not all, years under Muslim rule. That is an unfair comparison except that, in fact, any examination today of how Arab Muslims treat non-Muslims in their Arab lands is not an invitation. That is why, now that travel around the world is possible, there is such a major exodus of non-Muslims from Arab and other Muslim lands.
in Andalusia, in Morocco, in Iraq, etc., etc.
In Andalusia??
You trying here teaching us your twisted / invented history?
Muslims, Arab, Jews and Christians were living in golden age there were science was on its top, western scholars have good time to learn from Islamic schools and universities starting from there when hundreds of books was treated and then taken to be taught in western and famous universities till late 1700.
After the fall Andalusia both Muslims and Jews was of After the Muslims lost Andalusia both Jews and Muslims were massacred by Christians who gain control of Andalusia.
Iraq??
I can speak here as Iraq my home country. My personal experience with my fathers friends were Jews who were very close family relations to my family, as my father keep telling his stories about them and how much he miss them and how they sadden when they left Iraq showing all love to the land and the people of Iraq.
Iraq was under British occupation just like now under US occupation were all polices and orders handled by top British mandate as today in Iraq with top US official.
Regrettably the major unfortunate chaos (Al-Farhood) happened in Baghdad and other places, exactly what happening today in Iraqi were many Iraqis from different Sec, ethnic and religious killed, made refugees or lost their assets and homes.
Just to tell you those Jews had all respect to their Iraqi friends and neighbours on the street and districts who rushed to defend them from those looters / gangs at that time, if you live in UK just make some search of some of those Jews olders or families from Iraq will tell you their real stories.
There were some believes that early Zionists gangs have hands what happened although the denial strongly by today by Israelis / Zionists about it, but let not forgot the British mandate were in control of Iraq and it’s polices, the orders taken by the Iraqi king to stripe citizenship from the Iraq Jews who leaving Iraq just utterly wrong and provoking but let keep in mind Iraq monarchy was set-up and controlled by British.
There is a poet written by very famous Iraqi poet during that time said Iraqi king not more than a servant to British who paid him his salary.
In all Arab state what happen to Jews after 1948 with the creations of State of Israel raised fears between the Jews community and political regimes who may used that for their self-necessities, that made many Jews from Arab land preferred to immigrate to UK and US and other places mostly but fewer went direct to Israel.
Salah,
Regarding Andalusia, there was a terrible massacre by Muslims against Jews in December of 1066. An Arab mob razed the Jewish quarter of the city and slaughtered its 5,000 Jewish inhabitants. The riot was evidently incited by Muslim preachers who had angrily objected to what they saw as inordinate Jewish political power – i.e. the participation of Joseph HaNagid in the government.
In Iraq, there was a massacre in the 1940’s. It has been given the name Farhud. In Morocco, there was a massacre in the early years of the 20th Century. Must I make you look ridiculous by describing the details of these and other massacres?
Note: I made clear that Islamic rule was not always terrible. It was, however, sometimes truly terrible and it was never, by modern standards, remotely good.
The case of Andalusia is a case where it was a mixed bag – depending on the period. However, in no period was the life of an average Jew good. And, in the later period, life was down right oppressive. The most famous Jewish scholar of all, Maimonides, fled Andalusia and ended up in Saladin’s Egypt.
Maimonides, in fact, wrote about his time in Andalusia. It was not a kind life, in his view. He wrote: “Remember, my coreligionists [i.e. Jews], that on account of the vast number of our sins, God has hurled us in the midst of this people, the Arabs, who have persecuted us severely, and passed baneful and discriminatory legislation against us.” Moreover, according to Maimonides: “Never did a nation molest, degrade, debase, and hate us as much as they [i.e. Arabs].”
So, I think you have an overestimation of the kindness of Muslim rule.
Lest you have any doubt about its wonders, I suggest you pick up a book about the Muslim conquest of India. You might try K. S. Lal. He, like famed historian Will Durant, seems to think that the conquest of India by Muslims was among the worst and bloodiest in history.
Again, one should not make essentialist statements and, thus, should not assume automatically that bad past treatment of non-Muslims dictates what will occur in the future. However, the past does count for something. And, notwithstanding your protest, Muslim rule was never idyllic for non-Muslims. And, in a great many instances, it was downright oppressive.
Arnold,
You write: “No Arab opponent of Zionism I’ve ever come across has been motivated by hatred of Jews, or believed that Jews should be killed because they are Jews.”
