Jerusalem: Too holy to bomb it, too decrepit to pacify it

I come across stuff like this alot:

Look, desecrations have taken place from both (actually all three) sides. Tensions will always be there, no matter what solution is chosen, until the people themselves make peace in their own hearts. The population mix has changed repeatedly, with the different waves of expulsions and migrations and the different demographic trends. But Jerusalem, and the Old City in particular, has always been mixed, and what’s more important, EVERYBODY wants it to remain so. Why not dream of a Jerusalem at peace – administratively divided, if necessary for the foreseeable future – but at peace, where both peoples, and all three religions, can feel at home and worship as they wish? – Ref. Psalm 122. The sticking point is, none of us should feel as the "owner" of the Holy City. This is difficult for Jews to digest, I know, since you have the oldest and deepest claim, but history – even the history of God, to borrow Karen Armstrong’s phrase! – has passed on. Jesus Christ happened; Muhammad and the Isra happened (and the Isra is actually one of the most attractive and positive stories of the Quran, if you read it without prejudice).(Sometimes I dream of the Dalai Lama being given the keys to Jerusalem, like the Muslim Nuseibah family still has the keys to the Holy Sepulchre, to the healthy shame of all us Christians who can’t seem to agree on its ownership…)
 

I think that a Jerusalem at peace would be impossible. The Jews and Muslims increasingly hanker for a piece of this rock, and the politics of settlement and anti-settler violence in Jerusalem and other areas of the West Bank/JudeaSamaria are destined to amplify the din for generations to come. This will continue unabated in any non-Jewish-majority-favoring demarcative status quo – one-state, two-state, three-state, four-state.

Plus, if Christians (who have no dog in the Temple Mount fight) can fight again and again – for over a millenia – over denominational control of sections of the same church, then I can imagine Sunnis and National-Haredi bloodily fighting in the streets of Jerusalem surrounding the Temple Mount for years on end.

It is ultimately a "heart-and-mind" issue, one which is distributed among almost all Abrahamic monotheists. Those who attach an immense emotional weight to a particular place or thing will fight to the death with rivals over the control of such entities. Prior to 1948, religion hardly played a role in the Arab-Hebrew rivalry over the strip of land which consisted the Jewish portion of the partition; around 1967, it became a conflict with extremely-heightened religious implications. 

So to appeal to such human rights principles as freedom of religion, freedom of conscience, and observance of the laws of war when those who engage in bloody rivalries are not state agents, but are still belligerent ideological actors in the conflict is, ultimately, a futile exercise. Even those who say that the "good Jews" are "righteously" combating with the "bad Jews" are showing their ignorance of the ongoing schism between Judaism in the diaspora – one which celebrates being in a semi-assimilated minority – and Judaism in Israel – one which celebrates being in the majority; they are ignorant of why the increasingly-native religious Jews in Israel are gradually, angrily tuning out a naturally-implacable diaspora and turning their eyes and ears to Jerusalem and the hinterland with every passing generation. I don’t think that those who praise anti-war protesters and anti-settler activists – even those who do identify as Jewish – understand how different of a mentality that a religious-majority status can imbue upon those who gain from, and wish to advance, the state privilege of (Orthodox) Judaism.

Being Orthodox in Israel, I assume, makes it easier to say "fuck the West and fuck Christianity" without receiving an extensive amount of criticism, just as it is in Muslim majority countries. When Jews who have lived for generations in the Western world and its plethora of cultures encounter reports of sectarian violence in Jerusalem involving Haredim or residential violence in Hebron involving angry, edgy settler families, I don’t think they realize, or are prepared to realize, that those who count themselves among the Haredim and settlers are not like the Jewish minorities in the United States and Europe. Being in a land of your preferred religious majority, you can be much more religiously bigoted and belligerent, and much more publicly outspoken for the advancement of such sentiments. One can’t fault religious Jews for such attitudes and expressions, of course, without criticizing similar outbursts and outrages from Muslims and Christians in both the past and present; it is ultimately up to those who do not have vested interests in the advancement or destruction of either religion to work out a long-term process for ending religious hostilities – and no, it won’t be through the seeking of immediate peace, which is never a lasting or suitable peace.

But at least the person who wrote the above comment also noted the occurrence of Temple Denial among Arabic-speaking residents:

Jerusalem… the old, eternal sticking point… Just promise me you’ll avoid trying to discredit the importance of the Temple Mount and the Isra’ story to the Muslims, and I promise I’ll uphold the importance of it to Jews when I talk to Muslims (some of them try to convince me that the location of the Temple is unknown, and to place it on the Haram AlSharif is just Zionist propaganda…) Thank God at least our Christian Holy Places are 500 yards away!
 
 

P.S.: I don’t think that reintegration of the Palestinian diaspora into Israel should be brought up until at least after 2067, 100 years after the Six-Day War. By that time, I’m fairly certain that the Jewish population in the West Bank will have increased to over 1M, and a more numerically-equitable agreement or status quo can proceed between the two sides of the conflict. 

Of course, the 2060s are the period which would be most acceptable for an apocalypse, according to Sir Isaac Newton.

1 thought on “Jerusalem: Too holy to bomb it, too decrepit to pacify it

  1. I would be happy to see the Jews sweep the Christians and the Muslims out of Jerusalem and make it a Jewish only city. Their claim to the city is older, and they have sure as Hel done more to make it livable than the other two. 0bama said that if things got rough in the world he’d side with the Muslims. I’ll side with the Jews: They still have something to teach me.

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