Dear Elie Wiesel: My Response to Elie's "musings" on Jerusalem ~ Window Into Palestine

By Mike Odetalla

Dear Elie,

I hope that you don't mind me calling by your first name, but after reading your so-called "musings" in a rather expensive ad in the New York Times and other publications on the city of my birth, I feel that we can dispense with the formalities because I believe now I know you very well.

The Holy City of Jerusalem, or Al-Quds, its true and proper Arabic name, which means "The Holy", is not and has never been a "mythical" place for me; it is the city of my birth and that of my forefathers. My connection to the city is based on simple facts and truths, and not the myths, propaganda, and the outright lies that seem to have permeated and corrupted the minds of the masses. While your mother may have sung you a lullaby about Jerusalem, as you claim, I took my first steps as a baby within its sacred walls on the grounds of Al-Aqsa compound. Going back to Jerusalem is a true "homecoming" for me in the truest sense of the word, even though your brethren in Israel make it as hard as humanely possible.

While you rely on ancient myths, many of which have been discredited by scholars and researchers, some of who are Jewish by the way, as the basis of holding my beloved city captive to the unjust and cruel whims of the racist Zionist ideology, many Palestinians still hold in their possessions the keys to the homes that they were forced to leave and have not been permitted to return to, even though that scared right is enshrined in International Law and the laws of God himself!

When my children visit Jerusalem and Palestine, it is truly the lands of their ancestors, clear and concrete, from the graves of their forefathers, to the ancient olive trees that they planted many hundreds of years before the Jewish State came to being. They do not have to rely on ancient legends to know their connection and that of their ancestors to the land, they can see, feel, and even "breath" it!

The soil of Jerusalem and Palestine is entwined in my body, mind, and soul. It is right there when I first set foot in the Old City, I can see, smell, and taste it. Jerusalem is present in the olives and oil that I consume from my family's ancient trees, in the sweet nectar of cool, dew covered apricot on a summer's morning, the setting sun, and the full moon that lights the hills!

You claim in your AD that "Today, for the first time in history, Jews, Christians and Muslims all may freely worship at their shrines. And, contrary to certain media reports, Jews, Christians and Muslims ARE allowed to build their homes anywhere in the city. The anguish over Jerusalem is not about real estate but about memory."

Sir, reading that outright lie, I wonder if you really wrote that or if the Israeli Ministry of Information, had not in fact wrote it for you. Either way, I cannot believe that someone as yourself who prides himself on doing "meticulous" research could write or lend his name to such a statement. Your "credibility" takes the hit!

The fact is that Arab Christians and Muslims are NOT free to worship at their shrines. The patently racist Israeli system of erecting concrete walls, roadblock, and checkpoints makes it virtually impossible for millions of indigenous Palestinian Arabs from ever reaching their Holy Places. In fact, there are hundreds of thousands of Palestinian Arabs that can see Jerusalem from their homes, but have a better chance of traveling to the moon that actually visiting the lands of their forefathers.

Also, as the facts, NOT just "certain media" reports bear out, Palestinian Arabs are NOT permitted to "build their homes anywhere in the city". The sobering and painful fact is that Palestinian homes have been demolished by the thousands, with many more on the list threatening them with destruction. Palestinians Arabs, the rightful owners of the lands are forced to live in cramped homes and cannot build on their OWN lands as the Zionist policies are methodically grinding on in an effort to ethnically cleanse the lands of its indigenous population.

You also claim that "Jews were not willing kill for Jerusalem" which is an outright lie worthy of the Nazi propagandist in their heyday!

You conveniently forget about the massacres and atrocities that were committed by your Zionist brethren (I use the term "brethren" because you seem to identify with Israel and her policies as your own by spreading the myths, propaganda, and out right lies of the so-called "Jewish State") against the Palestinian Muslim and Christians whereby thousands were massacred, and hundreds of thousands were expelled from their homes, lands, and villages to create the "Jewish State". Maybe the name Deir Yassein could stir your memory a bit or the village of Lifta, the village of grandmother which overlooks Jerusalem and still stands with empty homes that the Zionist forces saw fit to blow holes in their roofs and floors so as to make them uninhabitable and to discourage their rightful owners from returning to them!

My grandmother's grave and that of many of her relatives and fellow villagers, is but a stones throw from Jerusalem's Damascus Gate and overlooks the ancient city walls; the golden Dome of the Rock is clearly visible, and the painful fact is that her living relatives are not even permitted to come and visit her grave site to say a simple prayer. In fact, the population of her entire village was transformed into homeless refugees and she died yearning to return to the village of her ancestors!

You also seem oblivious to the fact that not a day goes by that the Zionist forces do not maim, kill, or destroy Palestinian life and property, and for what? Even the blind can see that the nefarious policies of the Jewish State have one and ONLY one goal, to steal as much land as possible and to make life unbearable for the Palestinian Arabs! You desire the land, BUT NOT the people that are on it, pure and simple.

