Busywolf: Jerusalem

I recently watched a documentary about the fall of Jerusalem in May 1948. Those who were born and lived there before 1948 still call anything outside the walls "the new city". In 1948 about 120 Jewish soldiers defended the Jewish Quarter against the Jordanians. Despite plans to place Jerusalem under international control, the British abandoned their positions or simply relinquished them to Jordanian soldiers and armed Arabs civilians, while restricting Jewish soldiers and even civilians from entering the walled city. They also confiscated their arms and ammunition, and even shot and killed some of them. When the 20 or so remaining Jewish soldiers ran out of ammunition, and the Jewish civilians took refuge inside one of the syangogues to escape the ruthless Jordanian artillery fire into their houses, Moshe Rusnak, their commander of the Jewish defense unit, decided to surrender to the Jordanians. When the Jordanian commander realized that he had been held at bay by two dozen young Jews and Jewesses, he arrested a number of civilians, old men, including a 90-year-old one, and several children and took them to Jordanian prison camps. Just to save face. (photo: Moshe Rusnak signing the surrender agreement.)

Colonel Abdullah el-Tal, one-time commandant of the Jordanian Arab Legion, in describing the destruction of the Jewish Quarter, wrote in the volume of his Memoirs (Cairo, 1959): "... The operations of calculated destruction were set in motion.... I knew that the Jewish Quarter was densely populated with Jews who caused their fighters a good deal of interference and difficulty.... I embarked, therefore, on the shelling of the Quarter with mortars, creating harassment and destruction.... Only four days after our entry into Jerusalem the Jewish Quarter had become their graveyard. Death and destruction reigned over it...." "As the dawn of Friday, May 28, 1948, was about to break, the Jewish Quarter emerged convulsed in a black cloud - a cloud of death and agony."

Jonathan Sidon
Jerusalem weekend supplement,
June 8, 2007

Eli Kedar was born in the Jewish Quarter of the Old City. He was taken prisoner by the Jordanian legion in 1948. After liberation, he returned to his home and became commander of the Jerusalem Division in the 1967 war. Shmuel Even-Or (Orenstein)'s father was the Western Wall rabbi until he was shot and killed during the War of Independence. Puah Steiner was expelled from the Jewish Quarter in 1948, and returned in 1967.

Dawn, June 7 1967. Eli Kedar, commander of the D company of the 163 regiment of the Jerusalem Brigade was standing outside the Dung Gate. Behind him an army of photographers and reporters were getting ready to immortalize the Israelis entering into the Old City. Eli, however, suspecting that the Jordanian Legion was lying in ambush, was in no hurry to lead his troops in. Having lost communication with his commanders, he had to make a strategic decision: push forward towards the Western Wall or turn South toward the Jewish Quarter, where he had been born, raised and expelled by the Jordanians. Eli chose his childhood home over the ultimate Jewish symbol (and over his own fair share of glory). "I walked down the same route the Jordanian legion had walked when they conquered the Jewish Quarter in 1948", he recalls. "But instead of finding the enemy, I found white rags and kaffiyas. Even when we reached the Rova there was no resistance, it was deserted. I know the area like the back of my hand, so I combed it quickly. Even though I had been away for 19 years, it looked almost the same. Then Eli and his soldiers turned to the Kishla building, but were met with gunfire. "Paratroopers emerged from David Street, all of a sudden, and I had no idea how they got there. There officer was equally surprised and asked me what we were doing there. I told him that I was going to the movies."

Later that day, when the Old City was about to be liberated, Eli was overcome by the desire to fulfill an old dream - after all he was so close to his childhood playground. It didn't take him long to jump into a Jordanian military vehicle parked near by and drive to his parents' house in the German Colony, a mere three minutes' drive. He gave his surprised father a khaki uniform and helmet and drove him back to the Rova: "My father's eyes filled with tears when we stood in front of the old house. He started running about and touching the stones, saying over and over again that this was the happiest day in his life."
Eli Kedar (formerly Mizrachi) was born in the Jewish Quarter in 1932. The Orensteins had moved nextdoor in the early 1940's. Avigdor Yitzhak Orenstein was the Western Wall rabbi until 1948. "My father's task was to supervise the daily prayers and to send daily reports to the chief Rabbis and to the National Committee who had appointed him", recalls the rabbi's son, Shmuel Even-Or (b.1929). "In those days the Wall was very different from what it is today. The Arab residents of the Old City would pelt us with stones, or ride their donkeys close to the Wall with the sole purpose of soiling the ground with animal dung. There were many restrictions on the Jewish worshippers - blowing the shofar before Yom Kippur was forbidden. I have childhood memories of the British police chasing and beating those who breached this order."
Puah Steiner, a sixth generation Jerusalemite, was born in the Jewish Quarter in 1941. "Even as a little girl I understood that the Rova had been conquered", she recounts the events of that fateful day in May 1948. "Everybody was broken hearted. The Jordanian legionnaires were looting and stealing everything they could lay their hands on. My sister and I had to walk among tongues of fire until we were outside the walls. When we heard that our father had been taken prisoner by the Jordanians we were devastated."

