TEL AVIV JOURNAL OCTOBER 26, 2011
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No, I am not writing about whether the Palestinian Arabs should have their own sovereign slice of Jerusalem. That is an extremely complicated matter, not least because increasingly the Arabs of the holy city and its close environs want to stay with Israeli rule, paying high taxes, enjoying liberties to which even their brothers and sisters enjoying whatever there is to enjoy during the Arab Spring season will not and cannot imagine and—most of all, I suppose—living, more or less, in a highly developed social welfare state. There is reliable polling that confirms this fact.
In any case, this happens not to be an urgent matter—whatever Dame Ashton says. There will be no peace agreement for many seasons to come and, frankly, I can’t imagine a reasonable one to which the Palestinians would agree. One more point: The frontiers of 1967—really the armistice lines of 1949—are dead, finished, kaput. Barack Obama’s nostalgia for them is frankly inexplicable. And a second point: There will be no repatriation of Palestinian “refugees” because by the time the Palestinian authorities come around to their senses there will be not one true refugee still alive. A third point: People who now live in the same cartographical Palestine where their old homes were located—but, let’s say, ten miles to the east—are not refugees. In fact, until their Arab rulers started the Six Day War, these “refugees” were all living under sovereignty of their own: In Gaza under the Egyptians, in the West Bank under the Jordanians. And virtually the same in Lebanon and Syria—both of them remnants of the Ottoman empire, more or less, fragments of historic Palestine.
Anyway, sorry. The people who want a division of Jerusalem and who are, I fear, about to get it are
the ultra-orthodox Jews of the city. Right now, the almost complete takeover is in one small but horrible area of the municipality called the Mea Shearim, the hundred gates. It is the second Jewish neighborhood to have been built in the late 19th century beyond the Old City walls, and it was settled by pious folk who’ve only become from one generation to the next more pious, more dogmatic, more lawless. They wouldn’t rise up against the Turks or the British. But against the Jewish police, why not? Doing so is, in fact, a blessing.
You guessed it. The issue is the sight of women. Zealots don’t want to see them, unless they are their wives. So they have built walls down the middle of the streets of Mea Shearim separating the sexes and protecting their own eyes from temptress ladies. But, believe me, these shapeless persons are nothing to look at. Still, their men want to protect them … or, my true guess is, to demean them. Once they succeed in this quarter of Jerusalem they will go on to conquer other sections of the city, many of which are already dominated by these schismatic and fanatical Jews.
The area of the hundred gates is ideologically dominated by the Neturei Karta, the self-styled “guardians of the city.” They are extreme anti-Zionists, do not pay taxes or fill out census forms or cooperate in any way with Israeli authorities. If my memory is correct, they use United Nations stamps instead of the philately of the government postal services. You can see them at Palestinian protest rallies in their all-black gear, denouncing Israel for having been created by men and women, and not, as the Bible promised, by the Messiah. They dutifully attend Dr. Ahmadinejad’s jamborees. But they are not alone in their hatred of the Jewish State or the Zionist movement. They partner with other milder psychopaths, also led by rabbis. They do no useful work and are supported by groups and grouplets of their own in America and Europe.
How many of these Jews are there? Only God knows, I suppose. After all, He receives their prayers and counts them.
Do not think that the divided streets aimed at separating the sexes is without a follow-up strategy. It is to deny in these enclaves of the city the authority of the State of Israel itself. They then will claim that the liberated sectors constitute a corpus separandum, like the Vatican vis-à-vis Rome. This may be portentous. On the other hand, these sanctimonious men are not exactly known for their secure hold on reality.
Actually, they have already achieved small triumphs all over Jerusalem. In some areas, where the ultra-orthodox live among the secular and the modern orthodox, the fanatics intimidate their neighbors into refraining from playing music, any music, on the Sabbath. And just imagine if the recording happens to be Verdi’s Requiem. As it happens, these particular Jews don’t allow themselves the pleasures of a female voice.
And if you’ve been to Jerusalem recently, you couldn’t have helped noticing that billboards around town are without women, as well.
How do these zealots impose their will? They go into the streets and make mayhem. The cops come and touch them up a bit. Then the self-styled victims start shouting “Nazis, Nazis.” What the police really should do is put a bunch of them in the cooler. Only then they will stop. But maybe only for a short while.
