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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Responses to The New York Times' Nicolas Kristof on Water, Hebron and Jewish Land

Blogs serve an important purpose: Bloggers can blow off steam, particularly when it's so hard to get any column inches in the mainstream press. Another pressure valve is the "talkback" feature that follows many online newspaper items. Frankly, they're a waste of time and effort, but sometimes it's the only way to get something off your chest. Such is the case this week with many angry readers of The New York Times' Nicolas Kristof's column this week on the "Israeli colony" in Hebron.

I'm not the only one to use the blog and the "talk-back" feature to respond to Kristof. Read Prof. Gerald Steinberg's response on the NGO Monitor site. A particularly poignant response was written by Stephen Flatow, father of 20-year-old Alisa who was killed by a Palestinian bus bomb in 1995. There's also an important response by David Wilder, spokesman for the Jewish community in Hebron. Wilder revealed that while Kristof toured Hebron with B'Tzelem, one of the most vociferous and tendentious pro-Palestinian organizations in Israel, the columnist satisfied his "journalistic objectivity" by merely giving Wilder a phone call.

Below are excerpts from my own response to Kristof.

Mr. Kristof -- The Israelis you cite are either from the extreme left who deny any Jewish right to the Jewish historical sites in Judea/Samaria (the West Bank) or those on the right in Hebron who find themselves on the front lines. Their views are molded by the intense pressure of their lives.

Most Israelis, however, are anchored in the center, and that is certainly the case for the hundreds of thousands who, like myself, live in the post-1967 areas and for their extended families and friends in pre-67 Israel.

You find the idea of Jews living in their second holiest city, Hebron, illegal or “utterly impractical.” Sorry, Mr. Kristof, many Jews want the right to visit the Tomb of the Patriarchs, something denied to Jews after the 1929 massacre of Hebron’s Jews. Many of those closed shops you referred to were once Jewish properties.

Don’t apply the “utterly impractical” standard to Israel. The state never would have been founded in 1948 according to your standards.

You claim one-third of settlement land is privately owned by Palestinians. Not according to the Israeli Supreme Court — the paragon of justice, decency, fairness loved by Israel’s left — that allowed the construction of settlements on “state land.” When a settlement was built on private land, the court ordered it removed immediately. (The Elon Moreh case.)

The delay of sick Palestinians in ambulances at checkpoints is tragic, but the use of those ambulances to ferry explosives used by suicide bombers is lethal and criminal. I’m not surprised they get delayed at checkpoints.

Mr. Kristof, unless you parachuted into Hebron, you drove on Route 60 from Jerusalem. I use the road every day, and I share it with hundreds of Palestinian trucks, taxis and private cars. Many of them enter Route 60 from Bethlehem. At that intersection 10 years ago a Palestinian terrorist, driving a large stolen Israeli truck, rammed my son’s compact car with his four passengers. Miraculously they survived. The intersection was closed during the intifada, but it’s been open for a year. And my son drives past that spot every day on his way to a Jerusalem hospital where he treats Arabs and Jews. For better or for worse, most roads are open and most Palestinians can travel in the West Bank.

Water Usage in Israel and around the world

Your portrait of evil Israelis just can’t be complete without the canard of Israelis using five times more water than Palestinians. Sorry, it doesn’t wash, so to speak. A study produced by the U.S. National Academy of Sciences along with their Jordanian, Palestinian and Israeli counterparts ten years ago, found little difference between water consumption in Israeli and Palestinian urban areas. “Per capita water use for urban Palestinians reaches a maximum of 100 cubic meters a year, similar to Israeli use.” The study suggests that low figures for rural Palestinians “is likely to increase with improvement in the level of living.” More telling, however, is the report’s finding that “water losses unaccounted for [theft or leaks] in the [Palestinian] distribution network” reach 55 percent[!]

Lastly, all modern, developed 21st century societies use much more water than developing societies. “The United States and Canada are the highest per capita water users in the world,” according to the Commission for Environmental Cooperation, “…per person usage is more than 2.5 times that in Asia or Europe, and over six times that in Africa.” Cross the border into Mexico and per capita water usage drops by two-thirds.

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Ms. Rice Visited Israel, Not Birmingham, Alabama

Two months ago in Annapolis Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice compared the plight of Palestinians to the experience of African-Americans some 40 years ago in the segregated South. "I know what it is like to hear that you cannot go on a road or through a checkpoint because you are Palestinian," she said. "I understand the feeling of humiliation and powerlessness." The reporter continued, “As a black child [pictured with her mother] in the South, [she remembers] being told she could not use certain water fountains or eat in certain restaurants.”

