The Last Exile

And she possesses a real intellect. I admit I haven’t paid much attention to Sarah Honig (whose column is often carried in the Jerusalem Post) in recent years. My very, very bad. She puts her two shekels on the latest Jerusalem controversy and I quote an excerpt:

The Hurva was built between 1857-1864 on the ruins of an earlier structure constructed by Rabbi Judah the Pious in the late 17th century (over a synagogue site dating to the second century). There wasn’t a wee murmur of protest about this wanton arson nor about the devastation of 57 other Old City synagogues by conquistador Arabs. Likewise, not a whisper of displeasure about Arabs ripping out Mount of Olives tombstones to construct public latrines. The international community was decidedly unbothered when for 19 years Jews were prohibited from praying at their holiest sites.

But the Jewish return was deemed a reprehensible violation of good conduct codes by which, we know, all other nations faithfully abide. Ravaging the Hurva was acceptable, but rebuilding it is a sin against pie-in-the-sky peace. It was pardonable to cast Jews out of the Old City, but their homecoming deserves unreserved condemnation.

Jerusalem was always one united city save for a 19-year illegality arising from an Arab invasion in violent breach of the UN partition resolution. While the world convivially tolerated Arab occupation of half of Jerusalem, it never recognized the residual Jewish hold even on the other half, west Jerusalem. In the spirit of skewed evenhandedness, the global consensus now is that the result of 1948’s illegal Arab invasion must be upheld and that Jews must be barred from anywhere that the invaders once occupied.

That’s why planning permits for 1,600 additional apartments in Ramat Shlomo irk the world. Ramat Shlomo isn’t in east Jerusalem but to its north, doesn’t encroach on Arab neighborhoods and its birth 12 years ago triggered no squawk. It’s situated on what were barren slopes that overlook the Tel Aviv-Jerusalem Highway. Ramat Shlomo’s already existing 2,300 housing units were erected on vacant wasteland, dispossessing nobody. Currently 17,500 Jews reside there. They marry, give birth and their families grow. Is their neighborhood to be made judenrein because for 19 years Jews were barred from it?

If anyone owes an apology for rank insults, Obama, Biden and Clinton do for assuming they can dismiss 3,000 years of Jewish history in the city which Jews put on humanity’s map. This trio disrespects us and our sensibilities and in so doing raises Arab expectations and deepens Arab intransigence. With the world’s one superpower espousing the Fatah/Hamas line, why should Arabs evince the slightest flexibility? Obama has placed all the bargaining chips in Arab hands.

On May 29, 1995, post-Oslo and five months before his assassination, Yitzhak Rabin told the Knesset: “There is one issue on which there is no debate among us – the integrity of Jerusalem and the continuation of its cultivation and consolidation as Israel’s capital. I said so yesterday and will repeat it today: There are no two Jerusalems. There is only one. Jerusalem is not subject to compromise. It was ours, will be ours, is ours and so it will remain for ever and always.”

Amen.