Here is a snapshot of Jerusalem life. My wife and I go to dinner in the German Colony, a good neighborhood in West Jerusalem. We sit at the bar, and I ask for a Taybeh beer, the Palestinian beer brewed in Ramallah. They don’t have it, just German beer. As we eat, the bartender opens a huge bag of imported Italian coffee for the espresso machine.
We are surrounded by miles and miles of Arabian and Turkish coffees.
We walk home past a conference center. Former Israeli Ambassador Dore Gold is outside talking on a cell phone. Inside, Daniel Pipes is speaking, the U.S. neoconservative, the hall is sold out, but we jam in the back. The Hadar-Israel Council for Civic Action. He’s talking about the Muslim threat in Europe. England and Sweden have lost their essential character, England has given up the “Jane Austen” side of its culture for a new Muslim flavored England. “Before our eyes it is becoming a different country.”
Pipes concedes that you can’t kill the Muslims or put a “head tax” on the hijab. You have to encourage the “moderate” Muslims, the ones who believe in interest on savings accounts and are against slavery. (As if most Muslims oppose interest and are for slavery.)
The problem is not the hijab or the minarets, that is just “symbolic,” Pipes says. The problem is laws that allow polygamy. Apparently that is the thin edge of the wedge that will destroy western civilization, Muslim practice of polygamy! Pipes says that we must use all means we can to counter radical Islam, including “demographic” means. I am not sure what he means, but he suggests that means having more babies. Europeans are only having 2/3 of the babies they “need” to have to replace themselves. Immigrants are making up much of the rest.
The audience asks a bunch of questions that are intolerant of Islam. One woman with a strong accent calls Pipes naive and says that we should be dealing with the Muslim world as we should have dealt with the Nazis.
So Daniel Pipes is a liberal! Only in Jerusalem.
We leave and walk back to East Jerusalem, a half mile away. We are suddenly surrounded by people governed by Israel—but not citizens, “permanent residents,” whatever that means—who would have a very different perspective on Muslim life from Daniel Pipes or his audience.
Of course none of them was invited, none of them would feel safe coming. Inside the international city.
They are here, but not really wanted here. Like the Taybeh beer and the Arabian coffee.
If you appreciate this on-the-ground reporting from Israel/Palestine – please donate to Mondoweiss today.
