The United Nations Secretary General Antonio Gutteres is concerned when armed parties might use lethal force. He has frequently urged that ‘utmost restraint’ be exercised by two warring parties like Lebanon and Israel (2021), and when a government confronts unarmed civilians, such as Iran confronting demonstrators (2022) and the Taliban takeover of Afghanistan (2021).
In only one situation has the UNSG urged ‘utmost restraint’ when fighting terrorists: Israel fighting Palestinian Arab terrorism, as he did after an Arab terrorist killed seven Jews outside of a synagogue on a Sabbath in Jerusalem (2023).
Jerusalem’s Great Synagogue (photo: FirstOneThrough)
The Palestinian leadership expressed outrage and asked the UN to intervene. U.S. members of Congress Rashida Tlaib (D-MI), Ilhan Omar (D-MN) and Jamaal Bowman (D-NY) said that “more guns lead to more deaths,” with Bowman adding that he would urge the United States to restrict military aid to Israel if armed guards located at synagogues resulted in any Arab deaths over the Jewish holy days.
Josh Earnest, spokesperson for former President Obama noted that Jews in Jerusalem “provoke tensions“, while The New York Times referred to those Jews as “right-wing settlers.” Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas decried the entire situation of Israel trying to “Judaize” Jerusalem with “Talmudic rituals.”
Meanwhile, though Israel limited access for Jews to the Temple Mount in Jerusalem during Islamic holidays even when it overlapped with Jewish holidays, the Jewish State has not announced any restrictions on Arab movement in Jerusalem during the Jewish holiday season which have no Islamic holidays. Amnesty International declared Israel to be an ‘apartheid‘ regime privileging Jews anyway.
The UN’s Gutteres issued a statement in time for the holidays telling Israel to “exercise restraint and use only proportional force and the duty to minimize damage and injury and respect and preserve human life,” when confronting potential jihadi terrorists at synagogues. That includes only fighting Arab assailants with knives and meat cleavers if those are the weapons the terrorists choose.
The Israeli government opted to quote former Israeli Prime Minister Menahem Begin over the global concern and threats over Israel defending Jews praying in synagogues during the holidays: “A Jew must learn to defend himself. He must forever be prepared for whenever threat looms…. The world may not necessarily like the fighting Jew, but the world will have to take account of him.”
On September 5, Papua New Guinea became the fifth country to open its embassy to Israel in Jerusalem. It joins the United States, Kosovo, Guatemala and Honduras in moving its diplomatic headquarters from the major Israeli city of Tel Aviv to Israel’s capital. Representatives of three continents now have their embassies to the Jewish State in Judaism’s holist city.
The location is in a high-rise building opposite Jerusalem’s biggest mall, the Azrieli Malcha Mall, located near former mayor of Jerusalem Teddy Kollek Stadium, west of the invisible 1949 Armistice Lines with Jordan.
Jerusalem’s Malcha Mall and Kollek Stadium
The Jordanian Foreign Minister was outraged.
Ambassador Sinan Al-Majali, the official spokesperson for the ministry, issued a statement that condemned the action as a “flagrant and significant violation of international law and international legitimacy resolutions.” He added “that any actions or decisions aiming to alter Jerusalem’s status or its legal position are null and void, holding no legal weight. He reiterated the importance of achieving a just and comprehensive peace as the sole means to attain a two-state solution based on international legitimacy resolutions. This solution should culminate in the establishment of an independent and sovereign Palestinian state, with East Jerusalem as its capital, based on the June 4, 1967 borders.”
Consider these comments coming from Jordan about Jerusalem.
Jordan illegally invaded Israel in 1948
Jordan committed a crime against humanity in ethnically cleansing all Jews from land it seized in 1949, including the Old City of Jerusalem
Jordan illegally annexed eastern Jerusalem and all of the area that became known as the West Bank in 1950, a move not recognized by the entire world other than the United Kingdom and Pakistan
Jordan issued a disgraceful citizenship law in 1954 that specifically excluded Jews
Jordan committed a crime against the basic human rights of Jews to live and pray in Jerusalem while it controlled the Old City
Jordan illegally attacked Israel again in 1967
The Papua New Guinea embassy is located WEST of the 1949 Armistice Lines, which even the Jordanian statement says will be part of Israel
Jordan is a laughing stock, issuing ridiculous and noxious statements that could emerge from a camel’s anus. It is performing a theater of the absurd which highlights its stupidity and hypocrisy. Only fools could be convinced that such inanity whitewashes Jordan’s illegal, belligerent and antisemitic acts.
