The Armenian quarter

So we had a guided tour of the Armenian quarter Friday, which is pretty cool for a number of reasons. First, it was a tour by an Armenian scholar (that is, a scholar who has studied extensively the history of Armenians, not an Armenian himself). Second, while the Armenian quarter isn’t entirely closed to outsiders, you really have to know someone to get inside. Since the Armenian museum is closed for renovation, this is one of the few ways to get to a first-hand look at the Jerusalem Armenian community.

We started off outside the Cathedral of St. James.

A Fresco above the main door of St. James Cathedral.

So we waited around for the guy who had the key. We waited a bit more, then a bit more. Finally, we decided we’d get on with the tour. The Armenian Quarter is rather small. There’s a large courtyard, with buildings all around. We did get a chance to duck inside a monastery (briefly) where this statue was in the courtyard.

An Armenian Cross. Notice the flourish at the bottom, which is supposed to be vines and life, suggesting the life given by the cross.

We also got a chance to see the Armenian library, the largest private library in the state of Israel. It was really cool to see books in Armenian, a language radically different from any other I’ve seen. In another monastery (that is in the process of being converted for residential use) we saw an olive tree that is sacred to the local Armenian community as the place where Christ was scourged. It is quite old, regardless of whether this story is accurate.

We also saw the Church of the Holy Archangels, in which photos are not allowed. I attended vespers at the Church of St. James later that afternoon with a few other students. It is an extremely beautiful Cathedral; the service was also very beautiful. Both churches are quite old, dating to around the Crusader period. Unfortunately, photos are allowed of neither, and I am a bit too respectful to take them in spite of the rules.

One interesting thing about the vespers service is that it was nearly entirely sung, but not in the way westerners think of song. There is something in Eastern church-culture (and maybe this exists in America too) that emphasizes singing to an extreme. Instead of reading from scripture, scripture is frequently (if not usually) sung. It’s also not terribly musical, in my opinion. But it is an interesting bit of what is local to churches here that really stands out to someone who has always thought of reading and singing as two quite separate domains.

The Chapel of the Ascension

“You want to go into the church?”

A gruff accented voice calls out on the Mount of Olives. It’s Monday- the shadows are beginning to lengthen and an enterprising tour guide wants to make his last sale of the day.

“You want to go in?”

Our small band of four American students crosses the street, approaching the high wall with the door that the bellowing man stands in front of. His tone changes slightly.

“Five Shekel each.”

(5 Shekel = $1.20) We search for a minute, come up with the correct change. The gate in the wall is opened and we’re led into a courtyard, surrounded by a high stone wall with a short path leading to a cupola.

The outside of the chapel.

The man leads us into the chapel, gives a two-sentence history of the structure, then asks “Do you want to pray or something?” before he is badgered for more information by my companions. When was the dome built? Who built it? How did the Muslims change the shrine? What are the big stones outside?

So many questions and so much thought over such a small structure. To be fair, its not likely any of us would have done this on our own. The Chapel of the Ascension is one of the more overlooked holy sites in Jerusalem, probably because no one is fighting over it at the moment. It is firmly owned and operated by Muslims, it is recognized by the Greek, Latin, Armenian, and Syrian (I think they’re the fourth group) Christians, as well as Muslims, as the site where Jesus ascended into heaven, leaving a footprint.

The footpring of Jeus, so they say.

Of course, there’s no way to verify that this is the site. Perhaps it’s just nice everyone agrees on it, for once.

The wall of the Chapel of the Ascension at which the footprint points. You see the mihrab, marking the direction to Mecca, and two Christian altars.

As part of our course here, we’ve been assigned papers based on sites that existed during the medieval period in Jerusalem. We were supposed to write about what they were like then, what they’re like now, and how they’ve changed in between.It’s really quite a fascinating mix of practical “field work” and scholarly writing/conjecture. My site turned out to be the Chapel of the Ascension. We were supposed to talk about the site in the historical framework offered by the different pilgrimage accounts we read. Here are the two I used in my paper:

“On the whole Mount of Olivet there seems to be no spot higher than that from which the Lord is said to have ascended into the heavens, where there stands a great round church, having in its circuit three vaulted porticoes covered over above. The interior of the church, without roof or vault, lies open to heaven under the open air, having in its eastern side an altar protected under a narrow covering.”

