From David Wilder, the spokeperson of the Hebron Jewish community:========================
To the Editors
Caroline Little
Chief Executive Officer and Publisher
Jim Brady
Executive Editor
The Washington Post
Re: In Divided Hebron, a Shared Despair
by Scott Wilson, Thursday, July 26, 2007 [see below]
Dear Sirs,
Considering the Post's reputation, I was quite surprised by the number of factual errors in the above article, not to mention the immense bias portrayed in the feature.
1. "Within Hebron, the separation is enforced not only by Israeli barriers but also by military checkpoints and curfews…"There has not been a curfew in Hebron in years.
2. "Securing the small Jewish minority has a potent impact on the lives of the city's 150,000 Arabs,"
Exactly 10 years ago Hebron was divided into two zones. In an official agreement with Arafat, Israel transferred over 80% of Hebron to The Palestinian Authority. There is no proof of the number of Arabs who live in Hebron, but for the sake of argument, should there really be 150,000, ten years ago at least 130,000 came under the sole control of the P.A. Presently, the number of Arabs in P.A. controlled Hebron would be in the vicinity of 90%. Where then does Israel's presence in less than 10% of the city have a 'potent impact on the lives of the city's 150,000 Arabs?'
3. "In recent months, the Israeli army has helped the Hebron settlers expand eastward to a hilltop home near the settlement of Kiryat Arba…"
The Hebron Jewish community purchased a 35,000 square foot building for over $700,000. The Israeli military had nothing to do with the purchase and did not 'help the Hebron settlers expand.' They fulfill their function by offering the necessary protection at the site, as the military does throughout Israel. There are no restrictions on Arabs living in the vicinity of the building.
4. "There is no future for Arabs and Jews together in Hebron," said Noam Federman, 37, a settler from Beit Hadassah"
Noam Federman never lived in Beit Hadassah. He and his family have lived in Kiryat Arba for the past year and a half. His statements do not represent anyone or anything except his own personal views.
5. "… Behind him trailed a small group of men and boys, who at Shuyukhi's instruction were attempting to defy the enforced division of their city that has virtually emptied its most important historic, religious and commercial areas of Palestinians."
a) According to the Hebron accords, the entire city is supposed to be open to both Jews/Israelis and Arabs. However, Jews are forbidden from entering the "Arab/Palestinian" side of the city, whereas Arabs are permitted to enter the Israeli-controlled side of the city.
b) As above, virtually all of the commercial areas of Arab Hebron are located within the area controlled by the P.A. This is not cut off from the Arabs. In addition, no Arabs have been forced to leave their homes, or move out of the Israeli-controlled side of the city.
6. "The post bars Palestinians from entering Shuhada Street, a once-thriving commercial strip closed by the Israeli military more than a decade ago to protect the two Jewish settlements and a yeshiva along its route. The U.S. Agency for International Development spent $2 million in 1997 to renovate the street as part of an Israeli-Palestinian agreement to reopen it for Palestinians. But Israel has since refused to do so."
a) The area closed off to Arab traffic is approximately two blocks long. Alternate routes have been provided. This, in comparison to 80% of the city, closed off to Jews.
b) It is not true that Israel refused to open the street. It was open to vehicular and foot traffic following completion of the construction by US AID. However, the Israel Defense Forces demanded it be closed following the outbreak of the second intifada in October, 2000, when Hebron Arabs began shooting at Jews from the surrounding hills, hills which had been transferred to the Palestinian Authority as part of the Hebron Accords.
7. "…there are 100 Israeli-constructed fences, gates, concrete barriers and military checkpoints within the roughly one-square-mile historic center."
These fences and barriers have been constructed to prevent infiltration of terrorists and to prevent easy escape routes for terrorists following perpetration of terror attacks.
8. "… The area included the Jewish Quarter until 1929, when Arabs killed more than 60 Jews living there. The survivors fled."
In 1929, 67 Jews were raped, tortured and killed by their next door neighbors. Seventy were wounded. The survivors did not flee. They were expelled by the British. A group returned in 1931 and remained until 1936 when again they were expelled due to Arab inciting.