Such as the Palestinian official news agency, Wafa.
For many years, Palestinian Arab leaders warned Israel against dividing the Jewish Temple Mount in Jerusalem in time and place. That reality may be coming closer.
The Old City of Jerusalem including the Jewish Temple Mount/ Al Aqsa Compound
For centuries, Muslims had prevented Jews from going to their holy places in the Jewish holy land. In both Hebron and Jerusalem, Muslims declared that Jewish holy sites were purely Islamic and denied Jews any rights. That changed after the neighboring Arab states conspired to destroy Israel in June 1967 but lost control of those two holy cities which Jordan had illegally annexed in 1950.
After the 1967 war, Jews were finally able to go into the Cave of the Jewish Matriarchs and Patriarchs, which Muslims call the Ibrahimi Mosque. Israel made the site available to both Jews and Muslims, and in June 2023, opened an elevator to facilitate visitation by handicapped persons in a broad effort of inclusivity.
While Israel took over the Old City of Jerusalem in the same June 1967 Six Day War, it handled the situation very differently, giving administrative control of the Jewish Temple Mount/ Al Aqsa Mosque Compound to the Jordanian Waqf, while Israel maintained security control. Even after eastern Jerusalem, including the site, was officially annexed as part of Israel, the Waqf continued to forbid Jews from praying at their holiest location, even as they allow a small number of Jewish visitors.
In October 2014, a Palestinian attempted to assassinate Rabbi Yehuda Glick because he advocated for peace and equal rights for both Jewish and Muslim prayer on the Temple Mount. In response, Mahmoud Abbas, President of the Palestinian Authority declared “Israel’s leaders are making a big mistake if they think they can turn back history, to impose a reality, and to divide the al-Aqsa Mosque [into separate prayers times and areas] as they divided the Ibrahimi Mosque in Hebron.”
Rabbi Glick survived the four bullets, and was nominated to the Israeli Knesset in 2016, continuing to advocate for Jewish rights on the Temple Mount. His efforts resulted in few practical changes, however, the number of Jewish visitors to the holy site has steadily increased since that time.
For his part, Mahmoud Abbas continues to warn Israeli leaders about Jewish prayer and dividing the Temple Mount. In April 2022, Jordanian politicians joined in condemning then-Israeli Prime Minister Naftali Bennet’s non-controversial comments that Jews, Christians and Muslims should all be free to celebrate their holidays (Passover, Easter and Ramadan), which Arab leaders viewed as a precursor to dividing the Temple Mount.
The back-and-forth continues.
In early June 2023, Amit Halevi, a member of Knesset from Likud, put forward an official proposal to divide the religious site between Jews and Muslims, calling for the southern 30% of the compound – which includes the al Aqsa Mosque – to be for Muslims, and the northern 70% – which includes the Dome of the Rock where the Jewish Temples stood – to be for Jews. The political-terrorist group Hamas declared that such proposal was part of an “Israeli religious war launched by the fascist Israeli government… [and] the Al-Aqsa mosque will remain an exclusively Muslim holy site and the Palestinian people will continue to defend the mosque against Israeli partition and Judaization schemes.” Palestinian Prime Minister Mohammed Shtayyeh voiced concerns about the “order to impose temporal and spatial division in the blessed al Aqsa Mosque. We warn the occupation authorities against taking such a step that would have unpredictable results.”
Most of the media ignored the story, presumably because Halevi is a low level MK without portfolio, and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has repeatedly said that he will uphold the Waqf’s antisemitic “status quo” banning Jewish prayer at the site.
The event may be unreported, but the situation will not remain ignored.
There are competing natural desires which have long brewed in the holy land: for Palestinian Arabs to return into the land of Israel to towns where grandparents had lived; for Jews to pray openly and frequently at their holiest site on the Temple Mount; and to live throughout the area. For years, the United States attempted to keep a lid on those aspirations until President Obama reversed precedent, nodding to Arab migration into Israel (2012), while making it illegal according to international law for Jews to move to the eastern parts of Jerusalem and the holy land (2016), and maintaining the ban on Jewish prayer on the Temple Mount.