-”The Pilgrimage of Arculfus in the Holy Land,” Palestinian Pilgrims Text Society. Original 670 AD

and from a later, crusader-era pilgrimage:

“it is from this stone that Christ our God ascended to the heavens. This (holy) place is a circular enclosure, paved with marble slabs, and surrounded by vaulted chambers. In the middle of the enclosure a small round chapel has been built, open to the sky, and without pavement; and it is under this open cupola that the sacred stone lies upon which the feet of our Lord and Master rested.”

-from “The Pilgrimage of the Russian Abbot Daniel in the Holy Land,” Palestinian Pilgrims text society. Original produced 1106-1007 AD

As both of these sources tell us, the site of today is quite different. Gone are the vaulted chambers of Abbot Daniel and the wide openness of Arculfus. In their place, we have a (not-so) inspiring shrine. Part of this post is to give my readers a feel for the sort of stuff we’re doing in class, and part is to explore the interesting history of the site. This is a place that has been used continuously as a shrine (with perhaps brief interruptions) for at least 1300 years! It really is incredible to think that it’s still (mostly) the same. One of the arguments, among a few others, that I advanced in my paper was that the Church of the Ascension in the time of Abbot Daniel was built as a rival shrine (or at least an imitating shrine) to the Dome of the Rock. This is based on the fact that the wall we see today is a mis-shapen octagon, and it seems quite possible that this octagonal layout follows (roughly) that seen in the Dome of the Rock (which this shrine overlooks). The Muslims, it appeared, saw it this way since they rebuilt it as a much smaller shrine, and one that definitely had a roof.

My next project is going to be on Jaffa Gate, and if I come across anything interesting, I’ll share it on here as well.

Bethlehem (from a distance)

Nothing in this place is as simple as it seems. Bethlehem, “بيت لحم”, “בת להמ” You need to use all three names because all three mean something different. Bethlehem is where the Pope is going to visit in about a week and a half. It’s the place where western Christians say that Jesus was born, and that’s mostly what it means.

Bethlehem. The Church of the Nativity would be visible just over the rise, I believe.

The Palestinian city is بيت لحم, a town of something like 30,000 people, on the border of Israel. This is the term used by Eastern Christians, as well as Muslims. It is the place where Jesus was born, but it also means “house of meat.”

بيت لحم- A refugee camp should be just over the rise.

The city on the border of Israel is בית לחם, which is on the other side of the wall and is 70% Muslim, 30% Christian. It has two daughter cities, Beit Jala and Beit Satur, which hold an additional 20,000 people. It is roughly 0% Jewish, and it is really the first thing on the south side of the border of municipal Jerusalem. To the south of it lies Hebron. The name literally means “House of Bread.”

בית לחם, at the edge of Jerusalem

For those who are interested, the pronunciation of those names are all roughly similar (Arabic: Bayt Lehem, Hebrew: Bet Lahm). Which should confuse you (as it did me) because the two semitic languages have a word with the same sound with two oppositional meanings. Perhaps this is most appropriate though, since it is clear that all three names mean something very different. I’ve found (and told on at least a few occasions) that this is remarkably typical of the region. Two or three groups look at the same exact thing and see remarkably different things. First, a map of the area.

Photo Credit: Google Maps

These pictures were taken from Tantur,

The front entrance of Tantur, where we've had classes the past two days.

an ecumenical Christian compound built just opposite Bethlehem. To one side of Bethlehem, we have the dauther city of Bayt Satur,

Bayt Satur, at center-left, with the grove of dark green trees. This is the location of "shepherds field," where the angels heralded the birth of Christ.

In addition to the sheperds’ field, Bayt Sahur is home to about 12,000 Arabs, 80% Christian, 20% Muslim. To the other side there is the daughter city of Bayt Jala.