The Siege and the Detention
On November 29, 1947 the United Nations voted to terminate the British Mandate in Palestine and to allow its partition into two states. The next morning, residents of the Jewish Quarter in Jerusalem found themselves under siege, in appalling conditions. The British policemen displayed mostly passivity. At the end of January 1948, 19-year-old Shmuel Even-Or was serving with the Palmach in the Negev. He was notified that the Arabs had blown up his parents' house in the Rova: "Our house was known as the Orenstein outpost, under the command of my brother Avraham. When the house was blown up he was home with my mother, and they were both wounded. The following day the British blew up what was left of the house, so I had to find lodgings elsewhere in the Rova." Eli was 16 years old when the War of Independence broke out: "I was working in a carpenter's shop outside the city. One day after work they simply wouldn't let me go home, so I went to my relatives' house. I managed to return to my parents' house during Passover (3-4 months later), when I was allowed back into the City to deliver matzoth."

The situation in the Rova deteriorated further in mid-May, when the British left. "I had terrible nightmares every night", says Puah. "One evening we heard horrible screams: 'Arabs with knives', and everybody scrambled towards the inner houses for cover. We thought the Arabs were coming to slaughter us, and we had had nothing to defend ourselves with. I grabbed my mother's skirt and we started to run with the others. Everybody was certain that this was our last day. Everybody was crying and saying the prayers for the dead. My father said something that I cannot forget to this day: 'I pray they take pity on women and children, and if heavens decide that we part, remember that the Torah is the only important thing the world. When you grow up, marry Torah students.' Then we heard that the Arabs had gone elsewhere, and we were able to return home. For us it was a miracle."
Eli was posted on Karaim Street, in an abandoned British post, where he was manning a Tommy gun. "For days I was stranded there without a chance to see my family. I was even shot in the arm when the Arabs stormed us. When I got back to my post, we were practically out of ammo. So we threw potted plants at the enemy." The news of rabbi Orenstein and his wife's death during a Jordanian shelling was a very severe blow for the Rova residents.

"Naturally, I wasn't there,", recalls Shmuel. "When I reached the new city nobody wanted to give me the bad news. It was terrible losing both my parents like that."
By the end of May, 1948, the Rova fell and most of its residents were taken prisoners, some willingly. Eli: "I was too young to become a POW, but my mother said we had better split the family. So I joined my father, who had been taken prisoner along with other men. She stayed behind with the other children. Strange as it may sound, when I tried to surrender, the convoy of prisoners had already left, so I had to run after them." Eli spent nine months in Jordan as a POW, in Umm-el-Jamal, close to a military airport by the Iraqi border. "What I remember mostly from that time was forever standing to attention in the blistering sun for the roll call. The Jordanian soldiers always had the count wrong, and each time they came up with a different number. One day, after Hanukkah, I tried to escape disguised as a Bedouin. I had worked out the times the Jordanians went on patrol, but on that very day they changed the routine, so I got caught. A few months later, we were liberated. Groups of prisoners were returned to Israel. My father was among the first while I was freed with the last groups. When they told me I was going home, I decided I wanted a souvenir, so I stole the lock and keys to the camp. When the Jordanians discovered the loss they went crazy. They kept us there for several more hours, but in the end they let us go.
At the same time, Puah's father, Shlomo, was also in a prison camp in Jordan. His family was evacuated to the Katamon neighborhood in Jerusalem, including Puah: "My mother was a very strong woman and she managed to keep the family together and alive. I remember mostly how badly I missed my father. He sent us letters via the Red Cross, but he was forced to write them in English. He was urging mother to take care of our education. One night, in February 1949, a military vehicle stopped in front of our house, and father stepped out of it. Even though he was a liberated prisoner of war, he felt compelled to bring us presents: very good quality blankets. One of them was made into a winter coat for me. My two-year-old sister didn't remember father at all, and had a hard time getting used to him. She kept asking my mother when this man was going to leave."