The “status quo” is not a ban on Jews praying on the Temple Mount but of competing points of tension. The large holes in the holy land dam are readily apparent to everyone. One can ignore them and wait for the fissures to crack open unpredictably, or facilitate the spillway, with some Jews praying openly and discretely at their holiest site.
The holy city of Jerusalem, the capital of Israel held two parades over the past couple of weeks. One was done by the right-wing and the other by the left-wing. Each side claimed the moral high ground and accused the other of acting in bad faith.
Let’s speak about both honestly.
The Flag Parade
On May 18, thousands of Israelis marched through the streets of Jerusalem carrying Israeli flags to mark the reunification of the city at the end of the 1967 Six Day War. The tremendous pride in country and messianic feel of Jews controlling Judaism’s holiest site for the first time in almost two thousand years was palpable at the time, and many tried to recreate that sense of awe 56 years later.
Marchers near Damascus Gate of Old City during Jerusalem Day, 2023
The parade route into the Old City to the Western Wall could have worked its way through the Jewish Quarter but the nationalist spirit of the marchers directed them through the Arab Quarter, essentially re-educating the Arabs about their defeat. While the march was basically peaceful, roughly 2,500 police officers came to maintain order as past years saw scuffles as the Arabs in the Old City resented the march.
The Gay Pride Parade
On June 1, thousands of Israelis marched through the streets in a gay Pride Parade. While such a parade would have happened without controversy in the liberal and secular city of Tel Aviv, the religious beliefs of devout Jews and Muslims in Jerusalem caused friction.
Thousands of police came to protect the marchers as there were attacks in past years. This year’s event proved peaceful and uneventful.
Some Truths
The Flag and Pride Parades were both legal and unnecessarily provocative. The right wing Jewish nationalists did not need to go through the Arab Quarter and the left wing secular Jews did not need to march through religious sections of the country. Each sought to drive home their own point that they are free and able to hold such events, and enjoyed rubbing the spectators’ noses in the fact.
The left-wing media only focused on the right-wing in both cases. CNN described a “contentious flag march” in which a” number of Palestinian shopkeepers told CNN before the event that they would close their shops in the Old City for fear of attacks by far-right Jewish nationalists.” The New York Times covered the “Conflict With the Far Right Shrouds Jerusalem’s Pride Parade,” with the backdrop of “the most hard-line and religiously conservative government in the country’s history took power.”
Both the right-wing and left-wing held their parades in Jerusalem being proud and provocative, yet the mainstream opinion shapers could only find fault with right-wing and religious Jews. It fed their macro narrative of right-wing White Supremacist Jews as the elite amongst the bigots, despite being the most persecuted group in the world.
Nothing so inflames the passions of Muslims around the world as hearing that Jews are threatening the al Aqsa Mosque in the Old City of Jerusalem.
So the Palestinian Authority yells lies to incite people to jihad against Jews quietly visiting Judaism’s holiest location.
On May 4, 2023, just as it has done many times, Wafa, the official news agency of the PA posted the headline “Israeli settlers break into Jerusalem’s Aqsa mosque.” The inflammatory rhetoric and article had nothing to do with facts. The article said:
“Dozens of fanatic Israeli settlers Thursday morning broke into the compounds of al-Aqsa Mosque under heavy protection from the Israeli police.
“The Waqf said that settlers, divded into groups, raided the holy Islamic Mosque from al-Maghariba gate and took provocative tours in its compounds.
“It added that the extremist settlers performed Talmudic rituals in the eastern part of the Mosque.
This comes at a time as Israeli forces intensify measures against Palestinians coming from Jerusalem to enter the Mosque, inspecting their IDs and briefly detaining them.”
Jews quietly visiting the Temple Mount, which the PA called a “raid” of the al Aqsa Mosque
That the PA would label a few dozen Jews visiting during regular visiting hours – some with their sons for their bar mitzvahs – as an “extremist” and “provocative” “raid” and “break in” of the mosque (which they never entered) demonstrates the importance of having a police escort.
The Palestinian Authority repeatedly shows the world that it can never have control of Jerusalem, as it fosters extremism and violence and rejects peaceful coexistence.
United States President Joe Biden’s approach to religious freedom was laid out clearly in back-to-back pronouncements this week.
