Al-Haram al-Qudsi al-Sharif is administered by the Islamic Waqf since it came under Israeli control during the Six Day War in 1967. The City of Jerusalem officially became the capital of Israel in 1980 under the Begin government,’ he reminded them.
‘What started these riots?’
‘The reconstruction of the ramp.’
‘Why?’
‘The pedestrian ramp as you can see goes up from the Wall area to the Mughrabi Gate and the Esplanade, a lot of tourists use it every day and for simple safety reasons it needed renovation.’
‘It was damaged?’
‘Yes, a minor earthquake and a snow storm in 2004 damaged it.’
‘I see.’
‘Unfortunately any building work within the walls, on the walls themselves or even around them has always been highly controversial.’
‘Any excuse to start trouble!’ said Hertzfeld.
‘Regretfully so. The ramp was damage and unsafe, so the authorities decided to rebuild it. The riots are provoked by trouble makers and religious extremists, most of these rioters are young good for nothings, just look at them, poor uneducated youths who do have not the least idea of their own history or the history of their religion.’
‘The Muslims?’
‘I’m sorry to say both sides are often at fault. In 1996 sixty nine Palestinians and sixteen Israeli soldiers were already killed in riots after Netanyahu’s Government opened a new tunnel leading to the Western Wall.’
‘I suppose the site has to be maintained.’
‘Maintain, yes, but in 2002 a bulge in the southern wall raised a storm of protests against the Waqf who were building a new mosque which endangered the site by excavations in the Stables of Solomon.’
‘So it’s part of an ongoing religious battle for between the Waqf and the Israelis for control of the site.’
‘Unfortunately so, the al-Aqsa mosque was nearly burnt down by a Jewish extremist in 1969. Abdullah of Jordan restored it together with the Dome of the Rock, it needed 85kg of 24-carat gold!’
‘Religion has become important, or is it an excuse for intolerance of anything different?’
‘Here you can see the Hassidim walk around non-Jews to avoid unclean shadows,’ laughed Hertzfeld.
O’Connelly was not surprised after all he had seen in Jerusalem.
‘I've heard things are bad in France,’ said David.
‘Bad?’
‘Yes.’
‘A lot of Jews are emigrating from France.’
He shrugged his shoulders: ‘I don’t know.”
‘They say France is full of Arabs…Muslims.’
‘And?’
‘Well they say in the press that anti-Semitism is on the increase, Jews, are being attacked with rioting and burning cars.’
‘It’s the first I’ve heard of it!’
‘That’s what we hear,’ said David smiling, ‘and the French Jews who come to Israel have pretty extremist ideas concerning Arabs. Since the Intifada they’re arriving at a rate of about 3,000 a year, that’s the most since the Six Day War.’
‘I didn’t know,’ said O’Connelly not sure whether David was provoking him.
‘They mostly live in and around Ashdod, there’s a lot of French speaking North African Jews there, then quite a lot move to the Netanya area.’
‘Who are they?’
‘Mostly they’re relatively young people, professionals and businesspeople. The older ones move to Herzliya and Caesarea. They are mostly Sephardic, from North Africa.’
‘I see, what motivates them then?’
‘Some kind of dream, an ideal, something they’ve always thought about. But since the number of Muslims in France has grown a lot it forced their hand if you like.’
‘So they felt threatened.’
‘I suppose so.’
‘And not by the Hezbollah rockets!’
David laughed: ‘They actually spend a lot of time outside of Israel and when things start hotting up they jump on a plane back to France.’
‘Most Jews in France live in Paris,’ said Laura speaking authoritatively. ‘I suppose the threat is more in their imagination fuelled by the media, where I live a great majority have businesses or are lawyers and doctors. I remember an article where one complained about being called names and said stones were thrown into the local synagogue garden, I suppose that’s not as bad as Hezbollah rockets.’
‘Or military service in Israel!’
