The Shepherd Hotel in Jerusalem: An End to the Arabs’ Wars of Limited Liability?

There Are Consequences for Choosing Aggression

Published by The Jerusalem Post, August 7, 2009

Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu’s resolute response to a State Department official’s objection to a Jewish building development in the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood of Jerusalem may actually close a 90-year-old chapter of the Arab-Israeli conflict and bring about a measure of justice. "We cannot accept the idea that Jews will not have the right to live and buy (homes) anywhere in Jerusalem," Netanyahu said.

For way too long Arab states, terrorist groups and the Palestinian Arabs believed that they could wage “wars of limited liability” first against the Jews of Palestine and then against the State of Israel. They embraced a fantasy that they could unleash attacks with impunity in an attempt to wipe out Israel, convinced that if they were defeated they could return to a status quo ante, or even achieve diplomatically what they couldn’t win on the battlefield. Territories captured by Israel would be returned and not annexed, terrorist leaders would be honored and not condemned, and Jews/Israel would be blamed and never indemnified. Tragically, that fantasy became reality.

In 1920, the Balfour Declaration, written three years earlier, was a very pertinent and relevant document in Palestine. The Turks were gone from Palestine after 400 years, and the British were attempting to establish their authority. Jews who had fled the Turkish regime began to return, and they were joined by other Jews – “Zionists” from Russia and eastern Europe -- eager to build the promised “national home for the Jewish people.”

Arab clans and local groups began to coalesce and compete to fill the vacuum left by the Turks. They found sympathetic British authorities who opposed the establishment of a Jewish home in Palestine and sought to rescind the Balfour Declaration. Together, they opposed the Jewish immigration into Palestine and the Jewish purchase of large tracts of land. The British authorities placed limitations on the formation of Jewish self-defense groups, some of whom included veterans of the British army’s Jewish Legion and Zion Mule Corps.

The Jewish settlement of Tel Chai in the Galilee was overrun by local Arab marauders in early 1920, and within months, riots and pogroms against Jews erupted across Palestine. According to witnesses, the ax and sword-wielding mobs, emboldened by their perception of supportive British authorities, yelled, “Addowlah ma’anah! The government is with us! Itback el yehud! Slaughter the Jews!” as they attacked Jewish communities. They were led by the nephew of Jerusalem’s mayor, a young rabble-rouser named Haj Amin el Husseini. Rather than throw Husseini in prison or hang him, the British chose an appeasement policy and appointed him as the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem. The Mufti would later incite more bloody pogroms against Jewish communities in 1929 and launch the Arab Revolt (1936-1939) against the British, Jews and fellow Arabs. The anti-Semitic terrorist leader used his position to garner a following and a status that he would wield for the next 25 years, culminating in his collaboration with Adolf Hitler in World War II.

[Santayana’s admonition, “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it,” was tragically proved true. Britain’s policy of appeasement in Palestine was copied years later when Chamberlain met Hitler at Munich in 1939. And the honors and adulation bestowed upon Haj Amin al-Husseini were later granted to his cousin Abdul Kader al-Husseini, a leader of the attacks against Jews in the 1940s. Similar tributes were paid to another terrorist cousin, Mohammed Abdel Rahman Abdel Raouf Arafat al-Qudwa al-Husseini, AKA Yasir Arafat.]

When the British attempted to arrest the Mufti in 1937 he fled Palestine, and the British made do with confiscating his property. The Husseini clan owned several well-known buildings in Jerusalem, among them the Palace Hotel on Mamilla Street (later Israel’s Ministry of Trade, and now being rebuilt as a hotel), the Orient House (the site of Palestinian Authority attempts to establish its rule in east Jerusalem), and the Shepherd Hotel in Sheikh Jarrah on a plot of land known as Karam al Mufti, named for Husseini.

The Shepherd Hotel was located on a key roadway; just yards away is the site of the infamous Hadassah Hospital convoy massacre in April 1948, prior to Israel’s independence. Seventy-nine Jews, mostly doctors and nurses, were killed on that road when their convoy to the Mt. Scopus hospital was attacked by hundreds of Arab terrorists. A meek British military response allowed the attack to continue for many hours throughout the day.

Despite all of the Arab attacks in 1920, 1921, 1929 and 1936 the British response was to reward Arab aggression against the Jews and impose draconian restrictions on Jewish immigration. Part of the British mandate of Palestine, what could have been part of the Jewish homeland, was lopped off in 1922 and given to Emir Abdullah to form the state of Jordan. Addowlah ma'anah.

The pattern of Arab attacks and rewards would repeat itself time and again. Limited liability – the Arabs paid little for their attacks. Despite Arab aggression against the Jewish communities in Palestine in 1947 and 1948, Palestinian Arabs still demand today a “right of return” to areas within Israel’s borders since the 1949 Armistice.