Bayt Jala, on the left side of the hill.

Bayt Jala is home to about an additional 12,000 Arabs. On the Israeli side of the wall, we have Har Homa

Har Homa, on a hillside dominating Bayt Satur

which is a neighborhood of Jerusalem founded in the 1990s and

A view of Gilo, the buildings behind the trees.

Gilo, a neighborhood of Jerusalem founded after the 1967 war, still unrecognized by most of the international community. Even before our guide talked about what was going on in the area, I understood from my earlier tour of the old city what would be said about the Har Homa; It was a settlement. Had I seen Gilo, I likely would have guessed the same thing about it. The projection of power is just too clear a factor in the region. Every act is political.

The wall, of course dominates ones entire view of the area. The eyes are positively attracted to it. The wall, or separation barrier as it is known to Israelis, is about 30 feet high, with a checkpoint in Bethlehem, as you can see in the second picture.

A closer view of the wall. Note the street sign (roughly 2m) for height comparisons.

Gerrymandered on the Israeli side of the wall is the tomb of Rachel. You can see the wall dip in and dip back out in the 4th photo, and that is where the tomb is located. The wall, of course, was constructed in response to the second Intifadah. The Israelis had enough of the killing and did something widely recognized as drastic – they built the wall. That isn’t to say that the building of the wall was completely “fair.” The construction of the separation barrier = the wall allowed Israel to move the boundary up perhaps 300 meters – not an insignificant amount in a region where land is so important. The wall and these settlements, as well as a score of others, are designed to create a Jewish perimeter of Jerusalem, making sure that it never again falls exclusively under Arab control. Or it’s a security measure that needed to be pushed up as far as possible for some reason.

The stories told here are two different stories.

That’s why I’m here and that’s why it’s important to investigate for myself. The pictures I post aren’t insignificant either. There seems to be a dearth of honest reporting about the mundane in this area, the stuff that lives are made of. It’s only exciting to the media if someone dies and right now it seems like the fighting isn’t the killing kind, but that doesn’t mean that the battle is less pitched.

Yom Hazikaron (Israel Memorial Day)

So apparently I’ll get two holiday calendars this year. One, the American, centers around 4th of July, Thanksgiving, and the beginning and end of summer, with a few holidays in the February. The Israel holiday calendar centers on the two weeks we are presently in. Holocaust Memorial Day (Yom HaShoa) was one week ago, Tuesday is Israeli Memorial Day, and Wednesday is Israeli Independence Day. The holidays begin at sundown, and last until sundown of the day following.

Last night I had a very cool opportunity to go see the service for Israel Memorial Day that took place at the Western Wall. See is the wrong word. There were a lot of very tall people in front of me. I was present however, and did manage to grab a few photos.

The center of the ceremony: a flame, a half-mast flag, and soldiers

As you can see, the crowd was quite sizable. At exactly 8a, the air raid sirens sounded for 1 minute, when the whole country stood in silence. The ceremony was conducted entirely in Hebrew (don’t ask me what they said) and lasted about 45 minutes. There was a certain solemn air over the crowd. Yom Hazikaron has an entirely different aesthetic from American Memorial Day. There is not a lot of laughter or celebration. As one of the coordinators with our program at Hebrew U put it: “It’s not a shopping holiday.” This is entirely accurate, from everything I’ve observed in the rest of the holiday. I think at least part of the reason it is different is that everyone has lost someone. Yom Hazikaron commemorates not only fallen soldiers, but also victims of terrorist attacks in Israel. I doubt there are very few families indeed that have not lost anyone in the conflicts of the past 60 years, or in a terrorist attack.

A (blurry) photo of a lit minaret.

This is an old city mosque on one of the main roads. The minarets on every Jerusalem mosque have these lights in the same shade of green. One of the most interesting parts of Jerusalem’s night skyline is the dots of green lights on every minaret, broadcasting out a visible sign of the mosques presence. The reason I bring this up is not only to shed more light on Islamic Jerusalem, but also to put this photo into perspective.

The larger picture.