Martin Peretz is the editor-in-chief emeritus of The New Republic.
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18 comments
What a bunch of deluded a-holes these Mea Shearim denizens are. Do they think they could survive in an Muslim State? Yes, they will be allowed to discriminate against women, but at the same time they would be oppressed. Ask the Copts what it's like to live in a Muslim dominated society. Peretz is right the ultra Orthodox are so benighted that they don't even know on which side their bread is honeyed. They lash out against their fellow Jews because they know that nothing will happen to them. btw: I thought the Israeli government also helps to support these lazy schleps.
- arnon
October 26, 2011 at 12:21am
The Israeli government is hampered by rules and agreements negotiated by Ben Gurion. Since then it was only down the slippery slope.
- rmakover@swbell.net-OLD
October 26, 2011 at 6:44am
How should the state of Israel deal with this community, Marty? Throw them in jail? Stop collecting garbage in their street? Cut off electricity and water? Force the children to attend state's schools? How are these measures to be imposed, in a democracy? These are die-hard anti-Zionists who really really don't care one whit about public opinion. But they aren't half as harmful to the state of Israel's future as their Muslim counterparts in Um-El-Fahm (about whom you do not write probably because you are afraid of being labeled a bigot, and Jews are always an easier target for sneers, aren't they?) So how do you integrate them without doing violence to their very souls, never mind their bodies? Any practical solutions? http://hurryupharry.org/2011/07/07/neturei-karta-sheikh-raed-salah-has-always-expressed-brotherhood-with-the-jewish-people/
- noga1
October 26, 2011 at 7:06am
Peretz afraid to be labelled a "bigot." What nonsense. noga1 "How should the state of Israel deal with this community, Marty? Throw them in jail? Stop collecting garbage in their street? Cut off electricity and water? Force the children to attend state's schools?" All of the above. Better still, give Meah Shaearim to Hamas. These ultra Orthodox don't acknowledge democracy they prefer to live under Shariah law than in a democratic society.
- arnon
October 26, 2011 at 8:50am
Good for you Marty.
- WandreyCer
October 26, 2011 at 11:20am
not least because increasingly the Arabs of the holy city and its close environs want to stay with Israeli rule, paying high taxes, enjoying liberties to which even their brothers and sisters enjoying whatever there is to enjoy during the Arab Spring season will not and cannot imagine If I may digress from the main topic, why not give the denizens of Kafr Aqam their own state and then let them annex more villages of like-minded Palestinians? This would create a non-Hamas alternative to Fatah and thus a negotiating partner who might actually accept something tolerable and remove the obstacle of letting the PA collapse if western funding is withheld.
- sighthnd
October 26, 2011 at 11:31am
"All of the above. Better still, give Meah Shaearim to Hamas. These ultra Orthodox don't acknowledge democracy they prefer to live under Shariah law than in a democratic society." You probably jest, but my guess is that the Neturei Karta and other extreme anti-Zionists would have no problems living as dhimmis under the Shariah law of Hamas, paying zakat and saying their prayers for so long as their masters don't shake them down for more money. IIRC, Hamas's charter for a liberated Palestine in Israel's place accounts for a Jewish community in the territory that is supine and obedient to their Islamic masters, who would leave them alone to study, pray and work among themselves so long as they don't get any ideas about political sovereignty or civil rights beyond those specified in the Koran and Hadith. The denizens of Mea Shearim would be good candidates for that kind of a Jewish society. It's the rest of the Jews of Israel -- the ones who expect national self-determination and treatment as something other than a minority religious sect to be tolerated -- who would have a problem with Hamas's ideas.
- wildboy
October 26, 2011 at 12:19pm
I agree with Arnon 110%. (I'd go to 111% but percentages don't go that high.) And I second Jill's words of enthusiam for Peretz's posting. What should be done with groups that persistently violate the civil law and maybe the criminal law and can't be stopped by suasion, moral or otherwise? Generally, apply to them the remedies that the law provides with as much vigour, persistence, force and amplitude as is necessary to heal and prevent their breaches.
- basman
October 26, 2011 at 1:22pm
Wildboy's guess is absolutely correct, even though Hamas would tolerate less nonsense than the Zionists.