On April 16, 2023, US Ambassador for International Religious Freedom Rashad Hussain and US Special Representative for Palestinian Affairs Hady Amr “reiterate[d] the U.S. commitment to the historical status quo in Jerusalem” which bans Jews from the basic human right of praying at their holiest site on The Jewish Temple Mount. The desire among Jews to pray at the site is almost exclusively held by the Orthodox.
The next day, Hussain tweeted “I reiterated US support for implementation of the 2016 Western Wall agreement to expand the egalitarian space at the Wall,” a move that would BREAK from the historical status quo which has limited prayer at the Kotel plaza to only be in the Orthodox style of separate sections for men and women.
There is no consistency in Biden’s approach for the status quo in Jerusalem, in one case embracing it and in another breaking from historic custom. The only commonality is his ignoring the sensitivities and wishes of Orthodox Jews and promoting those of Muslims and non-Orthodox Jews. Biden is seemingly limiting his concerns about religious freedom to those who stuff Democratic ballot boxes, as poll numbers show that 75% of Orthodox Jews vote Republican, while 80% of Reform Jews vote for Democrats.
Domestically, the Biden Administration took aim at rescinding protections for religious groups on American college campuses in February. The proposed rule read: “The U.S. Department of Education proposes to rescind regulations related to religious student organizations at certain public institutions of higher education that prescribe a novel role for the Department in enforcing grant conditions related to religious student organizations.”
Sam Brownback, a former U.S. senator and governor of Kansas and current co-chair of the bipartisan International Religious Freedom Summit, warned that the Biden administration’s proposal ignores the First Amendment rights of religious clubs, saying that the administration is not supportive of religious freedom. In response to the Biden proposal, many attorneys general sent letters to the president stating their opposition to rescinding protections for religious groups.
Biden’s domestic and international policies related to religion are dictated by his loyal base of historically Black Protestants, non-Orthodox Jews, Buddhists and Muslims who overwhelming vote for Democrats, according to Pew Research. In contrast, Mormons, Evangelicals and Orthodox Jews who vote Republican are feeling Biden’s animosity after he emerged unscathed in mid-term elections. Those groups may have much to fear if he wins a second term.
I know that you have been following matters in the Middle East and likely have access to materials and insiders that many do not. You may have concluded that while the Arab-Israeli Conflict is complicated, the thorniest issue is Jerusalem, and in that tinderbox the most sensitive is the al Aqsa Mosque / Jewish Temple Mount.
I reach that assessment based on your support of a position that the ban of Jews praying on the holy site should continue, a position known as the “status quo.”
It is likely based on comments from the leader of the Palestinian Authority who said that Israel is “playing with fire” if it allows Jews to pray on the Temple Mount, something he called allowing “settlers to desecrate holy sites.”
The leader of Hamas made similar comments, that there would be a “bloodbath” if Israel makes changes to the rights of Jews. He warned that “the action of the occupation targeting the Islamic and the Christian Holy sites in Jerusalem and Palestine, and specifically the Al Aqsa Mosque, brings about the angry Palestinian reaction.”
To avoid such bloodshed, you possibly decided to overlook the basic human rights of Jews to pray at their holiest site.
You may have convinced yourself that the only Jewish visitors who want to pray at the site are right-wing extremist “illegal settlers”, to further rationalize your position.
So let me ask you, do only Christian fanatics visit and pray at the Vatican?
Do you understand that Judaism is a particular religion, with no desire to convert or dominate anyone? That while Christians and Muslims fought crusades for over one hundred years over the holy land, and expelled the others, and converted their mosques to churches and churches to mosques, Israel did no such thing when it took control of the Temple Mount in 1967? Instead, it handed administrative control of the site to the Jordanian Waqf.
Jerusalem’s Arabs who have been living under Israeli administration for decades have slowly internalized that Israel has no plans on the al Aqsa Mosque. In a December 2022 poll of Jerusalem’s Arabs, they showed that they have a greater fear of accessing the holy site if eastern Jerusalem was under Palestinian sovereignty (63%) than Israeli (41%).