In the photo above, notice the Israeli flags draped down from the walkway leading up to the Haram Al-Sharif (the Temple Mount). You can see a green light (of the exact same shade) just above the trees in the upper-right. This is the minaret of the Al-Aqsa mosque, the third holiest mosque in Islam. (For those interested in how the event was secured, you can also see the sillouettes of two guards in front of the tip of the dome, barely visible). This brings me to what I wanted to speak about, which is the idea of the Jewish state. When I first came here, I didn’t understand how fully Jewish the state of Israel is, and exactly what that means. It is very strange to see a government holding a ceremony at what could be called (with very little argument) the holiest place on earth. On the other hand, this is what a Jewish state is about. In truth, when I saw the wall, I couldn’t help but think of all the suffering of the Jewish people, and be reminded that it was only because of the military of the state of Israel that Jews now have access to the wall at all. Perhaps it is fitting then, but very strange.

The ceremony concluded with the singong of Israel’s national anthem, the Hatikva. It was sung in Hebrew at the ceremony, but I’d like to post the last three lines, translated in English below, since the national anthem has developed my picture of Israel’s national consciousness.

The hope of two thousand years,
To be a free nation in our land,
The land of Zion and Jerusalem.

from Hatikva by Naftali Herz Imber

The Mt. of Olives

Sunday, we took a tour of the Mt. of Olives. Most of the face of the mountain is covered with a very large public cemetery, with the earliest tombs dating back to ancient times.

The Mt. of Olives cemetery. Every terrace is completely covered in tombs.

The fascinating bit that our tour guide really brought to life was the significance of the olive tree in the ancient world. In particular, he tried (and I think did a very good job) of bringing out some of what he described as the “Biblical botany” of the New Testament.

Let's look at the olive tree! (Photo credit: Caitlin Tweed)

As you can see, olive trees are quite unusual in shape. They are very gnarled and stubby as compared to virtually every other type of tree I’ve seen. The guide explained this – the olive tree grows from the root. It puts out shoots every year, and if you want a crop of olives, you must cut off the shoots so the nutrients go to the olives and not the shoots. I assume that this leads to a gnarled tree, after many, many years of pruning.

The guide also showed us that the Mt. of Olives (part of which is called Mt. Scopus) is a watershed. The western side – towards Jerusalem – receives 10 times the amount of rain that the other side does. One side is lush and green, the other side a desert.

West side of the Mt. of Olives/Mt. Scopus, which gets 20+ inches of rain per year

Those are (surprise) olive trees, growing on the western side of the Mt. of Olives, specifically a terrace near the bottom. This is the Judean desert.

The east side, which receives ~2 inches of rain per year.

The crazy part – these photos were taken about 30 yards apart. The watershed is quite abrupt and makes one side of the mountain much more desirable for agriculture.

The guide also mentioned that olive oil meant light in the ancient world. It was used to light lamps without giving off a lot of smoke. As we descended the mountain, we visited three Christian holy sites. The first the Church of the Tear, marks the site where tradition holds Jesus wept over the city of Jerusalem. The church has a spectacular view of the city (what would have been the temple at the time of Christ).

View of the altar at the Church of the tear with the temple mount (the Dome of the Rock) behind.

I thought this was one of the prettiest churches I’ve visited here. At the bottom of the valley (it’s the Kidron valley) there is the Church of Gethsemane. They were having services as we went in, so I didn’t get any good photos of the interior. On the grounds there is a beautiful garden, the traditional site of Gethsemane, it has flowers and some massive olive trees.

Gethsemane

The final site was the shrine of Mary. This was an underground vault containing the tomb of Mary, the mother of Jesus. None of my pictures of this site turned out well enough for this liking (and I found the site weird and creepy enough to begin with). The tomb wasn’t anything spectacular, and I wasn’t particularly impressed. There were a lot of lamps and ornamentation (it was a very orthodox shrine), but nothing truly spectacular.

There is (at least) one Mt. of Olives site not covered in this post – the Chapel of the Ascension, where Christ ascended into heaven. I visited there independently, and I think it would be interesting to discuss it at greater length. There is so much on the Mt. of Olives, and I really appreciated the chance to take in just a bit more of the history of the city.

