More setting the record straight
[Just when I thought I had it right, i.e. that that east Jerusalem meant all lands east of the armistice line, Charles Oren writes to tell me I still don't understand.]
By Charles Oren
Jerusalem was a divided city until ‘67 with No-Man’s land running approximately N-S along what is now Route 1 and then south along the Old City wall and along the valley to UN HQ in Government House.
Arab snipers frequently fired into Jewish Jerusalem. But not all the area East of the green line was populated !
And remember that the first houses outside the Old City walls were built by Sir Moses Montefiore.
The windmill was built in 1857. Jews have been the largest group in Jerusalem since then.
The city was divided as the result of the unprovoked attack by Transjordan and the illegal Jordanian occupation. However, the division was started by the British years before that.
Their reaction to the Arab riots of ‘29 and ‘36 was to “evacuate” Jews from their homes and force them to live in West Jerusalem.
These are the homes that are now being reclaimed by Jews in the City of David, Sheikh Jarrah, the Old City etc.
Victims of unprovoked aggression who reclaim their homes is not the same as aggressors who lost the war they started and so also lost their homes.
They gambled and lost…….and no casino refunds gambles !
The Brits also brought more Arabs from outside the Mandate Palestine to swell the number of Arabs in Palestine.
The British census at the beginning of the Mandate showed that there were 600,000 Arabs in Palestine and the census in ‘47 showed that there were 1,200,000. A hundred years earlier there were only 200,000 Arabs.
The Arab intention to destroy Israel is illustrated by the first thing that the Arabs did when they conquered the Old City on the eve of Passover ‘48. They destroyed the Hurva synagogue, the largest and most important synagogue in the Old City. They then destroyed all the other synagogues and razed the Jewish Quarter. The Western Wall was used as a public urinal……..it stank to high heaven when I visited it in June ‘67 !
Nobody enforced the Armistice agreement signed in Rhodes that ensured access to the Holy sites in Jerusalem to everyone.
The Hurva has now been rebuilt and will be dedicated this week.
I guess that this ceremony should be postponed due to the building freeze otherwise Obama and the Arabs will call it a provocation.
Presumably, Clinton wants to return to the illegal partition of Jerusalem since Israel is not permitted to drive away aggressors !
Ted,
Thanks for the info. It is accurate, and every Jew should be aware of it. However, the latest “flap” between Israel and the US, has little to do with Jerusalem. Nothing that happened in Jerusalem caused the exchange of insults, real and imagined — it was engineered and directed from Washington. If nothing more than an extra bathroom had been constructed, planned or imagined in Jerusalem or anywhere near it (in Tel Aviv, for instance), the outcome would have been the same.
The heart of the issue is Obama himself, and why he has decided to attack Israel at this time. He is using Petraeus as the “bad cop”, demanding that Judea and Samaria be placed under the US Central Command, and he is being the “good cop”, patiently enduring imagined provocations. There is no RATIONAL explanation for his behavior: He is not going to bring about any sort of peace agreement, or even advance the “peace process”; and he is clearly not going to bring down the Netanyahu government.
Pharaobama IS trying to box in Israel, and keep it at bay with an Iranian nuclear gun pointed at it, making the situation far worse than it is right now (and blaming the Jews for that worsening), until the whole place predictably begins flying apart at the seams. Then he plans to step in as Messiah and, through unconscionable application of America’s military might, dictate a world “peace” based on submission to him. If that sounds far-fetched, you come up with an alternative explanation THAT HOLDS WATER.
Total insanity reigns in the White House. I welcome any plausible argument that contradicts this, because it does not give me a comforting feeling.
Comment by BlandOatmeal — March 18, 2010 @ 9:37 pm