For Jerusalem

Holocaust survivor and Nobel laureate Elie Wiesel presented his position on the stature of Jerusalem in an ad published by the Washington Post last Friday (16/04/2010). In short he claims political pressure will not produce a solution to the issue of Jerusalem.

The text is short, and is already circulating in blogs all over the net, so I take myself the liberty of posting it here. If copy right issues prevents if from being posted in its entirety, I kindly ask moderators to remove it:

For Jerusalem

It was inevitable: Jerusalem once again is at the center of political debates and international storms. New and old tensions surface at a disturbing pace. Seventeen times destroyed and seventeen times rebuilt, it is still in the middle of diplomatic confrontations that could lead to armed conflict. Neither Athens nor Rome has aroused that many passions.

For me, the Jew that I am, Jerusalem is above politics. It is mentioned more than six hundred times in Scripture -- and not a single time in the Koran. Its presence in Jewish history is overwhelming. There is no more moving prayer in Jewish history than the one expressing our yearning to return to Jerusalem. To many theologians, it IS Jewish history, to many poets, a source of inspiration. It belongs to the Jewish people and is much more than a city, it is what binds one Jew to another in a way that remains hard to explain. When a Jew visits Jerusalem for the first time, it is not the first time; it is a homecoming. The first song I heard was my mother's lullaby about and for Jerusalem. Its sadness and its joy are part of our collective memory.

Since King David took Jerusalem as his capital, Jews have dwelled inside its walls with only two interruptions; when Roman invaders forbade them access to the city and again, when under Jordanian occupation, Jews, regardless of nationality, were refused entry into the old Jewish quarter to meditate and pray at the Wall, the last vestige of Solomon's temple. It is important to remember: had Jordan not joined Egypt and Syria in the war against Israel, the old city of Jerusalem would still be Arab. Clearly, while Jews were ready to die for Jerusalem they would not kill for Jerusalem.

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.

What is the solution? Pressure will not produce a solution. Is there a solution? There must be, there will be. Why tackle the most complex and sensitive problem prematurely? Why not first take steps which will allow the Israeli and Palestinian communities to find ways to live together in an atmosphere of security. Why not leave the most difficult, the most sensitive issue, for such a time?

Jerusalem must remain the world's Jewish spiritual capital, not a symbol of anguish and bitterness, but a symbol of trust and hope. As the Hasidic master Rebbe Nahman of Bratslav said, "Everything in this world has a heart; the heart itself has its own heart."

Jerusalem is the heart of our heart, the soul of our soul.

- Elie Wiesel

source

There has been quite a few responses and comments on "For Jerusalem" in the global media, and I think it could be interesting if we posted some of these reactions, to get valid perspectives and points of views on the matter. If not whole articles, then chosen excerpts, highlights or comments.

Of course your personal POWs are welcome too. A word of advice to certain ATS members; where you normally insert hate and political agenda, erase and insert intelligence and reflection instead, and perhaps we can get an interesting debate going!

Mod Edit: New External Source Tags – Please Review This Link.



[edit on 28-4-2010 by GAOTU789]

This reply was posted by a Jewish Jerusalem-based group called 'Just Jerusalem':

www.en.justjlm.org...

I would like to point out that I DO NOT represent the opinions presented in this response. I do believe it has some point of views worthy to take into consideration, I also think it makes some dubious statements.

It claims that Wiesel's text is "replete with factual errors". Which ones? I can't find any. In a historical context, I believe it stands up to scrutiny.

I also question the Just Jerusalem group's position on the East Jerusalem areas Sheik Jarrah and Silwan, which they champion as 'Palestinian' territory. Historically, both neighborhoods have been inhabited by Muslim's, Jews and Christians alike. It became 'Palestinian' during the Arab revolt in 1936-39, when Arab para-military groups chased Jewish inhabitants from the areas in something that can only be described as ethnic cleansing.

I also raised an eyebrow when I read the last line of the text:

As we chant weekly in our vigils in Sheikh Jarrah: “Nothing can be holy in an occupied city!”