9. "Hemmed in and harassed, the Palestinians are fleeing today. Nearly half the homes in and around the Israeli-controlled Old City of Hebron have been vacated, the Israeli human rights group B'Tselem recently reported."
a) Who is hemmed in and harassed? Arab terrorists shot at Jews for two years, killing and wounding. Dozens of Israelis have been killed in and around Hebron since the signing of the Oslo Accords.
b) B'Tselem is a radical left wing organization, whose facts and statistics are very much in question.
10. "The Ibrahimi Mosque is ours, not theirs."
The 'Ibrahimi Mosque' – otherwise known as "Ma'arat HaMachpela," the Tomb of the Patriarchs and Matriarchs, is the second holiest site to Jews in the world. The site was off-limits to Jews and Christians for 700 years – from 1267-1967. This despite its sanctity to Jews, and despite the fact that the building above the caves was built by Herod some 2,000 years ago, six hundred years prior to Muhammad's birth. Since Israel's return to Hebron in 1967 the site has been accessible to all people of all faiths. However, Moslems refuse to accept freedom of worship, claim that it's a mosque and declare that should they ever again control the site, it will be off-limits to anyone not Moslem. (The site, nor the city of Hebron is mentioned anywhere in the Koran.)
11. "The 50-yard walkway took months to complete because each night the bricks were uprooted. It opened this year."
The walkway has been used by Arabs for years. A sidewalk was paved last year.
12. " During the three-month period ending Jan. 31, the observer group received 35 complaints of settler violence and harassment, ranging from beatings to throwing debris. Over the next three months, 71 cases were reported. "The pattern you see is that you have settlement and then violence around it," Lignell said. "And you see this project inching forward.""
a) TIPH – Temporary International Presence in Hebron – is supposed to be an observer force. What is the legitimacy of "received complaints?" Such 'complaints' may, or may not be true. An 'observer force' is supposed to do just that – observe – and not base conclusions around 'complaints received' which have no proof backing them up.
TIPH is an extremely anti-Semitic organization, made up primarily of Scandinavian human rights workers, who know virtually nothing about the Jewish history and tradition of Hebron, and who are notorious for one-sided 'observations.'
b) According to recent reports issued by the IDF and the police there has been a tremendous decrease of violence by Israelis in Hebron over the past year, with very few cases being brought to the attention of the police.
13. "Palestinian patrons, who have watched anxiously as the settlement project recently swelled beyond the city center under the protection of Israel's military, whose strategic goals frequently coincide with the settlers'."
a) Foreign governments, primarily Germany, France and Spain, have invested huge amounts of money in various parts of Hebron, including the Casba. Why is it legitimate for Arabs to renovate property, yet when Jews do such it is deemed illegitimate? Why can Arabs build, buy and sell, while the same activity by Jews is considered negative?
b) The IDF does not and never has been involved with 'strategic planning' with civilians in Hebron. The military is under the direct rule of the Defense Department, i.e. the Defense Minister, the Prime Minister and the Israeli government. There are times when our aims coincide but also many times when they clash.
14. "The town is divided, it is deserted, and in many ways like a prison for us," said Khaled Osaily,"
As written earlier, 80% of Hebron is under total PA control. The entire city was open until beginning of the second intifada, during which time a homicide bomber exploded and killed a couple from nearby Kiryat Arba.
15. "David Wilder, originally from New Jersey, is the spokesman for the Hebron settlers. He largely dismissed public relations until Goldstein opened fire."
This is totally inaccurate. I began working for the Hebron Jewish Community in an administrative capacity in May of 1994 and did not begin work as a spokesman for about 2 years following that, with the advent of the Hebron Accords. My employment had nothing to do with Baruch Goldstein.
16. "Wilder, who like many settlers here wears a pistol on his hip,…"
This is true. We are licensed to carry a weapon for reasons of self-defense. I have never needed to use it, thank G-d. I know people who are alive today because they had a weapon.
17. (He) does not agree with what he calls the Israeli military's "concept of using walls as a means of security, of building barriers and saying, 'Now you are safe.'
"The problem here is not so much that people can't make a living; it's a political one," Wilder said. "The Arabs want a presence here. If they have it, they own it, de facto. And if not, they don't."
These two paragraphs are total non-sequiturs, making no sense in the context of the article. It is clear that they were inserted: 1) to include a Hebron representative in the article, and 2) to make me look foolish and unintelligent.
18. " On a hilltop less than a mile's trip along streets secured by Israeli soldiers sits a four-story house, which a group of settlers occupied the evening of March 19."
