The Corona Chronicles – Business As Usual
Yesterday was Jerusalem Day, the 54th anniversary of the liberation
of the eternal Jewish capital from the illegal Jordanian occupation, and
of the city’s return to Jewish sovereignty for the first time in two
thousand years.
It should have been a day of rejoicing. Instead,
it was marred, not only by riots on the Temple Mount and in other places
in Israel, stirred up by false rumours that “the Zionists are storming
El Aqsa”, but also by attacks and near lynches on Jews throughout the
country, especially in places where there are large concentrations of
Arab “Palestinian” residents, and over 250 rocket attacks on Israeli
communities, originating in the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip.
If you get your news from the likes of CNN, or the virulently anti-Zionist Ha’aretz
(the extreme left-wing Israeli newspaper which functions, these days,
as a mouthpiece for every closet antisemite, who, when challenged for
their lies, like to come back with “But I read it in an ISRAELI media
source”), you will probably not even have heard the Israeli side of the
story and even if you have, it will have been couched in terms which
distort the truth in such a way as to make it clear that, for the media,
Israel is always to blame.
Yesterday afternoon, around 5 pm, I
lay down for a nap. I awoke round about 8.30 pm, to find my WhatsApp
feed full of anxious messages from family members;
“They’re bombing Jerusalem!”
“Are you okay?”
“Where are you?”
“Why don’t you answer, what’s happening?”
“Has anyone heard from Shimmy?”
It turned out that Hamas had been firing scores of rockets at Israeli civilian targets – some of them in Jerusalem, where I live. And I had slept right through it. Not even the air raid sirens had awakened me.
Nor was that the end. Since yesterday afternoon, Hamas has fired hundreds of rockets at Israel, most of which, fortunately, were intercepted by our Iron Dome defence system. About a third of the rockets fell short and landed in the Gaza Strip and were very likely responsible for at least some of the “Palestinian” deaths attributed to Israel. A few did manage to evade Israel’s aerial defences and even score a few direct hits on Israeli homes and, within the past few minutes, it has been reported that in the merciless, unceasing barrage of rockets on the coastal town of Ashkelon, scores of Israelis have been injured and two women have been killed.
Naturally, what interests the world press is Israel’s reaction and
the number of “Palestinian” casualties. Israeli casualties are mentioned
only in passing. It’s never: Hamas rains rocket fire on Israel: Israel retaliates. No,
that would impress on the reader the fact that HAMAS started the
“spiral of violence”. Instead, the reader’s attention must be drawn
first of all to the Israeli response, which is usually portrayed as
being disproportionate, and only then, in passing, in such a way as to
convey to the reader that it is a mere coincidence, are we told WHY
Israel took the action she did:
Israel airstrikes kill 20 in Gaza, Palestinians say, after militants fire rockets at Jerusalem
So let me explain a few salient facts. The ostensible cause for the escalation is the Israeli “aggression” on the Temple Mount. It has always been easy for “Palestinian” leaders to rally the support of the masses by claiming that “the Zionists” or even simply “the Jews” are threatening El Aqsa (the Temple Mount) – just as, in days gone by, before Israel existed, they would stir up pogroms by false claims that “the Jews” had desecrated a mosque. In the past, Christian leaders often stirred up pogroms by similar claims that “the Jews have desecrated the Host” etc. And, indeed, in this digital age, it can often be made to seem as if this is true, when social media are awash with pictures of armed Israeli police racing across the Temple Mount. What they fail to show, however, is that the Israeli police actions were in response to rocks and Molotov cocktails being hurled at the police and even (from the vantage point of the Mount), on Jewish worshippers at the Western Wall down below. Indeed, this is a point to be noted by all those who say – “Let the Muslims have the Temple Mount. The Jewish holy place is the Western Wall.” I am not going to go into the question now, of the relative holiness of the Western Wall and the Temple Mount for Jews. I will just say this. Every time Jewish worshippers at the Western Wall are bombarded with blocks and bricks from above, it becomes obvious that he who controls the Temple Mount controls the Western Wall.
