The following was sent to us by J.E., a student from the United States, who is currently living, working and learning in a refugee camp in Occupied Palestine as she completes her master’s degree in social justice. She is only using her initials to protect her identity as she depends on an Israeli visa to stay in the country. You can follow her writing on the blog – http://tasteofapear.blogspot.com/.
Shuttered stores in Hebron’s Old City during Sukkot. Photo: J.E.
I’m starting to see a trend here and it is leaving a very unpleasant taste in my mouth. On Jewish holidays violence against and repression of Palestinians by IDF occupation forces and settlers increases dramatically in Israel and the West Bank. Personally, in the month I have been living in Occupied Palestine I’ve witnessed the actions surrounding Yom Kippur in Jerusalem and Sukkot in Hebron. On both occasions Israeli military presence increased dramatically, Palestinian freedom of movement was repressed and Israeli groups were allowed/encouraged by the IDF to invade Palestinian places of religious significance, prompting protests by Palestinians and a violent repression of those protests (shooting, beating, arrests, closures) by the IDF.
From my conversations with Palestinians here and research into events in years past these actions seem par for the course. After all, the Second Intifada, the Al-Aqsa Intifada, was initiated by Sharon’s grandstanding at Al-Aqsa/Temple Mount/Dome of the Rock with a supporting force of hundreds of riot police. Basically every Palestinian I’ve talked to in the West Bank now associates Jewish Holidays with violence and oppression of Palestinians, because, on Jewish Holidays the Israeli state supports and perpetrates violence against and repression of Palestinians.
As someone coming from a Jewish family in the states this makes my heart hurt. The idea that The Day of Atonement would somehow cover as justification for instigating violence against another religious group seems sacrilegious. That Sukkot, which I always understood as a joyous occasion to celebrate the abundance of the earth and to welcome guests results in the repression of the freedom of movement of your neighbors seems equally disgusting. For obvious reasons when celebrating your faith becomes synonymous with violating others human rights we, the global we with a stake in social justice, should be more then a little concerned.
I have seen reports this year that the IDF has been preventing Palestinians on the WB from accessing their crops to harvest them – what a perversion of the meaning of Sukkot!
And then of course the settlers are free to rob and despoil at will while the owners of the land are locked out.
Terrible article. All generalizations. No specific examples. What places of Palestinian religious significance? What Israeli groups? Pretty typical coverage supported by Adam.
Masters degree in “Social Justice” what a joke.
The sky is falling, Julian! Hitler, Nazis, antisemitism, Mel Gibson, 1930s Germany, it’s all coming back! Ruuuuuuuuuunnnnnnn!
I don’t know why Julian would be disturbed by these reports. I’m sure he rejoices at the news that Israel has inflicted new suffering on the Arabs. I’m sure he’d like to be there himself, inflicting his own portion of oppression. Maybe throw some wine in a woman’s face.
The Ibrahimi Mosque in Hebron, for one.
Hebron is a special case. Since it is the only major West Bank city with a bona fide Jewish shrine in its center, the settlers have made it a place of pilgrimage for Orthodox Jews on the holidays of Sukkot and Simhat Torah. The police and army enforce a lockdown to keep the Jews safe from the Arabs.
In the case of Yom Kippur, Israeli Arabs are required, by custom, to observe the holiday too. Israeli Jews revel in the empty streets. Kids on bicycles ride down the freeway. in mixed Jewish-Arab areas, the non-Jews stay home if they know what’s good for them. (In the past, moving vehicles, including ambulances, have been pelted with stones.)
“Hebron is a special case.
You know, if some Holocaust denying fool comes along and make sa comment like “Auschwitz was a special case,” you know have no right to criticize.
Hypocrite.
Too bad the police and army don’t take any steps to keep Arabs safe from Jews, or enforce Jewish observation of Muslim holidays.
I have never, btw, seen the religious virtue of riding bikes in the empty streets where cars are forbidden to drive. If driving cars violates the sanctity of the holiday, riding bikes does so equally. Make the kids stay home and pray, or let everyone follow their own religious impulse.
BTW-
From an ecological point of view bicycles are no danger to the environment, whereas cars are. From a Jewish law point of view, driving a car involves a combustion engine: fire and a bicycle involves no such fire. Giving the streets over to the kids and their nonmotorized vehicles yields a change of perspective from run of the mill modern society.
The prohibition on cars is a decent tradition and should be more than once a year and not only in Israel.
I’m sure there is or could be some halachical reason to regard bike-riding as a prohibited activity. It is certainly not prayer, which is supposed to be the purpose of the holiday. If the country is going to shut down for prayer, then let it pray.
The ban on cars might be a decent tradition for a number of secular reasons, if it were voluntary. But as an imposition on the entire society, not all of whom believe in the religious law, it smacks of gross hypocrisy to allow selectively some activities and prohibit others.
These Israeli policies seem designed to create hatred for Judaism and Jews.
I don’t really think that was the purpose, the intent is rather triumphalism, but if you want to inspire anti-semitism (meaning anti-Jewishness) you could hardly come up with something better. Then one has to note that Israel thrives on anti-semitism – it claims it as its raison d’etre, and zionists are always going around the world screaming about it, convincing Jews abroad that they have to support Israel to counter it. So really, Israel the state grows rich and strong in an environment where theres at least some anti-semitism. It doesn’t take much really and it helps if the so-called anti-semites (if they are that) are helpless people under the jackboot of the occupation because then there’s a reason to kill them and expropriate their property too.
I don’t mean to denigrate the Cave of Machpela, which is what the burial place of Ibrahim (Avraham, Abraham) was called way before it received the name and designation of the Ibrahimi Mosque. The Hebron Jewish community as a rule seems to behave in a fashion resembling that photo of the delinquent tossing the wine at the old woman and I will let them argue for themselves.
But regarding the Temple Mount, as it was known way before it became known as Haram al Sharif: it topographically is higher than the wall that is known as the Kotel. To throw stones down from the Temple Mount onto those praying at the Kotel is easy and unfortunately has happened before on these very days of the Sukkot holiday. To limit attendance at the mosques located on the Temple Mount seems reasonable given the current tensions.
(The tendency of the current government to create such tensions is something that I regret and of which I do not approve, but the Jews have a right to pray at the Kotel during Yom Kippur and Sukkot, without fearing stones and boulders.)
You’re going to find any reason at all to justify a blatantly apartheid policy, aren’t you? I’m sure there were white South Africans making the same sort of arguments.
And when it is ever considered reasonable to inconvenience the Jews for the sake of the Muslims? What do you suppose would happen if the plaza of the wall were closed to Jews on any given day?
As for the tensions, as you say, these are in large part provoked. There is no reason for non-Muslims to be entering the Al-Aqsa Mosque, except as a provocation. Ariel Sharon knew this, and the current government does as well.
And another one:
link to maannews.net
How often are Jewish shopkeepers assaulted and called “dirty Jews” as the police shut them down so Muslims can worship?
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