Haifa

So Haifa is an amazing place. Not because there is so much stuff to do (though there is a lot), nor because the people are super-nice (though they are), but because the city is one of the most stunningly naturally beautiful places I’ve ever been. The whole city is built on a hill.

Haifa at night. The long lit-up strip up the mountain is the Ba'hai gardens, which are really Haifa's focal point.

Friday night we mostly chilled and played cards (in addition to having dinner at a rather mediocre Chinese restaurant). Saturday morning we were off to tour the Ba’hai gardens. First, to the top of Mr. Carmel.

There were a LOT of steps.

Where we entered the Ba’hai gardens at the top and received a tour leading down to (but not into) the Shrine of the Bab.

Downhill view from near the summit of Mt. Carmel.

As I said, we walked down to the Shrine, catching some truly awesome views along the way.

A view of Haifa and the gardens.

After the gardens, we went to the beach and hung out there the rest of the day before getting an early start for home.The beach was absolutely spectacular, though I didn’t get any really great pictures.

Akko!

Friday, we went to Akko.

Akko! (in three languages, all of which are legitimate to spell the name in!)

Akko is one of the great historical treasures of the world. The city has been continuously inhabited for the past 3000 years! It was a major port in the Roman Empire, the gem of Crusader Palestine, and a lynchpin in Napoleon’s planned conquest of India (which didn’t happen because Akko held out against Napoleons siege). The city was the largest port in Israel before modern times, and nearby Haifa is still a major port to this day.

The old city was really cool. It was like Jerusalem, but much less crowded. The market was also somewhat more exotic than in Jerusalem. Fish markets abounded with fish so fresh they still flopped in their bins. They had quite a few stores selling hookah (water pipes for tobacco) as well, I saw a few as tall as I was! The real treasure was the living archaelogy of the city. We first toured the tunnels built by the Crusaders under the city. These tunnels sat silently under the city until the 1990s, when they began to be unearthed. They had been relatively intact, under the city for all those years.

Dramatic shot of crusader tunnels. The ceiling of the room is about 15-20 feet.

From the tunnels, we exited to a dramatic view of the ocean and the sea wall.

The Mediterranean. From the Haifa old city.

Note the wave break on the middle left of the photo. This marks the outer wall of a crusader-built fortress destroyed by the Napoleon’s cannon. The view from Akko is absolutely incredible. The wall is also gorgeous sandstone. From the top of the wall, you can see across the bay to Haifa and Mt. Carmel.

Part of the wall of the old city seawall. See the sillouette of Mt. Caramel in the background.

I also had a chance to see the beautiful Al-Jazzar mosque. Photos weren’t allowed inside, but here is a picture of the outside.

Al-Jazzar Mosque

After the mosque, it was off to Haifa for a great Friday evening and a packed Saturday.

Holocaust Memorial Day at Hebrew University

Last Tuesday (I should have written about this a few days ago), was Holocaust Memorial day, or Yad HaShoa is a national holiday in the state of Israel. All across the country, at 10a sharp, air raid sirens sound. Everyone stands, still and silent. Drivers pull their cars over, get out, and stand in silence for two minutes while the country remembers. Hebrew University had a 45 minute ceremony to remember the Holocaust. During the ceremony, six candles were lit in order to remember the Jewish suffering during the Holocaust. There were songs, poems, and readings of holocaust accounts. I found the ceremony quite moving.

In my prior post I discussed the national consciousness of the Holocaust. The prominence of the remembrance only reinforces this in my mind. All throughout Israel, there were memorial services and remembrances.

I have two thoughts about this. First, I think it’s very significant that Israel remembers once a year how weak and evil people are. I think there’s something very important about it and I wish there was some similar holiday in the rest of the world. To remember that (ordinarily) decent people can be turned into cold-blooded killers, and that the most charismatic is often the most evil is a lesson we should probably think on more frequently in our modern world. I’m going to go out on a limb and say most people alive today are (on the average) not as religious, hardworking, or decent as 1930s Germans. To think that they, not us, were tricked into perpetuating (and indeed, many became quite devoted to what they were doing) what could probably be called (fairly) the greatest human tragedy of the 20th century should certainly give us pause.