Well, I trust that you will admit that some Arab opponents of Israel, if we go by their written word, do hate Jews and want to massacre them everywhere. Such, to note, is the view stated in the Hamas covenant.
I note that in an interesting interview of the public intellectual Paul Berman, he noted that understanding of Palestinian Arab intentions depends on whether or not the nasty things of the type that appear in the Hamas covenant (e.g. the call to kill all Jews, the claim that Jews are behind all wars, etc., etc.) are in earnest or whether they are merely the types of things, albeit stated in a wild fashion, that enemies say about each other. It does depend on that, you will note.
So, maybe you have met a lot of kindly Arabs who love Jews. I have as well, for what it is worth. But, the leaders of those who lead the various Islamist movements are downright scary, crazy stuff that rivals what the Nazis argued. Read the Hamas covenant. It is rather explicit. It makes a political program out of this Hadith, an Hadith that originally pertained to Islamic eschatology:
“The Day of Judgement will not come about until Moslems fight the Jews (killing the Jews), when the Jew will hide behind stones and trees. The stones and trees will say O Moslems, O Abdulla, there is a Jew behind me, come and kill him. Only the Gharkad tree, (evidently a certain kind of tree) would not do that because it is one of the trees of the Jews.” (related by al-Bukhari and Moslem).
[Source: Yale University Avalon collection of documents.] This was, in classical Islam, related to the end of days. In the Hamas covenant, by contrast, it is stated as a political program: “Moreover, if the links have been distant from each other and if obstacles, placed by those who are the lackeys of Zionism in the way of the fighters obstructed the continuation of the struggle, the Islamic Resistance Movement aspires to the realisation of Allah’s promise, no matter how long that should take.”
And, the covenant makes much of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, not only stating its approval of the book but, in fact, listing all the wars and upheavals that Jews supposedly have stood.
Maybe this stuff is unimportant. That would appear to be Helena’s position, since she basically ignores it all. While we should not be essentialist and, God knows, Muslims have no monopoly on bad or good behavior, there is real precedent for people meaning what they say.
If you read what I wrote in an earlier comment, it included rather hateful statements by one of the former – now dead – leaders of Hamas. Your contention is that such statements should be ignored or, perhaps, you just do not hear them, since you say that you have not heard such things. My suggestion is that you read the transcripts of PA TV or Hamas TV or Manar TV or of sermons by Muslim clerics. You will find a lot of nastiness against Jews, not just Israel. And, it is often directed to supposed eternal – i.e. essentialist – traits of Jews. That sort of stuff may or may not be seriously intended. However, it does have its impact on Muslim Arabs including Palestinian Arabs.
In this regard, I invite you to read about the types of things which were said about Armenians by Muslims in the 19th Century. What was said de-legitimized Armenian Christians as legitimate persons within the Ottoman Empire. And, that made it a whole lot easier to massacre them, as occurred in 1894 – 1896, 1908 and during WWI.
Is West Jerusalem part of Israel?
Constatine, re W. Jerusalem: The UN Partition Plan of 1947, which is still the only definitive UN document that provides a map, mandated that all of Greater Jerusalem should be part of an internationally administered “corpus separatum”, not part of either the Palestinian Arab or Palestinian Jewish state. But the Jewish/Israeli fighting forces did seize control of W. Jerusalem in the 1948 war, so if the formula for a lasting settlement is a return to those lines it would be part of Israel.
During the 1948 fighting W. Jerusalem’s numerous Arab residents were “ethnically cleansed” from the city– as were the smaller numbers of Jews who had lived in East Jerusalem, which was taken and held by the Jordanian Army that year. In the context of a final peace settlement between Palestinians and Israelis all the claims of those various people would have to be settled. They include property claims and claims for residence. Not insoluble, but not easy to solve in a politically durable way.
Well, I trust that you will admit that some Arab opponents of Israel, if we go by their written word, do hate Jews and want to massacre them everywhere. Such, to note, is the view stated in the Hamas covenant.
N.
Tell us what inspiring you of all these hateful and allegations here?
As you said you neither are nor Jew believer neither Israeli citizen then we expected that your talk support the justices in case like Palestine occupation, or at least all the justice of humans around the world. Coming here and put your Holly books what Hamas written and said is just a complete nonsense and propaganda that you trying to tell.
It’s not what written here and there, it’s the motive and the real acts by people/State/Armies this tells the truth.
I am confused… / Jihad and Pascal
I am confused… by Sherry Rutherford
Jihad and Pascal response by Marc Fisher