Death in a Jerusalem Yeshiva

David Aikman

Where Do They Go from Here?

The murder in early March of eight Jewish students at the Mercaz Harav yeshiva in Jerusalem established some disturbing precedents. To begin with, it was the first major outbreak of violence in Jerusalem since 2004 and the first in Israel as a whole since a suicide-bomb blast in Tel Aviv in 2006. Second, it was committed by an Arab resident of East Jerusalem with no previously known ties to terrorist groups. That shook the nerves not only of Jewish residents of West Jerusalem, in which the murders took place, but of Arab East Jerusalemites worried about potential reprisals against them. Whatever their views on Israeli-Palestinian relations in general, East Jerusalemites have not usually been involved in major violence between Jews and Arabs. Third, an official daily newspaper of the Palestinian Authority, with which Israel is attempting to negotiate a peaceful settlement of issues leading to a Palestinian state, praised the murder without reservation. Al Hayat al Jadida placed a picture of the shooter, Alaa Abu D’heim, on its front page, proclaiming him to be a shahid—that is, as a fighter who had given his life in jihad, he had earned instant placement in the Muslim version of paradise, complete with access to seventy-two virgins.

In one sense, the Jerusalem yeshiva murders were part of what has been rather lazily dubbed by the media the “cycle of violence” between Israel and the Palestinians. They were claimed by more than one Palestinian terrorist group as a response to Israel’s recent incursions into Gaza that left at least 120 people dead. Yet the IDF Gaza incursions were themselves prompted by the relentless rain of rockets fired from Gaza onto the Israeli city of Sderot—not a “settlement” in “occupied territory”—barely a mile from the border with Gaza. Despite this flare-up, neither the Palestinians nor the Israelis have walked away from the negotiations between them midwifed by the US. To underline the continuing importance of American diplomatic efforts, yet another American envoy was in the Middle East to engage in talks with the region’s various leaders, especially those of Israel and the Palestinians. He is Vice President Dick Cheney.

It is, sadly, a fair bet that Vice President Cheney’s trip, though it may underline the fact that Washington really, really wants results, will not pull any rabbits out of the Palestinian-Israeli hat. Why not? For two reasons. First, the Palestinian authority, which does not control Gaza, is unable to pressure Hamas, the political party that does, to restrain the young men who fire the rockets at Israeli civilians. Second, the Palestinian Authority itself is conflicted to the point of schizophrenia about what it wants to see happen to Israel. On the one hand, it negotiates as though it accepted the Israeli and U.S. premise of a two-state solution for Israel, the West Bank, and Gaza. On the other hand, with messages similar to the one in Al Hayat al Jadida, it continually winks to its own people that it doesn’t really want to live side-by-side with Israel. It would actually like to see the state of Israel disappear. If you don’t believe this, look at the geography textbooks in Palestinian schools from the first grade upwards; Israel simply doesn’t exist on Palestinian maps.

About the time of the funerals of the yeshiva students, at a hotel on Mount Scopus in Jerusalem the Fifth Jerusalem Conference was taking place. This annual event brings together major Israeli politicians, academic experts, and foreign visitors to ensure that Israel’s claim to sovereignty over Jerusalem is kept at the center of public attention. This year, participants heard among other speakers from Israeli archeologist Eilat Mazar, who displayed slides of coins excavated from the site of King David’s city in Jerusalem engraved with Jewish names specifically mentioned in the history section of the Hebrew Bible.

Why is archeology important? Ever since the Camp David negotiations between Palestinian Authority Chairman Yassir Arafat and Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak in the summer of 2000, Palestinian Authority leaders have been claiming that there is no evidence that the Jews in historic times ever controlled Jerusalem, much less had a Temple there. This assertion, of course, conflicts with Palestinian statements going back several decades. It also begs the much larger question: if Jerusalem was never an important Jewish city, why was the first qibla, the direction of prayer for faithful Muslims, towards Jerusalem and not Mecca? Mohammed based his “apostleship” on the assumption that he was the “seal” of the prophets whose first exemplars had come to the fore in the Holy Land of the Jews. He only changed the qibla to Mecca because the Jews of Arabia did not consider him an authentic Biblical prophet.

Two interesting ideas came out of the Jerusalem Conference on how to break out of the “cycle of violence.” One was from former Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu and the other was from former U.S. presidential contender Sam Brownback of Kansas. Neither idea was new, and both are highly controversial, but for that reason they are topical.

Netanyahu proposed the very opposite to the Gaza rocket barrage of “proportionate response” espoused by Just War theorists, and indeed recently by the UN itself. His own proposal: “disproportional response,” which, he said, constituted “the very nature of deterrence.” What was happening in Gaza, he said, was “a war of attrition . . . gradually habituating the other side to the ability that they will engage in the daily bloodletting and terrorizing of our cities, and they will suffer a certain price.” He said that this was unsustainable. What was needed, he added, was that Israel “up the ante” of military reprisal disproportionately to such an extent that the value of true deterrence was recovered. As for Jerusalem, he said it was vital that Israel not negotiate its way out of the city. “If we walk out, then they come in,” he said. “Militant Islam comes into Jerusalem, Jerusalem becomes, forgive the expression, a Mecca for all the world’s terrorists.” Then, in an interesting reference to Jerusalem’s ideological symbology, he warned that if Israel left Jerusalem, the Islamists would attack a symbol “of the West’s symbolic religious power, the nexus of Judeo–Christianity . . . unleashing a global religious war.”

Senator Sam Brownback (R-Kansas) gave a strongly pro-Israel speech that revived the notion of a confederation of Palestine and Jordan, a proposal, he said, that had gained the support of 42 percent of the Palestinians in a 2007 poll. The reason for such a radical proposal, he said to loud applause, was the current path to peace “isn’t working, wasn’t working, and will never work.” He added, “After fifteen years, billions of dollars in aid, massive international attention, and unlimited diplomatic support,” he asked rhetorically, “what do the Palestinians have to show for it? Nothing.”

Why mention the Netanyahu and the Brownback ideas? Because, quite possibly, according to the latest polls, Netanyahu may become Israel’s next prime minister. As for Brownback, he is quite a close friend of Republican presidential candidate Senator John McCain. If McCain were elected, not only might Brownback play a significant role in the new administration, but Washington might be then trying to midwife quite new and different between Israel and the Palestinians: an Israel-Jordan-Palestine solution. 

Dr. Aikman, a Senior Fellow of the Trinity Forum, was for many years senior correspondent for Time.

1 Responses • Columns, David Aikman, Faiths and Worldviews, Religious Liberty, Society, Mon 24 Mar 2008