Has it totally escaped these Jerusalemites that Jerusalem has almost always been occupied?

Jerusalem has been occupied systematically through history, by Babylonians, Egyptians, Assyrians, Romans, Arabs, Crusaders, Ottomans, English, etc. I guess that must mean that Jerusalem was only "holy" during the time of King David.

Comments?

[edit on 23-4-2010 by Heliocentric]

Einstein on Israel & Zionism

Einstein's view on Israel and Zionism?

How do you tie that in with Wiesel's text on Jerusalem?

It seems like a pretty long stretch to me, but perhaps you can clarify.

unless your a religous nut case then you will use biblical crap to go on about how the land is yours#


or use history Jerusalem is palestinian, aka occupied land
only thing israel can claim is it was theirs 3000 years ago
but come on how many countries would be screwed if people started claiming land on basis that someone thousends or even hundreds of years ago owned the peice of dirt

US would be screwed
Australia would be screwed
most countries would be

Thanks for posting illusive man.

I was hoping for a bit more scholarly contributions, rather than the mainstream pro-palestinian/pro-israeli rant that already overflows the Middle East Issues forum, but perhaps I raised the bar a bit too high. After all, seeing it in black and white makes everything so much easier.

Originally posted by illusive man
unless your a religous nut case then you will use biblical crap to go on about how the land is yours#

I suppose you meant the contrary, that only 'religious nut cases' use 'biblical crap' to prove that land belongs to you.

You may consider the Bible crap. Personally, I consider it a source of information that you need to carefully analyze with a fair dose of skepticism,

As an archaeologist, I find that sometimes, events portrayed in the Bible corresponds with events we can corroborate with historical research or archeological field work, and sometimes not. So while I'm not prepared to accept the Bible as a road-map to establish who Jerusalem belongs to, I do consider it more influential than 'crap'.

Originally posted by illusive man
Jerusalem is palestinian, aka occupied land
only thing israel can claim is it was theirs 3000 years ago

In a world where empires come and go, Jerusalem has been captured and claimed by numerous people. Almost always has it been taken by force, so therefore it is hard to establish who's more righteous than the other; the one that captured the city by force or the one that captured the city by force from the one that captured the city by force?

In recent history, it was administered for centuries by the Ottoman Empire (who took it by force from the Mamluks), until the end of WW I, when the empire collapsed and Jerusalem fell to the British (who took it by force).

Luckily, both the Ottomans and the British were good administrators, so they kept close records on demographics through census. Basically a tool for the taxman, these censuses kept a close track on ethnic communities living in Jerusalem, and their size in relation to each other.

Partially though these demographic records, but also through historic facts and archaeology (I have myself worked on several sites in the Levant for more than 20 years), we know the following:

There has always been a Jewish population living in Jerusalem. In difference to what many people may think, the Jewish exodus did not concern every Jew living in Israel or Judea, but simply the ruling elite and the upper social hierarchy. So even after the great purges, Jews continued to live in 'Palestine' and Jerusalem, from the Biblical era up until today. Sometimes the Jewish community was greater, sometimes smaller, depending on the occupying force, but they were always there.

In order to get a feel of the partition of Jerusalem between ethnic and religious communities through the centuries, please visit Wikipedias page "Demographics of Jerusalem":

en.wikipedia.org...


Let's fast-forward to the early 20th century, and a snippet of info taken from Wikipedia's general Jerusalem-page:

en.wikipedia.org...

From 1922 to 1948 the total population of the city rose from 52,000 to 165,000 with two thirds of Jews and one-third of Arabs (Muslims and Christians).[76] The situation between Arabs and Jews in Palestine was not quiet. At Jerusalem, in particular riots occurred in 1920 and in 1929.


So, from the early 20th century up until the proclamation of the Jewish state, Jerusalem was predominantly Jewish.

