A night at the concert

–Arab citizens, not all but many, are now rioting, and some are being very violent.  Jews have been attacked, stores and restaurants trashed, synagogues defiled. They are in the process of destroying, or have already destroyed, 50 years of hard work by good people, Muslims, Jews, and Christians, to build a country where all citizens are treated equally. A Jewish nation, yes, but a nation that provides freedom and dignity for all of its citizens.

Had Israel made it to the mountain top? Of course not. What nation has? But we had made great strides as evidenced in our universities, the health care system, and other spheres of society. Israelis had taken great pride in the way in which the country had come together to tackle the coronavirus.

All of this progress has been serious damaged if not destroyed.  The bitter pill:  the silence of Israeli Arab leaders.

–The prospects of the “change” coalition coming together and the real possibility of Prime Minister Netanyahu staying in office. As I and many others, including former Netanyahu supporters, have written, it is way past time for the Prime Minister to go.  The possibility of extending his term is bad for the nation.

But the damage goes beyond Netanyahu. As I have previously written, there was the very real possibility that an Arab party, an Islamist one at that, would be key in supporting a coalition, and would be doing it in exchange for concrete, pragmatic gains for the Arab community.

And, there was a very real possibility that a good number of parties, including ones on the right side of the political spectrum, would serve in a coalition dependent on the Islamist party. There was even some chance of the party actually being part of the coalition.

Besides the usual police tactics, decisions, and overreactions, unfortunate occurrences that are endemic to policing everywhere but that can be particularly combustible in this region, there is a combination of causes. Among them:

–Final days of Ramadan, a reflective, community-minded month-long holiday that also brings with it heightened religious fervor and intensity, coinciding with Yom Yerushalayim, a day marking the 1967 reunification of Jerusalem after 19 years of illegal Jordanian rule during which Jews were prohibited from entering the Old City and during which many Jewish holy sites were desecrated and destroyed.  Unfortunately, some intentionally celebrate this day in a highly provocative, in-your-face manner.

Many in Israel’s security agencies urged that Yom Yerushalayim Day activities be greatly curtailed or cancelled. While there has been an effort in recent years by people with a more moderate political orientation to engage in activities promoting coexistence and goodwill, the day is still dominated by activities and people that are often obnoxious, overly nationalistic, and unnecessarily provocative. Still, people, even ones I don’t care for, have the right to gather and parade as long as they are not violent. In the meantime, 90,000 people came to Al Aqsa for Ramadan. We wouldn’t dare cancel that.

–Mahmoud Abbas, the 85 year-old President of the Palestinian Authority now in the 17th year of his four year term, cancelling the elections he had called. He laid the blame on a dispute with Israel over the participation in the election of Jerusalem’s Arab population, but it is doubtful that even his immediate family believed that was the real reason. Everyone, particularly the Palestinian “street,” knows that the real reason is that he feared losing the election.

Smelling an opportunity, Hamas capitalized on this embarrassment by stepping up its West Bank activities, particularly in “defending” the Al Aqsa Mosque from non-existent Israeli “aggression” and in supporting some Arab residents of Sheikh Jarrah who are fighting eviction by a right-wing Jewish group intent on reclaiming houses owned and occupied by Jews prior to 1948.

–Iran. The region’s major exporter of terror and destabilization, supporter of Hezbollah and Hamas, never misses an opportunity to stir the pot. It has upped its hateful anti-Israel rhetoric and its trading in false accusations.

–Sheikh Jarrah. If this happened in any other country, few would care. Almost no one would know about it. It involves about 100 people. It’s wound its way through the Israeli court system for years.

But, because it’s Israel and the Palestinians, because it involves Jews trying to resettle in a neighborhood where Jews lived with Arabs prior to 1948, because it’s a right-wing group with an agenda asserting the property rights, because Israel has more Western journalists than any other country in the region, because the story ties in nicely with the far left’s fiction that we are nothing but colonizers in the land in which we are an indigenous people, it’s a big deal. The EU, the UN, the U.S. and a host of NGO’s, have to get involved.

In the meantime, a million Uighurs in China are imprisoned and everyone is planning for the 2022 Winter Olympics there, and Qatar, a dictatorship built on slave labor is getting ready to host the 2022 World Cup in stadiums built by slave labor, and no one cares. Perhaps that’s the key. Perhaps we need to host a world sporting event.

It is doubtful the government could stop the evictions even if it wanted to. It is private parties that are involved. Technically, legally, the Jews may have the better case. However, it is not the original families that lost their properties in 1948. They sold their interests to a right-wing group that makes a point of trying to move Jews into eastern Jerusalem.

While the objectives and some of the tactics of the group seeking the evictions are questionable, the Arab world does not have real clean hands here. Abbas, Hamas, Hezbollah, Iran, and the Israeli Arab parties have used the dispute to heighten tensions and create friction.

Stress. Disappointment. Distress. Depression. Destruction. A deep hole. Not the best of times.  One thing is clear:  When this is over, the Jews and the Arabs will still be here.