This striking image accompanied the NY Times article about Bibi Netanyahu’s stem-winding speech at the Aipac conference in which he made some typically bellicose claims. Among them:
“The Jewish people were building Jerusalem 3,000 years, and the Jewish people are building Jerusalem today,” Mr. Netanyahu said to the group, the American Israel Public Affairs Committee. “Jerusalem is not a settlement; It’s our capital.”
It may be Bibi’s capital, but the rest of the world doesn’t seem to see it that way. And if no one but you recognizes it as your capital then for all intents and purposes it isn’t. Bibi, of course, purposely elides East and West Jerusalem in order to fudge the division between them that all but he and other Israeli rightists acknowledge.
In other words, the world has no problem with West Jerusalem being Israel’s capital as long as East Jerusalem becomes Palestine’s capital. That’s the sticking point. And as far as the world is concerned, Jewish construction in East Jerusalem IS settlement.
A word about the image: it represents the views of a minority of Israel’s extreme right-wing and not the majority of Israelis as proven by a Haaretz poll this week which found that Israelis have a favorable impression of Obama. But just as we have the Tea Partyers here, Israel has its extreme pro-settler lunatics. We should keep in mind just what these people believe and represent and not fool ourselves into believing they are like us or can be reasoned with.
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the post falsely represents the poll taken by Tel Aviv University.
http://www.jpost.com/Israel/Article.aspx?ID=171506
Bullcrap. If you bother reading the article to which you link, all it claims is that Haaretz mistranslated the word inyani to be more positive than it really is. If an Israeli says Obama’s relations with Israel are inyani, I don’t see any reason to consider that anything other than “acceptable” (or more precisely “business-like”). Acceptable is something you or I or anyone can live with. So go fly a kite & take JPost w. you.
Anyone who would deny the Jewish people (if they are a genetically related people at all, which is a complicated issue) a connection with Jerusalem is crazy, even if the connection is only spiritual. But to say that “the Jewish people were building Jerusalem 3000 years” is more than crazy; it is ludicrous.
Practically everything in the old city is Arabic.
I quote Dan Lieberman (Alternative Insight):
“The City of David, built on a hill outside of the city walls is a small settlement area, and its relation to the mythical David, except for some possible tenth century artifacts, is unclear There might have been a great Temple, as noted by historian Flavius Josephus, but no stone of that Temple has been uncovered in Jerusalem’s Temple Mount/Al-Haram al-Sharif. The Western Wall, often mistakenly called the ‘wailing wall,’ which is a contrived 19th century term and not used in Israel today, is considered to be a bearing wall for Herod’s platform and not a wall of the Temple. According to historian Karen Armstrong, Jews did not pray at the Western Wall until the Mamluks in the 15th century allowed them to move their congregations from a dangerous Mount of Olives and pray daily at the Wall. At that time she estimates that there may have been no more than 70 Jewish families in Jerusalem. These historical pronouncements create doubts of the Western Wall being the most revered monument in Jewish life and instead shift it to the category of revered by default – there is no other in Jerusalem – and ignores many others disbursed throughout the Jewish world. Although historians have attributed David’s Tower and Solomon’s Pools to Greek and Roman times, the designations lead persons to believe these constructions are related to the Biblical Israeli monarchs.”
By the way, I am really glad the old comment system is back, Richard. I tried to post something one day and it wouldn’t even work. But apart from that: I really hate systems where people can rate other people’s responses with a + or – without saying why.
A lot of Israeli Jews think Obama is a PLO (remember them?) agent.
A lot of American Jews think that the previous President was ‘Bushitler’
Life’s like that.
No, very few Israeli Jews think Obama is a PLO agent. A few extremist settlers and ultra Orthodox do. They don’t constitute “a lot.”