Love of the Land: (Video) Jerusalem: The Media Myth of Two Cities

(Video) Jerusalem: The Media Myth of Two Cities

HonestReportingVideo
May "11


The history of Jerusalem did not start in 1967. Thousands of years of Jewish history took place in what is now called "Arab East Jerusalem." Only when the Jewish residents were driven from their homes in 1948 was the city divided between East and West.

This video shows the reality of Jerusalem today and includes interviews from survivors of the fall of Jerusalem.




To discuss the issue of Jerusalem, join our Facebook Group "The History of Jerusalem Did Not Start in 1967."

To read more about the issue of Jerusalem, check out the Jerusalem resources section of the HonestReporting website: http://www.honestreporting.com.

If you enjoy "Love of the Land", please be a subscriber. Just put your email address in the "Subscribe" box on the upper right-hand corner of the page.

Love of the Land: (Video) Jerusalem: The Media Myth of Two Cities

Love of the Land: Media-backed Violence and Twisted History

Media-backed Violence and Twisted History

Yisrael Medad
My Right Word
26 April '10

Isabel Kershner has a report in the New York Times on the Kach march through Ir David/Silwan:-

Israeli Rightists Stir Tensions in East Jerusalem

A small group of ultra-right-wing Israelis marched through a volatile neighborhood of East Jerusalem on Sunday, arousing passions over the future of the contested city as an American envoy wrapped up an inconclusive three-day visit aimed at getting peace talks under way.

I will return to that "arousing passions" in a moment but let me deal with another element in her story.

She writes (and the foreign desk editor approved for publication as we media monitors should know that many keyboards a story make) that the marchers proceeded:-

...through the Wadi Hilwe section of Silwan, a predominantly Arab neighborhood. Wadi Hilwe sits on what Jews believe to be the ruins of the biblical City of David, in the shadow of the Temple Mount, or the Noble Sanctuary, a site holy to both Muslims and Jews. In recent years a Jewish settler group has sponsored excavations in the area and acquired property that is now populated by hundreds of Jews.

Anyone who knows the area knows that Ms. Kershner (or Mrs. Hirsh Goodman) is really splitting geographical hairs on that. A "section" within a "neighborhood"? Sounds as if its another district of "Palestine".

But more importantly, many non-Jews also believe that the location is David's City and there are quite provable and firm scientific elements of evidence to that claim.

(Read full post)

Love of the Land: Media-backed Violence and Twisted History

Love of the Land: Next Year in Occupied East Jerusalem!

Next Year in Occupied East Jerusalem!

Avi Davis
The Intermediate Zone
28 March '10

Over the weekend I was a victim of a hoax. An internet scenario played out a scene in which Barack Obama tells a visiting Israeli delegation to the White House, headed by Israeli prime minister Benjamin Netanyahu, that he believes the cause of peace would be advanced if the words “Next Year in Jerusalem” were excised from the Passover Haggadah.

The prime minister, squirming uncomfortably in his seat, looks from aide to aide before finally offering to remove the words from the Yom Kippur service but not the Haggadah. Not satisfied with the response, Obama stands up to excuse himself for dinner, indicating that he will be back later. ” I’ll give you some time to think about it and will return to have you sign the new edict.”

I believed it for a moment because, like all parody, it possesses an inkling of truth. Given this administration’s impatience with the Netanyahu government’s obduracy in attaching itself to a united Jerusalem, one would think that there is indeed some substance to the idea that the Obama administration not only wants to sever East Jerusalem from West, but the Jewish people’s attachment to the city in general.

Maybe that is why an unconfirmed rumor circulating the Internet, that the Obama White House seder will not conclude with the traditional words ” Next Year in Jerusalem” for fear of offending Palestinian sensibilities, has gained such currency.

It may all be nonsense but still it leaves many with the sense that things seem to have gone very wrong. During his electoral campaign, Obama’s own platform called for a united Jerusalem and the U.S. Congress itself has been behind that very notion since at least 1995 when it passed The Jerusalem Embassy Relocation Act.

(Read full article)

Love of the Land: Next Year in Occupied East Jerusalem!