In 1956, Egyptian-commanded fedayeen terrorist attacks led Israel to join Britain and France in the Sinai campaign against Egypt. Two days into the war, President Dwight Eisenhower called Israel’s Prime Minister David Ben-Gurion. According to a biographer of Jewish leader Max Fisher, Eisenhower admonished Prime Minister Ben Gurion "... You ought not forget that the strength of Israel and her future are bound up with the United States." This was followed by specific threats: If Israel did not leave Sinai and Gaza there would be U.N. condemnation, U.S. aid would be terminated, the tax-status of charitable contributions would be challenged.”

AIPAC’s founder, Si Kenen, wrote of the period: “There were long and feverish negotiations between the Israelis and Secretary of State Dulles who tried to divide American Jews, most of whom were backing the Israelis. Dulles invited a group of major Jewish philanthropists, including leading non-Zionists, to use their influence to persuade Israel to accept the U.S. position…”

Sound familiar and contemporary? To a recent meeting with American Jewish leadership, President Obama also invited two leftist organizations highly critical of Israeli policies.

In 1957, the U.S. pressure forced Israel to withdraw from Sinai without securing ironclad guarantees against Egyptian aggression and blockades. In October, 1965 Max Fisher visited Eisenhower at his Gettysburg farm. Eisenhower admitted to him "... looking back at Suez, I regret what I did. I never should have pressed Israel to evacuate the Sinai.”

Several casus belli directly led to the 1967 Six Day War. They include Egypt’s naval blockade of Israel, the massing of Egyptian troops in Sinai, Jordanian dispatch of tanks into the West Bank and shelling of Jerusalem, and Syrian bombardment of Israel’s northern communities. The American and British drafters of the 1967 UN Security Resolution 242, while “emphasizing the inadmissibility of the acquisition of territory by war,” also recognized the madness of returning to the 1949 armistice lines. “We didn't say there should be a withdrawal to the '67 line,” said British Ambassador Lord Caradon. “We did not put the 'the' in, we did not say all the territories, deliberately.. We all knew - that the boundaries of '67 were not drawn as permanent frontiers, they were a cease-fire line of a couple of decades earlier... We did not say that the '67 boundaries must be forever; it would be insanity.”

Yet, today, under the Arab concept of wars of limited liability, they and the United Nations demand a complete withdrawal from the West Bank and east Jerusalem – “100 percent” -- and a dismantling of the security barrier erected to block Palestinian suicide bombers. In other words, there is no punishment, no price to pay, and no indemnification for acts of aggression. Addowlah ma'anah.

The actions and words of the Obama administration today elicit from Israel’s “peace partners” echoes of that ominous war cry.

“Obama,” noted the Washington Post’s Jackson Diehl after interviewing the Palestinian Authority’s Mahmoud Abbas, “has repeatedly and publicly stressed the need for a West Bank settlement freeze, with no exceptions. In so doing he has shifted the focus to Israel. He has revived a long-dormant Palestinian fantasy: that the United States will simply force Israel to make critical concessions, whether or not its democratic government agrees, while Arabs passively watch and applaud.” Addowlah ma'anah.

Ironically, Abbas himself, recently revealed that once the Arabs of Palestine did not expect the great powers or other Arabs to rescue them, and that indeed they were capable of recognizing the responsibility for their actions. Describing the 1948 flight of his Arab community from Safed, a mixed Arab-Jewish town in the Galilee, Abbas admitted on Al-Palestinia TV last month, “People were motivated to run away... They feared retribution from Zionist terrorist organizations - particularly from the Safed ones. Those of us from Safed especially feared that the Jews harbored old desires to avenge what happened during the 1929 uprising. [pictured: destroyed Jewish homes in 1929.] This was in the memory of our families and parents... They realized the balance of forces was shifting and therefore the whole town was abandoned on the basis of this rationale - saving our lives and our belongings."

The acquisition of the Shepherd Hotel site was carried out according to the letter of the law. The land, first confiscated by the British was administered by the Jordanian government after it illegally annexed the West Bank and east Jerusalem in 1950. Under international law, the Israeli government became custodians after the 1967 war. For the last 15 years the building stood abandoned. Soon the piece of real estate will house the descendants of those who Haj Amin al-Husseini tried to kill in Palestine or the grandchildren of those European Jews who escaped Husseini’s ally, Adolf Hitler. Maybe, just maybe, there are consequences for aggression.

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What My Seven-Year-Old Grandson Can Teach President Obama About Israel

Reprinted from The Jewish Week, New York

Hebron -- Uriya and 80 other first grade boys received their certificates last month on completing their study of the entire book of Genesis. That's an important achievement in many Jewish day schools in the United States, usually accomplished only in the third grade. What was truly unique about Uriya's reception was its location: The Shrine of the Patriarchs and Matriarchs in Hebron in the West Bank.

Meorat HaMachpeila, the traditional site of the graves of Abraham and Sarah, Isaac and Rebecca, and Jacob and Leah, is the second holiest site in Judaism after the Temple Mount in Jerusalem. The burial cave was purchased by Abraham from Ephron the Hittite for 400 shekels of silver, according to the Bible [Genesis 23:17]. The cave was enclosed by a massive Herodian structure some 2000 years ago upon which Muslims added minarets and Christian crusaders added their churches.

