Monday, May 30, 2022
From Ian:
Jonathan Tobin: Why do young Americans give Israel the cold shoulder?
Half of Jewish Israelis back prayer on Temple Mount, mostly to ‘prove sovereignty’
Jonathan Tobin: Why do young Americans give Israel the cold shoulder?
As Gallup's numbers show, those trends were set in place long before Netanyahu and Obama were engaging in public quarrels. Moreover, Israel's continued presence in the West Bank has everything to do with repeated Palestinian rejections of Israeli offers of statehood and peace, and little to do with the policies of right-wing governments. Since, to this day, both the Palestinian Authority and Hamas reject the legitimacy of a Jewish state no matter where its borders are drawn, the continued "occupation" is their fault – not Netanyahu or the coalition led by Naftali Bennett that includes an Arab party that succeeded him a year ago.Our nation's capital throughout history - Jerusalem
The failure of American media, mainstream politicians and the foreign-policy establishment to accept these facts as most Israelis have done is why so many have accepted the false narrative about Palestinian victimization that has impacted public opinion.
Israel's polling problems can also be traced to the popularity of left-wing ideologies like critical race theory and intersectionality that have largely conquered college campuses and have now recently migrated to the public square. If you view Israelis and Jews as possessors of "white privilege" – though the majority of Jewish Israelis are people of color who trace their origins to former homes in the Middle East and North Africa – and think of Palestinian Arabs, rather than Jews as the indigenous people in the country, then you are likely to ignore the facts of the conflict or about the character of the movements that lead the Palestinians.
It's hardly surprising that these views are to be found more among young Americans and Democrats than among older ones or Republicans.
As to what to do about it, the notion that policy shifts regarding the Palestinians or Iran will make Israel more popular is a myth. The idea was discredited by what happened after it embraced the Oslo process that involved territorial surrenders, as well as by the aftermath of the complete withdrawal of every Israeli soldier, settler or settlement from Gaza by Prime Minister Ariel Sharon in 2005.
Those efforts led to more terrorism and allowed the Palestinians to continue to dream of Israel's destruction. Rather than illustrating Israel's desire for peace or the Palestinian disinterest in it, it had the opposite effect. Each concession only strengthened the false narrative that Israel was a thief returning stolen property to the rightful owners and gave new life to an anti-Zionist movement whose goal is the elimination of the only Jewish state on the planet.
That demonstrates that what Israel needs is a more aggressive information policy grounded in arguments for Jewish rights and the truth about the nature of its opponents, not anodyne sentiments about a desire for peace or even attempts to distract the public from the conflict by talking about Israel's beauty or the value of its high-tech industry.
Israel will never convince "progressives" that believe it has no right to exist anymore than Palestinians will persuade the 30% of Americans who told Pew that they believe God gave the land of Israel to the Jewish people to forsake them. Instead, it must battle for those in the middle, pointing out that the toxic theories of the left are a permission slip for antisemitism and not advocacy for human rights. Any other approach will only ensure that the troubling trends among young people and Democrats will continue to get worse.
Jerusalem and the Jewish people are so intertwined that telling the history of one is telling the history of the other. For more than 3,000 years, Jerusalem has played a central role in the history of the Jews, culturally, politically, and spiritually, a role first documented in the Scriptures. All through the 2,000 years of the diaspora, Jews have called Jerusalem their ancestral home. This sharply contrasts the relationship between Jerusalem and the new Islamists who artificially inflate Islam's links to Jerusalem.
The Arab rulers who controlled Jerusalem through the 1950s and 1960s demonstrated no religious tolerance in a city that gave birth to two major Western religions. That changed after the Six-Day War in 1967, when Israel regained control of the whole city. Symbolically, one of Israel's first steps was to officially recognize and respect all religious interests in Jerusalem. But the war for control of Jerusalem and its religious sites is not over.
Palestinian Arab terrorism has targeted Jerusalem particularly in an attempt to regain control of the city from Israel. The result is that they have turned Jerusalem, literally the City of Peace, into a bloody battleground and have thus forfeited their claim to share in the city's destiny.
Jerusalem’s Jewish Link: Historic, Religious, and Political
Jerusalem, wrote historian Sir Martin Gilbert, is not a ‘mere’ city. “It holds the central spiritual and physical place in the history of the Jews as a people.” For more than 3,000 years, the Jewish people have looked to Jerusalem as their spiritual, political, and historical capital, even when they did not physically rule over the city. Throughout its long history, Jerusalem has served, and still serves, as the political capital of only one nation – the one belonging to the Jews. Its prominence in Jewish history began in 1004 BCE, when King David declared the city the capital of the first Jewish kingdom. David’s successor and son, King Solomon, built the First Temple there, according to the Bible, as a holy place to worship the Almighty. Unfortunately, history would not be kind to the Jewish people. Four hundred and ten years after King Solomon completed construction of Jerusalem, the Babylonians (early ancestors to today’s Iraqis) seized and destroyed the city, forcing the Jews into exile. Fifty years later, the Jews, or Israelites as they were called, were permitted to return after Persia (present-day Iran) conquered Babylon. The Jews’ first order of business was to reclaim Jerusalem as their capital and rebuild the Holy Temple, recorded in history as the Second Temple.
