Myths of the Middle East - Part 1

( This article has been cross posted from the blog Grandma's Army)

The destruction of the First Temple in 586 B.C.E., was the most traumatic and transformative event for the Jewish people to have ever taken place.  According to rabbinic tradition, the Second Temple in 70 C.E. was destroyed by the Romans on the very same day, and this time the Jewish people were exiled from their homeland of Israel. From then on, the Romans promised, it would be known as Palestine. The name was derived from the Philistines, a people conquered by the Jews centuries earlier. It was a way for the Romans to add insult to injury.

Another long list of traumatic events suffered by the Jews are believed to have occurred around the same day, quite a few of which have been  historically proved. Since then, from that day to the present time, Jews all over the world have fasted in order to commemorate specific events related to the Destruction. Today, we are almost at the end of the three weeks of mourning preceding the fast known as Tisha b’Av (ninth of the month of Av).

In order to commemorate these tragic events Jews gather on Tisha b”Av every year in their synagogue.  There they fast, pray, and read the sad and depressing prophetic writings concerning the destruction of their Temple and land.  

An anecdote is told of the great French leader, Napoleon Bonaparte.  He once was traveling through a small Jewish town in Europe, where he entered a synagogue. There he saw an incredible sight.  Men and women sitting on the floor and weeping, while holding candles and reading from books.  It was a dark and gloomy sight to behold.

Napoleon asked why the people were weeping and wanted to know what misfortune had happened here, and why he had not heard about it.  An enlightened Jewish French officer told him that nothing new and terrible had happened.   The Jewish people had a custom to gather once a year on a day called the ninth day of Av, the day that marks the destruction of the Jewish people's Temple.   After their second Temple was destroyed the people were scattered all over the world and sold as slaves. Some escaped and built their homes the world over.  Somehow the Jewish people exist without their country and their Temple. 

Napoleon inquired as to how many years they have been doing this and when he was answered, for more than 1,700 years, he exclaimed,  "Certainly a people which has mourned the loss of their Temple for so long will survive to see it rebuilt!"

When the Jews recaptured East Jerusalem during the 1967 war, a war of aggression by the Arabs against the Jews – Israel begged Jordan not to join in, promising that Israel wouldn’t attack Jordan. The Jordanians ignored the Israeli pleas and wound up losing East Jerusalem to the Jews, who then reunited their ancient capital and gained access to the Temple Mount and the Western Wall of the old Temple. They incredibly allowed the Muslim Waqf to retain religious control of the Temple Mount. This magnanimity – another example of the Jewish cultural inclination to compromise rather than to fight - allowed the Muslims to retain a foothold in the old city of Jerusalem and, over the years, to enhance and expand their efforts, both at control and at refusing Jews access to the Temple Mount, the holiest place in the world for Jews.

What this fast itself also tells the world is that the Jews were in Jerusalem before the Babylonians, before the Romans, before the Christians and, most certainly, before the Muslims. When the Jews didn’t have it, it was an Arab backwater, unremarked upon in Arab literature or theology and largely ignored. What so many in the west don’t grasp is that the Jews alone are the indigenous people of the land, and that Judaism is based on an actual nation which practiced its religion in the historic kingdom of Judea.

Paris ‘peace’ talks, the usual charade

Jeff Robbins Tuesday, May 31, 2016

http://www.bostonherald.com/opinion/op_ed/2016/05/jeff_robbins_paris_peace_talks_the_usual_charade

This Friday’s one-day “peace conference” in Paris, convened by the French government to discuss the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, has a wearisome, all-too-familiar look to it: same farce, different day.

Representatives of some 20 political entities will be sharing their “thoughts” about the conflict for several hours, sandwiched between photo opportunities and a fine meal. Thankfully, such reliably constructive actors as the Arab League, Turkey, Saudi Arabia
and Indonesia have been invited.

France, which in diplomatic matters famously regards itself as superior to all others, and to the U.S. in particular, has looked a good deal like Abbott and Costello when it comes to the Mideast. Eager to curry favor with its large Muslim population in advance of upcoming elections, it recently backed a Palestinian resolution in UNESCO denying any link between Jews and Jerusalem’s Temple Mount. Within days French President Francois Hollande announced that his government’s vote was the result of a “misunderstanding.”

The government that was unable to “understand” what the Palestinians were seeking to do by its UNESCO gambit — and so many others like it — or to “understand” the ceaseless Palestinian con job, will be chairing the peace conference. That should come as excellent news for those hoping for peace.

The French have said that their purpose is “saving the two-state solution” and “bringing the parties back to the negotiating table.” This is a head-scratcher, since the Palestinians have repeatedly rejected the two-state solution and have refused to negotiate with Israel for many years now, rejecting its request for negotiations as recently as last week. It is hard to believe that anyone is fooled at this point by the Palestinians’ song-and-dance, since all they have done since time immemorial is to say “no” to the very independent state they say they want — the independent state that would end the occupation that they declare with a straight face is the cause of the conflict.

“The Palestinians are not able to agree to any resolution that doesn’t involve them getting 100 percent of what they want,” says David Roet, Israel’s deputy permanent representative to the United Nations.

The record bears him out. In 2000, 2001 and 2008 they were offered an independent state on virtually all of the West Bank, all of Gaza and a capital in East Jerusalem. All they had to do was say “yes” to peace with Israel. They said “no.” Having demanded that Israel freeze settlement activity for 10 months as a condition for agreeing to negotiate with Israel, they obtained the freeze — and then refused to negotiate. Every time the Israelis have offered to negotiate with them since 2009 they have repeated the word that has come to be associated with them: “No.”

In Boston last week with a group of her fellow members of the Israel Defense Forces, a young officer named Dana (full names are not used for security reasons), talked about what it feels like to have to defend her country against those who are trying to make it disappear.

“I never tell my mother what I’m doing,” Dana confesses. “I don’t want her not to sleep at night. We try to do our best with the fear.”

In Paris this week, the charade proceeds as before. The Palestinian rejection of the very two-state solution they profess to seek will continue. Their rejectionism will be excused, the rejectionists coddled. Israel will be lambasted, as always. The end of conflict that ought to be attainable if it were actually desired will remain unattained. And Dana and the other young Israelis who do their best to defend their country and who are obliged to cope with their fear will go on knowing that, like it or not, they have precious little choice but to keep on doing what they are doing.