Perhaps here is a good place to say a few words about the university where I have been teaching and its location. Mount Scopus, known in Hebrew as הַר הַצּוֹפִים (Har Hatzofim), rises to a height of 2,684 feet (826 meters) above sea level. It has rightly been described as a site of incomparable beauty and impressiveness, affording breathtaking views of Jerusalem, Bethlehem, the hills of Judea, the Jordan Valley, the Dead Sea, and the Mountains of Moab. Because it is high ground close to Jerusalem, Mount Scopus has been strategically important for the defense of the city since ancient times. The Roman armies that conquered Jerusalem and destroyed the Second Temple camped here in the year 70 of the Common Era, and the Crusaders followed suit a thousand years later.
The foundation stones for the Hebrew University were laid on Mount Scopus in 1918, and I take special pride in noting that a Goldberg (American author Isaac Goldberg) purchased the land for the site. Albert Einstein gave the first lecture here in 1923 – he lectured on his theory of relativity and spoke the first sentences in Hebrew – and the university officially opened in 1925. Like the New School for Social Research in New York (another institution with which I have some acquaintance), the Hebrew University provided a haven for scholars and scientists fleeing the Nazis. During Israel’s War of Independence in 1948, Mount Scopus was the scene of an infamous ambush in which Arab forces murdered a civilian convoy of doctors, nurses, and students delivering medical supplies to the university’s Hadassah Hospital. At the war’s end (or rather cease-fire), Mount Scopus became an Israeli-controlled but demilitarized area within Jordanian territory that was inaccessible to Israeli teachers and students, and the university relocated to Givat Ram in the Israeli-controlled sector of Jerusalem. After the Six Day War reunited Jerusalem under Israeli rule in 1967, the Hebrew University was able to return to Mount Scopus, and it now uses both campuses. I heard an amazing story from a young scholar at the Hebrew University a few months ago, the kind of amazing story that one can only hear in Israel, about a relative of his who taught at the Hebrew University before the 1948 war. The professor, who had to flee his office during the fighting, returned nearly twenty years later to find the book he had left on his desk still open at the same page.
Here is a photo of yours truly taken from the Hebrew University on Mount Scopus, with Jerusalem visible in the background. (The gold dome to the right is the Dome of the Rock; it stands on Mount Moriah, the site where Abraham came near to sacrificing his son Isaac and where King Solomon's Temple once stood.)
Following our informal, early evening tour of the Hebrew University’s Mount Scopus campus, A. and I decided to take a bus into Jerusalem and have dinner at the famous Ticho House. Once the home of the painter Anna Ticho (one of whose pictures was hanging in our room at the Maiersdorf Guest House) and her husband Dr. Abraham Ticho, it is now a well-known gallery and café. Here is A. at the entrance to the Ticho House:
On the way, we passed another famous house: the home of Abraham Isaac Kook, the first Ashkenazi chief rabbi of modern Israel (and one of the many luminaries present during the opening ceremony of the Hebrew University in 1925). Here is the entrance to his house:
From the windows of the house we heard beautiful singing, which reminded us that our visit to Jerusalem happily coincided with Jerusalem Day, the anniversary of the liberation and unification of Jerusalem under Israeli sovereignty in 1967. (For readers who might prefer to describe Israel as an occupier rather than a liberator of Jerusalem, it is perhaps worth pointing out here that the Jordanians – who seized control of the Old City and most of east Jerusalem in 1948 – were occupiers, too. In the 1947 U.N. partition plan, Jerusalem was to be a “separate entity” under a governor appointed by the U.N., but this plan was never implemented. In fact, the whole history of Jerusalem has been the history of one conquest and occupation after another, making it difficult to find an “unoccupied” point in time which one could restore or to which one might return.) Arriving at the Ticho House, we found it closed for a private party, but we had a superb dinner at El Gaucho, a kosher Argentinean steak house not far from there. At the end of the evening, we shared a taxi cab back to Mount Scopus with two young American students who were studying at the Hebrew University, one of whom had made aliyah (immigrated to Israel). Upon our return to the guest house, we were tired but well satisfied with our first day in Jerusalem.