Jerusalem was more than the Jewish kingdom’s political capital. It was a spiritual beacon. During the First and Second Temple periods, Jews throughout the kingdom would travel to Jerusalem three times yearly for the pilgrimages of the Jewish holy days of Sukkot, Passover, and Shavuot, until the Roman Empire destroyed the Second Temple in 70 CE and ended Jewish sovereignty over Jerusalem for the next 2,000 years. Despite that fate, Jews never relinquished their bond to Jerusalem or, for that matter, to Eretz Yisrael, the Land of Israel.
No matter where Jews lived throughout the world for those two millennia, their thoughts and prayers were directed toward Jerusalem. Even today, whether in Israel, the United States or anywhere else, Jewish ritual practice, holy day celebration and lifecycle events include recognition of Jerusalem as a core element of the Jewish experience. Consider that:
- Jews in prayer always turn toward Jerusalem.
- Arks (the sacred chests) that hold Torah scrolls in synagogues throughout the world face Jerusalem.
- Jews end Passover Seders each year with the words: “Next year in Jerusalem”; the same words are pronounced at the end of Yom Kippur, the most solemn day of the Jewish year.
- Three-week moratorium on weddings in the summer recalls the breaching of the walls of Jerusalem by the Babylonian army in 586 BCE. That period culminates in a special day of mourning – Tisha B’Av (the 9th day of the Hebrew month Av) – commemorating the destruction of both the First and Second Temples.
- Jewish wedding ceremonies – joyous occasions, are marked by sorrow over the loss of Jerusalem. The groom recites a biblical verse from the Babylonian Exile: “If I forget thee, O Jerusalem, let my right hand forget her cunning,” and breaks a glass in commemoration of the destruction of the Temples.
Even body language, often said to tell volumes about a person, reflects the importance of Jerusalem to Jews as a people and, arguably, the lower priority the city holds for Muslims:
- When Jews pray they face Jerusalem; in Jerusalem Israelis pray facing the Temple Mount.
- When Muslims pray, they face Mecca; in Jerusalem Muslims pray with their backs to the city.
- Even at burial, Muslims face toward Mecca.
Finally, consider the number of times Jerusalem is mentioned in the two religions' holy books:
- The Old Testament mentions ‘Jerusalem’ 349 times. Zion, another name for ‘Jerusalem,’ is mentioned 108 times.
- The Quran never mentions Jerusalem – not even once.
Even when others controlled Jerusalem, Jews maintained a physical presence in the city, despite being persecuted and impoverished. Before the advent of modern Zionism in the 1880s, Jews were moved by a form of religious Zionism to live in the Holy Land, settling particularly in four holy cities: Safed, Tiberias, Hebron, and most importantly – Jerusalem. Consequently, Jews constituted a majority of the city’s population for generations. In 1898, “In this City of the Jews, where the Jewish population outnumbers all others three to one …” Jews constituted 75 percent of the Old City population in what Secretary-General Kofi Annan called ‘East Jerusalem.’ In 1914, when the Ottoman Turks ruled the city, 45,000 Jews made up a majority of the 65,000 residents. And at the time of Israeli statehood in 1948, 100,000 Jews lived in the city, compared to only 65,000 Arabs. Prior to unification, Jordanian-controlled ‘East Jerusalem’ was a mere 6 square kilometers, compared to 38 square kilometers on the ‘Jewish side.’
Half of Jewish Israelis back prayer on Temple Mount, mostly to ‘prove sovereignty’
More Jewish Israelis support allowing Jews to pray on the Temple Mount in Jerusalem than oppose it, a recent survey has found.
Half of those polled by the Israel Democracy Institute said they supported Jewish prayer on the holy site, while 40 percent said they opposed it. The rest were not sure.
The poll, which was conducted last month, was first published shortly before Sunday’s Jerusalem Day, which police said saw a record-setting 2,600 Jews visit the Temple Mount.
Over the course of three days in late April, the IDI surveyed 601 people in Hebrew — a common means of collecting a Jewish polling group without asking for one’s religion directly — about their opinions regarding the Temple Mount and the restrictions against Jewish prayer on the esplanade under what is referred to as the “status quo.”
Generally, this arrangement is understood to mean that Muslims are permitted to visit and pray on the Temple Mount, while non-Muslims can only visit, not pray. The status quo has also been interpreted to refer to formal, organized Jewish services, not prayers said quietly by individuals.
The ban on prayer, as well as religious prohibitions against visits to the Temple Mount entirely, were once a matter of consensus among religious and secular Israelis, but in recent years, public opinion on the issues has begun to shift, save for among Israel’s ultra-Orthodox population, which still overwhelmingly accepts and supports these restrictions.
This is principally due to a growing belief that equates Jewish prayer on the Temple Mount with Israeli sovereignty over the site, widely considered the holiest spot for Jews, where two Temples once stood and where the biblical patriarch Abraham is said to have nearly sacrificed his son Isaac, before God intervened.
Amazingly joyful celebration of Jerusalem Day! With unexpectedly high number of participants and, despite Hamas threats, and contrary to Al-Jazeera "reporting", a successfully managed and peaceful celebration with no major problems. Hats off to Israeli police and Israeli public. https://t.co/B1UPsLp38j
— Judea Pearl (@yudapearl) May 29, 2022
