My new column on the the U.S. Jewish establishment repeating Netanyahu’s misleading spin on East Jerusalem is up at the American Prospect:
Western communists, it was said in another era, took out their umbrellas whenever it rained in Moscow. I remembered that adage as I read a recent statement from the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations that arrived in my inbox. The subject was the latest U.S.-Israeli flap over construction in East Jerusalem. No matter that the diplomatic thunderstorm appears artificial — deliberately engineered by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to deflect the Obama administration’s pressure to freeze settlement activity. At the Presidents Conference headquarters in New York, the umbrellas were opened with alacrity. The statement is an uncritical repetition of Netanyahu government spin.
The locus of the clash is a four-story building known as the Shepherd Hotel in the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood north of Jerusalem’s Old City. It’s an affluent area where foreign consulates are scattered between mansions of aristocratic Palestinian clans such as the Husseinis and Nashashibis. The hotel building itself was once the headquarters of Hajj Amin al-Husseini, mufti of Jerusalem and Arab nationalist leader during British rule of Palestine. After Israel conquered and annexed East Jerusalem in 1967, a government agency — the Custodian of Absentee Property — took possession of the building.
In the mid-1980s, it was sold to a corporation owned by American millionaire Irving Moskowitz, the financial angel of far-right Israeli groups intent on settling Jews in Palestinian neighborhoods inside and encircling the Old City. Moskowitz-backed projects have repeatedly been flashpoints for Israeli-Palestinian tensions. They’re also a direct threat to any attempt to reach a compromise over the future of the so-called Holy Basin — the Old City and its environs — which is critical for any peace agreement. …
Read the rest here and come back to SoJo to comment.
Dr, Moskowitz is certainly a controversial figure The “Bingo King” has led a charmed life spending alot of his time fending off lawsuits in regard to his cash cow” Hawaiian Gardens” . He is a doctor in name only only practicing medicine for a few years; the rest of the time he built and sold hospitals. He is a developer pure and simple with a eye to ridding Israel of any Arab presence ,but of course at a profit for Irving. It is rumored that Bibi doesn’t pass gas without Irving’s ok and his influence is always relective in Bibi’s decisions It is sad but true
G-
You would be surprised at the unbelievably corrupt financial shenanigans Peres, Rabin , Beilin and the rest of the Oslo Gang set up in order to rip off Israelis, but even more so, Palestinians, all in the name of “the Peace Process”. There was Yossi Ginossar, who got significant cuts off of monopolies in the Palestinian authority in things like IIRC flour, gasoline and other necessities that poor Palestinans were coughing up money in order to keep Arafat, Ginnosar, and other criminals in luxury. (Ozrad Lev wrote about this in “Mey ha kis shel ha’rais”). Ginnosar was given this largesse by Arafat so that he would act as his advocate with the Israeli gov’t (Ginnosar was an ex-SHABAK man who was IIRC who had been involved previously involved in framing an innocent man, Yitzhak Mordechai for the Bus 300 affair) so they would keep making concessions and giving money and weapons to him at the same time he was sending suicide bombers to kill us.
Then, of course, there was Arafat’s business parner, Martin Shlaff, who was also in business with Sharon’s buddy Dov Weisglass (the Jericho Casino) . Yep, the “peace people” are certainly very moral. Rabin didn’t pass gas without Ginossar’s approval.
Y : no I wouldn’t be surprised at the bogus deals that politicians get involved in and even members of Obama’s inter-circle including Larry Summer and his high priced lecture scam and Clinton’s man Robert Rubin ,who was one of the architects for deregulation, and was the deal-meister for Citi-Group Thanks for the meltdown Bobby. At least Irving is making a profit and not asking for a government bailout from either the US or Israel I only have a problem with his goals.
Aother point I live in the Detroit area ;thus , nothing surprises me. We have Kwame,and Monica Conyers, the wife of the Chairman of the House Judicial Commitee,John Conyers. Monica ,a Detroit councilwoman, who is going to the “big house”for bribery: all good Democrats.
My real complaint and it’s more of a bitch with Irving is ,why didn’t he use ,obviously a great mind, as a physician and work on something that would benefit all mankind in stead of programs that are so devisive .