Love of the Land: Biden's knee-slapper

Biden's knee-slapper

Soccer Dad
25 March '10

Stand up comedian: Vice President Biden (h/t The Muqata last week):

"I just got back from five days in the Middle East," Biden said. "I love to travel, but it's great to be back to a place where a boom in housing construction is actually a good thing," he said. Israel announced during Biden's visit that it had approved construction of 1,600 homes in East Jerusalem, a move which the U.S. called an "insult" due to its timing. (Haaretz)

Israelly Cool observed:

That's really funny, especially to those who have lost their homes and may stand to lose their homes in future thanks to the US pressure on Israel.

And then there's the larger issue of what the administration is trying to accomplish. Israel Matzav wrote two weeks ago:

Because Jerusalem rent is so expensive, young families are trying to move out of the city. But the places that are cheaper that would be attractive to ultra-Orthodox families who would like to be near Jerusalem - Kiryat Sefer and Beitar Ilit - are over the 'green line' where the government has implemented a 'settlement freeze.' So they are looking for solutions in Jerusalem.

People have to live somewhere. Unfortunately, most of the 'international community' would rather that we just leave.

(Read full post)

Love of the Land: Biden's knee-slapper

Love of the Land: Obama’s Humiliation of Israel May Only Be Getting Started

Obama’s Humiliation of Israel May Only Be Getting Started

Jonathan Tobin
Contentions/Commentary
26 March '10
Posted before Shabbat

After days of a news blackout about the details of the meeting on Tuesday between President Barack Obama and Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, the Britain’s Telegraph has broken a story with details about what can only be described as an attempt to humiliate the Israeli.

According to the Telegraph’s account, the meeting began with the president presenting a list of 13 demands to Netanyahu. These included a complete freeze on Jewish building in eastern Jerusalem. When Netanyahu did not immediately accede to this diktat, Obama left him saying he was going to go eat dinner with his wife and daughters. Netanyahu and his party were left to wait for over an hour for Obama’s return. The paper claims that as Obama left, he told the prime minister to consider “the error of his ways.” Yediot Ahronot reported that Obama merely said, “I’m still around. Let me know if there is anything new.” A second brief meeting followed, which apparently consisted of the president restating his demands. As a punishment for Netanyahu’s failure to immediately bend to Obama’s ultimatum, there was no joint statement issued about the meeting and no press coverage of the visit. Friday’s Ma’ariv describes the scene thusly: “There is no humiliation exercise that the Americans did not try on the prime minister and his entourage. Bibi received in the White House the treatment reserved for the president of Equatorial Guinea.”

The Jerusalem Post is reporting that Obama wants an answer to his demands by Saturday so he can then present them to a meeting of the Arab League going on in Libya so that ineffectual body can endorse the so-called proximity talks in which the Palestinian Authority refuses to directly negotiate with Israel.

(Read full post)

Love of the Land: Obama’s Humiliation of Israel May Only Be Getting Started

Love of the Land: Obama’s Disgraceful Conduct Toward Israel

Obama’s Disgraceful Conduct Toward Israel

P. David Hornik
Frontpagemag.com
26 March '10
Posted before Shabbat

On Wednesday night in Washington Israeli and American officials worked feverishly—but failed—to produce a document stating Israel’s commitments regarding proximity talks with the Palestinian Authority. The U.S. was reportedly supposed to take the document to the Palestinians and then to the Arab League meeting in Tripoli, Libya, this weekend.

Days earlier Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu had outlined such commitments in a letter to secretary of state Hillary Clinton. It was deemed insufficient and, in Washington, President Barack Obama sent Netanyahu and his accompanying officials back to the drawing board. According to one report, Israeli foreign minister Avigdor Lieberman advised Netanyahu not to sign any such document that night, and to wait to return home and discuss the matter with the Israeli inner cabinet.

The commitments Obama seeks are variously reported to be: some sort of Israeli undertaking about a construction moratorium in the West Bank (where one is already in place) and East Jerusalem; a promise to engage in such final-status issues as refugees, borders, and Jerusalem in the proximity talks; and “gestures” to the Palestinian Authority such as the removal of additional checkpoints and the freeing of Palestinian security prisoners.

