Jerusalem Maths

[loic]

Last Friday we went on an alternative archaeological tour of the Silwan neighbourhood of East Jerusalem. The tours are run by Israeli archaeologists who feel that the archaeology done in the area often referred to as the City of David aren't done professionally. The Israeli Government and the settler organization El Ad use archaeological techniques

Comments

[angriest]

Didn't the Romans only run the city because they lay seige to it and massacred a lot of Jews? (Roman history shaky.)

[loic]

The Romans (from my poor knowledge of history and random reading of encyclopedias) controlled Jerusalem because they controlled most of the Mediterranean. For a while they ruled outright, then they installed a client state, then the Jews revolted and the Romans destroyed their temple and exiled them. Fairly standard fare in Roman (and modern) history.

[anxiolytic]

On the one hand I can understand the want to describe persecutions over a longer term, from both sides. However, it is a legitimacy that the Jewish side can only win.

If we take the starting point from British control over Palestine then both sides are equally as weak.

I do not know the way forward, but I have a hunch that it has got to do with education. All sides need to know what happened, and as much as can be distilled, why. Supreme anger, either by the polity of Israel and the conscription armed forces, or the Palestinian peoples and their paramilitary forces, is not the answer.

Caveat: I feel an unexplained empathy for the Jewish diaspora (maybe from too much reading about their history). But I am repulsed when the Israeli government blatantly represses the prospect of peace. I am also repulsed by the way much of the powers of the middle east use the suffering of the Palestinian people for their own end.

[loic]

I guess I don't feel that the Jewish people have a monopoly on persecution or on a connection to Jerusalem. I understand that they legitimately feel that they have a history of persecution and of connection to Jerusalem, but I don't feel that those histories give them the right to persecute, or the right to control Jerusalem exclusively. When I looked at the history of Jerusalem I was actually surprised how little of it had anything to do with the Jewish people

Jerusalem Maths

[anonymous]

Okay, so Jerusalem has had a checkered history.

Perhaps the Jews cannot make an exclusive claim to this city.

However, Jewish identity is concentrated in this area.

The Islamic world, on the other hand is a much larger place.

For the Jews, where else?

Re: Jerusalem Maths

[loic]

I don't think that Jews shouldn't be in Jerusalem or have access to the city. There have been Jewish (and Judean) people in Jerusalem for almost it's entire history, there's just been everyone else there too. It seems like demanding that it must be exclusively the capital of a Jewish state is a little selfish, unrealistic and short-sighted. Sadly that's how the game is too often played by all sides. I mostly am saddened for my lovely Israeli and Palestinian friends who have to live in the middle of all of this bullshit.