Wednesday, August 28, 2019

Arabs Meet Jews at the Kotel June 1967



As soon as the curfew was lifted for an hour to enable residents to get food supplies,
my father rushed to gather us from all around the house, like a shepherd gathering his
flock, announcing that we will return to our house outside the gates in Wadi Hilwa in
Silwan, amidst the protests and dismay of everyone, horrified by my father’s irrational
and irresponsible decision. My father, however, was ill with worry over his new house
which he had not yet enjoyed, and that is why he insisted on going back. He said that
he would die only in his house and that he would never leave it, and neither he nor any
of his offspring would ever become refugees anywhere. We left my grandfather’s house
quickly to face the unknown. Afraid, we headed slowly and cautiously north towards
Bab al-Silsila Street. We went down the steps, steps we had trodden thousands of times
in the past, and knew so well that we could walk down even blindfolded. We saw nothing
suspicious along our way: we did not see any soldiers or any destruction despite the
sound of bulldozers and explosions that we had heard while at my grandfather’s house.
We did encounter, however, people running silently without uttering a word, with anger
and fear written all over their faces. Some of them were carrying heavy suitcases, while
others were dragging children behind them and even an older woman who couldn’t walk.
Given the circumstances none of this raised our suspicions. As soon as we reached Bab
al-Silsila Street we turned right toward the east, and continued for fifty meters before
turning south to enter Abu Madyan al-Ghawth’s Ascent, where we walked through a
small alley and then began descending down the stairs.

What we saw upon reaching Zawiyat Abu Madyan al-Ghawth, facing east, was
indescribably horrific. Right there, at the bottom of the stairs, we saw soldiers, so many
of them, heavily armed from head to toe, dancing and singing in a language that we did
not understand, and behind them − emptiness. The Moroccan quarter no longer existed.
The fig and pomegranate trees were gone, and so were the alleys I used to walk and
play in. Muhammad, Sa‘id, Si Yusif, Masluhi and his fig tree were not there, the only
thing visible under June’s hot sun was a cloud of dust hovering over a heap of rubble.
Bulldozers, which I had never seen before in my life, were roaring along their metal
chains to the tunes of victory music, completing a job as yet unfinished. That day I saw
Ashkenazi rabbis for the first time; they were there in their black attire and strange hats
(shtreimels), dancing over the rubble … dancing over my memories, over the homes of
my friends and the paths that I so often frequented. For the first time in my life, I saw
the Buraq Wall so huge. It looked unfamiliar, because it had been small, and difficult to
see without going down an alley and through a gate first. But now the wall was in the
center of the scene, and it was even possible to see al-Aqsa Mosque and the Dome of
the Rock from that point, which had never been possible before, blocked by the crowded
buildings in the Moroccan quarter.

I cannot say that any of us, the twelve people walking in the ruins of the Moroccan
quarter, grasped what was going on, and I still don’t know how it was that no one fainted, other than the fact that we were already expecting the worst. Within seconds soldiers surrounded us, raising their guns to our faces. They forced us to stop and bombarded us with words that we did not understand. Arrogantly, a soldier whose face was blue and indistinguishable from the dust that covered it, inspected us slowly and finally selected my eldest brother, who was in his late-twenties, and pulled him away from us, blindfolded him, and ordered us to continue walking. We walked without my brother, heading towards Bab al-Maghariba, leaving behind us a neighborhood reduced to rubble, dancing soldiers, a huge jarring wall, rabbis swaying their heads in front of it, bulldozers razing what was left of the quarter, and an arrested brother whose fate was unknown. We carried with us our humiliation, disgrace, tears and defeat, glancing back every now and then until the whole scene disappeared from behind us as we descended to the unknown, down the hill to the southern gate to leave the Old City through Bab al- Maghariba. Soldiers were everywhere. 

^

2 comments:

Mr. Cohen said...

Sir Winston Churchill described “militant Mahommedanism” as “the religion of blood and war”.

SOURCE: Churchill: Walking With Destiny (chapter 2, page 53) by Andrew Roberts, Viking Publishers, year 2018, ISBN 1101980990 * ISBN 9781101980996

===================================
The phrase: "Islam in a man is like rabies in a dog"
is often attributed to Sir Winston Churchill.

However his exact words were:

“How dreadful are the curses which Mohammedanism lays on its votaries!

Besides the fanatical frenzy, which is as dangerous in a man as hydrophobia* in a dog, there is this fearful fatalistic apathy.”

* VOCABULARY NOTE: The American Heritage® Science Dictionary says that hydrophobia is another name for rabies.

SOURCE 1: The River War: An Historical Account of the Reconquest of the Soudan, by Winston Churchill in 1899 CE, published by Longmans in two volumes.

This quote was removed from the condensed year 1902 edition, for fear of antagonizing millions of Muslims that the British Empire ruled at that time.

SOURCE 2: Churchill: Walking With Destiny (chapter 3, page 62) by Andrew Roberts, Viking Publishers, year 2018, ISBN 1101980990 * ISBN 9781101980996.

===================================
In March 1921, when Sir Winston Churchill visited Gaza, the local Arabs greeted him with frenzied cries of:

“Down with the Jews! Cut their throats!”

SOURCE: Churchill: Walking With Destiny (chapter 12, page 283) by Andrew Roberts, Viking Publishers, year 2018, ISBN 1101980990 * ISBN 9781101980996

===================================
In March 1921, Sir Winston Churchill said to the Arabs of Haifa:

“It is manifestly right that the scattered Jews should have a national centre and a national home in which they might be reunited, and where else but in Palestine, with which the Jews for three thousand years have been intimately and profoundly associated?”

SOURCE: Churchill: Walking With Destiny (chapter 12, page 283) by Andrew Roberts, Viking Publishers, year 2018, ISBN 1101980990 * ISBN 9781101980996

===================================
“…the persecution of the Jews in Germany began in earnest with a Government-orchestrated national boycott of all Jewish businesses and professions, enforced by Brownshirt thugs on the streets who sadistically assaulted and humiliated Jews at every opportunity. Churchill’s philo-Semitism, so rare on Tory benches, was invaluable in allowing him to see sooner than anyone else the true nature of the Nazi regime.”

SOURCE: Churchill: Walking With Destiny (chapter 15, page 367) by Andrew Roberts, Viking Publishers, year 2018, ISBN 1101980990 * ISBN 9781101980996

===================================
“Churchill had eloquently denounced the notorious [year] 1939 White Paper that had severely restricted Jewish immigration into Palestine.”

SOURCE: Churchill: Walking With Destiny (chapter 23, page 601) by Andrew Roberts, Viking Publishers, year 2018, ISBN 1101980990 * ISBN 9781101980996

===================================
On 1944 July 11, Sir Winston Churchill wrote this to [Anthony] Eden about the Nazi death camps:

“There is no doubt that this is probably the greatest and most horrible crime ever committed in the whole history of the world…”

SOURCE: Churchill: Walking With Destiny (chapter 30, page 829) by Andrew Roberts, Viking Publishers, year 2018, ISBN 1101980990 * ISBN 9781101980996

Mr. Cohen said...

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