The pressures Obama directed at Netanyahu were severe, in one account even inducing a “panic” reaction in the Israeli leader. The total media blackout that accompanied their meeting led the Washington Post’s Jackson Diehl to comment that “Netanyahu is being treated as if he were an unsavory Third World dictator, needed for strategic reasons but conspicuously held at arm’s length.” Obama was further riled by news about an approval to build 20 apartments for Jews in a compound in East Jerusalem owned by an American Jewish millionaire since 1985—situated in a mostly-Arab neighborhood.

(Read full article)

Love of the Land: Obama’s Disgraceful Conduct Toward Israel

Love of the Land: Third Act for the Jerusalem Crisis this Week

Third Act for the Jerusalem Crisis this Week

Leo Rennert
American Thinker
22 March '10

Relations between the United States and Israel hit crisis level last week. The drama has played out in two acts so far. The third act comes this week, and it determines whether this whole situation will be a tragedy or farce.

According to the New York Times, the acrimonious ten-day confrontation between President Obama and Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu is over -- with each side claiming victory. American officials say that they got important concessions from Israel, while Israeli officials say that Netanyahu didn't give away anything of real importance -- certainly not on Jerusalem, which, after all, was the casus belli for this U.S.-precipitated oratorical row.

Upon review of what actually transpired during these tense ten days, there's a lingering question that should nevertheless haunt Obama for a long time: Did he and his subordinates really need to huff and puff so vociferously against Israel and end up with so little?

The sudden crisis in U.S.-Israel relations can be divided into two parts -- the first involving a major Israeli screw-up, the second involving a much bigger Obama screw-up. In fact, what was barely a mini-crisis in the first act turned into a full-blown set-to when Obama raised the stakes for both sides big time.

The fuse was lit when visiting Vice President Biden was blindsided by an announcement from Israel's Interior Ministry that an interim approval was given to proposed plans for the addition of 1,600 apartment units in Ramat Shlomo -- an ultra-orthodox Jewish neighborhood in northeast Jerusalem. With the U.S. trying to get indirect peace talks underway, Biden was furious and criticized the Israeli move as an unnecessary and provocative obstacle to the peace process. He kept Netanyahu waiting for ninety minutes at a dinner hosted by the Israeli leader to draft a fairly sharp response.

(Read full article)

Love of the Land: Third Act for the Jerusalem Crisis this Week

Love of the Land: Of grievances and perceptions

Of grievances and perceptions

Soccer Dad
14 March '10

Last week in an article about the eviction of two Arab families from the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood, Isabel Kershner of the New York Times summed it up:

For those who want to see a peaceful resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, the eviction of the Ghawis has touched on two sensitive nerves: the fate of East Jerusalem, where Israel and the Palestinians vie for control, and the abiding grievances of Palestinian refugees from the 1948 war.

She mentioned two things: both sides are competing and the Palestinians have a grievance. In fact most of the article centers around the Palestinian claims and how even some Israelis support the Palestinian case. The history leaves out inconvenient details such as:

On April 13, 1948, a convoy of ambulances, armored buses, trucks loaded with food and medical equipment, and 105 doctors, nurses, medical students, Hebrew University personnel, and guards headed for Mt. Scopus. The convoy was ambushed in the middle of Sheikh Jarrah, the lead vehicle hit a mine, and gangs of armed Arabs attacked. Seventy-eight Jews were murdered, among them 20 women and Dr. Haim Yaski, the hospital director. In the following months the hospital and university ceased to function. After the Six-Day War, when the area was returned to Israel, a memorial was built in their honor in Sheikh Jarrah on the road leading to Mt. Scopus.