You may have heard that over the past few weeks, extreme right-wing Jewish groups have been marching through Jerusalem harassing and attacking Arabs. This is true, as far as it goes – and I am ashamed of that – but what you don’t hear is that this came about as a response to Arab attacks on Jews, particularly Jews who were easily identifiable as religious, which the perpetrators then gleefully posted on social media such as Tik Tok.
The other alleged cause of the escalating tensions in Jerusalem is
the projected eviction of a number of Arab “Palestinian” families from
the Sheikh Jarrah neighbourhood in Jerusalem, in order to replace them
with “Jewish settlers”. Again, I am ready to bet most of you aren’t
getting to hear the whole story. At best, you may be told that the
“settlers” claim the buildings were Jewish-owned before 1948.
So,
here is the history of the “Sheikh Jarrah” evictions. I put the name of
the neighbourhood in quotation marks because what the “Palestinians”
call “Sheikh Jarrah” actually comprises the original “Sheikh Jarrah”
neighbourhood, an affluent Arab neighbourhood built in the 1860s, and
the two adjacent Jewish neighbourhoods, Shimon Hatzaddik (built in 1890
on land purchased fifteen years earlier) and Nachlat Shimon (dating from
the early 20th century). During Israel’s War of Independence, the
Jewish residents were forced to leave and the Jewish neighbourhood was
occupied by the Arab Legion. It remained under illegal Jordanian
occupation from 1948 until the Six Day War in 1967.
In 1956, the
Jordanian government and UNRWA settled a number of “Palestinian”
refugee families in the former Jewish neighbourhood, under a 33 year
lease. Ownership (under Jordanian law) remained in the hands of the
Jordanian Custodian of Enemy Property.
After the Six Day War, Israel
was once again in control of the Shimon Hatzaddik and Nachlat Shimon
neighbourhoods and property that had been held by the Jordanian
Custodian of Enemy Property passed to the hands of his Israeli
counterpart. In 1972, the latter transferred ownership to two Jewish
organisations, who had documented proof that they had owned the land
until the 1948 War of Independence. However, the Arab residents were
allowed to continue living there until 1982, when the legal Jewish
owners attempted to assert their ownership “on the ground” as it were.
In the ensuing court case, the parties reached an agreement under which
the Arab residents recognised the ownership rights of the two Jewish
organisations and in return, they would continue to live in the disputed
houses, as protected tenants under Israeli law, a status which would
enable them to live there indefinitely, as long as they continued to pay
their rent and see to the reasonable uptake of the houses. The court
set its seal of approval on the agreement, giving it the validity of a
court verdict.
In the years following, the Arab residents
reneged on the agreement, claiming their lawyer had signed it without
their consent, and refused to pay rent. This, of course, led to a series
of court cases, which has continued to this day, although one of the
two Jewish organisations involved has since sold its rights to an
American Jewish organisation which does, indeed, have, as one of its
aims, the settling of many more Jews in what was, already, Jewish-owned
property. (And why not, I might add?)
It is very likely that if
the “Palestinian” residents had not reneged on their agreement and
continued to pay their rent (as, in any case, they were doing before the
Six Day War), the new owners would not even have considered it worth
their while to purchase the property, as “protected tenants” are
notoriously difficult to dislodge under Israeli law. However, by
refusing to fulfil their obligations, the “Palestinian” families lost
their protected tenant status. In any normal country, if you don’t pay
your rent, you get evicted, and nobody will lift an eyebrow. Except, of
course, in Israel, if you happen to be “Palestinian” and therefore, by
definition, a victim – and the property owner to whom you are refusing
to pay the rent which you are legally obliged to pay happens to be
Jewish and therefore, by definition, a land-grabbing villain. Such is
the hypocrisy of the world in which we live.
Finally, in
honour of Jerusalem Day, here is my prayer for my city – a prayer which
seems unlikely to be answered in the near future – originally composed
by King David, set in English by the Elizabethan composer Richard
Nicholson and performed here by my own choir, the Jerusalem Oratorio
Chamber Choir:
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