This year is the 75th anniversary of the United Nations Declaration of Human Rights. Article 18 states “Everyone has the right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion; this right includes freedom to change his religion or belief, and freedom, either alone or in community with others and in public or private, to manifest his religion or belief in teaching, practice, worship and observance.” Article 2 underscores the point that this relates to religious rights in disputed land: “Everyone is entitled to all the rights and freedoms set forth in this Declaration, without distinction of any kind, such as race, colour, sex, language, religion, political or other opinion, national or social origin, property, birth or other status. Furthermore, no distinction shall be made on the basis of the political, jurisdictional or international status of the country or territory to which a person belongs, whether it be independent, trust, non-self-governing or under any other limitation of sovereignty.”
This clearly includes the rights for Jews from around the world to pray at their holiest site of the Temple Mount in Jerusalem.
In 1776, Thomas Paine wrote in Common Sense “A long habit of not thinking a thing wrong, gives it a superficial appearance of being right, and raises at first a formidable outcry in defense of custom. But the tumult soon subsides. Time makes more converts than reason.”
So it is with the status quo ban on Jews. It is morally wrong and a disgrace, and the world has blindly let it continue.
I ask that you stop facilitating the trampling of the fundamental human rights of Jews and vote to reverse the anti-Semitic “status quo” edict, and condemn the incendiary remarks and false accusations which block Jews from praying peacefully at their holiest site in their holiest city in the holy land.
The Arabs living in eastern Jerusalem are in a unique category compared to other Arabs in the region for two principle reasons: from the international perspective, they are not Palestinians, and from the Israeli perspective, they are Israeli. That is not true for any other Arab in the region.
The United Nations in 1947 had sought for all of greater Jerusalem and greater Bethlehem to be an international “holy basin”, but the 1948-9 Arab-Israeli war divided the region into Israeli-controlled and Jordanian-controlled territory. It’s why most countries do not recognize even the western part of Jerusalem as Israeli and move their embassies there, as they want the Holy Basin to be divided through negotiations. The same holds for the eastern part of the city.
From the Israeli perspective, they took the western part of Jerusalem in a defensive war in 1949, and then Bethlehem and eastern Jerusalem in another defensive war in 1967, making the acquisitions completely legal (reacquisitions actually, as all the land was part of the Palestine Mandate). Israel annexed eastern Jerusalem and extended the borders into a new municipality. All Arabs who have not been convicted of terrorism are allowed to apply for Israeli citizenship and thousands have done so.
The trend towards favoring Israel continues to grow.
There were 22 areas in which the Arabs thought that their daily lives improved, compared to only five in which they deteriorated (and two of them were about taxes). Access to the al Aqsa Mosque (+11%), retirement benefits (+11%), access to travel throughout Israel (+12%), access throughout the West Bank (+21%), overall standard of living (+21%), and obtaining a passport and flying out of Ben Gurion Airport (+22%) are just some examples.
The improvements are directly related to Israel’s governance. When asked to whom they turn when they have an issue, almost no Arab turned towards the Palestinian Authority, Palestinian NGOs or international NGOs which pepper the landscape. Almost everyone turns to either a family member or the Israeli government exclusively.
That is not to say that everything is good and people are satisfied with the Israeli government’s administration. The vast majority of Jerusalem’s Arabs are still angered by the Security Barrier and checkpoints which cause delays (89% and 87%, respectively). The perception of level of crime dropped significantly (from 84% in 2010 to 63% in 2022) as did the perception of corruption of Israeli officials (from 78% to 66%). However the levels of perceived intimidation increased, from border guards (54% to 65%), Jewish civilians (51% to 61%) and Palestinian groups (20% to 29%).
As the Palestinians consider holding presidential elections this year as announced in October 2022 as part of the Algiers Declaration endorsed by the United Nations, Palestinian Authority president Mahmoud Abbas is likely to raise a commotion about having Arabs in Jerusalem participate. According to the PCPSR poll, only 6% of the eastern Jerusalem Arabs said they would vote. Abbas uses Israel’s refusal to allow Jerusalemites to participate in Palestinian elections as an excuse to not hold them, when in truth, he knows that Hamas would trounce him, as shown in numerous PCPSR polls.
Significantly, when asked what they would like to see in a final settlement, the preference among Jerusalem’s Arabs is for being part of Israel TRIPLED, while only one-third would want to see Jerusalem become part of a Palestinian state, down from half.
Not surprisingly, the number of Jerusalem Arabs who would welcome being Israeli citizens over becoming a citizen of Palestine jumped as well.