- amidut
October 26, 2011 at 2:17pm
Boy I am with you on this one! Many years ago one man on motorcycle came down a hill in Jerusalem in the dark. Those monsters called Neturei Karta had put a chain across a street at the bottom of a hill in the dark because it was Friday night, the Shabat. The motorcyclist hit the chain and died. No one said I am sorry for this death then. Israel has no law to deport those Jewish enemies of Israel who are allied with Achmedinajad and it should.
- Poupic
October 26, 2011 at 2:20pm
I am with noga, what are the practical solutions? In the US ultra orthodox behave similarly but we do fine with them. When I was a kid they used to go to camps in the poconos and never bothered anyone. Hell, the same with the amish here. Except stopping them from trying to remake the public square, I honestly don't know what else can be done.
- blackton
October 26, 2011 at 3:04pm
Not that complicated. The US Supreme Court has wrestled with these questions many times in the context of the First Amendment's free exercise clause. The answer is pretty simple. No matter that the claim is grounded in religion, there is no exemption at all from the dictates of ordinary civil and criminal law of general applicability. It is the responsibility of the State of Israel to prevent any group from creating lawless territory. It is a terrible irony that Israel rhetorically and repeatedly attacks the weak Palestinian government for failing to control terrorist elements while the State of Israel, far stronger, better organized and facing unarmed religious fanatics, is unable to summon the will to require the zealots to observe the law. If Israel cannot do this, how does expect the far weaker Palestinians to do it against an armed minority?
- roidubouloi
October 26, 2011 at 5:38pm
"afraid of being labeled a bigot" ...Have you ever read Marty Peretz before? As for the original topic, I agree overall but have one quibble: I'm not sure that the phrase "shapeless persons [who] are nothing to look at" works well in a context of criticizing the demeaning of women.
- frippo
October 26, 2011 at 6:03pm
Blackton -- I'd add hitting them in the pocketbook by allowing civil suits against organizations that encourage the infringement of rights. Or *something.* More broadly speaking: Israel needs to get the ultra-orthodox in-line swiftly or it's in real trouble with American Jews. J-Street and younger Jews disenchanted with Likkud politics is not that big of a problem. But try passing that law that excommunicates American Jews who trace their Judaism to a convert by a Reform or Conservative temple, or maybe a grandfather who intermarried but whose grandmother didn't convert because Reform recognizes patrilineal Jews. I've talked with Israelis who think that the response will merely be grumbling, and American Jews who describe it like a close friend trying to kill their child. Even Jews not directly affected will have loved ones no longer considered Jews by the Jewish State, no longer covered by the law of return. And this is just one example of the poison the ultra-orthodox might bring. (Total sidebar, but someone should get those orthodox Jews who run Kars-4-Kids to quit the deceptive fundraising -- unless you consider funding orthodox Jewish education for Jewish children the equivalent of "for kids.")
- Lymon1
October 26, 2011 at 6:05pm
blackton " Hell, the same with the amish here." The Amish have been having their own problems with modernity and each other.
- arnon
October 26, 2011 at 7:43pm
my arrival is from RealClearWorld, which quite possibly proves that whoever chooses what to post at RCW only reads the title, and must have thought this was about what Peretz emphatically opened that it is not: "No, I am not writing about whether the Palestinian Arabs should have their own sovereign slice of Jerusalem. ..." I did read this yesterday and the comments, but continue to find Peretz's revulsion of the ultra-orthodox of Israel to be 'distractive'. so, back to finding out how many women in Yemen uncovered their faces yesterday. THAT is interesting news from the edge of chaos affectionately branded "Arab Spring".
- K2K
October 27, 2011 at 9:12am
http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2011/10/drawing-an-israel-palestine-border/247264/ very interesting series, seems mostly as videos, on all the mapping solutions, except for Peretz's problem in Jerusalem. But, thought some of you would want to look at all the other maps :)
- K2K
October 27, 2011 at 11:31am
This is symptomatic of Israel's tendency to allow the ultra-orthodox their own state within a state. In light of their refusal to work for a living, serve in the military, and send their kids to schools that aren't ridiculously backward, is it any surprise that they feel entitled to get away with crazy stuff like this?
- WillPastor
October 27, 2011 at 12:44pm