My second thought is this: We Have Forgotten. We don’t remember. We (and by we, I mean Americans, though I think it applies to most of the world) have not remembered and so we have don’t care that people around the world are killed for their race or their beliefs. We had the power to stop the Rwandan genocide, we had the power to militarily put an end to that genocide and the genocide in Darfur. No, we didn’t start it. No, it wasn’t our problem, as Americans. It was our problem as human beings. Maybe the miliary option isn’t always appropriate, I’m willing to believe that. But maybe we should be more willing to condemn and to boycott and demonstrate and sanction nations who perpetuate such acts.

The ceremony was, as I said, quite moving. I’m very glad I was in Israel to get a bit better picture of a major part of the national identity.

The State of Israel- an Israeli Perspective

So after my last post, I really wanted to add a bit of balance. I think it is important to present both sides of the story, as far as I can see them. So I’m not going to go on a pro-Israel rant, I’m going to write about the Sunday edition of the Jerusalem Post.

I’ve heard, though I’m not an expert on the subject personally, that the JPost tends to be on the more liberal side of the Israeli papers. Having read it (almost) cover-to-cover, it would not qualify as that on the American spectrum. If you want to read the paper online (and you should), check it out at www.jpost.com. Anyhow, on Friday morning I sat down with a paper copy, a cup of cofee and a croissant, and I read for quite a while. The Friday edition was quite large, and there was a section dedicated to opinion, as well as news. Surprisingly, the rhetoric I found in the opinion section focused mainly on the EU, the US and the UN, with little to say about the PA. The pieces I read had a very interesting undercurrent that I will attribute primarily to timing.This is the first weekend after Passover and the weekend before Holocaust Memorial Day, which falls on Tuesday. Virtually all of the articles took the Holocaust as their impetus, in some way. The one piece that did talk about the Palestinian conflict directly “If dialogue is a crime, we are all guilty” (David Saranga) focused on the director of a youth orchestra who was denied entry to a district of the West Bank because the orchestra “had just played a concert in Israel honoring Holocaust survivors.”

But most of the columns I read weren’t like that. Most representative (if most extreme) of the bunch was “Never since the 1930s” (Sarah Honig), which focused on what she sees as the rising world tide of anti-semitism, now expressed as contempt for the state of Israel. Israelis are worried. Worried about Iran, worried about the Palestinian situation (to a lesser extent), but primarily worried by the rise of world condemnation for their actions, and a growing radical sentiment (particularly in the western left) against their own self-defense. In particular, the columnists seem to be worried about an upcoming conference known as Durban II. Apparently the last Durban conference quickly descended into a pro-Palestinean Israel-bashing forum. A column on this year’s forum can be found here.

It was very interesting to see an Israeli political perspective, and I’m hoping to have more opportunities to get both sides while I’m here.

The Old City- a Palestinian perspective.

As part of my last visit downtown, I took this picture.

This is a cemetary in downtown Jerusalem, right in the middle of several very busy areas. The gravestones are marked in Arabic (though I didn’t get any pictures of those). There were some indications that the area might be under construction, like what looked like an archaelogical dig-type-pit next to where this picture was taken, but it was very unclear.

Monday we took a tour of the old city with a tour guide from خامعة القدس (al-Quds University, aka The Centre for Jerusalem Studies). In this post I hope to bring out the Muslim, Arabic, and particularly the Palestinean view of the Israeli government and rule of Jerusalem.

As virtually everyone knows, the dome of the rock is in Jerusalem. Big deal. But it is a big deal, and a bigger deal than just the Dome of the Rock. The temple mount also holds the al-Aqsa Mosque.

