Judea Magazine, No. 7.4
Hebron Etzion
_______ Bloc Betar Jerusalem
/Kiryat \ _______ ______ _____________
/ Arba \ / Efrat \ / \ / \_______
___/ \____/ \__/ \____/ Maaleh Adumim
######### #### #### # Tekoa ______
# # # # # # # # _____ / \
# # # # # ### ##### / \ / \
# # # # # # # # # _/ \____/ \_
### ## #### #### # #
"Rebuilding Jewish Life in Judea, Israel"
**********************************************************************
JUDEA ELECTRONIC MAGAZINE Vol.7, No.4 Av-Elul 5759/July-August 1999
**********************************************************************
Website: www.virtual.co.il\clients\judea
Contents:
* Life Under Barak
* Barak Changes Wye Maps
* Is Peace Possible? - Interview with Arik Sharon
* A Chairman for All Citizens - Interview with Benny Kashriel
* 70th Anniversary of the Hebron Pogrom / Interview with a Jewish
Survivor / Semitic Antisemites / Movie Review: To Live and Die in
Hebron
* Jewish Heroes: The Bridge Over the River Jordan
* Aliya is Our Most Important Task - Interview with Yitzhak Shamir
*************************************************************************
LIFE UNDER BARAK
The change of government in Israel has indeed been momentous for its
redefinition of the national consensus. As one Israeli writer noted,
kibbutz-born Ehud Barak respects the settlement enterprise.
According to news reports, 20 of the 24 outposts set up on land near
existing Jewish villages in Judea and Samaria in the waning months of the
Netanyahu government will remain in place.
This is where the Barak government has drawn the line -- for now.
It also means that -- for now -- free-market housing construction in the
Jewish towns in Judea and Samaria will continue undisturbed.
We have to live with this reality and get on with our task of
rebuilding Jewish life in our homeland. The new chairman of the Council
of Settlements in Judea, Samaria, and Gaza (Yesha), Maale Adumim Mayor
Benny Kashriel, has called for a population drive to settle Yesha as the
major need of the hour.
Homes built in 1998-99 are now complete and ready for occupancy in
many new Jewish villages throughout Judea and Samaria, with advertised
prices starting as low as $41,000 for a private house on a 500 sq. meter
lot. In Tekoa, as of this writing, there are still a few building lots
available for $5,000, on which you can design and build your own home.
Or you could be a pioneer and move into a trailer at one of those new
outposts. Pioneering opportunities don't come along very often to Jews
living in the metropolitan West.
************************************************************************
BARAK CHANGES WYE MAPS
According to press reports, on August 18, 1999, Prime Minister Barak
presented his Cabinet with some planned changes in the maps of the
Israeli withdrawal from 13% of Judea and Samaria. This figure was part
of the Wye agreement signed by former Prime Minister Netanyahu and Arafat
in November 1998, though no final maps were specified.
According to the unofficial map prepared by the previous government,
in response to American pressure to transfer additional territory to the
Arabs, an area of some 150 sq. km. in the northern Judean Desert
southeast of Tekoa was to become a "nature preserve" under Palestinian
civilian control. Apparently, Barak has decided to cancel any withdrawal
from the Judean Desert for security reasons involving the future
protection of the capital, Jerusalem.
Given the nature of the Wye agreement, however, the territory
retained in Judea must be matched by withdrawals elsewhere, reportedly in
Samaria. These alternative Israeli concessions appear to include
withdrawal from a nature preserve in northern Samaria, as well as the
removal of exclusive Israeli control from key roads on the Samarian
mountain ridge that today link scores of Jewish villages throughout the
region.
*************************************************************************
IS PEACE POSSIBLE?
Interview with Arik Sharon
Denise Bart
[Former Defense Minister Gen. Arik Sharon led the Israeli
counterattack into Egypt during the Yom Kippur War.]
Q: Do you see a solution anytime, or will we have to live like this
forever?
A: The problem is how the Jewish people in the Jewish state can
survive. The question is if it is clear to the Jewish people their
unquestionable right and duty to make possible the existence of a Jewish
democratic state that lives in security. Not just to live from election
to election but to live tens of years with security. This is the key.
And if to achieve this it is necessary to hold a sword in your hand, then
you must hold a sword in your hand.
Is it possible to reach a peace settlement today? In my opinion,
no. Is it possible to reach an agreement on something less than peace
that will last for some years, a type of non-belligerence, in my opinion,
yes.