Moskowitz bought the property, so why cant he build on it. His purchase of the property is likely as valid as the purchases of the property that Gershom and Haim live on
That he may give me the cave of Machpelah, which he hath, which is in the end of his field; for as much money as it is worth he shall give it me for a possession of a buryingplace amongst you. 10: And Ephron dwelt among the children of Heth: and Ephron the Hittite answered Abraham in the audience of the children of Heth, even of all that went in at the gate of his city, saying, 11: Nay, my lord, hear me: the field give I thee, and the cave that is therein, I give it thee; in the presence of the sons of my people give I it thee: bury thy dead. […] 16: And Abraham hearkened unto Ephron; and Abraham weighed to Ephron the silver, which he had named in the audience of the sons of Heth, four hundred shekels of silver, current money with the merchant. 17: And the field of Ephron, which was in Machpelah, which was before Mamre, the field, and the cave which was therein, and all the trees that were in the field, that were in all the borders round about, were made sure 18: Unto Abraham for a possession in the presence of the children of Heth, before all that went in at the gate of his city. 19: And after this, Abraham buried Sarah his wife in the cave of the field of Machpelah before Mamre: the same is Hebron in the land of Canaan. 20: And the field, and the cave that is therein, were made sure unto Abraham for a possession of a buryingplace by the sons of Heth.
YBD–speaking of corruption, let’s not forget the Palestinian clan that’s making a fortune in supplying concrete for the separation barrier…
Now, let’s picture this in reverse: a Palestinian from E. Jerusalem has property his father purchased, and gets a permit after 20 years and starts building—but the Jews scream “Not in my back yard” and demand that building in (name any west Jerusalem Jewish neighborhood–how about Baka?) of a multi-family apartment house cease.
Would the EU be upset? Would HRW or B’tselem get involved? Would there be screams of racism and apartheid? You bet!
Hebrew University is right up the hill; French Hill (ostensibly Jewish but in reality a mixed neighborhood) abuts Sheik Jarrah, as does the police HQ. This is not a purely Arab neighborhood to start with and it is pure apartheid to suggest that a Jewish owner of a property there for 20 years can’t build on it. (There is Jewish-owned property in Abu Dis whose owners have been forbidden access to it.)
Has it occured to anybody that the Arab insistence that their neighborhoods be Jew-free is every bit as racist as the white southern insistence that their neighborhoods be Jew-free (and Black and Hispanic-free also). No one is circulating petitions to kick Arab families out of Baka, French Hill, upper Abu Tor, Armon HaNatziv, or other heavily Jewish-populated neighborhoods.
The building, as well as the settlement debate, is just another distraction from the real issue, which is creating a two-state solution. Either Jerusalem will be divided in the negotiations and people can decide if they wish to remain minorities in respective majority populations OR it won’t be divided, in which case the whole discussion is moot.
On the subject of Jews settling in the OPT and Palestinians settling in Israel, Anatole France said it best over a century ago:
“The law in its majestic equality forbids the rich as well as the poor to sleep under the bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal bread.”
As for Palestinian companies providing cement for their own and Israel’s prison wall, sadly true. Myopic and greedy (aka business-like), probably, corrupt, I don’t know. Are those Palestinians who are forced to collude with the Shabak for work permits or medical services corrupt?
A Aliyah06 Are you able to tell me please:
1. Which State will the Old City be in?
2. Will Jews be barred from the Old City as they were between 1948 and 1967?
3. Will Jews living in the Arab State have equal rights with Muslims or be dhimmis? (The PA law is sharia.)
When Jews were barred from the Old City, the world was silent, the UN was silent. The silence was deafening.
The building as well as the larger settlement debate is an obstruction to peace. It’s been a provocation that inspires anger despair cynicism lack of trust. Palestinians come to feel that the government does not have either the will or the means to remove them when the time comes but more than that it contributes to a feeling, as lands slips away, that there is no way that Palestinians can have a state that is geographically workable. As well, even regarding those areas that will probably get bargained away in an exchange, the time has come to show that this is something that must be settled at the negotiating table, not by taking first and changing the landscape.
How long and what energy/cost does it take to replace olive trees? or un-pave a road back to a field? or clean up settler garbage dumps? or remove a misplaced wall?… or buildings that are not suitable for Palestinian needs?
As we speak- planes of new settlers arrive from the US and elsewhere, some headed directly to these places to contribute to”natural growth”… totally oblivious of the consequences.