Back to the Rova

"...a shocking picture was unfolded of the results of this policy of wanton vandalism, desecration and violation perpetrated during the period of Jordan occupation from 1948 onwards. In the Jewish Quarter all but one of the thirty-five Jewish houses of worship that graced the Old City of Jerusalem were found to have been wantonly destroyed. The synagogues had been razed or pillaged and stripped and their interiors used as hen-houses and stables. In the ancient historic Jewish graveyard on the Mount of Olives, tens of thousands of tombstones had been torn up, broken into pieces or used as flagstones, steps and building materials in Jordanian military installations and civilian constructions. Large areas of the cemetery had been levelled and converted into parking places and petrol-filling stations. ... The Western Wall holds a unique place in the history and faith of the Jewish people. For nineteen centuries Jews flocked to the Western Wall from all parts of the world to pray and worship before it. It would not cross the mind of Jews to impair in any way the sanctity of the Western Wall.The interest now evinced by the Jordanian Government in the Wall is surprising against the background of the vandalism perpetrated there by that Government when it was in occupation of the area. The Jordanian Government deliberately profaned the sacred character of the Wall by erecting adjacent to it structures of secular services, warehouses and toilets, and converting its immediate precincts into a slum."

Eli did not move back to the Rova after the Six Day War: "I could have moved back if I wanted to. But all through the years I asked myself what I was going to do there and I found no solid reason to buy a house. Perhaps I was wrong, but I am happy where I live now."

Puah's felt the exact opposite when Jerusalem was liberated in 1967. Even though she didn't liberate the city with her own hands, and due to pregnacy complications, she managed to visit the city several months after the war, but when she saw her old home she became very emotional and wanted to move back in for good: "When I first set foot in the Rova after so many years, I nearly fainted. Every alley and every house took me back in time to my childhood. When I stood in front of our old house, I saw yeshiva students studying the Gemara. I thought to myself that my father would have been pleased: he used to sit in the same room and study the same thing. Puah was willing to move back into her house right there and then, but when the euphoria dissipated, bureaucracy took over: "A lot of people wanted to move into the Rova, so we had to draw lots. We were not lucky enough. Others drew the lucky numbers." Ten years later, Puah and her husband managed to buy an apartment in the Rova and they have been living there since: "I admit that we are living in crowded quarters, and it is sometimes very noisy, but I feel that heavens guided me to the Old City. We considered moving out several times, but my son said that nobody leaves the Rova. I agreed with him. One cannot be a resident of the Rova and ignore its rich history and heritage. This is why I put my childhood memories in a book, 'Out of the Overthrow' where I describe the fall of the Rova.

Shmuel still feels closely connected to the Rova and its heritage, although he now lives outside Jerusalem. He is the director of the Association of the 1948 Defenders of the Rova and is an authority on the history of the place: "I feel it is my duty to tell the story of what happened there, how the residents fought for their home and ideology with all they had. It is very important to teach the young generations about what happened in the Old City before 1967."

Divided for 19 long years

*The Jewish Quarter is situated in the South-Eastern part of the Old city of Jerusalem.

*Archeological digs found evidence that the Rova was inhabited in the First Temple period.

* In 1267, rabbi Moshe ben Nachman, the Ramban (Nachmanides, not to be confused with the Rambam, Maimonides, rabbi Moshe ben Maimon) arrived in the Old City.

*He founded a synagogue in the Rova, which is named after him.

* The first cabbalist was born in the Rova in 1543, rabbi Yitzhak Luria, Ari the Holy.

* A synagogue in the Rova was named after him.

* On the eve of the War of Independence there were 1,700 Jewish residents in the Rova.

* There are now 3,500 Jewish residents in the Rova.

* The Jewish Quarter is the third largest among the four quarters of the Old City.

* It is smaller that the Muslim and the Christian Quarters, and larger than the Armenian Quarter.

* The Rova attracts around 7 million visitors each year, among them 1.5 million tourists.

* The youngest fighter who gave his life in the War of Independence was Nissim Guinny. He was ten years old.

*There has been an almost uninterrupted Jewish presence in the Rova since the days of the Crusaders.

*The only 19 years WITHOUT a Jewish presence in the Rova was between 1948 (when the Jordanians seized the Old City) and 1967 (when it was liberated by Israel).

*Archeological digs of the Rova have been conducted since 1969, when the Society for the Restoration and the Development of the Jewish Quarter was founded.

