JERUSALEM- MANTLED OR DISMANTLED?
Elhanan ben-Avraham 3-2008

I am sitting here in the heart of Jerusalem- within the Old City walls- old as memory and beyond, the City that inspires dreams well beyond human imagination, and ignites human passions grasping for eternity. Layers of history lie below my feet, and layers above my head. Below my feet are the Jebusites and their city captured by King David thirty centuries ago, King Solomon and the golden Temple of God, all the kings and prophets of Israel, the Greeks and the Macabees, and the Romans who crucified Jews, and centuries of various Christian expressions atrophied under Arab conquerors and their wars with each other, and the land made desolate finally by Muslim Ottoman mismanagement until the 20th Century. Above me now, hammers ringing through the warm spring air in the Jewish Quarter, rises the amazing restoration of the old Hurva synagogue- perhaps the quintessential symbol of the strange and unlikely return of the Jewish people to this city after being scattered to the ends of the earth for two millennia. This grand synagogue was captured by the Arab Legion in Israel’s War of Independence in 1948, and then dynamited to the ground by the conquerors. When the Old City was retaken in 1967 in a war of six prophetic days, the Israelis erected a large stone arch following the line of the former high dome of the house of prayer. That stone rainbow became a memorial landmark in the heart of Jerusalem until 2006. Then began the rebuilding of that beautiful edifice, standing some six stories high- an act that infuriates the eyes of its former destroyers. The timeless curves, domes, and towers rise again majestically by the hand of workers on scaffolds and cranes. Adjacent to the synagogue is an old Muslim minaret yet standing, unmolested and respectfully preserved by the Israel government.

As I write this, the trees planted here after 1967 as part of the restoration of the destroyed Jewish Quarter are breaking forth from winter into the flowers of spring. The voices of young Jewish men are chanting prayer rhythmically up to the God of Israel, church bells chime in the Christian quarter, and birds chirp, awaiting the soon-coming haunting howl from the minarets of the Muslim quarter.

This recalls to mind our last Shabbat’s retreat into the Judean Desert. In the midst of the barren wilderness near the Dead Sea between Jericho and Qumran (where the Dead Sea Scrolls were discovered) at the lowest point on Earth, lies an oasis whose appearance forces the mind to think: Eden. Here is Kibbutz Almog, founded in 1979 by a group of Jews who took the barren earth, strangled by the dense salts of the Dead Sea area, and through a process of irrigation, sunk the salts deep below, literally bringing the topsoil to life. Using waste water running down from the high desert town of Maale Adumim, they planted date groves and made hot houses, from which their delicious fruit is now exported to the world. The kibbutz itself, truly a symbol of life from the dead, is a delight of spreading shade trees and flowers of every description. Birds play and sing here in the day, and crickets chirp in the soft and quiet night, where we slept in the cozy guest rooms. Of course, if the political powers-that-be have their way, the some two hundred people who have made their homes here (and thousands of others on the West Bank) would have to face the agonizing decision of whether to dismantle as they leave this small paradise they built, or to turn it over as a gift to the Palestinians for some hope of “peace”.

Just three years ago in 2005, thousands of Jews who had made their homes in Gaza for some thirty years were forced into the same painful decision. After turning the infertile sands of Gaza into organic vegetable producing towns
(among other crops), the Israeli government unilaterally forced these Israelis from their homes and dismantled them in hope that ending the “occupation of Arab lands” there would produce peace with our Arab neighbors. Instead, the relentless hatred continued as the Muslim Arabs declared Jihad (holy war), and saw the event as a retreat and a victory rather than a peace offering. Rather than using the abandoned hot houses as an opportunity to begin building a viable economy for themselves, they danced on the ruins, tore down and burned the evacuated synagogues, and began firing deadly missiles into the neighboring Israeli towns from the abandoned areas. They also sent suicide bombers into Israeli restaurants and buses, targeting and murdering innocent civilians, finally forcing Israel to build a defensive wall to protect its citizens, and to deal with these terrorists before they could enter the country. This experiment of “land for peace” had failed utterly.

Today the quest for peace with our Arab neighbors continues, even as we hear persistent reports from their radical Muslim religious leaders that Jews have no history in this Land of Israel, that no Jewish temples ever existed in Jerusalem, that “not a grain of sand here belongs to the Jews”, and that Israel must be dismantled and Jerusalem made Muslim. As one British commentator said recently, “Islam does not seek to be accepted, but to be obeyed”. We hear little actual talk of- or preparation for peace from the Arab side as an objective in itself. Instead we see in their press incitement and anti-Jewish political cartoons that are reminiscent of the Nazis, and maps of the area on the official PA TV that include all of Israel as Palestine, with no hint of the existence of the State of Israel.

In light of the above, shall we again gamble for peace by painfully transferring tens of thousands of Jews from their homes in Judah and Samaria, and dividing Jerusalem? Meanwhile, we here lift up our eyes and continue to pray and work for true peace, teaching and preaching the word of God to both friend and foe. We now prepare to celebrate the festival of Purim, which recalls the deliverance of the Jewish people from the hands of those who wished to destroy us in Persia (today’s Iran) in the days of Esther. And then we will begin to ready for the deliverance festival of Pessah (Passover), a holy day which anticipates the greatest coming event in those many layers of Jewish history: the return to Jerusalem of the Messiah.

(Ezekiel 36, Joel 3, Psalm 122:6, Jeremiah 12:14-17, Psalm 83)