Perhaps this has provided you additional perspectives on your claim that "Jerusalem is Palestinian, aka occupied land", and that the "only thing israel can claim is it was theirs 3000 years ago".

reply to post by Heliocentric


i will be honest , i couldnt give a hoot about your Job profession and how the bible is refrence for you,

infact i couldnt give a hoot that there was jews who lived there.
just because someone of jewish faith lived in that land doesnt mean
others can come in and say yay we have someone of our faith here, we shall now reclaim this land after 3000 years.

all that matters to me is Fact not Biblical nonsense. so you can go on about the bible and so on, it will fall on deaf ears.


your right the Land has Changed hands over hundreds even thousends of Years. even then the land never was Israel's when it comes to claim as it was occupied by another group of people way before the Israelites came forth.

yes i am going to take Wikis word for it

By Interntional law Jeruslaum is occupied territory of palestine.

also if your going to talk to me keep your bible studies to your self.

No please dont keep your bible studies to yourself. As you may know this topic on ATS draws fire. The Jewish question in the Middle East.

Its interesting that the heat here paralles what goes on over their.

It should be a clue to many that this particular tribe of humans gets so much flack for wanting back what God gave then years ago. What thats all that God wants for His administrators? That little slice of the earth over there? And He has to take flack from what?

Look at all the land and oil Gods has given the Arabs and thier kin over there and yet the Jews having that little slice so agrivates them? What they cant sleep at night without knowing that the Dome of the Rock is setting on the grounds of the olf Jewish holy ground?

For me then the Dome is like a dog that has marked its ground by pissing or crapping on something. I can show respect for thier other edifices but not there, not in Jerusalem. What the Arabs to there is like what China does to Tibet.

Finally, in the early 20th centurey, Tibet was able to declare independence, expelling all Chinese residents from Tibet. However, this independecne was destroyed when, in the 1950's the Chinese government under the rule of Chairman Mao took over by violating the rights of Tibetans which is still going on, to a lesser extent today.

TIBET - INDEPENDENCE FROM CHINA

The Chinese government believes its claim to Tibet to be valid for three main reasons. The government believes its rights to Tibetan territory to be left over from the Thirteenth Century, when China and Tibet were both incorporated into Kublai Khan's empire.

This is what the Jews are fighting today....an old empire, several old empires of several sorts,

from what I read on the article it seems that jews think they are above any law. They seem to have the "chosen" people got to their heads. I personally don't believe that they are the "chosen" people.

Originally posted by Logarock
No please dont keep your bible studies to yourself. As you may know this topic on ATS draws fire. The Jewish question in the Middle East.

as i recall i said if he wants to direct anything at me to keep his crap to him self,
i dont care how many fairytales you people argue with together aslong as i dont have it shoved down my throat justifying their BS

get the picture.

Originally posted by dragnet53
from what I read on the article it seems that jews think they are above any law. They seem to have the "chosen" people got to their heads. I personally don't believe that they are the "chosen" people.

hey all people are Gods chosen
watch human sacrafice

from ancient amian (my spelling sucks) to modern day
people have chosen they are Gods chosen to kill others. Israel is no diffrent.

some use to sacrafice prisoners of war to please their Gods
some even ate their victims and so forth.

Okay, before we go any further, let me just say this;

This is n-o-t the thread where you pimp your political agenda in the Israeli/Palestinian conflict, accompanied by hate and disregard towards those who oppose that agenda. There are plenty of other threads where you can do that. This is the thread where we discuss Jerusalem, with the article by Elie Wiesel as a starting point in order to establish a debate about what should be done, what can be done, what can not be done, in order for all parties to reach a settlement, which must come eventually,

It's less fun than flaming, I know, still it's the way to go.

Originally posted by illusive man
reply to post by Heliocentric

 

i will be honest , i couldnt give a hoot about your Job profession and how the bible is refrence for you,

infact i couldnt give a hoot that there was jews who lived there.
just because someone of jewish faith lived in that land doesnt mean
others can come in and say yay we have someone of our faith here, we shall now reclaim this land after 3000 years.

all that matters to me is Fact not Biblical nonsense. so you can go on about the bible and so on, it will fall on deaf ears.

