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| Church in the Christian Quarter in Jerusalem (Wikipedia) |
If you read the pro settler version in the Jewish Press, then you consider it a blood libel. If you read the original story in the Sunday Times (UK) then your sympathies will lie with Christian clerics who are complaining about it.
As usual my sympathies lie somewhere in between those two extremes. Although to be honest, I am not at all pleased by what these settlers are doing.
One of the tactics used in their attempt to settle all of Israel is to buy up property from non Jewish residents. This is especially true in the Christian Quarter of East Jerusalem. Christians live there because of their proximity to sites holy to the Christian world.
What these settlers do is probably legal. They are trying to buy up Christian homes there. Which they will of course re-settle with their own people. I understand their goal. They want Jerusalem to be inhabited entirely by its rightful owners, the Jewish people.
This is a very nice goal for the future, once Moshiach comes. But the reality now is that Jerusalem has been occupied by members of all 3 faiths for centuries - worshipping there mostly undisturbed. Until now. From a Times (UK) excerpt in the Jewish Press:
Yet radical groups continue to acquire strategic property in the Christian Quarter, with the aim of diminishing the Christian presence, often using underhanded healings and intimidation tactics to evict residents from their homes, dramatically decreasing the Christian presence
Christian clerics clearly fear being squeezed out of Jerusalem. There is no doubt about that. Jews buying property from a Christian in Jerusalem might be completely legal. But are all of their tactics legal? And even if they are l- are they ethical? Here is another excerpt that raises this question:
The Romanian Orthodox monastery in Jerusalem was vandalized during Lent in March this year, the fourth attack in a month. During Advent last December, someone lit a fire in the Church of All Nations in the Garden of Gethsemane.
Last week church leaders in Jerusalem raised an unprecedented and urgent alarm call. In a joint statement, they said Christians throughout the Holy Land had become the target of frequent and sustained attacks by fringe radical groups.
They described “countless incidents” of physical and verbal assaults against priests and other clergy, and attacks on Christian churches. They spoke of holy sites being regularly vandalized and desecrated, and the ongoing intimidation of local Christians as they go about their worship and daily lives.
Apparently there is a lot more to this story than simply buying property. It is about using scare tactics and violence – some of it extreme – all in the goal of buying back all of Jerusalem.
Predictably, the Jewish Press defends them and questions the veracity of those allegations. They refer to them as a blood libel reminiscent of Holocaust era Nazi propagandists Julius Streicher and Joseph Goebbels. (How Godwin of them...)
I don’t know how accurate those allegations are. But based on the history of the more extreme elements among Religious Zionists I fear that the Christian version is closer to the truth than the Jewish Press version.
So those that accuse these extremists of picking on Arabs, are wrong. Because it isn’t only Arabs. It’s Christians too. Or anyone that gets in the way of their messianic belief that after 2000 years the return of Eretz Yisroel into Jewish hands we are now experiencing the ‘first flowering of our redemption’ from exile. Which in their religious fervor - makes it an imperative to actively settle all of the land of Israel.
But these extremists have not cornered the market on religious fervor, much as they would like to think so. Nor are their views universal among religious Jews. Most religious Jews do not believe that we are in that ‘first flowering of our redemption’ - I among them. But even if I were, that does not mean doing what these settlers are doing. They should stop the harassment and intimidation - if that is indeed the case.
And even if they are being falsely accused they should stop stirring things up. Just leave these people alone and allow the status quo to remain until such time that the advent of Moshiach becomes clear to all of us. What they are doing now is wrong and will only generate animosity from the rest of the civilized world. This is not what we need right now. And I therefore strongly disagree with the Jewish Press spin on this. They are only adding fuel to the fire.