This building was not 'occupied,' rather it was purchased for over $700,000. Why, when an Israeli purchases property he is an 'occupier' but when an Arab buys property and moves in, his is a legal resident?
19. " the military government in the occupied territories, contends that the settlers did not arrange for the permits Israelis need to buy and move into property in the West Bank."
1) Why does the Washington Post use language 'the occupied territories' as opposed to Judea and Samaria, or the West Bank?
2) The permits were requested and denied for political reasons, not for any legal reason. The entire transaction will be proven to be legal and legitimate.
20. "…and the Tomb of the Patriarchs, the caves beneath the Ibrahimi Mosque."
Why is the site called the "Ibrahami Mosque?" Why isn't it written that there are also a number of synagogues in the building, which again, was not built by Herod as a mosque?
21. "We don't know the people who come and go from there," said Jabari, 22, a bespectacled middle school chemistry teacher. "We try to stay inside now as much as possible."
Arabs in the neighborhood continue to walk the streets freely. They are not restricted in any way, and no incidents initiated by Jews have been reported in the area since Hebron residents moved in.
22. "One tried to snatch a soldier's gun, Israeli military officials said, and the officer opened fire."
The article concludes with such a sorrowful scene. However, would it have ended the same way had the Arab been able to take the soldier's gun and open fire on the Israelis at the scene? When you play with fire, you get burned.
This article does not attempt, in any way, to portray an accurate portrait of life in Hebron. It clearly portrays the Arabs as the oppressed and the Jews as the oppressors; the Arabs as the victims and the Jews as the culprits.
Within the article on the Washington Post web site are three featured videos: One with the Arab mayor of Hebron, one calling for expulsion of Jews from Hebron, and one featuring an extreme left-wing Israeli. Why aren't their three videos featuring Hebron Jewish residents?
A graphic map of Hebron – "Detailed map of Hebron and area surrounding shows locations of checkpoints, roadblocks and settlements.," is totally inaccurate, making it look as if almost all of Hebron is under Israeli rule. This is misleading and false, being that an overwhelming majority of Hebron is under the rule of the P.A.
It is unfortunate that the Washington Post should see fit to print Wilson's shabby, one-sided, biased piece of yellow journalism.
Sincerely,
David Wilder
Spokesman
The Jewish Community of Hebron
One out of 22 ain't bad:-
The WashPost now has this at their site:
Correction to This Article
A July 26 Page One article about the tension between Jewish settlers and Palestinians in the West Bank city of Hebron incorrectly said settler spokesman David Wilder largely dismissed public relations until a 1994 shooting. It was the Hebron settlers generally who did not embrace public relations until that event; Wilder did not become spokesman until two years later.
In Divided Hebron, a Shared Despair
Palestinians and Jewish Settlers in West Bank City Struggle for Existence
By Scott Wilson
Washington Post Foreign Service
Thursday, July 26, 2007; A01
HEBRON, West Bank -- The barrier Israel is constructing in the largely rural West Bank is effectively separating Arab from Jew along much of its 456-mile length. But the broader project of disentangling the two peoples in the absence of a peace agreement is failing in urban areas such as Hebron, where the most radical elements of Islamic and Jewish nationalism are gaining strength.
Within Hebron, the separation is enforced not only by Israeli barriers but also by military checkpoints and curfews intended to protect the roughly 700 Jewish settlers living within the city's most historic and religiously important areas. Securing the small Jewish minority has a potent impact on the lives of the city's 150,000 Arabs, who voted last year to fill all nine of the district's parliamentary seats with candidates from the armed Islamic movement Hamas.
This city, set among prolific vineyards, was among the first destinations for Jewish settlers following the 1967 Middle East war, when the Israeli military occupied the West Bank. Fired by a four-millennia-old religious claim to Hebron, the settler enterprise here is among the most ideologically determined in the territories. Its expansionist goals clash with Palestinian secular and Islamic armed movements, whose own nationalist passions helped turn Hebron into one of the most violent venues of the Palestinian uprisings.
In recent months, the Israeli army has helped the Hebron settlers expand eastward to a hilltop home near the settlement of Kiryat Arba, a large step in their plan to connect the two areas. An international observer mission here, established after 1996 accords that left part of the city under Israeli military control and placed the other under the Palestinian Authority, reports sharply rising violence between Israeli settlers and Palestinians.