(From _Makor Rishon_, Yoman, 20 Aug 99, p. 10+)
*************************************************************************
A CHAIRMAN FOR ALL CITIZENS
Interview with Benny Kashriel
Efie Meir
Benny Kashriel, Mayor of the City of Maale Adumim in Judea, just
east of Jerusalem, is the new Chairman of the Council of Judea, Samaria,
and Gaza (Yesha). According to Kashriel, "We have an agreement with
Barak that he won't surprise us with new regulations that "dry us out"
and we won't surprise him by bringing trailers up to unoccupied hilltops.
My red line is a building freeze or the removal of a Jewish village.
That would be a reason to go out and struggle. Since we know that there
is an Oslo agreement and a Wye agreement, it is clear to us that within
these limitations we need to strengthen our villages within the
boundaries of their master plans.
The new government stated in its basic guidelines that it would
allow building within the existing villages. There are a few small
villages with only a few families and we need to strengthen them so that
they won't load them on trucks in the middle of the night."
Kashriel is the first Chairman of the Yesha Council who is not
identified as religious. "In order to love Judea, Samaria, and Gaza you
don't have to pray three times a day, though prayer helps. People think
that in all the villages in Yesha everyone has a knitted kippa and a
beard, and they're all "anti." They don't know that 50 percent of the
men in Yesha do not wear kippot.
We need to bring an active message to the public that stresses
national interests. To explain that we are here to protect their water
reserves, that we are their security belt. I believe we'll receive great
sympathy and identification among the Israeli public. I also believe
that through discussions with Barak and using all legitimate means in our
fight, no village will be removed."
Q: But what if?
Kashriel: "Why 'what if, what if'? I say to you that they will not
remove villages. Why talk about a bleak future? I understand the problem
of the danger of removing villages."
Q: This sounds a bit naive.
K: "Then I'm naive. I built a city of 25,000 people with my
naivete. All the settlements of Gush Emunim arose on naivete, and I take
my hat off to those of Gush Emunim. Because of them there is the
settlement movement. But when times change you also need to act
differently."
(From _Makor Rishon_ Yoman, 23 Jul 99, p. 14-16)
*************************************************************************
70TH ANNIVERSARY OF THE HEBRON POGROM
The Jewish Community of Hebron marked the 70th anniversary of the
1929 pogrom, in which 67 Jews were slaughtered by their Arab neighbors,
at a public ceremony on 1 August 1999. Survivors and descendants of
victims of the carnage were present, as well as rabbis and public
figures.
The massacre destroyed the Hebron Jewish community and shook the
entire Jewish "yishuv" in pre-state Palestine at the time. Though these
riots were foreshadowed by earlier attacks in 1920 and 1921, the
country-wide scope of the riots in 1929 surpassed the previous ones in
severity. Fortunately, an early formation of the Hagana defense forces
prevented the massacre of the Jews of Jerusalem, Tel Aviv and Haifa, as
well as holding at bay thousands of Arabs who had come to kill the Jews
of Hulda. The riots brought about the end of the long-time existence of
the Jewish community of Gaza City, when local Arabs threatened the Jews
there and caused their emergency evacuation by British forces. The
Hagana had not yet made its presence felt in Hebron, the Galilee city of
Safed, or the Jerusalem-area community of Motza, and all three of these,
especially Hebron, suffered heavy losses.
Attorney Elyakim Ha'etzni, a Kiryat Arba resident and a student of
history of the era, told Arutz-7 that two main population sectors were
seriously shaken by the massacres:
"The first group shocked by the murders was the 'Old Yishuv,' Jews
who were either anti-Zionist or were not part of the pro-Zionist camp.
According to their own accounts, these Jews had been living peacefully
with their Arab neighbors in Hebron for generations, and had even
received promises from them that nothing bad would happen to them. The
Jews were convinced that the murderous Arab opposition was aimed only at
the Zionists and Zionism, and they never prepared any defense against
this violence, thinking that they were not part of the dispute. They
also did not wish to upset the Arabs by giving them the impression that
they didn't trust them."
"The second group traumatized by the massacres," continued Ha'etzni,
"was the Zionists. The depth of their trauma can only be appreciated by
studying the Zionist ethos of that period. The Zionists believed that as
soon as a Jew set his foot on this soil, new rules would apply to him.
The Zionists felt that the conditions of the exile simply did not apply
here. But if you compare the accounts of the 1929 Arab massacre of Jews
in Hebron to the accounts of the Kishinev pogroms 25 years earlier, you
will be startled by the parallels. The fact that a pogrom could take
place here simply did not jibe with the Zionist worldview."
