Skip to main content

People in Glass Houses....

The departure of the Israelis from Gaza has garnered world-wide praise together with condemnation of the Palestinians for vandalising or destroying synagogues left behind. Clearly any attack on a house of prayer should be condemned. Whether the Israelis should have dismantled the synagogues in the first place or whether they were left there as a lightning-rod for the propoganda war which would follow if the synagogues were attacked is another matter. Only last Tuesday in a Melton class a member of the class thundered that what the Palestinians had perpetrated was outrageous and what would the world have said had "we" [presumably Israelis and Jews in the Diaspora] even touched one stone of a mosque.

Sadly, as reflected on by the Former Deputy Mayor of Jerusalem Israel stands accused of treating mosques in Israel in less than a reverant manner to put it at its mildest:

"Out of some 140 village mosques that were abandoned due to the war in 1948, some 100 were totally torn down. The rest, about 40, are in advanced stages of collapse and neglect, or are used by the Jewish residents for other purposes. In a moshav in the Carmel mountains there is a mosque whose remnants still display its past grandeur. It is in a sad state of disrepair, it's walls are crumbling and it is surrounded by barbed wire fences. The requests of "present-absent" refugees (Palestinian who live in Israel but are classified by the state under the oxymoron `Present Absentees' to prevent them from claiming ownership of their property) to repair the mosque have been refused by the authorities.

A large mosque in the heart of a moshav in the Judean mountains serves as a warehouse and body shop for farming machines. There are 20 additional similar structures on the verge of collapse.

In 1997, when the residents of a community in the Western Galilee wanted to build an extention, they rammed the remnants of the village's abandoned mosque with a bulldozer and demolished it completely. Not far from there the authorities refuse to allow Palestinians to pray in the ancient mosque of another abandoned village, using the excuse that such prayer is "political organizing, almost a settlement and would set a precedent for agreeing to let the Palestinians return."

Several mosques serve as housing, and others are used for commercial and cultural purposes. The mosque of an abandoned village on the Iron Valley serves a kibbutz carpentry. A mosque in an artists' community in the Carmel serves partly as a restaurant and bar. Other mosques serve as museums and galleries. The large synagogue in a township near Rehovot is located inside the abandoned village's mosque, whose minaret was destroyed and the symbolic half crescent atop its dome has been replaced by a menorah.

And we haven't even mentioned yet the tombs of sheikhs that have become graves of holy Jewish figures - the "Dan tomb" that replaced the tomb of Sheikh Gharib, a local holy man, or the tomb of Sit Sakina in Tiberias, which became the tomb of Rachel, Rabbi Akiva's wife. Less than 40 Moslem cemeteries remained out of more than 150 that existed in abandoned villages. They too are run down and in constant danger of having their tombs smashed and of being violated and expropriated.

The Israeli government knows why it does not want to demand that the Palestinians protect synagogues. What if the Palestinians pose a counter demand - to compel Israel to look after the dilapidated mosques in its territory? And all the good-hearted people, whose heart aches to see the destruction of a synagogue - would they raise a hue and cry to save the mosques of Ijzim, Lajjun and Ghabbasiyah? At least they should acknowledge that the feelings aroused by the destruction of abandoned synagogues are also shared by hundreds of thousands of Israeli Moslems at the sight of their disappearing holy sights. Perhaps, when everyone recognizes that the pain over destruction is universal, the war over the holy places will end"

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Reading the Chilcot Inquiry Report more closely

Most commentary on the Chilcot Inquiry Report of and associated with the Iraq War, has been "lifted" from the Executive Summary.   The Intercept has actually gone and dug into the Report, with these revelations : "THE CHILCOT REPORT, the U.K.’s official inquiry into its participation in the Iraq War, has finally been released after seven years of investigation. Its executive summary certainly makes former Prime Minister Tony Blair, who led the British push for war, look terrible. According to the report, Blair made statements about Iraq’s nonexistent chemical, biological, and nuclear programs based on “what Mr. Blair believed” rather than the intelligence he had been given. The U.K. went to war despite the fact that “diplomatic options had not been exhausted.” Blair was warned by British intelligence that terrorism would “increase in the event of war, reflecting intensified anti-US/anti-Western sentiment in the Muslim world, including among Muslim communities in the

An unpalatable truth!

Quinoa has for the last years been the "new" food on the block for foodies. Known for its health properties, foodies the world over have taken to it. Many restaurants have added it to their menu. But, as this piece " Can vegans stomach the unpalatable truth about quinoa? " from The Guardian so clearly details, the cost to Bolivians and Peruvians - from where quinoa hails - has been substantial. "Not long ago, quinoa was just an obscure Peruvian grain you could only buy in wholefood shops. We struggled to pronounce it (it's keen-wa, not qui-no-a), yet it was feted by food lovers as a novel addition to the familiar ranks of couscous and rice. Dieticians clucked over quinoa approvingly because it ticked the low-fat box and fitted in with government healthy eating advice to "base your meals on starchy foods". Adventurous eaters liked its slightly bitter taste and the little white curls that formed around the grains. Vegans embraced quinoa as

Climate change: Well-organised hoax?

There are still some - all too sadly people with a voice who are listened to - who assert that climate change is a hoax. Try telling that to the people of Colorado who recently experienced horrendous bushfires, or the people of Croatia suffering with endless days of temps of 40 degrees (and not much less than 30 at night time) some 8-10 degrees above the norm. Bill McKibben, take up the issue of whether climate change is a hoax, on The Daily Beast : Please don’t sweat the 2,132 new high temperature marks in June—remember, climate change is a hoax. The first to figure this out was Oklahoma Senator James Inhofe, who in fact called it “the greatest hoax ever perpetrated on the American people,” apparently topping even the staged moon landing. But others have been catching on. Speaker of the House John Boehner pointed out that the idea that carbon dioxide is “harmful to the environment is almost comical.” The always cautious Mitt Romney scoffed at any damage too: “Scientists will fig