by Israel Shamir
JAFFA, ISRAEL -- The touching words of Elie Wiesel ("Jerusalem in My Heart," New York Times,
January 25, 2001) painted a beautiful portrait of the Jewish people,
yearning for Jerusalem, loving and praying for it over the centuries
and cherishing its name from generation to generation.
This potent image reminded me, an Israeli writer from Jaffa, of
something familiar yet elusive. I finally made the connection by
revisiting my well-thumbed volume of Don Quixote. Wiesel s evocative
article is so wonderfully reminiscent of the immortal love of the
Knight of Sad Visage to his belle Dulcinea de Toboso. Don Quixote
traveled all over Spain proclaiming her name. He performed formidable
feats, defeated giants, who turned out to be windmills, brought
justice to the oppressed, and so much more for the sake of his
beloved. When he decided that his achievements made him worthy, he
sent his arms bearer, Sancho Pansa, to his Dame with a message of
adoration.
Now I find myself in the somewhat embarrassing position of Sancho
Pansa. I have to inform my master, Don Wiesel Quixote, that his
Dulcinea is well. She is happily married, has a bunch of kids, and
she is quite busy with laundry and other domestic chores. While he
fought brigands and restored governors, somebody else took care of
his beloved, fed her, provided her with food, made love to her, made
her a mother and grandmother. Do not rush, dear knight, to Toboso, or
it would break your heart.
Elie, the Jerusalem that you write of so movingly is not now and
never has been desolate. She has lived happily across the centuries
in the embrace of another people, the Palestinians of Jerusalem, who
have taken good care of her. They made her the beautiful city she is,
adorned her with a magnificent piece of jewelry, the Golden Dome of
Haram al Sharif, built their houses with pointed arches and wide
porches and planted cypresses and palm trees.
They do not mind if the knight-errant visits their beloved city
on his way from New York to Saragosa. But be reasonable, old man.
Stay within the frame of the story and within the bounds of common
decency. Don Quixote did not drive on his jeep into Toboso to rape
his old flame. OK, you loved her, and thought about her, but it does
not give you the right to kill her children, bulldoze her rose garden
and put your boots on her dining room table. All your words just
prove that you confuse your desires with reality. If you must
continue to ask why the Palestinians want Jerusalem? Because she
belongs to them, because they live there and it is their hometown.
Granted, you dreamed about her in your remote Polish hamlet. So did
many people around the world. She is so wonderful and certainly worth
dreaming about.
Elie, many people have adored this city across the ages. Swedish
craftsmen left their villages and moved there to build the lovely
American Colony together with the Vesters, a devout Christian family
from Chicago. You can read about it in the works of Selma Lagerlof,
another Nobel Prize winner. On the slopes of the Mount of Olives,
the Russians built the dainty church of Mary Magdalene. Ethiopians
erected their Resurrection monastery amid the ruins left by the
Crusaders.
The British died for her and left as their architectural legacy
the St George Cathedral and St Andrew s. The Germans built the
lovely German Colony and nursed the city s sick in the Schneller
Hospital. My devout great-grandfather moved into the protection of her
thick walls in 1870-s from a Lithuanian Jewish village and threw his
lot with the hospitable Jerusalemites. He found his eternal rest
until the day of Resurrection on the slopes of Mount of Olives. None
of them thought to rape their Dulcinea. They just left bouquets of
architectural flowers as testament of their adoration.
Those who love Jerusalem are legion. It is disingenuous of Elie
Wiesel to reduce the struggle for this city as a tug of war between
Muslims and Jews. It is a question of coveting property versus
having the deed of ownership. The resolution of this case should be
based on the 10th commandment, observed by our fathers. They knew
that veneration does not amount to the right of ownership. Millions of
Protestants venerate the Catholic-owned Gethsemane Garden, but it
does not transfer the garden into their hands. Millions of Catholics
visit the Tomb of Mary, but it still belongs to the Eastern Church.
For generations, the Moslems have come to kneel at the birthplace of
Jesus in Bethlehem, but the church remains Christian forever.