Compare Kershner's care in preserving the Palestinian narrative in the Sheikh Jarrah story to the way she handled the Israeli narrative in the case of honoring Dalal Mughrabi:

The woman being honored, Dalal Mughrabi, was the 19-year-old leader of a Palestinian squad that sailed from Lebanon and landed on a beach between Haifa and Tel Aviv. They killed an American photojournalist, hijacked a bus and commandeered another, embarking on a bloody rampage that left 38 Israeli civilians dead, 13 of them children, according to official Israeli figures. Ms. Mughrabi and several other attackers were killed.
To Israelis, hailing Ms. Mughrabi as a heroine and a martyr is an act that glorifies terrorism.

But, underscoring the chasm between Israeli and Palestinian perceptions, the Fatah representatives described Ms. Mughrabi as a courageous fighter who held a proud place in Palestinian history. Defiant, they insisted that they would not let Israel dictate the names of Palestinian streets and squares.

Note that here the dispute is reduced to a matter of perceptions, as if a "bloody rampage" that claims the lives of "38 Israeli civilians" isn't the very definition of terrorism.

(Read full post)

Love of the Land: Of grievances and perceptions

Love of the Land: AP’s Historical Revisionism on Jerusalem

AP’s Historical Revisionism on Jerusalem

Gilead Ini
CAMERA
12 March '10

Revisionism is big, at least when it comes to Jerusalem. For example, Ikrima Sabri, until recently the Palestinian Authority-appointed mufti of Jerusalem, told the German daily Die Welt in 1997 that "In the whole city, there is not even a single stone indicating Jewish history... The Jews cannot legitimately claim [the Western] wall, neither religiously nor historically."

But revisionism is not limited to Holocaust-denying Palestinian religious leaders. A somewhat less absurd, but nonetheless outrageously false, version of the city's history has recently been promoted by major Western news organizations.

On CNN, Christiane Amanpour had insisted that the "tug of war over Jerusalem" began in 1967, when Israel removed homes abutting the Western Wall. "The 40-year tug of war over Jerusalem began when Israel bulldozed the Arab neighborhood next to the Western Wall and built a plaza where Jews now pray," she said in the original version of CNN's 2007 program God's Jewish Warriors.

(Read full post)

Love of the Land: AP’s Historical Revisionism on Jerusalem

Love of the Land: How Quick They Forget: A Short History of U.S. Policy and Israeli Construction in East Jerusalem

How Quick They Forget: A Short History of U.S. Policy and Israeli Construction in East Jerusalem

Barry Rubin
The Rubin Report
14 March '10

For more than four months the U.S. government has been celebrating Israel agreeing to stop construction on settlements in the West Bank while continuing building in east Jerusalem as a great step forward and Israeli concession deserving a reward. Suddenly, all of this is forgotten to say that Israel building in east Jerusalem is some kind of terrible deed which deserves punishment.

Israelis are used to this pattern: give a big concession and a few months later that step is forgotten as Israel is portrayed as intransigent and more concessions are demanded with nothing in return. Here is a short history of this round:

(Read full post)

Love of the Land: How Quick They Forget: A Short History of U.S. Policy and Israeli Construction in East Jerusalem

Love of the Land: Biden: Obama Made Me Do It

Biden: Obama Made Me Do It

Marty Peretz
The New Republic
11 March '10
Posted before Shabbat

I am a little embarrassed to be so self-referential this morning, but I am going back to my Spine from yesterday, “The Relentless Facts of Palestine.”

Vice President Biden knew he had to calm the waters in Israel a bit. And he did. So, to an audience at Tel Aviv University--said by some to be comparable to Cairo University, where President Obama delivered his June 4 speech, and which saying tells you how little most people understand the real differences among universities--Biden delivered the reassurances that probably nobody expected: “U.S. president Barack Obama and myself know that the U.S. has no better friend in the community of nations than Israel.” That is certainly the case, across the board politically and philosophically. And aesthetically, too, by the way. These two countries are the epitome of humanistic modernity.

Sill, in the back of everyone’s mind in the audience was Biden’s use of the word “condemn” when speaking about the release of a newly approved Israeli plan for building 1,600 new apartments in what he called East Jerusalem. Just a minor point here: The designated units would be in North Jerusalem, not in the eastern part of the city that carries the yolk and passion of holiness--a troublesome yoke and a troublesome passion.