* * *
INTERVIEW WITH A JEWISH SURVIVOR
One of the survivors of the 1929 massacre in Hebron is Rabbi Dov
Cohen, who was 17 at the time. Arutz-7 spoke with him about the tragic
events of the time:
Arutz-7: What were you doing at the time of the massacre?
RC: I was a yeshiva student learning at the Yeshiva of Hebron,
Knesset Yisrael - Slobodka.
Arutz-7: Prior to the massacre were there signs of what was about to
happen?
RC: Until that time, in Hebron, the Jews lived in peace and quiet
with the Arabs. There was tension in the country as a whole for a week or
two before the massacre. Not only in Hebron, but all over the country,
although in Hebron it was a bit worse. As I said, relations with our Arab
neighbors, prior to that night, were very good. After a day of studies,
the yeshiva boys used to go for long walks on the outskirts of the city
even very late at night, and feared nothing.
Arutz-7: Did the Arabs also attack the yeshiva in Hebron on the
night of the massacre?
RC: Not exactly. Allow me to explain: On Friday, Arab youths
started to throw rocks at us in our part of the city. Late that
afternoon, a young student named Shmuel Rosenholtz went to the yeshiva
before the rest of the students. He was there alone, and some time
later, Arab rioters broke into the yeshiva and murdered him. After
Shabbat began, we were informed that Shmuel had been murdered, and that
he was lying dead [in the study hall]. We were instructed not to go to
the yeshiva over Shabbat.
Anyhow, that night, the son of Rabbi Slonim, who was the manager of
what later became Bank Le'umi, went from house to house, telling people
that, upon his father's instructions, whomever was concerned for his own
safety could stay in his home. Rabbi Slonim was highly-regarded in the
community and even had a gun. I was personally not so worried about the
danger, and so I did not go to the Slonim home, although many people did.
In the course of that Shabbat, the Arabs murdered more people in that
house than anywhere else.
On Shabbat morning, almost the entire Jewish population gathered at
the Police Station, Beit Romano. Everyone recounted what had happened in
his home the previous night. We prayed the morning service. There was
no Torah there from which to read, just a Bible. After completing the
Musaf service, we prepared to recite the Kiddush. All of a sudden, we
began hearing noises outside the building; masses of Arabs were gathering
on the streets outside of the police station. I looked out the window,
and saw that thousands of Arabs were descending from Har Hebron to the
valley below - all shouting, "Itbach el Yahud!" ("Kill the Jews!") At one
point, some of them tried to break down the door of the police station.
[Ed. note: The survivors remained in Beit Romano for three days.
The Arabs rampaged their houses, and destroyed their property. A
religious quorum of 10 men was allowed to participate in the funeral for
the murdered Jews, held at night, in the ancient Jewish cemetery in the
city. The surviving Jews were taken to Jerusalem - exiled from their
homes, the city of the Patriarchs. For the first time in hundreds of
years, Hebron had no Jewish residents.]
Arutz-7: What do you think today of the Jewish settlement in Hebron?
RC: I am very happy...but I am still sad that we were exiled from
Hebron, I still have a heavy heart when I think of it. When there wasn't
a Jewish community there at all, it was painful. It is a little bit of a
consolation [that a Jewish community exists there today]...but it is
still impossible for Jews to reach certain neighborhoods where we used to
live.
Arutz-7: There is a portion of the Israeli population that believes
that Jews there [in Hebron] are guilty of harming the relations with the
Arabs.
RC: Why? The Jews have no right to live there? The Jews, who were
bequeathed the city from the patriarchs? And who lived there hundreds of
years?
(From Arutz Sheva News Service, 1 Aug 99
* * *
SEMITIC ANTISEMITES
Sarah Honig
Filmmaker Noit Geva recently produced a documentary inspired by her
grandmother's reminiscences of the horrors she saw as a child in Hebron.
Geva herself repeats her grandmother's description of a Jewish preteen
who was raped by 13 Arabs and then hanged upside down, over an open
flame, to roast to death. Geva wondered why the Arabs needed to go
beyond neat killing and decapitate, disembowel, sever limbs, gouge eyes,
and perform all sorts of ghastly, unthinkable mutilation.
(From _Jerusalem Post_, 20 Aug 99, p. B8.)
* * *
Movie Review:
TO LIVE AND DIE IN HEBRON
Calev Ben-David
The gripping new documentary "What I Saw in Hebron," by Noit and Dan
Geva, premiered at the Jerusalem Film Festival.