Well, Ms. Rice, I recently returned from the South – southern Israel – and I saw a far different scene from the Jim Crow measures you experienced in the land of the Confederacy. My wife and I drove some 200 miles south from Jerusalem to Eilat, Israel’s “little Riviera,” for a week’s vacation. It coincided with the Muslim holiday of Id al Adha, and we shared Eilat with thousands of Israeli citizens of Muslim faith and Palestinian national identity.

I recall the de facto segregation in the Takoma swimming pool in northwest Washington DC where I grew up. In our Eilat hotel, on the other hand, it was impossible to differentiate between the Israeli Jewish and Muslim kids splashing in the pool. In the 1960s, ten years after Rosa Parks, seating on D.C. Transit buses and at the Peoples Drug Store soda counter reflected a habitual racial separation. There was nothing similar in the Eilat hotel dining room on Friday night which was filled with Jewish families saying Kiddush at their traditional Shabbat meal alongside Arab families partaking of the Ashkenazi gefilte fish and the Sephardi couscous. The Israeli Arabs’ 4x4 monster SUVs cast shadows over our modest sedan at the famous 101 roadside rest stop in the Negev desert where all Israelis – Muslim and Jewish – shared the restaurant, kids’ rides and washrooms.

Anyone suggesting that Jim Crow is present in Israel should be eating crow (except for the fact that it’s not kosher). That includes the Washington Post correspondent Scott Wilson who recently filed a story, “For Israel's Arab Citizens, Isolation and Exclusion.”

Israeli Arabs or Palestinian Israelis

Standing in line at an Eilat supermarket check-out we stood behind an Israeli Arab woman who spoke no Hebrew or English, only Arabic. She was a Palestinian from the West Bank who was married to an Israeli Muslim citizen, one of many West Bankers who have found a surreptitious way to accomplish the Palestinian goal of a “right of return” to the area of pre-1967 Israel.

Instead of traveling a route past the Dead Sea and parallel to the Jordanian border, our drive went straight south along Route 60 from Jerusalem. The first 30 miles were through the southern half of the West Bank, known for centuries as “Judea.” That took us past Hebron (Al Khalil on map), Arab villages and Jewish villages and towns -- misnamed for years as “settlements.” The term connotes temporary, military-style encampments. They’re nothing of the sort, with many stylish residences housing second and third generations of Israeli Jews.

Hundreds of Palestinian cars, trucks, and the distinctive yellow Palestinian taxis shared the road with us. My wife and I, in one of the few cars with the yellow and black Israeli license plates, kept looking for the supposedly omnipresent Israeli Army roadblocks and checkpoints. Frankly, we were a little anxious, and we were a lot curious about Ms. Rice’s complaint that Palestinians “can’t go on a road.” Along the whole route of this major thoroughfare – some 30 – 40 miles we did not see one roadblock or checkpoint! Only at the “crossing points” between the West Bank and pre-1967 Israel did we see checkpoints, established to prevent suicide bombers and terrorist groups from attacking Israeli targets. One such checkpoint recently discovered 6.5 tons of the bomb-making chemical, potassium nitrate, hidden in bags of sugar sent by the European Union as humanitarian aid.

Yes, there are checkpoints – and choke points – around some Palestinian towns, and travel to areas adjacent to Jerusalem and other major Israeli cities is often made difficult as the Israeli army attempts to thwart terrorists going into Israel and Palestinian car thieves fleeing Israel with their loot. But we travelled the length of a large, contiguous Palestinian region where Palestinian school children, merchants, truckers and commuters experienced no interference whatsoever as they traveled.

Ms. Rice, thank God Almighty that the U.S. civil rights movement was led by the likes of Reverends Martin Luther King and Ralph Abernathy. Imagine how the U.S. government would have reacted if the movement were led by the militant Black Panther’s Booby Seale or Huey Newton, or a terrorist group such as the Symbionese Liberation Army led by Donald “Field Marshal Cinque” DeFreeze. Government agencies probably would have set up roadblocks and checkpoints around every American urban center. Ms. Rice, if a non-violent Palestinian national movement were ever to emerge and really purge the terrorists, then your comparisons would be worthy of consideration.

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