(Read full post)

Love of the Land: Biden: Obama Made Me Do It

Love of the Land: Biden in Public and Private

Biden in Public and Private

Jennifer Rubin
Contentions/Commentary
11 March '10
Posted before Shabbat

Joe Biden delivered his much-anticipated (and we are told, tweaked) speech in Israel today. It was the usual mix of what we have come to expect from the Obami — broad declarations of support for Israel mixed with an obsessive desire to move forward on the “peace process” and a fixation on building activity. On Iran, Biden pronounced, “The United States is determined to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons, period.” But how, and what options remain? He didn’t say. As for East Jerusalem, the vice president harped on what he deemed the “hardest truth.” That is parlance for the Obami’s insistence that it is building in Israel’s capital, not the persistence of terrorism or the refusal to recognize the Jewish state, that serves to “undermine trust.” As skewed and as unwelcome as much of that public message was to many onlookers here and in Israel, what went on in private was jaw-dropping. We are told:

(Read full post)

Love of the Land: Biden in Public and Private

Love of the Land: No wonder he's smiling...

No wonder he's smiling...

Melanie Phillips
The Spectator
10 March '10

Israel is in the doghouse with America because it revealed during the visit by US Vice-President Joe Biden that it was building more houses for Israelis in east Jerusalem. According to Biden and outraged western received opinion, this ‘undermines peace efforts’.

Why? To be more precise, why does this initiative – or indeed any of the ‘settlements’ -- undermine peace efforts while the actual reason for the absence of peace, the fact that the Abbas administration has said it will never accept a Jewish state of Israel and refuses to renounce the Arab aim of ending Israel's existence, the sole reason for eight decades of aggression, terrorism and war in the Middle East, is not even mentioned?

Biden also said:

the Palestinians deserve a ‘viable’ independent state with contiguous territory

Why? What have they done to deserve it?

(Read full post)

Related: Nobody deserves a murderer-state

Love of the Land: No wonder he's smiling...

Love of the Land: Nobody deserves a murderer-state

Nobody deserves a murderer-state

Fresnozionism.org
10March '10

News item:

US Vice President Joe Biden said Wednesday the Palestinians deserve a “viable” independent state with contiguous territory, seeking to reassure them of US support after the Interior Ministry on Tuesday approved a plan to expand the Jewish Ramat Shlomo neighborhood in east Jerusalem…

“The United States pledges to play an active as well as a sustainable role in these talks,” Biden said. He stressed the Palestinians deserve an independent state that is “viable and contiguous,” meaning the territory should not be broken up by Israeli settlement enclaves.

Although this AP report doesn’t provide the complete quotation, I presume that Biden actually used the word ‘deserve’. Now, I will agree that all human beings, including Palestinian Arabs, deserve a secure existence and to live in an environment that’s not oppressive and where their political, economic and other aspirations can be realized. The question is, “does the Palestinian Authority or Hamas deserve the leadership role in the state that is to be created for them?” and the answer is “certainly not.” And that’s because both of these organizations have, as part of their fundamental self-definition, the violent negation of another state. Nobody ‘deserves’ a murderer-state. How could the logic be any simpler?

(Read full post)

Love of the Land: Nobody deserves a murderer-state

Love of the Land: A Lesson for the Future in Abbas’s Retreat on Refusing to Talk

A Lesson for the Future in Abbas’s Retreat on Refusing to Talk

Evelyn Gordon
Contentions/Commentary
10 March '10

That Israel and the Palestinians, after 16 years of direct talks, are now back to indirect talks is an undeniable retreat. But in a must-read analysis, the Jerusalem Post’s diplomatic correspondent, Herb Keinon, points out that this may nevertheless be one of the most hopeful moments of the entire peace process — because for the first time, “the Palestinians gave in on something.”

“Israelis, Palestinians and the world have become accustomed to Israel setting red lines, and then moving them,” Keinon wrote. “The Palestinians, on the other hand, have set a track record of saying what they mean.” For instance, they have never budged from their demand for “all of east Jerusalem, including the Old City,” or for “the right of Palestinian refugees to return to Israel proper.”