Said Noit, "Shortly before our daughter was born, my father Asher
told me he had something that grandma Zmira had written down, which he
thought I should read. It was titled 'What I Saw in Hebron.'"
Zmira's father, Rabbi Eliyahu Mani, had been one of the leaders of
that city's Sephardi community, just as his father and his father's
father (the Baghdad-born sage Eliyahu Ben Suleiman Mani) had been before
him. But the clan's illustrious history in Hebron ended in August 1929,
when local Arabs rose up and brutally slaughtered 67 members of the
city's Jewish community.
Geva learned that her grandmother had been a survivor of the
massacre. Just a day after that terrible event, Zmira Mani wrote a brief
eye-witness description of the events, at the request of Jewish Agency
officials investigating what had happened.
It began: "On Shabbat, August 24, at eight in the morning, I saw out
of the window of our house a large crowd of Arabs gathering by a nearby
garage. From time to time new groups of Arabs would arrive and then move
on, all of them were carrying clubs, knives or axes...
"Thirty minutes later, we heard an uproar from outside, with voices
and screams, coming through the doors. There was not even one policeman
to be found, and the Arabs entered in the courtyard of the Jews with no
opposition.
"My parents and I remained in our house, expecting at any minute to
be torn to pieces by the murderers. We lived on the fourth floor...and
from the floors below we heard screams and shouts for help, and we
couldn't get out. From the field next to the house, women and children
that had gathered started to hurl stones at us, shattering the window
panes of our home.
"Suddenly we heard banging on the front door, and a calming voice
cried out to us: 'Don't panic, don't panic.'
"My father opened the door and saw that it was an Arab we knew named
Abu Id Zaitoun. He held a sword in his hand, and behind him stood two
other Arabs, whom we learned afterwards were his brother and son.
"At first, when I saw his sword, I thought he had come to kill us. I
lost faith that we would be rescued, and started to climb up onto the
roof to throw myself off of it. But my parents, with Abu Id Zaitoun and
the two other Arabs protecting them with their swords, began to go down
the stairs and told me to follow them. Abu Id Zaitoun himself took my
hand, holding his sword in the other.
"Going down the steps I saw a body lying there and almost tripped
over it. I looked down and realized it was our neighbor, Avraham the
Wise. His body, resting awkwardly on the steps, was covered with blood,
and his arms and legs were twitching in agony. A crescent-shaped dagger
was sticking out of his belly, and blood was flowing from his entrails.
"By his side I saw an Arab whom I recognized as the porter who
delivered canisters of heating oil to our house from time to time. The
porter looked for a moment at the dying man, retrieved his dagger and ran
outside into the courtyard.
"Abu Id Zaitoun led us down to the cellar under our house, shut us
in there and left. Shortly afterwards he brought in a few more Jews he
had rescued....Two hours later Abu Id Zaitoun returned to the house with
a police escort, and they took us to the police station along with other
Jews who had been saved."
After the massacre, some Jewish families did try to resettle in
Hebron, but they were permanently removed by the British authorities in
1936 at the start of the "Arab revolt" in Mandatory Palestine.
The Gevas located some 15 Jewish survivors who had witnessed the
massacre -- all, of course, had been children or teenagers at the time --
and were able to interview a dozen of them to provide the chilling
reminiscences which comprise the heart of "What I Saw in Hebron."
Miriam Goldschmidt, who today lives in Toronto, spoke with clear-
eyed precision when she recounted how a crowd of Arabs broke into her
family's home, and she watched as they started to drag her father out the
door to his death.
When she grabbed her father to try to hold him back, one of the
Arabs tried to pull her off. Another remarked that it was easier just to
kill her, and he smashed her head with a club. Goldschmidt says she bears
the scars to this day.
For Geva, who found herself breaking down in tears while editing the
film, the experience of doing "What I Saw in Hebron" meant re-evaluating
some of her views about the massacre.
"I initially wanted to make a film about the Arabs who saved the
Jews during the massacre, but found myself truly shocked by some of the
things the other Hebron Arabs did that day -- not all of which can be
explained by the mufti stirring up things from above. While any killing
is terrible, why did they have to cut off hands, why take out eyes, why
murder women and children?"
"What I Saw in Hebron" gives voice to only one member of Hebron's
current Jewish community, a woman by the name of Anat Cohen who notes
skeptically that "of the tens of thousands of Arabs living in Hebron in
1929, only 19 Arab families sheltered Jews."
One of the film's more intriguing points deals with the effort by a
small number of the survivors of the massacre to reclaim their old houses
after Israel retook the city in 1967. One of them, Yossi Ezra, is shown
saying that they were told by then defense minister Moshe Dayan to remain
patient while the government worked out a solution that would allow them
to get their family homes back.