Yet the “talking point” these days is that settlements don’t matter. That’s a very hard case to make.
It occurs to me that the only way to stop the Arabs barring the Jews from the Old City again is to make sure that the whole of Jerusalem is “racially” mixed so that it can’t be divided again. Makes sense to me.
Charlotte: For an obviously educated person I find it ironic that you would use such a phrase as “racially mixed” which connotes that Arabs and Jews are of different races. Race is a rather imprecise term which has been misused for years primarilly to fit predjudices rather than define a specific species in a biological fashion.
Jerusalem should be an international city which recognizes the three major Western religions as those holding the power of governance.Nobody said it would be easy because the two major combatants will have their turf staked out. The law ,constitution, and governing body should probably track something like Switzerland. Unfortunately my group can’t even get together on holds the key to The Church of the Holy Sepulcher.
As in most cases religion gets in the way of reasonable compromise . It may truly be “the opium of the masses”
George, I was being ironic, that’s why I put the word racially in inverted commas!
Charlotte: Cool , silly me . I will try that grammer ploy next time I want to be ironic. I doubt that the majority of the justices on the appellate courts , I toil before ,would pick up on that. It’s too over their heads and Jurist Doctor doesn’t describe intellectual abilities.
While other respondents have talked about the situation in Jerusalem itself, I’m personally more concerned about a relatively small number of “Conference” leaders claiming to speak for a highly diverse constituency, most of whom do not have the “umbrella reflex” of unthinking endorsement for the political positions of Israel’s leaders.
The Conference leaders obviously didn’t check with their member organizations and so they are claiming to speak for them without their knowledge or consent (guilty of misrepresentation). And the whole bit about “house of a friend of Hitler” is so intellectually flaccid that one has to wonder if it’s sincere or just crass, cynical manipulation of the readers emotions. (I will be generous and presume they are just guilty of presuming a stupid audience that is easily manipulated).
Shame on Solow and Hoenlein for their attempt to cast their own opinions as those of all “major American Jewish organizations” and for their dummying-down of this important debate.
The issue of the genocidal Mufti’s former residence is an ideal opportunity for the Israeli government to educate the modern generations who did not live through World War II and its aftermath of the genocidal truth of the Mufti and the Arab League, the continuation of Hitler’s attempt at a final solution. Many young people in the UK, despite supposedly being on the school curriculum do not know about the Holocaust and don’t know who Churchill was.
Never take it for granted that outsiders know the facts of Jewish history as we do. They get sucked in by the constant drip-drip-drip of anti-Israeli Arab and left wing media propaganda to Israel’s.
Israelis shouldn’t be surprised that much of the Western democratic world believes the anti-Israeli Jew-as-aggresssor/Arab-passive-victim, Zionism is racism garbage, because you fail to TELL THE PEOPLE THE TRUTH.
I’m sure the Armenians want the world to take note of their history too. My Armenian friends never miss a chance to vilify the Turks and tell me that their homeland is controlled by the infidel muslims. I of course retort that it was an Armenian who gave the Soviets the MIG and like so what.
Charlotte , you throw in too many generalities,like most of the Western democratic world believes that Israel is the aggressor and the “nut cases” in Hamas are passive victims. You forget that it was muslims that struck the Trade Towers on 9/11. You also forget that alot of the alledged left-wing journalists here in the US are Jewish and have a good grasp on history.
I don’t know about the UK ,but in every major city in the US where I have been ,there is a Holocaust museum. The history of this event is not shoved away in a closet in this country.
My admiration for Israel and it’s people doesn’t affect my empathy for the innocent Palestinian people and their suffering and that is why interns from my church work among them in Jerusalem ,to the point that we have been considered persona non grata by the powers that be.
History as a teaching tool can be both positive or negative. Hitler got alot of mileage out of ,the Jews in the German government sold the country out in 1918 and were at the heart of Germany’s great depression and the suffering of the German people; thus, they need to be eliminated. See where that went
George, My view is UK based. There is only a small Jewish population in the UK who have traditonally tended to keep their heads beneath the parapet. Consequently there is no call for Holocaust museums and a Holocaust Remembrance Day is a recent innovation. The Muslim Council boycotted it. The Christian community feel their beliefs and traditions to be under attack. You may be interested to read this Times On-line article “Bishop of Rochester, Dr Michael Nazir-Ali, faces death threats”
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/comment/faith/article3292032.ece.