But after months of proclaiming that he would not resume talks with Israel without a complete freeze on Israeli construction in both the West Bank and East Jerusalem, Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas has backed down. And this offers a crucial lesson for the future.

“The reason Abbas was willing to move his red line was because he came under intense pressure from the US, certain elements inside the EU, and from Arab states such as Egypt and Jordan to start talks, even though all his conditions were not met,” Keinon noted. “The valuable lesson here: The Palestinians, too, and not only Israel, are susceptible to pressure.”

(Read full post)

Love of the Land: A Lesson for the Future in Abbas’s Retreat on Refusing to Talk

Love of the Land: No equality before the law

No equality before the law

Construction laws in Jerusalem applied differently to Jews, Arabs


Hagai Segal
Opinion/Ynet
10 March '10

I felt two very dear people were missing in last week’s press conference where Jerusalem Mayor Nir Barkat presented his King Garden’s plan: The city’s Legal Advisor, Yossi Havilio, and State Prosecutor Moshe Lador.

They were supposed to be there to praise the plan, or at least show moral support with their very presence. After all, one of the plan’s most prominent aims is to impose law and order in the wild construction market of east Jerusalem, and both of them thus far appeared to be zealous supporters of this challenge. Yet they did not show up.

Havilio, as we know, is the uncompromising fighter against Beit Yehonatan in Kfar HaShiloah. His office has been turned into a war room against the mayor’s aspirations to legalize the building. Havilio did not agree to any compromise on the matter, even when the overall regularization of construction in the area – both Jewish and Arab – was discussed.

Meretz’s representative in City Council actually endorsed the compromise, yet Havilio objected on behalf of the law.

At a certain point, Lador too joined the campaign. Some very harsh warning letters were sent from Lador’s office on Salah al-Din Street to Barkat. The Mayor was asked to immediately seal Beit Yehonatan. “Any further delay constitutes grave damage to the values of the rule of law,” Lador reprimanded Barkat recently.

Sudden patience

King’s Garden, an ancient site that in the past was declared a green zone, includes 44 illegal structures. Their status is identical to that of Beit Yehonatan. Final demolition orders were issued against all of them.

(Read full article)

Love of the Land: No equality before the law

Love of the Land: Jerusalem on the Media Frontline

Jerusalem on the Media Frontline

The Economist misrepresents a municipal plan to improve the lives of Jerusalem's Arab residents.


Honest Reporting
Media Critique
09 March '10

Perhaps no other issue generates such emotion and conflict as the status of Jerusalem. We do not intend to prejudge the outcome of any discussions that may or may not eventually take place between the various interested parties that have a stake in the holy city.

However, many media outlets have done precisely that - drawing upon a one-sided and selective narrative that seeks to delegitimize Jewish rights in Jerusalem. Only recently, HonestReporting critiqued a biased BBC Panorama documentary focusing on tensions in the area of eastern Jerusalem adjacent to the Old City.

Indeed, with a settlement freeze on the West Bank excluding the eastern part of Jerualem, the media's new frontline has moved to Israel's capital city. The media have, in many cases, played into the hands of those on the Palestinian side who need little excuse to stoke existing tensions or create new ones.

(Read full article)

Love of the Land: Jerusalem on the Media Frontline

Love of the Land: The dogs of Sheikh Jarrah

The dogs of Sheikh Jarrah

Lurker
The Muqata
08 March '10

Have you ever wondered about what Arabs think of their Jewish anti-Israel fellow travellers? The video below might provide a hint. It's from one of the weekly demonstrations held by the radical left in the Jerusalem neigborhood of Shimon HaTzaddik (aka "Sheikh Jarrah")*.



In the video, several demonstrators can be seen getting arrested by the police. The overwhelming majority of the arrestees seem to be Israeli Jews. Meanwhile, starting at about 3:19 in the video, a woman in traditional Arab garb, looking on as these pro-Arab Jewish demonstrators are led away by the police, loudly shouts the following chant:


"Falasteene Bladna, al-Yahud klabna!"

This translates into:

"Palestine is our land, the Jews are our dogs!"