Hebron had served as King David's capital until he moved to Jerusalem, and Jews lived in Hebron for centuries until an Arab massacre of Jews in 1929 forced the survivors to flee. For centuries the Muslims forbad Jews from entering the tomb, which they called the Haram al-Ibrahimi. Only after the 1967 war, when Israel pushed the Jordanian Legion from the West Bank, were Jews able to return to Hebron and enter the shrine.

The children's program in Hebron was full of songs, re-enactments of Bible stories, and quizzes about Bible figures and verses. Most of the program was conducted on the broad expanse of grass outside the holy site, and then the boys went inside to pray in the chambers above the graves. Only the large Isaac chamber was off-limits since it is reserved for Muslim worshippers for most of the year. [It was the site of the massacre of 29 Muslims by Baruch Goldstein on Purim, 1994.]

My wife and I grew up in Washington D.C., and we often supplemented our American history lessons with class trips to the U.S. Capitol building, Mt. Vernon or the Supreme Court.

But for Uriya and his friends the field trip was the opportunity to learn about their forefathers and the Cave of Machpeila, a 25-minute ride from his Efrat school in the Etzion Bloc south of Jerusalem. The one biblical matriarch missing from Hebron, Rachel, is buried in a shrine a few miles to the north between Bethlehem and Jerusalem.

Uriya knows a little about the history of the Etzion Bloc and its valiant history in defending the approaches to Jerusalem in May 1948 when 250 Jewish fighters were massacred by Arab armies.

The Jewish communities, built there decades before, were wiped off the map. When he's older, Uriya and his class will visit the site of the massacre and the kibbutz rebuilt after 1967 by the children of the defenders.

Other than playing "King of the Hill, the boys do not understand the intricacies of strategic topography, but they know that across the valley from their school is the community of Elazar, built after 1967. They can relate the area to the ancient Chanukah story. The settlement, another part of the Etzion Bloc, was named for the Maccabean general who died nearby beneath the military tank of the time - an elephant - deployed by the invading Greek army.

The area is steeped in Jewish history -- and Jewish blood.

Uriya's moving ceremony was attended by his parents and two sets of proud grandparents who also live in Efrat. It may be difficult for Americans with their atomized families and cross-continent mobility to understand the pride and efforts of the large Jewish families in the settlements to live in close proximity. They spend Shabbat and holidays together. Siblings and parents are available to babysit and help out when a daughter gives birth. Our home reverberates when a near-minyan of grandchildren come for a birthday party or cookie baking or cherry picking.

Our Arab neighbors understand the idea. When a son marries he builds his home near or above his parents' home. I seriously doubt that any American policy-maker would ever consider denying Palestinians the right to "natural growth" in their places of residence.

A recent Washington Post article described the role played by President Obama's Jewish friends and advisors in setting his draconian anti-settlement policies. It's a shame that the advisors have little or none of the deep emotional Jewish ties to the birthplace and birthright of Judaism - the Biblical sites in east Jerusalem, Hebron or Shiloh. They view with distain the religious devotion of the modern Orthodox Jews and the more than 100,000 ultra-Orthodox Jews who live in Judea and Samaria (not unlike the embarrassment that their parents felt toward their Yiddish-speaking Orthodox grandparents who arrived in America in the early 20th century). Unlike their American Jewish cousins, there will be little if any intermarriage or assimilation among the observant Israeli Jews.

The American friends and advisors to Obama may be friends or relatives of Israelis who are, more often than not, secular Israelis from the Tel Aviv region. The ignorance about the religious "other" is not the sole property of the American Jewish advisors.

Former Prime Ministers Barak and Olmert were quick to relinquish the Jewish patrimony. During the Oslo Accords withdrawal one Israeli military negotiator had no inkling about the sanctity of Rachel's Tomb and "gave it away" until ultra-Orthodox rabbinic leaders persuaded Prime Minister Rabin to correct the spiritual crime.

The relationship between Obama's Jews on one hand and the ardent American Zionists and patriotic Israelis on the other is reminiscent of a conversation held more than a century ago between Chaim Weizmann and Lord Arthur Balfour, the eventual author of the Balfour Declaration that launched the policy to establish a Jewish homeland. Balfour could not fathom why persecuted Russian Jews refused an offer of safe asylum in Uganda. Weizmann argued that Zionist Jews could not accept a home anywhere but Jerusalem.

"Suppose I were to offer you Paris instead of London," Weizmann said.
"But, Dr. Weizmann," Balfour responded, "we have London."
"That is true," Weizmann said, "but we had Jerusalem when London was a marsh."
Balfour asked, "Are there many Jews who think like you?"
"I believe I speak the minds of millions of Jews," replied Weizmann.
"It is curious," said Balfour, "the Jews I meet are quite different."
"Mr. Balfour," Weizmann retorted, "you meet the wrong kind of Jews."

We all pray that Uriya and his classmates will be spared the army service that his father, uncles and grandfather have all experienced.

But if one day he will have to don a uniform, he will know about his centuries-old ties to the land.

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