4 comments:
Despite being faced with a serious case of Red Sox/Yankees discord here, I am enjoying your blog and I like the thought that you’re following Mark Twain’s footsteps, hearing his comments and smiling at his jokes as you look at the same sights he did...
Ah, if only you weren’t so blatantly anti-Palestinian! Quite a shame. Oh well.
In any event:
* there’s no such tradition that Islamism (how do you define that anyway??) will fall with Golden gate...
* You’ve been to the Kotel – but did you take the visit of the underground of the Wall? It’s quite enjoyable and you reach the closest point to the Holy of Holies. Make sure you book the tour in advance though, they usually don’t let you buy a ticket for the same day.
* The ground in front of the Kotel was not “excavated in 1968 to expose two buried courses of stone” because there was an Arab – Moroccan, to be precise - neighbourhood there and it was razed by the Israeli army in 1967.
* The Mosque on the Haram-Al-Sharif/Temple Mount isn’t the Mosque of Omar (and it was never called so; and the mosque was built several decades after Omar by Abdel Malek Ibn Marawan). The Mosque of Omar is actually right across from the Holy Sepulchre. The one on the Haram-Al-Sharif is the Dome of the Rock. Please stop calling it that. You may hate Muslims as much as you want but you have a duty, as an academic, to honestly reporting facts.
* I don’t think there are marbles from the temple in the Dome of the Rock mosque – the outside I am sure you know what it looks like; as for the inside we can’t really see because it’s all covered up for restoration. I'll check it out though, you've gotten me curious.
* Actually, you’ll be amusing to know that not all sects have a chapel inside the Holy Sepulchre: the Ethiopian Chapel is actually located... On the roof!
* Your description of the Kidron Valley sounds very interesting. I’ll make sure I go visit it next time I’m in Jerusalem!
* It is interesting how one’s view on things depends greatly on their own perceptions. You found the celebration of Jerusalem day very moving; I found it utterly scary and was actually frightened by the overzealous religious young men carrying flags and screaming their lungs out at every passerby..
Well.
Safe travels, Wisconsin Yankee!
East Jerusalem is indeed occupied. Here's a thought: Why don’t you just ask its inhabitants?
And by inhabitants, I don't mean the settlers who were transferred there after 1967 against International Law (4th Geneva Convention, to be more precise) regarding the transfer of civilian populations to occupied territories. Ask them. I find hilarious that you argue, in the same breath, that it is both not an occupation AND that the city has constantly been occupied so one more or one less... The regular pro-Israeli (and anti-International Law) argument is that Israel has conquered territories and therefore has the right (well, a right of sorts) to occupy East Jerusalem. Are you trying to be even more extreme than that??
And you defeat your own argument but referring to the partition plan – because if the UN is the basis of the discussion – as indeed it should be – then you will remember that East Jerusalem is occupied, under UNSC Resolution 242 and every single resolution that followed and confirmed the previous..
Hmm, so El Gaucho was good? Will give it a try. Thanks for the recommendation!
(and you would you please correct the erroneous ‘Mosque of Omar’ to ‘Dome of the Rock’?)
By the way, close to the Dome of Rock stands Al-Aqsa mosque, which is far more important to Muslims than the Dome of the Rock and was visited by the Prophet Muhammad (the Dome of the Rock was built 50 years later or so).
Dear Mohamed, I appreciate your detailed and thoughtful comments, though I don’t think the sarcasm you occasionally display is really necessary. Let me respond to a few of the points you raised.
1. Regarding Jerusalem: I don’t deny that the Palestinians who live in East Jerusalem and who are not Israeli citizens live under Israeli occupation. My point was that Jews experienced the reunification of Jerusalem as a liberation because of their historical ties to the city, because Jews were previously denied access to the Old City and the Western Wall when they were under Jordanian control, and because of the failure of the Jordanians to protect Jewish religious sites. My second point was that Jerusalem was already occupied before it came under Israeli control in 1967. I don’t think these points are contradictory.