(It should be noted, by the way, that she did not say that the "Zionists" are the Arabs' dogs, or that the "Israelis" are their dogs -- she said that the "Jews" are their dogs.)

(Excellent write-up. Read full post)

Love of the Land: The dogs of Sheikh Jarrah

Love of the Land: Left shows blindspot on Jewish rights in Jerusalem

Left shows blindspot on Jewish rights in Jerusalem

Bataween
Point of No Return
06 March '10

Another demonstration took place over the weekend against Jews moving into Sheikh Jarrah, that area of East Jerusalem known to Jews as Shimon Hatzadik. Palestinians and much of the media claim it is 'Arab'. The controversy over property rights concerns this blog because the underlying assumption is that Arab rights trump Jewish rights: nobody seems to care that Jews were forcibly evicted from land and property in East Jerusalem before 1948, nor does anyone worry about Jewish property seized in Arab countries. The Jews are the 'interlopers', while the Arabs are 'indigenous'. A proper reading of history shows that nothing could be further than the truth. Karni Eldad writing in Haaretz says Jews have had to buy their property in Jerusalem twice over :

"In 1948, scores of families were expelled from their homes in Jerusalem. The city was divided and squatters took over their houses and built on their properties. These refugees prayed to return to the homes they purchased legally in the 1920s and 1930s.

"In 1967, legal proceedings began for the restoration of ownership to those refugees. The squatters pursued every possible means, in every court, to delay the implementation of the possession by the legal owners. Every such legal proceeding lasted for decades, until an appeal was made to the High Court of Justice.

"In 2009, the High Court of Justice had its say too - the squatters must be evicted and they must also pay compensation to the owners of the land for all the years they made use of it. The proceedings against all the squatters has not yet been completed, but this year dozens of Jewish families are slated to return to their homes. Jewish? What? Yes, yes. These are families that are now purchasing, for the full price, their own properties in the Shimon Hatzadik neighborhood, better known as Sheikh Jarrah.

(Read full article)

Love of the Land: Left shows blindspot on Jewish rights in Jerusalem

Love of the Land: James Carroll Misrepresents Jerusalem Evictions Story

James Carroll Misrepresents Jerusalem Evictions Story

Steven Stotsky
CAMERA Media Analysis
24 February '10

Boston Globe columnist James Carroll has done it again. On February 22, 2010, he penned another highly biased opinion piece about Israel, relying heavily on personal claims leveled by Palestinians. The topic is evictions of several Palestinian families from disputed property in eastern Jerusalem. The writer promotes falsehoods about the disposition of the property and trashes Israeli legal proceedings that preceded the evictions. Beyond misrepresenting the facts and history of the case, Carroll offers a skewed portrayal of the two sides. Though he's written forthrightly and eloquently (in Constantine's Sword: The Church and the Jews) about the history of Christian hostility towards Jews, he has long seemed unable to apply the same approach to Israel. The February 22 commentary about supposed "creeping annexation" of Arab land echoes recent similar bias and error about Jerusalem.

The column focuses on the eviction of Palestinian families in the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood of Jerusalem. Carroll describes the land on which the homes were built for the Palestinian families in the 1950s as "vacant," obscuring a crucial element of this story. The land had been purchased by two Jewish organizations in the late 1800s, but was siezed by the Jordanians during the 1948 war. Regrettably, Carroll, who once wrote of being troubled that a clock owned by his mother in Germany might have previously been stolen from Jews, does not reflect on how the Arab families he champions were similarly the beneficiaries of violent dispossession of property from Jewish owners. He dismisses out of hand the history of Jewish ownership while giving voice in detail to the claim by the Arab occupants that their failure to secure the property deed was due to the 1967 war in which Israel took control of the land.

The 700 word piece also never mentions the salient fact that even after Jewish claims of ownership were confirmed, the evictions only came about because the Arab families stopped paying rent.

(Read full article)

Related: The Sheikh Jarrah-Shimon HaTzadik Neighborhood

Love of the Land: James Carroll Misrepresents Jerusalem Evictions Story