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IT'S YOM YERUSHALAYIM (Jerusalem Day) again --- and I'm still not over last year's celebration.
The weather was balmy for the walk through the Old City to the Western
Wall last year, and the atmosphere was festive. Many walkers sang or
carried large Israeli flags. Across from the Old City walls, people danced
on Jaffa Road. And though the mood changed a bit as the procession
continued toward Damascus Gate, the mood was upbeat as we invaded eastern
Jerusalem.
I use the word "invaded" with purpose. Our national celebration, after
all, marks their national disaster. In "undivided Jerusalem," no Arab will
march to celebrate Yom Yerushalayim.
And yet, under the bright blue sky, last year's holiday outing in the Old
City soon came to seem not just a celebration but a provocation --- the
Israeli flags, the patriotic songs of the marchers, the clear division
between those who walked and those who watched.
Worse, in the half hour or so it took the swarm of marchers to navigate the
narrow stone streets of the Muslim Quarter the Western Wall, several
confrontations between marchers and Arab onlookers indicated that, at least
for some Jews, the inner purpose of the march was not to celebrate with a
humble spirit but to rub Arab noses in the fact of their defeat.
The ugliest incident that I saw was the insistence of one young yeshiva
student near me on abusively jostling an Palestinian husband and wife who
were trying to make their way on a private errand against the current of
the thick crowd. Secure in a group of encouraging friends, he made sure to
push and knock into the Palestinians, to block their way --- to let them
know who was boss.
This, I thought to myself, is what people mean when they say that the
"Occupation" corrupts the Occupier -- not through large acts of violence
but in each individual's small retreats from his own human responsibility.
If we didn't know it before, we should have begun to understand -- after
Baruch Goldstein, after Yigal Amir, after death threats have become
commonplace against judges and other public figures -- the direction in
which such minor crimes may lead.
When I finally reached it -- past the loud-mouthed salesman of redemption
preaching through a bullhorn in front of the Ateret Cohanim synagogue and
the yeshiva boys shouting slogans from a roof -- the wide plaza in front of
the Western Wall was filled with dancers and music.
But I didn't feel like
staying.
Something had gone sour for me about Yom Yerushalyim.
I admire the bravery of Jews who live or study in the Arab Quarter of the
Old City; I have few qualms about laying claim to all the land from the
Jordan to the Mediterranean; and certain kinds of Israeli economic and
political pressure, including permanent settlement that encourage Arabs to
move elsewhere seem to me simply what the ultimate conquest of the land
requires.
That gives us some hard work to do. Though one doesn't hear the phrase
much of late, the Israeli army long talked about the the "purity of arms,"
the notion that weapons must be used within certain parameters of restraint
and purpose that preserve the soldier's and the nation's inner humanity.
There has to be an analogous "purity of conquest." Even as we insist on
Jerusalem undivided and celebrate Jewish victory and the ingathering of the
exiles, we need to remember that these things are a gift, not a mark of any
innate superiority of ours.
If a non-Jew walking among Jews as we
celebrate our national triumph has one hair of his head touched or even
feels threatened, I fear we have begun to lose our title to that
Jewish World Review May 14, 1999 / 27 Iyar, 5759
The Purity of Conquest
By David Margolis
Still, it is our right and even our obligation to celebrate. Arab
hostility to Jewish rule over this city doesn't make me shrink from the
burden and the opportunity of ruling here.
It was a small thing but heart-sickening --- as if this good-looking,
curly-haired yeshiva student wearing a knitted kippah was the reborn soul
of some drunken Cossack having fun on Easter Sunday by abusing a Yid. I am
Orthodox, too; my wife sharply scolded him as he finally let the Arab man
and wife pass by. He gave her a smart-alecky grin and drawled at her,
"Shut up!"
But beyond the current peace process or any future war, we will share the
Holy City and the Holy Land with others who cannot celebrate our Yom
Yerushalayim or our Independence Day and who do not stop their activity
when the sirens sound to mourn the soldiers killed in Israel's wars --
because for them, in small or large degree, history's gift to the Jewish
people is indistinguishable from their own calamity.
JWR contributor David Margolis is a journalist and novelist, most recently of Change of Partners. A resident of Israel, he can be reached by clicking here.
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