Labor Party leader Ehud Barak, who last year said if he had been born a Palestinian, he would have joined a terrorist organization, declared on January 24 that "This election campaign is a struggle of the entire People of Israel against the extremists from Tel Romeida and Moskowitz."
Those who justify Arabs joining terrorist organizations are the real extremists; those who support the Jewish residents living in Hebron's Tel Romeida neighborhood and on my property in Jerusalem's Mount of Olives neighborhood are part of the broad Jewish consensus, in Israel and the Diaspora, in favor of the right of Jews to live in their holiest cities, Jerusalem and Hebron.
Ironically, Barak's attack on the residents of Tel Romeida-Hebron puts him at odds with David Ben-Gurion. In a personal letter to me, dated September 18, 1968, after the cancellation of a government order that had temporarily restricted Jewish settlement in Hebron, Ben-Gurion wrote: "I am certain that you know already that the foolish order was abolished, and I hope Jews (also from the States) will settle in Hebron and its environs in the near future."
The land in the Jerusalem neighborhood known as the Mount of Olives, or Ras al-Amud, was originally acquired by Jews way back in the 1800s , and subsequently contained a large Jewish population. It is also adjacent to the sacred 2,500 year-old Mount of Olives cemetery, the largest and most ancient Jewish cemetery in the world. In an act of violence and hatred against Jews, Palestinian Arab rioters drove out the area's Jewish residents during the 1930s, and Arab settlers illegally occupied the neighborhood. Today, it is bordered by an Israeli police station (situated there since 1948), a Christian religious site, and the Jewish cemeteryit hardly qualifies as an 'Arab' or 'Muslim' neighborhood.
I have been given permission by the Israeli authorities to build 132 homes on my Mount of Olives property. In addition, in order to help assure local harmony, the Israeli government is sponsoring the construction of four times as many homes for Jerusalem Arabs500 housesas are being built on my property. Furthermore, a maternity clinic for Arab mothers is being built on a portion of my property as well. What could better symbolize mankind's hopes for a better tomorrow, than a neighborhood where people of all races and religions can live side by side, and a clinic where mothers will be educated and given assistance in caring for their newborn children?
Racial segregation could not last forever in the United States; the forces of decency overcame it. Apartheid could not last forever in South Africa; the fighters for integration and coexistence would not rest until apartheid was brought down. Racism and apartheid must not be permitted in Jerusalem, either.
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Outpost - 12 - February 1999