*The digs unearthed important finds dating back to 1948 in a water hole.

*It came as a complete surprise, because Moshe Rusnak, commander of the Rova defense unit, ordered the destruction of all weapons and ammunition before the Jewish defenders surrendered.

* Nobody knows who hid the arms in total violastion of that specific order.

* The only mosque in the Rova was erected in the 15th century by a Jew who converted to Islam following an argument with his neighbors.

*The mosque is not open for religious services.

*There is a special Arab-owned bakery in the Rova: it has all the required kosher certificates.

*Its specialite de la maison is a pastry is called "hamama" - bird, because it is shaped like the beak of a bird.

*Bread is baked according to an old secret French recipe, a sort of local baguette.

*According to legend, the Messiah will come when the Hurva (ruined) synagogue has been rebuilt for the third time.

* The Society for the Restoration and the Development of the Jewish Quarter is rebuilding the Hurva synagogue.

*This would be the third time, as the synagogue was destroyed in 1720 and 1948. (Two days before the fall of the Jewish Quarter in 1948, the Jordanians blew up the synagogue and the Jordanian commander in charge reported to his superiors: "For the first time in a 1,000 years, not a single Jew remains in the Jewish Quarter. No building there stands undamaged. This makes the Jews' return here impossible." However, in 1967 the Jews returned. The Jewish Quarter was rebuilt, but the Hurva remained in its desolation and a long-running architectural disagreement began.)

*The synagogue will probably be ready in a year and a half. Prepare thyselves!

Excerpts from LETTER dated 5 March 1968 from the permanent representative of Israel to the United Nations addressed to the Secretary General

Ar'el Segal
Ma'ariv, June 9, 2007

40 years, 4000 years, does it matter?
"Citizens, in the name of honor, in the name of our heroic Arab fatherland, in the name of history, past and future: we are entering today a battle for freedom, valor, honor and salvation. We shall stand before the Israeli aggressor and we shall wipe him out, in order to remove the stain of the imperialist Zionist entity. Brothers, free fighters from Gaza, Sinai and Sharm-al-Shech, brothers, heroes from the Lebanon and Syria, start marching on Tel-Aviv." This is how the Egyptian radio station began its broadcast to the Arab world on June 5, 1967, the day the Six-Day-War broke out.
This week, as I was leafing through an American magazine, I stumbled upon the best ever definition for "politically correct", a vile notion that corrupts dialogue and thought. "Political Correctness is a doctrine fostered by a delusional, illogical liberal minority, and rabidly promoted by an unscrupulous mainstream media, which holds forth the proposition that it is entirely possible to pick up a turd by the clean end."
I need this definition when the Iranian president declares that the days of Israel are numbered. One week ago the British academia decided to call for a boycott against Israel, which doesn't take me by surprise. Nor does it surprise me that members of Israeli academia acted as catalysts. Samuel Johnson said that patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel. Yes, and humanism is the last refuge of a traitor. Ironically, the first blood libel incident against the Jews documented in the Christian world took place in Norwich, England. Norwich Jews were accused of murdering 11-year-old William. One of the main characters in the story was unsurprisingly a converted Jew, Theobald of Cambridge.
The blood accusation later spread to the continent and the persecutions started. The passage of time left no mark either on the perpetrators or the renegade Jews. During the Defensive Shield operation, members of the Israeli academia signed a petition calling on the world to intervene and stop the ethnic cleaning of the Palestinians by Israel. It is not by chance that at the very same time Israeli PM Ariel Sharon was sipping Arab children blood in an Egyptian TV series. When Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak was kindly asked to take that program off the air, he replied: "Not all Jews are the same." Jewish self-hate is undoubtedly a very deep and unprecedented psycho-historical phenomenon.

The root of self-hatred
German Jewish philosopher Theodore Lessing published The Jewish Self-Hatred (Der Judische Selbsthass) in the 1930's. He was murdered by the Nazis in 1933. Lessing claims that the highly developed Jewish sense of morality is the key to the pathological self-loathing. An individual is not interested only in knowing the reason behind the disaster that strikes, they want to know why. Most humans will shift the blame onto someone else, usually the enemy. The Jew accepts his own guilt because he perceives every misfortune as punishment which brings him closer to salvation.
This self-blame is the result of thousands of years of persecution. The claim is supported by Masechet Shabbat (13,72): "Pray tell, rabbis, who wrote the book of fasting? They answered: Hanania ben Hizkiyahu and his followers who loved misfortunes (meaning misfortunes that can be atoned for, as well as the miracles for which they can praise the blessed Lord). Then said Rabban Shimon ben Gamliel: We also love our misfortunes, but what to do, for if we were to write them down, we would not have the time (Rashi comment: because they were aplenty)."
An additional reason for self-loathing is the gentile background. Victim demonizing is a frequent psychological process useful for overcoming conscience qualms over trespasses. The individual seeks a reason to justify his misfortunes (e.g. the attitude towards the expelled Gush Katiff residents). Two thousand years of Christian love must have done something to the Jewish soul, else why would the Jews themselves believe that they deserve their persecution. In Lessing's words: "In order to turn a man into a dog it is enough to repeat calling him 'You, dog'!".