The immediate reaction to the findings is perhaps surprise, as Jerusalem is considered the thorniest issue to resolve in the conflict. But Jerusalem’s Arabs are finding that becoming Israeli and part of a stable economic powerhouse is preferable to being under corrupt Arab rule.
As it relates to the most difficult of the thorniest issues, the Jewish Temple Mount / al Aqsa Mosque, the polls findings were shocking. Arabs believe that their access to al Aqsa will be BETTER under Israeli sovereignty than Palestinian sovereignty!
Perhaps that is the reason Abbas, Hamas and even the Jordanian king are actively trying to stoke anger about the Old City of Jerusalem and the al Aqsa Mosque: they see that the local Arabs are embracing Israel.
Jerusalem’s Arabs appreciate the benefits of being under Israeli administration and are increasingly showing their preference that all of Jerusalem should be under Israeli sovereignty.
The Abraham Accords struck between Israel and several Arab Muslim countries including the United Arab Emirates (U.A.E.), Bahrain, Sudan and Morocco in 2020, have continued to advance the cause of peaceful coexistence.
On February 20, 2023, the U.A.E. invited many Jewish guests to be part of the opening ceremony of the first new synagogue in a Muslim country in generations. The Moses Ben Maimon Synagogue is part of the multi-faith Abrahamic Family House complex in Abu Dhabi which also includes a mosque and a church. The three places of worship sit beside one another in an effort to show harmony between the different faiths.
Beyond the proximity of each house of worship, the architects took care in designing each building: the mosque faces the Islamic holy city of Mecca, the church faces east towards the rising sun, and the synagogue faces Jerusalem, Judaism’s holist city.
Abrahamic Family Complex in Abu Dhabi, UAE
On that same February day, the United Nations took the polar opposite approach towards religious coexistence as the U.N. Security Council issued a statement condemning Jews and Judaism.
The official statement was a litany of complaints on the presence of Jews in their holy land. It expressed “strong opposition” to Jews building homes east of the 1949 Armistice Lines (E49AL). It condemned Israel’s killing Islamic terrorists planning attacks on Jewish civilians. It demanded that Jews continue to be forbidden from praying at the holiest site on the Jewish Temple Mount. And it urged that Jews and Christians take a backseat to Muslims when the holidays of Ramadan, Easter and Passover overlap this year, prioritizing Muslim access to Jerusalem over believers of the other faiths.
Remarkably, the “most right-wing government in Israeli history” as portrayed in the media, acquiesced to the anti-Semitic proposals. The Israeli government said that it would keep the “status quo” of banning Jewish prayer on the Temple Mount and would ban Jews from the site during the last ten days of Ramdan. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu also reportedly told the United States that it won’t authorize new Jewish towns in E49AL for the next few months and will limit incursions into Palestinian Authority towns to arrest terrorists.
While the United Arab Emirates works for religious coexistence, the United Nations works to foment religious animosity and segregation. If there’s a future for peace and coexistence in the region, it will run through the U.A.E. and not the U.N..
The United Nations has summarized its thoughts about Jews in Jerusalem, and it’s appalling.
On February 12, 2023, UN Secretary General Antonio Guterres sent a message to a conference held in Cairo, Egypt called “Supporting the City of Jerusalem and its Population.” By the term “its Population,” the leader of the UN made clear he only supports the Arab Muslim population, not the Jewish one. He admitted as much in his opening statement about the “challenges faced by the Palestinian population in Jerusalem.” Presumably, the term Palestinian population refers to those Arabs who have not opted to take Israeli citizenship which has been offered to all law-abiding Arabs in the city.
It clearly didn’t mean Jews.
Guterres continued:
“Jerusalem — Al-Quds is not only a treasured home for so many — it also holds a unique place in the hearts of millions of Muslims, Jews and Christians the world over.“
Jerusalem is ONLY the holiest city for Jews. Minimizing the Jewish connection to the city after an opening comment showing unique concern for the challenges of non-Jews, reveals the jaundiced mindset of the global leader.
“As we have seen time and again, what happens in Jerusalem reverberates globally — and tensions, incitement and violence often spill into wider instability.“
Jews have been a majority in Jerusalem since the 1860s. However, the Jordanian Army ethnically cleansed the Jews out of the eastern portion of Jerusalem including the entirety of the the Old City, and forbade Jews from even visiting their holy sites from 1949 to 1967. The world remained completely silent about the abuse to Jewish human rights, even in the shadow of the European genocide of Jews.