The status of Jerusalem under international law is, I think, more complicated than you suggest. If time permits, I’ll address this issue later and more fully in a separate comment. For now, I just want to point other readers to a useful summary of some of the relevant issues: http://www.answers.com/topic/positions-on-jerusalem.
As for my personal political views, I have long opposed the occupation of the territories that Israel captured in 1967, and I favor a two-state solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict along the lines that Ehud Barak offered at Camp David in 2000. In other words, Israel would withdrawal from the vast majority of the West Bank, dismantle most of its settlements there, and swap land in return for keeping a few of the large settlements near the Green Line. I’d prefer to see Israelis and Palestinians find some creative way to share Jerusalem, but I would even support (reluctantly) a re-division of the city if it allowed Israel to retain some sort of connection with the Old City and the Temple Mount, provided access to and adequate protection for Jewish religious sites, and I was convinced it would bring a genuine and lasting peace.
2. Regarding the Mosque of Omar, thank you for pointing out my mistake. I’ll correct the posts at my earliest opportunity.
3. I appreciate your invitation to visit the West Bank, and I don’t doubt your sincerity, but I hope you’ll understand if I prefer to heed the travel warnings of my government.
4. Regarding “Islamism” and the Golden Gate, I was merely quoting Mark Twain and reporting what he said. Perhaps you’re right that there was no such legend; Twain was no expert on Islam, and it’s possible he was misinformed or even made up the story.
5. Regarding the destruction of the Moghrabi Quarter in 1967: it was a slum cleared in order to expand access to the Western Wall and create the large public plaza that is now in front of it. The demolition also enabled the excavations that I mentioned. In 1968 the Israeli government offered financial compensation to the families who were displaced by the slum clearance.
6. I am indeed quite critical of the Palestinian Authority and the methods of the second intifada, but I don’t think this makes me anti-Palestinian anymore than criticism of Israeli policies makes one anti-Israel. One can be critical without being “anti.” Perhaps you think I must be anti-Palestinian because I appear to you so pro-Israel, but I don’t assume that Israeli and Palestinian interests are irreconcilable.
7. I certainly do not “hate Muslims,” as you suggest. I don’t express hatred of Muslims or any other religious group anywhere in my blog, so I’m not sure where you would even get this absurd idea. At best, it is a faulty and unwarranted inference. In any case, I find the suggestion offensive and insulting, so please choose your words more carefully.
8. The young people I saw on Jerusalem Day did not appear angry or threatening; they were smiling, laughing, singing, and dancing. I didn’t encounter any screaming young men, as you did. But I’m not surprised that our experiences and perceptions were so different.
Thanks again for your comments. I hope you’ll continue to find my blog interesting.
This is a follow-up comment about the legal status of Jerusalem. In his superb 2003 book Right to Exist, Yaacov Lozowick (director of archives at Yad Vashem) notes: "The United Nations partition plan had called for an international administration in Jerusalem and Bethlehem. Instead, in 1949 the Israelis and Jordanians divided the area between them, with most of it going to Jordan.... [W]hile the rest of the territories occupied by Israel in 1967 had a recognizable claimant -- Egypt, Syria, or eventually Palestine -- there was no legal claimant to Jerusalem or Bethlehem." Hence, from a strictly legal point of view, Jerusalem doesn't "belong" to the Palestinians anymore than it does to the Israelis.
Lozowick adds: "No sooner were the hostilities over than the [Israeli] government drew a line around the city and annexed it officially. The line was more or less defined by strategic necessity, so that the hills overlooking the town would all be within the perimeter; in addition, a finger of territory jutted north, past the destroyed pre-1948 Jewish neighborhood of Atarot to the small airport north of it. There were about seventy thousand Arabs within these lines, making up about a third of the population of the city. These were given the option of Israeli citizenship, and most have a hybrid legal status that gives them the advantages of citizenship (free movement, social security, national health insurance, and so on) without the right to vote or be elected to the Knesset [Israel's national legislature - W.Y.]. They can vote in municipal elections, but most do not. The annexation, of course, was not accepted by anyone outside of Israel."
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