"There is no future for Arabs and Jews together in Hebron," said Noam Federman, 37, a settler from Beit Hadassah in the Israeli-controlled city center here. "And Hebron has always been a Jewish city."
Jamal Maraga's Palestinian fabrics shop sits along an alley in Hebron's casbah, lit by shafts of sunlight that filter through bricks, bottles and trash suspended in fencing laced over the walkway. The Jewish settlement of Avraham Avinu is housed in a multistory building that towers overhead.
International observers here say the settlers regularly toss debris and dirty water into the Arab market below, now largely shuttered in a city where unemployment stands at 60 percent. Asked whether Arabs and Jews can share Hebron, Maraga, his hair and beard a gray fuzz, looked up at the chain-link canopy.
"Impossible," he said.
Proximity and Violence
Just before noon on a recent day, Azmi Shuyukhi, the graying leader of the Palestinian Popular Committees, a civil-resistance organization, approached an Israeli military checkpoint. Behind him trailed a small group of men and boys, who at Shuyukhi's instruction were attempting to defy the enforced division of their city that has virtually emptied its most important historic, religious and commercial areas of Palestinians.
The post bars Palestinians from entering Shuhada Street, a once-thriving commercial strip closed by the Israeli military more than a decade ago to protect the two Jewish settlements and a yeshiva along its route. The U.S. Agency for International Development spent $2 million in 1997 to renovate the street as part of an Israeli-Palestinian agreement to reopen it for Palestinians. But Israel has since refused to do so.
The order to close the road was one of several that began the separation process here in 1994 after an Israeli from Kiryat Arba, Baruch Goldstein, killed 29 Palestinians praying in the Ibrahimi Mosque just past the end of Shuhada Street. The site is sacred to Muslims and Jews, who believe Abraham, Isaac and other biblical figures are buried in grottos beneath it.
According to the Temporary International Presence in Hebron, the unarmed observer mission, there are 100 Israeli-constructed fences, gates, concrete barriers and military checkpoints within the roughly one-square-mile historic center. The area included the Jewish Quarter until 1929, when Arabs killed more than 60 Jews living there. The survivors fled.
Hemmed in and harassed, the Palestinians are fleeing today. Nearly half the homes in and around the Israeli-controlled Old City of Hebron have been vacated, the Israeli human rights group B'Tselem recently reported. The group also said that more than three-quarters of the Palestinian shops and restaurants in the casbah and adjacent commercial districts have been shuttered, many by military order.
Shuyukhi's band had failed to make it past the checkpoint for 15 consecutive weeks. But this day, the soldiers waved them into the Israeli-controlled area. After several moments of bewilderment, Shuyukhi started down the empty street -- shops closed, no cars, men and boys with Palestinian flags following behind.
As they approached Beit Hadassah, a Jewish settlement of about 30 families, army jeeps roared up. Soldiers in helmets and body armor, joined by a few Israeli police officers, ordered Shuyukhi's group to lower the Palestinian national flag they carried and turn back.
"We will not take it down," Shuyukhi shouted. "The Ibrahimi Mosque is ours, not theirs."
Suddenly, an older settler rushed from the entrance of Beit Hadassah, clutching a walkie-talkie in one hand.
"Grab the flag, grab the flag," he shouted in American-accented Hebrew.
A policeman blocked him. But the man spun from his grip and, like a determined running back, plowed toward the Palestinians.
"Go take care of the Arabs, the criminals," he shouted at the police, who led him struggling away.
Mats Lignell, a former Swedish soldier with the observer mission in Hebron, watched the scene before heading to a raised path across Shuhada Street, which his mission financed so Palestinian students could reach their Cordoba School without passing near Beit Hadassah.
The 50-yard walkway took months to complete because each night the bricks were uprooted. It opened this year.
During the three-month period ending Jan. 31, the observer group received 35 complaints of settler violence and harassment, ranging from beatings to throwing debris. Over the next three months, 71 cases were reported.
"The pattern you see is that you have settlement and then violence around it," Lignell said. "And you see this project inching forward."
A Chain of Settlements
On a recent morning, a dozen toddlers zipped around Avraham Avinu's shady courtyard, where in 2001 a Palestinian sniper's bullet killed 10-month-old Shalhevet Pas. A nearby market, once the main Palestinian clearinghouse for vegetables, has been named for her by the settlers who control it.
