#828 – 11/13/16 – This Week: Jews as “East” Jerusalem “Settlers”?

 

WHILE YOU STAND ON ONE LEG:  The European Union last week referred to “the settlement of Gilo, built on occupied Palestinian land in East Jerusalem.” The U.S. State Department likewise called Gilo a “settlement.” If Jews, of all peoples, are not at home in historic Jerusalem, where are Jews “at home”?  And if contesting Jerusalem as “occupied Palestinian land” isn’t the fight of the world’s Jews, whose fight is it, Australia’s?

 This Week:  Jews as “East” Jerusalem “Settlers”?

Last week, following U.S. State Department and European Union condemnation of Israeli government approval of 181 housing units in the Gilo neighborhood of Jerusalem, the following responsive statement of historical facts appeared in a published article:

“For three millennia, Jerusalem has been the capital of only three native Jewish states – Judah, Judea and Israel.

“Jews have constituted the majority of Jerusalem’s residents since the pre-Zionist 19th century.

“In contrast, Palestinian Arabs have not ruled Jerusalem for a single day. Arab dynasties have ruled it temporarily, between 638 and 1099, under the Ottoman Empire, and under the Jordanian occupation between 1949 and 1967.”

The above [except that the Turkish Ottomans weren’t Arabs] is virtually in the exact words in which I’ve been stating these historical facts, in this media watch and in my books, Pressing Israel with Lee and Israel 3000 Years, over and over.  But what’s notable this week is that it wasn’t me who wrote this in an article, but the rather-less-right-wing-than-me Jerusalem Post, in an 11/5/16 editorial – “Hands Off Gilo.”

The JPost indeed had provocation.  Its editorial noted that the Gilo neighborhood, across the old 1949 Israel-Jordan military-only ceasefire line in Jerusalem, had been purchased by Dov Joseph for the Jewish National Fund in the 1930’s.  It stated flatly that Jewish housing there cannot by definition be called a (JPost’s quotes) “settlement.”   Nonetheless, the JPost noted, the State Department condemned these 181 Jerusalem housing units in language “We strongly oppose settlement activity.”  The JPost editorial also noted the tone of the European Union’s condemnation of Jewish building in

“the settlement of Gilo, built on occupied Palestinian land in East Jerusalem”

We cannot accept this – this demonization of Jews, of all peoples on earth, in Jerusalem, of all places on earth, as “settlers” who do not belong there.  Not from our own country’s State Department, not from the European Union, not from the mainstream western media.

On December 27, 2013, the widely-read, highly-respected Conf. of Presidents [of Major U.S. Jewish Organizations] Daily Alert did Lee and me the honor of excerpting an article we’d just written on Algemeiner.  Here’s part of that excerpt:

(Algemeiner) Lee S. Bender and Jerome R. Verlin – Western media participates in the delegitimization campaign against Israel by lacing its reporting with loaded terms: ….  “East Jerusalem” – The Jewish connection with “East Jerusalem” extends back to King David. Over the ensuing 3,000 years, the city has been the capital of three native states – Judah, Judea, and Israel. The two Jewish temples stood as Jerusalem centerpieces for a millennium. Throughout two millennia of foreign rule, Jews relentlessly returned to Jerusalem whenever the foreign invaders exiled them, again becoming Jerusalem’s majority during 19th century Ottoman rule. Throughout those millennia, nobody called Jews in Jerusalem “settlers.” ….  [emphasis added]

Are we all alone in the world, except for Evangelical Christians, in regarding Jews in Jerusalem as being at home there (and if not there, Where?)?  Not quite, as the Jerusalem Post noted in its week ago Saturday’s editorial:

One country stands out in its defense of truth from those who seek to delegitimize Israel:  Australia. Its attorney general told the Senate last week that Australia will no longer refer to east Jerusalem as “occupied” territory. “The description of east Jerusalem as “Occupied East Jerusalem” is a term freighted with pejorative implications, which is neither appropriate nor useful,” George Brandis said.

This is very nice, and deeply appreciated, I am sure.  But let me leave you this week with a sentiment that I told you last week had just been forwarded to me by an Old City rabbi by keepjerusalem.org:

     “We must thus encourage our Christian allies in our fight against hostile Muslim anti-Jewish trends, but we must not rely on them. The fight is ours” [emphasis original].