Now, Jews once again control the eastern portion of Jerusalem after Israel defended itself from the attacking Jordanian army in 1967. The current Jewish presence sickens the anti-Semitic Arab Muslims who shout that “al Aqsa is in danger.” Outrageously, the United Nations echoes their sentiments, further inflaming the region.
“It is therefore imperative that all parties exercise restraint and refrain from provocations, inflammatory actions and rhetoric. I am very concerned by the unilateral initiatives that we have seen in recent weeks.“
Refraining “from provocations, inflammatory actions and rhetoric” makes perfect sense. Unfortunately, the head of the U.N. has a perverse idea of what that constitutes, as can be seen in his next comment.
“The position of the United Nations is clear: The status of Jerusalem cannot be altered by unilateral actions, including settlement activities in occupied East Jerusalem; it can only be resolved through negotiations between the parties.“
Perhaps the U.N. does not accept Israel’s annexation of the eastern portion of Jerusalem, as the global body had sought that Greater Jerusalem and Greater Bethlehem be held under an international regime in the 1947 Partition Plan. But the Jordanians drastically altered the character of the city when it expelled every Jew, destroyed every synagogue, banned Jews from entering the city, illegally annexed it and granted any non-Jew citizenship. Reversing the anti-Semitic Jordanian actions is not altering the city with “unilateral actions, including settlement activities”, but reestablishing the Jewish presence in the Jewish holy city that had been unilaterally destroyed by the anti-Semitic Jordanian regime.
While Israel tries to establish a final resolution to the Arab-Israel conflict, it is absurd to demand that the city be frozen in time – only as it relates to Jews and to that period when Jews were ethnically cleansed. It is the capital city of Israel with an enormous demand for housing. How can the U.N. advocate for Arab housing in the city but not for Jewish homes?
“Jerusalem’s demographic and historical character must be preserved — and the status quo at the Holy Sites must be upheld, in line with the special role of the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan.“
If Jerusalem has been 75% Jewish in 2020, 2000, 1980, 1960 or 1940, is that the fixed percentage of the demographic character of the city that must be preserved? No city in the world has a fixed demographic character. To suggest that the demographic and historical character should relate to the eighteen years that Jordan banned the presence of Jews would be an endorsement of ethnic cleansing.
Which is what Guterres seems to have done, in calling for the anti-Semitic Jordanians to have a special role “at the Holy Sites.” The Jordanian Waqf ONLY has a special role in regards to Muslim holy sites such as the al Aqsa Mosque. It has no special role on the overall Temple Mount which is a Jewish holy site. In falsely giving the Waqf a greater role than was agreed upon in the 1994 Peace Agreement between Israel and Jordan, the U.N. chief is inflaming the situation and going directly against his own words: ignoring an agreement reached between the parties.
“The United Nations remains committed to help Israelis and Palestinians chart a credible path forward: Towards an end of the occupation; towards two States living side by side with Jerusalem as the capital of both; towards lasting security, peace and dignity for all. Thank you. Shukran.“
All of Guterres’ comments show a disregard for Jewish Israelis, so the call out of helping Israelis is a polite lie thinly spread on a mountain of scorn.
There is no “occupation” in Jerusalem. It was never Palestinian nor was it ever intended to be part of an Arab state, but part of an international “corpus separatum.”
If the parties are to negotiate a solution between themselves, then declaring the outcome of Jerusalem being a shared capital undermines the very principle of negotiation. The parties themselves will determine what they find acceptable.
Note that Israel has already advanced the sharing of Corpus Separatum, when it handed Bethlehem to the Palestinian Authority in 1996. The sharing of the holy basin has already been accomplished.
If the U.N. cared about Jewish dignity, it would INSIST upon Jewish prayer rights on the Jewish Temple Mount, not calling for banning Jews.
The head of the United Nations called for banning Jews from the Old City of Jerusalem and denying them basic human rights and dignity to pray at their holiest location. He has sadly become an ugly tool of radical jihadists, and an enemy of Jews.
The U.N.’s desire to impose sharia law in Jerusalem offers no justice nor dignity for Jews. The agency has broken its social contract with the Jewish State, and its heartless shell is but a conduit for overt anti-Semitism.
First One Through 