Breaking the Silence! Why do you Lie About This Now? (Because they can?) - by Sheri Oz

...the Arabs of Hebron do not vote in Israeli elections because they are citizens of the Palestinian Authority and not Israel? That the Arabs of Hebron vote in elections that take place in the Palestinian Authority? Do you need to hear that again?

Sheri Oz..
Israel Diaries..
11 March '20..

Breaking the Silence wants you to think that Israel is an apartheid state. How do I know that? Because they sent out an email to subscribers about the last elections, bemoaning the fact that 30,000 Arab residents of Hebron’s H2 sector could not vote in Israel’s last election while their Jewish neighbours did. First what they wrote; then my comments pointing out their lies:

In total, 215 votes were cast [in Hebron in the Israeli national election]; every one of them by Jewish Israelis. The 220,000 Palestinians in Hebron – 30,000 of whom live in H2, the area under direct Israeli municipal and military control – were not asked their opinion.

They went on to say that nobody knows what the next government will look like. But they do know that:

… when a group of people has no power to vote you out, you can do whatever you want with them without any fear of the electoral consequences. That’s the essence of occupation: military rule over a civilian population who have no choice in the matter.

We know, because we were the ones sent to enforce it. And we know that things must change.

What Breaking the Silence apparently does not know — and why should they, because they do not care about details or facts — is that the Arab residents of H2 are not Israeli citizens but citizens of the Palestinian Authority along with all the other Arab citizens of Hebron in H1. In other words, all Arabs who live in Hebron vote in the Palestinian Authority elections and not in Israeli elections.

Therefore, when Breaking the Silence cries at the injustice that Arabs did not vote in this last election but do not tell you that the Arabs are not Israeli citizens according to the Oslo Agreement signed by their late leader, Yassir Arafat, they are lying and making you think Israel is an apartheid state. Do I need to write that again?

(Continue to Full Post)

Hebron: Where Jewish history in the Land of Israel began - by Jerold S. Auerbach

Whether Zionism retains any connection to the ancient sources and sites of Jewish history is entwined with the future of the Hebron Jewish community.

Jerold S. Auerbach..
JNS.org..
18 November '19..

In the upcoming Torah reading of Shabbat Chaye Sarah (Genesis 23:1-20), Abraham reveals his need to purchase a burial site for Sarah. The local Hittites, praising him as “the elect of God,” offer “the choicest of our burial places,” the Machpelah cave. Declining their generous gift, Abraham asks them to intercede with the owner, Ephron, so that he may buy it “at the full price.” Ephron emerged from the group, and repeated the offer of his cave and the surrounding field as a gift. When Abraham insisted on paying full price, Ephron sold it to him for 400 shekels of silver. Abraham’s purchase marked the beginning of Jewish history in the Land of Israel.

Following the first-century Roman conquest, no Jews remained in Hebron. Centuries later, after the rise of Islam, Muslim sources would claim that the prophet Mohammad had stopped in Hebron during his night journey from Mecca to Jerusalem. Like the Western Wall, embraced by Muslims as the place where Mohammad’s horse was tethered, Machpelah—crowned by a massive Herodian edifice—became a Muslim holy site.

Jewish pilgrimages to Hebron were tolerated, and Jews were even granted permission to inhabit their ancient holy city, only to be expelled after the 11th-century Crusader conquest. In 1267, a Muslim edict prohibited non-Muslims from entering Machpelah; Jews were permitted to ascend only as far as the seventh outside step. A visitor watched “poor Israelite pilgrims … prostrated, stretching their necks like a burrowed fox in order to try to press their lips against their ancestors’ tomb.” That prohibition endured for exactly seven centuries. Dependent on the mercy of local rulers, Hebron Jews could only hope for a life of piety and burial near their ancestral tombs.

Jews came to Hebron, a visitor observed, only “to pray and die.”

(Continue to Full Column)

Jerold S. Auerbach, professor emeritus of history at Wellesley College, is the author of “Hebron Jews: Memory and Conflict in the Land of Israel” (2009).

The Magical Misery Tour? J Street's Program to Compete with Birthright Israel - by Abe Greenwald

Birthright, for the record, doesn’t ignore the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. It just operates with an understanding that Israel is more than its efforts to combat terrorism. And those efforts are overwhelmingly noble. The good news is that J Street has taken only 28 kids on a single trip. Put that against Birthright’s estimated 650,000. It will take a lot of David Halbfingers to make up the difference.

Abe Greenwald..
Commentary Magazine..
11 July '19..

A host of progressive organizations use their ostensible Jewishness as cover or sanction for their campaigns against Israel. J Street, which calls itself “pro-Israel” and “pro-peace,” is perhaps the best known among them. There’s no better example of how this works than J Street’s recent launch of a program to compete with Birthright Israel, the 20-year-old organization that’s provided free trips to Israel for more than 600,000 young Jews around the world.

According to J Street, “the omission and erasure of Palestinian perspectives and narratives on these [Birthright] trips creates a political environment that allows home demolitions, settlement expansion, and other destructive policies of occupation to continue unchallenged.” Instead, the group says, “organized educational trips for young American Jews must present a robust, nuanced and honest view of the current realities on the ground in Israel and the Palestinian Territory.”

The first such J Street trip, labeled the “Let Our People Know” tour, just concluded. Here, according to a miserable piece by the New York Times’s David Halbfinger, is the “nuanced” and “honest” take that was offered to the 28 American college students involved:

In the West Bank settlement of Har Gilo, they received a harsh history lesson from a veteran opponent of the occupation. Then they toured an impoverished, water-starved Palestinian village that Israeli settlers want to demolish, and visited the city of Hebron, where repeated outbreaks of violence have turned an entire Palestinian business district into a ghost town.

Not a word, either from the “opponent of occupation” or from Halbfinger on the murderous Palestinian anti-Semitic violence that necessitates Israel’s policing of such places in to begin with. Similarly, no mention of the kleptocratic Palestinian leadership that’s consigned generations of Palestinians to certain ruin. Finally, no mention of the fact that the Palestinians have, again and again—and again—refused to make peace with Israel when it was offered.

Here’s some more nuance, J Street style:

(Continue to Full Post)