The Al-Aqsa mosque and the Dome of the Rock are both located on what is known to Arabs as the  حرام الشرف (transliterated Haram Al-Sharif). In English, this area is of course called the temple mount, and I assume (though I don’t know) that the Hebrew name also conveys this idea. I mention the Arabic names because language is certainly used as a weapon here. The state of Israel glorifies the philologist who brought back Hebrew. Many shops print their signs in three languages (English, Arabic, and Hebrew) and you can judge the prominent makeup of a neighborhood by analyzing what language shop signs are. Even in the Old City there is a tremendous war of language.

Notice how the Arabic portion of the sign is primarily obscured. This is a street sign in the Jewish quarter. The War of Independence Museum entrance is seen at lower left. Our tour guide pointed a sign like this out to us and showed us how (at least on the sign he showed us, if not the one above) that the Arabic was obscured by a strongly pro-Israeli, anti-Palestinian sticker, I believe favoring the expansion of West Bank settlements.

The reason I gave the actual Arabic words above is that they mean something. In Arabic, there is a root system. Every word has three core letters, and derives it’s meaning from those (I’m oversimplifying horribly, but I can’t teach all of Arabic on a blog). The word القدس means “The Holy.” So instead of being a transliteration of Jerusalem, you have Arab ideas on what Jerusalem means encoded into the very word they use. The word حرام الشرف is two words. Al-Sharif means “hill or mountain” Al is the definite article (though it carries slightly less force than English’s “the”) and the word it’s attached to means hill. The word haram actually comes from the Arabic root meaning forbidden, but the idea is much more in the strong sense of the English word “holy.” The idea of the word is sacrosanct, though this is also the word used to name the Kaaba in Mecca (Islam’s holiest shrine). So even though Jerusalem is Islam’s third holiest place, we have seen that the very place names are encoded with rich meaning (independent of the history of the place) about how sacred Jerusalem is in general (and the temple mount in particular).

Back to the tour I started to tell you about. For about three hours on Monday, we were led around the Old City by this relatively nice old gentleman by the name of Ali. Everyone seemed to really like Ali, at least in the Arab parts of Jerusalem. Ali told us a lot about Jewish activity in the Old City. He talked at length about Jewish settlers who had intentionally settled in the Arabic neighborhoods. He claimed (I think rather without grounds) that US taxpayer dollars were going to assist these settlers take over what should have been Arab apartments. He pointed out a prominent menorah in the center of the Muslim quarter and said that a prominent Israeli poliitician (I think it was Ariel Sharon, but it may be someone else) lived in the building under this menorah and was there to displace Arabic famillies. For the first time, I saw that Arabs in Jerusalem really view Israeli flags as symbols of an oppressive nation.

Note the minnaret at top left, and the menorah, bottom center. At the end of the tour, he revealed to us why everyone had been so nice to him on the entire course of the tour. He had been in prison for 17 years beginning in 1968 when he had set off a bomb at Yaffa Gate (a main entrance to the Old City) that injured 19 people. He said the bombing was a retribution for collateral damages inflicted a day prior by an Israeli military action. He said that he wouldn’t plant a bomb today, not becaus he was afraid of jail, but because a bomb couldn’t tell the difference between “good Jews and bad Jews.” I think this is really something, because he honestly did seem to be fine with Jewish presence (even Jewish religion) so long as they weren’t trying to harm Palestinian interests in the Old City.

I’m still sorting through a lot of what he told our group. I think it’s a very interesting point of view. One of the main problems with discourse in (and about) this region is that it tends to lead to extremes. The motives of the other side are always suspect and it’s very hard to get distance and see what’s going on objectively. Both sides even seem to agree on the facts, they just see vastly different causes and attribute different motives. Having said that, I feel that how you view the photo at the top of the page (the one of the Arabic cemetery in the city center) says a lot about your perspective. I know the way I look at it (in particular, what government has allowed this land to fall into such disrepair and what that says about it) has certainly changed in the past few days.

I, like may other students on the trip, understand that there is a very different perspective to be had on the situation between the Israelis and the Palestinians. We’re looking to have someone informed on that side (and possibly a moderate) come and speak to us at some point this quarter. Look for a post about that, when it happens.