Israel Matzav

Hebron's Jews called the 'definition of Zionism' by... The Wall Street Journal

The picture at left is a nice picture of Meorath haMachpeila (the Cave of the Patriarchs); the caption that came through with it is unfortunate.

Last Sunday and Monday were the 80th Gregorian calendar anniversary of what's known here as "airuei Tarpat" (the events of 5789). In honor of the anniversary, The Wall Street Journal published this op-ed, which I thought nailed it regarding Hebron: Tarpat extinguished the most ancient Jewish community in Palestine.

With synagogues destroyed, Jewish property converted into storerooms and barns for livestock, and the ancient cemetery desecrated, few signs remained that there had ever been a Jewish presence in Hebron.

But nearly 40 years later, after the Six-Day War of 1967, a small group of religious Zionists returned to Hebron to rebuild the destroyed community. "What was in the past in Hebron," declared their matriarch Miriam Levinger, "is what will happen in the future. Always!" So it would be.

The Jewish community of Hebron—some 700 people—recently celebrated the 40th anniversary of their return. This month they commemorate the 80th anniversary of Tarpat. All the other ancient peoples mentioned in the Bible have vanished. But Jews, a community of memory, still live in Hebron.

Hebron Jews are relentlessly vilified as fanatics who illegally occupy someone else's land. As religious Zionists, they are the militant Jewish settlers whom legions of Jewish and non-Jewish critics love to hate. It is seldom noticed that their most serious transgression—settlement in the biblical land of Israel—is the definition of Zionism: the return of Jews to their historic homeland.

Read it all.

posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 11:45 AM