No Mr. Wiesel IT IS and has always been about "real estate" when it comes to the Zionists and their plans and the only memory they care about is one based on mythology and manufactured history, while ignoring the very REAL memories of the Palestinian Arabs as they seek to usurp not only the lands, but the memories and history of those whose roots pre-date even Judaism itself!

A few years back, a Jewish friend lamented to me that Zionism and its narrative has transformed Israel into a nation that worships not God, but rocks, trees, and soil your call for "putting off such a sensitive issue" is nothing more than the very policy of the racist Israeli state as it continues to devour Palestinian lands and seeks to create such "facts on the ground" that would make the return of Jerusalem to its rightful owners all but impossible! Even as your ad was going to press, the Jewish State was busy with announced plans to build yet more Jewish only colonies on stolen lands, making a mockery of your idiotic "musings" and that of International Law itself!

Instead of dwelling in the lands of myths, open your eyes to what is being done in your name in the Holy Lands. An entire people is being imprisoned and starved in the 21^st Century right before your eyes, and yet all you can do is conjure thousand years old legends to justify actions and ideologies that cannot and should not be defended!

Shame on you!

Mike Odetalla

4-2010

http://www.juancole.com/2010/03/top-ten-reasons-east-jerusalem-does-not.html

Tuesday, March 23, 2010

Top Ten Reasons East Jerusalem does not belong to Jewish-Israelis

Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu told the American Israel Public Affairs Council on Monday that "Jerusalem is not a settlement." He continued that the historical connection between the Jewish people and the land of Israel cannot be denied. He added that neither could the historical connection between the Jewish people and Jerusalem. He insisted, "The Jewish people were building Jerusalem 3,000 years ago and the Jewish people are building Jerusalem today." He said, "Jerusalem is not a settlement. It is our capital." He told his applauding audience of 7500 that he was simply following the policies of all Israeli governments since the 1967 conquest of Jerusalem in the Six Day War.

Netanyahu mixed together Romantic-nationalist cliches with a series of historically false assertions. But even more important was everything he left out of the history, and his citation of his warped and inaccurate history instead of considering laws, rights or common human decency toward others not of his ethnic group.

So here are the reasons that Netanyahu is profoundly wrong, and East Jerusalem does not belong to him.

1. In international law, East Jerusalem is occupied territory, as are the parts of the West Bank that Israel unilaterally annexed to its district of Jerusalem. The Fourth Geneva Convention of 1949 and the Hague Regulations of 1907 forbid occupying powers to alter the lifeways of civilians who are occupied, and forbid the settling of people from the occupiers' country in the occupied territory. Israel's expulsion of Palestinians from their homes in East Jerusalem, its usurpation of Palestinian property there, and its settling of Israelis on Palestinian land are all gross violations of international law. Israeli claims that they are not occupying Palestinians because the Palestinians have no state are cruel and tautological. Israeli claims that they are building on empty territory are laughable. My back yard is empty, but that does not give Netanyahu the right to put up an apartment complex on it.

2. Israeli governments have not in fact been united or consistent about what to do with East Jerusalem and the West Bank, contrary to what Netanyahu says. The Galili Plan for settlements in the West Bank was adopted only in 1973. Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin gave undertakings as part of the Oslo Peace Process to withdraw from Palestinian territory and grant Palestinians a state, promises for which he was assassinated by the Israeli far right (elements of which are now supporting Netanyahu's government). As late as 2000, then Prime Minister Ehud Barak claims that he gave oral assurances that Palestinians could have almost all of the West Bank and could have some arrangement by which East Jerusalem could be its capital. Netanyahu tried to give the impression that far rightwing Likud policy on East Jerusalem and the West Bank has been shared by all previous Israeli governments, but this is simply not true.

3. Romantic nationalism imagines a "people" as eternal and as having an eternal connection with a specific piece of land. This way of thinking is fantastic and mythological. Peoples are formed and change and sometimes cease to be, though they might have descendants who abandoned that religion or ethnicity or language. Human beings have moved all around and are not directly tied to any territory in an exclusive way, since many groups have lived on most pieces of land. Jerusalem was not founded by Jews, i.e. adherents of the Jewish religion. It was founded between 3000 BCE and 2600 BCE by a West Semitic people or possibly the Canaanites, the common ancestors of Palestinians, Lebanese, many Syrians and Jordanians, and many Jews. But when it was founded Jews did not exist.

4. Jerusalem was founded in honor of the ancient god Shalem. It does not mean City of Peace but rather 'built-up place of Shalem."