This week marks the 40th anniversary of the Six-Day War, but the public atmosphere dictated by the media swings between lament and grief. At times it seems that the Israeli elite regret our victory. Any person in their right mind would ask: "Are they sane? What would have happened to us if we hadn't crushed our enemies? Where would we have been had the intentions of our Arab enemies materialized, as expressed by Egyptian president Nasser in 1965, during his speech in Hilwan: "Our goal is the destruction of Israel. During the first summit we set two objectives. The immediate one – to complete the unification of the Arab forces, and the national objective – to annihilate Israel."

The tale of stupidity and ignorance
My TV set is tuned to channel 10 broadcasting "What we lost in the Six Day War". I go ballistic. Some of us, the "older ones", remember the battle cries of the crowds rallying in the main squares of Cairo and Damascus, days before the war broke out and liberated parts of our land. PLO leader at the time Ahmad Shukairi coined the phrase "Men to the sea, women to us". This became the legitimate, public chant of the blood thirsty Arab mobs, a battle cry of the tribal Arabs who used to slaughter all males and enslave all women. This barbaric cry is still popular with the Palestinians, both within and without the Green Line (remember the October riots?): "Haibar, Haibar, ya yahood, Jaish Muhammad Sawfa ya'ud", meaning "Haibar, Haibar, oh Jew, Muhammad's Army is coming for you." (Haibar was an oasis inhabitant by independent Jewish tribes until Muhammad treacherously attacked them, slaughtered all the men and enslaved all women and children).
How better to conclude this discourse on stupidity and ignorance than by mentioning a painful episode from our more recent history: remember the Fager rockets landing in Afula, Beit Shean and Haifa during the second Lebanon? What did the Hezbollah call them? Haibar rockets.

Jerusalem the Golden
On the eve of the Six Day War, Naomi Shemer wrote her "Jerusalem the Golden" classic, one of the finest examples of renewed Hebrew song. Well, during many a conversation with educated people, I was surprised to find out how few of them knew what inspired this beautiful anthem. Masechet Avot de Rabbi Nathan describes how Rabbi Akiva rewards his wife Rachel for her faithfulness and support through thick and thin, with a beautiful piece of jewelry named Jerusalem the Golden, an engraving of the city of Jerusalem, ruined and deserted by her Jewish residents. The gorgeous engraving was a memento of the city's lost grandeur and an expression of the hope for deliverance. And to complete the puzzle, in the Midrash Rabba Eicha, we read how Rabbi Akiva and the sages traveled (climbed) to Jerusalem and spotted a fox in the ruins of the Holy of Holies. While the sages wept, Rabbi Akiva burst into laughter. The sages were bewildered, but Rabbi Akiva explained: "As long as the prophecy of ruin was fulfilled, so shall the prophecy of salvation be fulfilled."

And behold, Naomi Shemer was composing her beautiful song during the Six Day War waiting period without the slightest suspicion that Jerusalem was soon to be liberated. Those whining today about our victory in the battle field are the same ones that criticized Naomi's lyrics, mostly "the dry water wells, the empty market place". Amos Oz, the one with the beautiful bangs and pure soul reprimanded: "What does she mean by the dry water wells and empty market place? It was full of Arabs. What does she mean no-one was going to the Dead Sea? With my own eyes I saw Arab women heading for the Dead Sea all the time." Naomi Shemer replied in the documentary produced in her honor: "This claim is really infuriating and offending. As if a man who misses his beloved should seek comfort with this psychiatrist, Amos Oz, who would reassure him: Don’t worry, your beloved is not alone, she is in bed with another man. For me, a Judenrein world is a dead planet, and the Land of Israel without Jews is empty and deserted."
(illustrations: Jerusalem and East Jerusalem painted in 1842 by British artist David , of all names, Roberts)