The Jewish settlement is separated -- by a wall, razor wire and a worldview -- from Hebron's casbah and its Palestinian patrons, who have watched anxiously as the settlement project recently swelled beyond the city center under the protection of Israel's military, whose strategic goals frequently coincide with the settlers'.
"The town is divided, it is deserted, and in many ways like a prison for us," said Khaled Osaily, Hebron's appointed mayor from the secular Fatah movement. Most of the more than 1,800 closed Palestinian businesses in the Old City area shut down since the second Palestinian uprising began in the fall of 2000.
David Wilder, originally from New Jersey, is the spokesman for the Hebron settlers. He largely dismissed public relations until Goldstein opened fire. The government of Yitzhak Rabin considered evacuating the settlers but instead imposed the military curfews and closures on the Palestinians.
Wilder, who like many settlers here wears a pistol on his hip, does not agree with what he calls the Israeli military's "concept of using walls as a means of security, of building barriers and saying, 'Now you are safe.'
"The problem here is not so much that people can't make a living; it's a political one," Wilder said. "The Arabs want a presence here. If they have it, they own it, de facto. And if not, they don't."
On a hilltop less than a mile's trip along streets secured by Israeli soldiers sits a four-story house, which a group of settlers occupied the evening of March 19. Lignell and his observer team arrived less than an hour later. By then, dozens of soldiers had surrounded the home to protect its new residents.
Kiryat Arba, a settlement of about 7,000 people, sits just across a narrow valley. Wilder, 53, said the property represents a key link in the chain the settlers are trying to establish between the urban settlements of Hebron and Kiryat Arba. His daughter's family is one of 15 moving into the house.
Wilder said the settlers bought the home for $700,000, some of it donated by American supporters. But Israel's Civil Administration, the military government in the occupied territories, contends that the settlers did not arrange for the permits Israelis need to buy and move into property in the West Bank.
"These people think they can do what they want and then we will have to adopt their decision," said Shlomo Dror, spokesman for Israel's Coordinator of Activities in the Territories. "This is not the case."
As a military court considers their appeal, the settlers are renovating the building. New plaster walls partition off a series of family apartments, their doors still sawed-out holes covered by hanging blankets. Soldiers wander the airy halls.
The house overlooks the main roads leading from Kiryat Arba to the downtown settlements and the Tomb of the Patriarchs, the caves beneath the Ibrahimi Mosque. The army used to set up a temporary post at the house on the Jewish Sabbath. Now, having set up a more permanent rooftop position, the army supports the settlers' right to stay.
"This building will show us whether there is a right for a Jew to buy a house in Hebron," said Baruch Marzel, a Hebron settler who has established a 70-student yeshiva in the home. "Or will Hebron be the only place in the world a Jew is not allowed to do so?"
'After All That . . .'
Mohammed al-Jabari looks out from his home, across a courtyard of grapevines and olive trees, to the army post on the roof of the settlers' new acquisition. On this day, he is waiting for a funeral, vivid evidence that separating Jews and Arabs here does not guarantee security for either.
"We don't know the people who come and go from there," said Jabari, 22, a bespectacled middle school chemistry teacher. "We try to stay inside now as much as possible."
A few hours later, in the adjacent cemetery, dozens of men gathered beneath cypresses and pines to escape the sun. Yehiya al-Jabari, a 67-year-old shepherd from Hebron and a distant relative of the teacher's, would soon be buried.
About 1 a.m. that day, Israeli soldiers had entered Yehiya al-Jabari's home looking for his 18-year-old son, Saleh. Seeing the soldiers come in, the men and women of the family accosted them. One tried to snatch a soldier's gun, Israeli military officials said, and the officer opened fire.
One shot struck Jabari's wife, Fatmeh, in the neck. The next hit Yehiya, who also dropped to the floor. An Israeli medic administered CPR to Fatmeh, reviving her, but Yehiya died in his living room.
"After all that, they said, 'Where's Saleh?' " recalled Sami al-Jabari, Yehiya's brother, who witnessed the scene.
Men and boys bore Yehiya's wooden stretcher up the hill, pausing to allow mourners to kiss his face. Some held Hamas flags, and the angry chants celebrating martyrdom carried down to the soldiers at the settlers' new home. Then, after tipping the body into the dry ground, the men wandered back down the hill into the divided city.
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