[(Continued from p.8)]
to coincide with Israel Independence Day, Jordan hosted an entire conference of these cranks in Amman. But the intifada brought with it what might be called Judaism denial as well: numerous Palestinian Arab spokesmen have claimed that the Temple never existed at all, that it is a Jewish invention for political gain, and that the Jewish attachment to Jerusalem is historically and religiously non-existent. The inimitable Hanan Ashrawi (herself a Christian, by the way) keeps warning against "the Judaizing of Jerusalem." On April 21, the Waqf and assorted Moslem political groups, including one calling itself "Al Aqsa," fiercely attacked a sound and light exhibit in Jerusalem that showed a "Virtual Temple" on a large screen, a visual image of what the Second Temple of Herod looked like. The Moslems called this an act of aggression and racism because everybody knows the Jews never had any Temple, and the creation of a computer program that simulates what it might have looked like is a violation of the human rights of all Moslems. (Israeli TV news program Erev Hadash, 21 April).The consequences for Jews of Palestinian erasure of their historical bond with Jerusalem are clear enough: the PLO can justify to the world its stonings, fire-bombings, child sacrifices, lynchings, and so on. But what are the consequences of this erasure of Judaism for Christians? At this point my argument must be pragmatic rather than ethical. If Christians won't speak up for the ancient Jewish kinship to Jerusalem when it takes some courage to do so, surely they should speak up for the history and central claims of their own religion. As Cynthia Ozick put it last October (in the Wall Street Journal), "If Judaism has no roots in Jerusalem, then Christianity was never born....If there never was a Temple, then where did Jesus walk?" The Christian stake in Israeli control of Jerusalem has to do not only with the protection of Christian holy sites, and not only with the preservation of the Temple Mount for Christian millennial expectations. It is an act of preservation of the very heart of Christianity.
Edward Alexander is professor of English at the University of Washington. His most recent book is Irving Howe: Socialist, Critic, Jew (Indiana University Press).
In the Middle Ages, when life was typically precarious for Jews and assaults and murders commonplace, the major defense available to them was the law, which, if rulers were willing to enforce it, usually offered some modicum of protection. Punishment for perpetrators would at least signal a warning to other would-be attackers. But when Jews demanded justice in the wake of crimes against them, a common retort from their enemies, built upon an anti-Jewish canard dating from the very beginning of the Jewish exile, was that the Jews were too focused on stern justice and devoid of mercy. They should, they were told, be more sensitive to the humanity of their tormenters and less bent on cold retribution. A variation on the same theme was that they were too narrowly attuned to the letter of the law and ought to be more sensitive to its supposed "spirit."
Sad to say, one finds chilling echoes of the same perverse arguments in the Mitchell Commission report on the breakdown of the Middle East peace process. Arafat and the Palestinian Authority have violated virtually every written commitment they made in the Oslo agreements, and those violations have been the source of the recent bloodshed. Arafat has built up armed forces far exceeding those allowed by Oslo and has smuggled in armaments forbidden by the accords. He has, in violation of Oslo, incited violence against Israel in his media and in his schools, and, in further violation, he has failed to dismantle the Islamic fundamentalist organizations that have been chief agents of anti-Israel terror but has instead protected them and colluded with them. After Arafat's rejection of the Camp David proposals of former Israeli Prime Minister Barak and former President Clinton, he instructed his forces to map out a new campaign of violence to wring more concessions from Israel, despite his many written commitments to settle all differences by peaceful means, and he unleashed that campaign last September.
Yet the Mitchell Commission report is silent on all these violations of the letter of Oslo, noting only that both sides have since September engaged in fighting and calling on both to desist. Only on one matter does it go beyond these bland recommendations and that is to urge Israel to implement a total freeze on construction in the territories. No such freeze is part of Oslo, and while Yitzhak Rabin agreed to build no new settlements--a commitment that has been adhered to by every subsequent Prime Minister--this was a unilateral concession outside the Oslo framework. Yet the Mitchell Commission insists Israel go further and desist from all building, even in existing settlements, suggesting that this is somehow necessary for the "peace process" to resume, in effect insisting on Israeli concessions to some imagined "spirit" of Oslo even as the commission is silent on crucial Palestinian violations of the letter of Oslo.
The importance of the settlement issue cannot be overstated. In the context of the Oslo agreements, the territories are disputed areas, with the borders between Israel and the emerging Palestinian entity to be arrived at by bilateral negotiations. This is consistent with UN Resolution 242, which called not for a return to the pre-1967 borders--on the contrary, the chief framers of the resolution believed that a return to those bor-
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August 2001 - 9 - Outpost