Love of the Land: The Jerusalem Syndrome

The Jerusalem Syndrome

Emmanuel Navon
For the Sake of Zion
14 March '10

Hillary Clinton has a selective way of getting insulted. When Assad received Ahmadinejad in Damascus after the US had sent a new ambassador there, Clinton asked for an explanation and was told to mind her own business. But when the Israeli Housing Ministry announced the construction of additional homes in an existing Jewish neighborhood of Jerusalem, Clinton could not take it.

The reaction of the international community to the “Ramat Shlomo” affair reveals double-standards, one-sidedness, and an ignorance of historical facts.

Double-standards, because in the attempts to rebuild confidence between Israel and the Palestinians, only Israel is expected not to “provoke” the other side. The Palestinians, for their part, get away with everything. True, Biden asked the PA to cancel the inauguration of a square named after Dalal Mughrabi. But the inauguration was only pushed off and the fact is that you did not hear Hillary Clinton or Catherine Ashton scold the Palestinians about this provocation. Mughrabi led one of the most horrendous terror attacks in Israel's history, perpetrated on 11 March 1978, when she and other terrorists hijacked a bus and killed 37 civilians. In December 2009, PA Chairman Mahmoud Abbas decided to sponsor a ceremony celebrating the 50th anniversary of Mughrabi’s birth. A few months before, Abbas inaugurated a computer center named after Mughrabi. On 11 March 2009, PA television called Mughrabi and her accomplices “heroes.” This year, the PA has planned on marking the 11 March event by naming a new square after Mughrabi.

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Posted by Yosef Hartuv at 1:48 PM

Love of the Land: The Jerusalem Syndrome

Love of the Land: The 1,800 Year Old High-Level Aqueduct of Jerusalem was Exposed Next to Jaffa Gate in the Old City

The 1,800 Year Old High-Level Aqueduct of Jerusalem was Exposed Next to Jaffa Gate in the Old City

Israel Antiquities Authority
18 February '10
Posted before Shabbat

A beautiful aqueduct, standing 1.50 meters high and built of large stones, has been situated for almost two millennia right under one of the most familiar and traveled places in Jerusalem – beneath the road that leads from Jaffa Gate toward the David Citadel Museum and the shops on David Street.

The High-Level Aqueduct of Jerusalem, which dates from the second-third century CE, was exposed in excavations the Israel Antiquities Authority is conducting, with funding provided by the Jerusalem Development Authority for the purpose of replacing the infrastructure in the region.

According to Dr. Ofer Sion, excavation director on behalf of the Israel Antiquities Authority, “The side of the aqueduct was discovered during the course of the excavation. When we removed the stones in its side and peeked into it we saw a splendidly built aqueduct covered with stone slabs where one can walk crouched down for a distance of approximately 40 meters. It is very exciting to think that no one has set foot there for many hundreds of years”. According to Sion, “The noted Land of Israel scholar, Dr. Conrad Schick, described a specific section of the aqueduct in a survey he conducted at the end of the nineteenth century. In 1898 a building was erected in this area which afterward became what we know of today as the Imperial Hotel. Schick’s documentation provided us with the clue that led to exposing this section of the aqueduct”.

The aqueduct is c. 60 centimeters wide and 1.5 meters high. Shafts were exposed at fifteen meter intervals or so that allowed the ancients to check the state of the aqueduct from what was the surface level in those days.

Up until the end of the Second Temple period, in the first century BCE, Jerusalem’s water supply was derived from the Gihon Spring; however, as the number of residents steadily increased, the city’s water resources proved insufficient.

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Love of the Land: The 1,800 Year Old High-Level Aqueduct of Jerusalem was Exposed Next to Jaffa Gate in the Old City