Anyway, the point I was making was not about the German Holocaust per se, but about the lack of education on the genocidal intentions of the Arab leadership in the 1948 war. Please see my post on the thread South Jerusalem History Awards re Al Husseini and Arafat.
I am also sorry for the innocent Arabs who suffer because of the hatred of their leaders, just as I am sorry for the innocent victims of Dresden, Hiroshima, Nagasaki, etc. That pity does not preclude telling ALL the facts. Otherwise antisemitic and anti-Israel propaganda will prevail.
Two years ago with my wife and my (at the time 12 year old Grandson) went to Japan to see our friends and I took this time to go to Hiroshima to observe”ground zero” and the museum.I also went to ask foregivness for the use of the atomic bomb on the civilian population which was
nothing more than an act of bigotry. I remember the event clearly ,I was 12 years old.
I also remember when “Bomber Brown” sent the British bombers ,followed by the Americans to saturate bomb Dresden and to burn thousands of innocent civilians to death.
I was in Dresden when the Cathederal was totally restored and rededicated by the Lutheran Church on my way back from Prague
Even more heinous was the firebombing of Japan at the behest of General Curtis LeMay and his chief of staff, Robert Strange McNamara They were incinerating 160,000 people a night and Mc Namara admitted that they could be tried as war criminal in his memoirs. He also should have been tried for the baldfaced lies he told LBJ about the Bay of Tonkin incident which expanded the war into North Viet Nam He died two weeks ago giving authority to the old bromide that ” only the good die young”
The history of anti-semitism seems to have started with Hecataecus of Abdera in the fourth century BC who had trouble with Moses as the leader of a culture far superior to his (the Greeks). The legend that Moses was an Egyptian renegade priest fed the Greeks xenophobia right into their version of Christianity and then it was off to the races.
Ironic that the present day crap that Obama is not an American born citizen ,but a Kenyan-born moslem has an ancient ring to it.
Charlotte : I read the Bishop’s article and I think the UK is suffering from it’s ill-advised ” open door ” policy on former possession emigration. The Netherlands seems to have it’s problems as well. The UK is really a small country about the size of Illinois in land mass with no reasonable policy to kick out the trouble makers, in their case ,the moslem extremists.
The Brits in some respects are the architects of their own trouble. The British for years had a “hollyer than thou ” attitude , which we the Americans have taken over. The Arabs and those people of color in the former colonies were termed (primarilly the by military) . . the “wogs”. As well the Brits had nothing but contempt for both the Jews and Arabs in Palestine before 1948. Now the “chickens have come home to roost” The extremist moslem elements in the UK smell blood and they are going after their historical oppressors, the Church of England ,which historically helped back several ill- conceived crusades. The Church thinks that “kissing their a-s” from Canterbury is the resolution route “no way Jose” This is a sign of weakness to extremists and they will push for more. The Church must protect it’s clergy by standing up for them and condemning such things as death threats and must quit placating these bad actors. Good resolution is acheived when both sides have strong support and protection. Freedom of speech ends at the point when threats of physical harm are apparent and as we Yank lawyers like to call a climate of ” clear and present danger” The FBI would be on the case described in a “New York Minute”
George, you seem to miss the point. Yes, Britain is suffering the legacy of “imperialism” in that it has thrown the doors open to unknown numbers of immigrants, both legal and illegal, from its former empire. But the problem is not “revenge” but adherents to the politico/religious dictates of supremacist Islam seeking “submission” from the “infidel”, ie non-Muslims. This is experienced as a relentless attack on British values and Judeo/Christian culture, particularly freedom of speech. Instead of the immigrants conforming to British values, it is the British who are expected to conform to discriminatory Islamic dictates. The problem is heightened because many of the newly religious Muslims are British born. They send for young non-English speaking uneducated wives from the subcontinent and live parallel lives to the British population. One may say that other religious groups may choose to live a separate life from the mainstream, but other religious groups do not have as their fundamental ethic an obligation to conquer the world. Unlike Christianity, which seeks to encourage conversion by example, Islam seeks to dominate the world by example, the sword, or the ballot box.
This is a link to an article that links to another yesterday’s Daily Telegraph on the Islamic demographic explosion in Europe.
http://www.jihadwatch.org/archives/027158.php