What water did to Gremlins in Spielberg s movies, Zionism has
inflicted on the jolly Jewish folk of Eastern Europe. It caused them
to carry out the ethnic clearing of Gentiles in West Jerusalem, to
convert Schneller hospital and church into a military base and to
build a Holiday Inn on top of the venerated shrine of Sheik Bader.
The Israeli State forbids the Christians of Bethlehem to pray in the
Holy Sepulcher and bans Moslems below the age of 40 from attending
Friday prayers at al Aqsa mosque. These changes of the city by the
Israeli government amount to her rape.
In order to justify this rape, you invoke the names of King
Solomon and Jeremiah, quote the Koran and the Bible. Let me tell you
a Jewish Hassidic tale, one you might have heard in your Polish
schtetl. A Jewish midrash, a legend, mentions that Abraham had a
daughter. A simple-minded Hassid asked his Rabbi, why Abraham did not
wed his daughter and his son Isaac. The Rabbi responded that Abraham
did not want to marry a real son to a legendary daughter.
The legends are the stuff the dreams are made of. Some are
charming, some are horrible, and none is valid as a deed to the land
or as a political platform. Elie, you certainly would not like to
lose your private home in New York because of a few verses written in
the Book of Mormon. This game of spreading the Zionist gospel is
becoming irrelevant, but I will play one more round with you for the
entertainment of the crowd. As every archaeologist will tell you,
King Solomon and his temple belong to the fantasy realm of Abraham s
daughter. Moreover, and not that it matters, but the name of
Jerusalem is not mentioned even once in the Jewish Holy Book, the
Torah.
Elie, you want to play some more games? I ll tell you more. The
Jews are not even mentioned in the Jewish Bible. Get that thick book
off of your shelf and check it. None of the great and legendary men
you named, from King David to the prophets, were called the Jews .
This ethnonym appears the first and only time in the Bible in the
Persian story of the very late Book of Esther. The
self-identification of the Jews with the tribes of Israel and with the
heroes of the Bible is as valid as the story of Rome being founded by
the Trojan prince Aeneus. If the modern Turks, who call themselves
the descendants of Troy would conquer Rome, dynamite Borromini s
baroque masterpieces and expel her inhabitants in order to
re-establish the legacy of Aeneus, they would just be repeating the
folly of the Zionists.
Our ancestors, the humble East European folk of Yids, whose
language was Yiddish, had a tradition of adorning themselves with the
impressive heraldic lions of Biblical heroes. Their claim of descent
from these legends was as valid as the claims of Thomas Hardy s
ambitious farmer girl Tess. But event the fictional Tess did not
conspire to evict the lords from their castle and claim the manor for
herself.
Once, walking with the Christian pilgrims to the great Church of
the Holy Sepulcher, I was stopped by a Hassidic Jew. He inquired
whether my companions were Jews, and, receiving a negative reply,
exclaimed in amazement: What are these Goyyim Gentiles looking for
in the holy city? He had never heard of the Passion of Jesus Christ,
whose name he used as a swear word. I am equally amazed that a Jewish
professor from Boston University is as ignorant as the simple-minded
Hassidic Jew. Jerusalem is holy to billions of believers: Catholic,
Protestant, and Eastern Christians, Sunni and Shia Moslems, to
thousands of Hassidic and Sephardic Jews. Still, as a city, Jerusalem
is not different from any place in the world; she belongs to her
citizens.
Twenty more years of Zionist control of this ancient city would
turn her into just another Milwaukee and forever ruins her charm.
Jerusalem needs to be restored to its inhabitants. The seized
properties in Talbieh and Lifta, Katamon and Malcha should be returned
to their owners. Professor Wiesel, respect the Gentile property
rights as you would like Gentiles to respect your right to your
lovely house. The holy sites of Jerusalem are regulated by the 150
years old international statute (Status Quo) that should not be
tampered with. Last attempt to touch it caused the siege of Sevastopol
and the charge of the light brigade at Balaclava. Next attempt could
cause the nuclear war.
Copyright © 2001 Israel Shamir. Israel Shamir, is one
of best-known and most respected Russian Israeli writers and
journalists. He wrote for Haaretz, BBC, Pravda and translated Agnon,
Joyce and Homer into Russian. He lives in Tel Aviv and writes a
weekly column in the Vesti, the biggest Russian-language paper in
Israel.