‘Many Jews in France came from North Africa where they had lived for centuries, they were there before the French arrived, but left with the French when those countries became independent, they had always lived in relative peace with the Arabs. I suppose it was the foundation of the State of Israel that sparked of the problem between them and the local populations.’
The problem was that the younger generation had little experience of living alongside Arabs. When the Jews arrived in France, after the independence of France’s North African territories, many settled in certain suburbs of Paris, but then with the arrival of new waves of immigration of North African workers in the seventies Arabs started to arrive in these same suburbs.
The Jews then moved to Paris intramuros as they prospered and the Arabs asserted their own identity. For economic reasons many Jews chose Israel, where they were offered housing and financial incentives, which was very much more interesting compared to their condition in France It is possible that those who claimed they had to hid their religion lived in immigrant suburbs not in Paris itself. But the Jews also became radicalised, even flaunting their difference, twenty years ago it was rare to see a kippah, now it is common and the synagogues are much more visible as are their new faith schools.
‘It’s a fact that there is an increase in communitarism and ghettoization in France today, whether the future for Jews will be more complicated, I don’t know, but will it be simpler in Israel?’
‘It’s serving in the army is what makes a real Israeli. If you are too soft like the French, you’d be eaten alive.’
‘Apart from that in France and Europe in general,’ Laura told him, ‘even the smallest criminal act can be transformed into anti-Semitism, when in fact they’re often acts of robbery or common violence. In any case a lot of the immigrants from France think they’re special, but here they are just Jews like everyone else. The Russians are grateful to have escaped from Russia, but the French behave like they are in conquered land, they are very demanding and often disappointed to discover a lack of job opportunities and lower wages.’
‘The grass is always greener….’
‘The laugh is that about twenty percent of the population in Israel is Arab and Muslim.’
‘As I said they think that life will be easier here.’
‘Aumann said a lot Jews don't understand why they are here, and if they don’t understand why they are here we will not survive. Perhaps in another fifty years, we probably won’t be here!’
‘Who is Aumann?’ asked Laura.
‘Robert Aumann! He won the Nobel Economics Prize last year.’
‘Never heard of him.’
‘Well he said the reason for the recent conflicts is national fatigue and if we fall asleep we will die, just like a mountain climber in the snow. So we have to stay alert!’
‘Sounds logical.’
‘He also said we are too sensitive about our losses, the 3,000 soldiers were killed in the Yom Kippur War was small change and the withdrawal from the Gaza Strip was a “tactical and ethical mistake”, which sent out the wrong signals to the Arabs. The result was the war against the Lebanon that set peace back at least 10 years.’
‘It certainly hasn’t promoted good relations.’
‘The trouble is a lot of Israelis are just bystanders, looking on as the Israeli state dispossesses the Palestinians of their territory and rights on the premise that the legends of our sacred book tells us we’re the chosen people! How can someone from France come and accept a home built on land seized from the Palestinians!’
r /> ‘In France the least supposed anti-Semitic event causes outrage,’ said Laura, ‘but people couldn’t give a damm about Palestinians, Iraqis, Somalis or Darfur.’
‘Are you anti-Jewish Laura,’ asked David jokingly.
‘As a matter of fact my mother is a Jew,’ said Laura.
That stopped David in his tracks.
‘The world is a strange place,’ said Shlomo taking over the conversation. ‘When Pinochet died he was ranked with Hitler and Stalin, tragically three thousand people died during the conflict in Chile, but it is incomparable to the countless millions Hitler, Stalin or Mao. Myself I was in Santiago de Chile, a student, before, after and during Allende’s government. I remember under Allende the country was literally falling to pieces, people were starving, there was nothing in the shops, a disaster, then Pinochet pulled things around.’
‘I don’t know about that, but in any case it’s clear today there’s an excess of political correctness.’
‘In France and many other countries in Europe,’ Laura told them, ‘there is a refusal by some and the left in particular to see things objectively, and all those who do are branded as racists, and no one, absolutely no one defends a racist.’
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Religion and Archaeology