5. The "Jewish people" were not building Jerusalem 3000 years ago, i.e. 1000 BCE. First of all, it is not clear when exactly Judaism as a religion centered on the worship of the one God took firm form. It appears to have been a late development since no evidence of worship of anything but ordinary Canaanite deities has been found in archeological sites through 1000 BCE. There was no invasion of geographical Palestine from Egypt by former slaves in the 1200s BCE. The pyramids had been built much earlier and had not used slave labor. The chronicle of the events of the reign of Ramses II on the wall in Luxor does not know about any major slave revolts or flights by same into the Sinai peninsula. Egyptian sources never heard of Moses or the 12 plagues & etc. Jews and Judaism emerged from a certain social class of Canaanites over a period of centuries inside Palestine.

6. Jerusalem not only was not being built by the likely then non-existent "Jewish people" in 1000 BCE, but Jerusalem probably was not even inhabited at that point in history. Jerusalem appears to have been abandoned between 1000 BCE and 900 BCE, the traditional dates for the united kingdom under David and Solomon. So Jerusalem was not 'the city of David,' since there was no city when he is said to have lived. No sign of magnificent palaces or great states has been found in the archeology of this period, and the Assyrian tablets, which recorded even minor events throughout the Middle East, such as the actions of Arab queens, don't know about any great kingdom of David and Solomon in geographical Palestine.

7. Since archeology does not show the existence of a Jewish kingdom or kingdoms in the so-called First Temple Period, it is not clear when exactly the Jewish people would have ruled Jerusalem except for the Hasmonean Kingdom. The Assyrians conquered Jerusalem in 722. The Babylonians took it in 597 and ruled it until they were themselves conquered in 539 BCE by the Achaemenids of ancient Iran, who ruled Jerusalem until Alexander the Great took the Levant in the 330s BCE. Alexander's descendants, the Ptolemies ruled Jerusalem until 198 when Alexander's other descendants, the Seleucids, took the city. With the Maccabean Revolt in 168 BCE, the Jewish Hasmonean kingdom did rule Jerusalem until 37 BCE, though Antigonus II Mattathias, the last Hasmonean, only took over Jerusalem with the help of the Parthian dynasty in 40 BCE. Herod ruled 37 BCE until the Romans conquered what they called Palestine in 6 CE (CE= 'Common Era' or what Christians call AD). The Romans and then the Eastern Roman Empire of Byzantium ruled Jerusalem from 6 CE until 614 CE when the Iranian Sasanian Empire Conquered it, ruling until 629 CE when the Byzantines took it back.

The Muslims conquered Jerusalem in 638 and ruled it until 1099 when the Crusaders conquered it. The Crusaders killed or expelled Jews and Muslims from the city. The Muslims under Saladin took it back in 1187 CE and allowed Jews to return, and Muslims ruled it until the end of World War I, or altogether for about 1192 years.

Adherents of Judaism did not found Jerusalem. It existed for perhaps 2700 years before anything we might recognize as Judaism arose. Jewish rule may have been no longer than 170 years or so, i.e., the kingdom of the Hasmoneans.

8. Therefore if historical building of Jerusalem and historical connection with Jerusalem establishes sovereignty over it as Netanyahu claims, here are the groups that have the greatest claim to the city:

A. The Muslims, who ruled it and built it over 1191 years.

B. The Egyptians, who ruled it as a vassal state for several hundred years in the second millennium BCE.

C. The Italians, who ruled it about 444 years until the fall of the Roman Empire in 450 CE.

D. The Iranians, who ruled it for 205 years under the Achaemenids, for three years under the Parthians (insofar as the last Hasmonean was actually their vassal), and for 15 years under the Sasanids.

E. The Greeks, who ruled it for over 160 years if we count the Ptolemys and Seleucids as Greek. If we count them as Egyptians and Syrians, that would increase the Egyptian claim and introduce a Syrian one.

F. The successor states to the Byzantines, which could be either Greece or Turkey, who ruled it 188 years, though if we consider the heir to be Greece and add in the time the Hellenistic Greek dynasties ruled it, that would give Greece nearly 350 years as ruler of Jerusalem.

G. There is an Iraqi claim to Jerusalem based on the Assyrian and Babylonian conquests, as well as perhaps the rule of the Ayyubids (Saladin's dynasty), who were Kurds from Iraq.

9. Of course, Jews are historically connected to Jerusalem by the Temple, whenever that connection is dated to. But that link mostly was pursued when Jews were not in political control of the city, under Iranian, Greek and Roman rule. It cannot therefore be deployed to make a demand for political control of the whole city.

10. The Jews of Jerusalem and the rest of Palestine did not for the most part leave after the failure of the Bar Kochba revolt against the Romans in 136 CE. They continued to live there and to farm in Palestine under Roman rule and then Byzantine. They gradually converted to Christianity. After 638 CE all but 10 percent gradually converted to Islam. The present-day Palestinians are the descendants of the ancient Jews and have every right to live where their ancestors have lived for centuries.

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PS: The sources are in the hyperlinks, especially the Thompson edited volume. See also Shlomo Sands recent book.