First of all, I'm not basing my arguments on the Bible, I don't know how you got that idea. I'm not a Christian, Jew or Muslim, I'm a scientifically schooled person who doesn't need a religion or an -ism as a platform for a reasoning,

Elie Wiesel does refer to the Bible in his article, and I think it is naive of you to think you could escape the Bible in this conflict.

Because it is the holy text of both Jews and Christians, and it's the source from which Islam sprung,

It is impregnated in this region, it's land, it's earth, and in it's conflict. So live with it. The more you know about the Bible, the more you know about this conflict. That said by an agnostic.

It's also kind of naive of you to acknowledge that 'someone of the Jewish faith' lived in that land, but say that they have no rights to it. Of course they have a right to it, and so do the Muslims that live there since centuries.

As to the 'others' (and I guess that you take a stab at zionism here), those that arrived later, you know they left a Europe that persecuted them and regularly lynched them. It's in the history books.

They left for a better, safer future, which is a hard thing to do because you leave everything you know and cherish behind you.

Did you know that more Jews immigrated to America than Israel, that there are more illegal Mexican immigrants living in the US than Jewish immigrants in Israel? There are more Maghrebi Muslims living in France than European Jews in Israel. What do you think about Mexicans and Arabs, should they be sent back home because they don't belong there? If not so, then why the European and American Jews in Israel?

Originally posted by illusive man
yes i am going to take Wikis word for it

If you think it's untruthful, then you should take it up with Wikipedia's editor, and produce some better sources for them.

Originally posted by illusive man
By Interntional law Jeruslaum is occupied territory of palestine.

also if your going to talk to me keep your bible studies to your self.

Allow me to set this one straight for you, just some historical facts concerning the stature of Jerusalem .

I'll link you to the UN General Assembly resolution 303 (it's wiki but I think it's good):

en.wikisource.org...

The United Nations couldn't give Jerusalem to either the Jews or the Muslims, and sharing it would only be a prelude to war, so they decided to 'internationalize' the city, make it belong to everyone and no one at the same time. The Arabs initially rejected the notion and the Jews accepted it.
The war of 1948 resulted in Jerusalem being divided, with the old walled city lying entirely on the Jordanian side of the line. It wasn't UN's decision, it became that way because the Arab League and the Palestinians decided to attack and annihilate Israel.

Jordan (then Transjordan) occupied the East Part of Jerusalem and Palestine, Israel occupied the west part. Then, in the Six Days war, Israel chased the Jordanians back to the Jordan river. Another people that took Jerusalem by force, from someone that took it by force and had no legal claim to it.

In 1988, Jordan ceded it's illegal claims to the West Bank, but of course not to Israel, to the Palestinians. It was an agreement between them, not with the U.N.

The 1993 Oslo Accords declared the final status of the West Bank to be subject to a forthcoming settlement between Israel and the Palestinian leadership.

That settlement has been on the negotiating table I don't know how many times now since, and it's been close to an agreement but it all fell on the stature of Jerusalem, which both parts claimed as Capital.

So no, Jerusalem has not been declared 'occupied territory of Palestine' by international law.

I'm sure it was just something you read on the internet.


[edit on 30-4-2010 by Heliocentric]

reply to post by Heliocentric


my friend you can keep arguing your point

i never said No one of the jewish faith shouldnt live In Israel/palestine

but the country of Israel has no right to claim it as its land
just because of the biblcal reasons or because of reasons thousends of years ago.

also to add

i couldnt give a hoot about your satistics
i wouldnt give a hoot if it was one Muslim or Christain and 10 Jews

i will stick by history and who the land fell to

now enjoy arguing your point.

i dont Read Wiki




[edit on 30-4-2010 by illusive man]

I am a Christian and I have a simple question to ask about this piece of so called land. If you read the bible and believe in it's word ( not saying those who don't read it are wrong ), then why is this piece of land probably no larger than the state of Massachusetts ( guestimation) mean so much to everyone in this world. Just my thoughts, no facts, but this little piece of land with no value unless hidden oil etc, fascinates and holds the attention of the world. Peace to everyone!