"I don't see any prospect for peaceful relations between Jews and
Arabs in Hebron in this generation," Geva says. "If it happens, it's
going to take plenty of time, maybe even 50 years."
Perhaps, muses Geva at the end of her film, her daughter will live
to see the day when Jews and Arabs again spend their summer vacations
together in Hebron, which, because of its altitude, is one of the coolest
places in Israel. But whether or not that day ever comes, "What I Saw in
Hebron" will remain a powerful reminder that for one terrible day 70
years ago, that temperate city was truly hell on Earth.
(From _Jerusalem Post_ Magazine, 9 July 99, p. 19-21)
*************************************************************************
Jewish Heroes:
THE BRIDGE OVER THE RIVER JORDAN
Emil Brig was born in Poland and survived the Holocaust as a
partisan. At age 25 he was a demolition sergeant in the Barak battalion
of the Golani brigade during the War of Independence. The supply lines
of the Arab Legion and the Iraqi expeditionary forces ran through bridges
over the Jordan River at Naharayim.
On May 14, 1948, the battalion commander ordered Brig to blow up the
bridge at all cost. He requested the tractors of Kibbutz Naharayim to
start working to distract the Arab guards on the bridges. Brig then
crawled in broad daylight through a field of thorns and thistles over to
the first bridge, right under the noses of the guards. He carefully
attached the explosives to the huge posts of the ancient bridge, and to
the other bridges as well, connected all of them with electric wire,
retreated, and took cover. He tried to set off the explosives but
nothing happened. The battery supplying the electric current was too
weak.
Brig crawled back to Naharayim and returned at night with simple
fuse wire only a few meters long, that would burn at the rate of a few
centimeters a second. He connected the wire, struck a match, and lit it.
The match flared briefly, but was seen by the Arab guards who directed
heavy fire at Brig. At the last second, he managed to roll for cover and
from there to watch as the bridges exploded one after the other,
preventing Jordanian tanks from crossing the river.
(From _Lionhearts: Heroes of Israel_ (Warner 1998), pp. 118-119)
*************************************************************************
ALIYA IS OUR MOST IMPORTANT TASK
Interview with Yitzhak Shamir
Zeev Sharon
[Former Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir, now 80, was the pre-War of
Independence commander of the Lehi freedom fighters underground
organization.]
"Today there are 5 million Jews here, but we hope to bring at least
another 5 million Jews from around the world. We have to bring it about
that the majority of the Jewish people will be here, in the Land of
Israel."
"During the time of my government, a million Jews came from the CIS.
This didn't just happen. We worked in many ways to advance and speed up
their aliya. But this is just the beginning of the road. Another
million potential immigrants are still there whom we can bring, and there
is also the large community of American Jewry. We also need to bring a
few million from there."
"Most of the English live in England, the French in France, and the
Italians in Italy. That is the normal condition. Therefore, we need to
strive for having most of the Jewish people living in their homeland.
This is the only way to exist here independently, strong and healthy.
(From _Makor Rishon_, Yoman, 20 Aug 99, p. 20+)
*************************************************************************
*** BACK ISSUES ***
1993 - Vol. 1: Issues 1.1-1.6, 1994 - Vol. 2: Issues 2.1-2.6
1995 - Vol. 3: Issues 3.1-3.6, 1996 - Vol. 4: Issues 4.1-4.6
1997 - Vol. 5: Issues 5.1-5.6, 1998 - Vol. 6: Issues 6.1-6.6
1999 - Vol. 7: Issues 7.1-7.4
Back issues and a complete Subject Index are available through the
JUDEA WEBSITE: http://www.virtual.co.il/clients/judea
To SUBSCRIBE (free), send e-mail to: listproc@vjlists.com
Message: subscribe judea firstname lastname
JUDEA Magazine is a bi-monthly electronic magazine produced and
transmitted from Judea, Israel, specializing in stories about the rebirth
of Jewish life in a tiny and unique corner of civilization. Mail address:
Judea Magazine, Yael and Mark Ami-El, Editors; Tekoa; D.N. North Judea,
Israel, Fax: 972-2-9964588. JUDEA Magazine is offered without charge on
the Internet. All material may be reprinted with attribution to JUDEA
Magazine and original source as cited. Comments are welcome by e-mail to:
amiel2@crosswinds.net
*************************************************************************
Your comments and questions are welcome. Please reply to:
amiel2@crosswinds.net