Tags
Haram al Sharif, israeli-palestinian conflict, Moshe Feiglin, peace education, Talat Ramia, Temple Mount
The pamphlet
Two weeks ago Israeli police found pamphlets that read, “Members of the Likud Caucus [the right-wing party currently in power], along with its thousands of members, headed by Moshe Feiglin [a political activist] are hereby invited to arrive at Temple Mount and praise God, and declare that healthy leadership begins with total control over Temple Mount. (Let us) purify this place from the enemies of Israel, who rob lands, and build the Temple on the ruins of mosques. We need not be afraid!” Police banned Feiglin from going onto the Haram al Sharif, which he tried to do. This news spread through the Palestinian community, and some began protesting. A week later, a rumor spread through some Palestinian circles that Feiglin and his supporters were going to try again, and young men again protested and threw stones at the army. This past Friday, Talat Ramia was among young men throwing rocks at a checkpoint, when he was shot and killed by an Israeli soldier. An Israeli army spokesperson said that Ramia had thrown firecrackers at the soldiers.
Since I am interviewing both Israeli and Palestinian teachers, this news made me wonder: where did Moshe Feiglin go to school? Where did Talat Ramia go? What I would have hoped from each would have been different – from Feiglin, a broader and more welcoming view of humanity, and from Ramia, better self-control and understanding of what will actually further his hopes and dreams. Did Feiglin have teachers who introduced him to an understanding of and respect for people of different faiths? Did Ramia have teachers who sought to inculcate in him emotional self-regulation and an insight into what actions actually effect political and social change?
For Feiglin a quick web search in English turns up masses of information, including where he went to high school, facts about his family, his two books, his regular writings and his many speeches. For Ramia, 15 minutes of searching in English yielded me only his hometown and a picture of his relatives mourning. In any case, Feiglin is a 50 year-old highly influential Israeli nationalist political activist, and Ramia was a 25 year-old Palestinian angered by the latest rumor. Of course, both were influenced by many people before and after high school, most powerfully by their families. Nonetheless, were there teaching opportunities to turn them, even if ever so slightly, off the path that led to this tragedy?
From Middletown to the Middle East 
Too bad for you and your article that Moshe Feiglin did NOT write or produce or have anything to do with the offending pamphlet.
It was produced by someone who wanted to paint Moshe as “an extremist” in order to kick him out of the Likud party that much easier, because he threatens the hegemony of the Likud leftist (but pretends to be rightist) Establishment.
Moshe has ascended to the Temple Mount every month for years and has never issued any pamphlet and has never created a stir.
Not for nothing, but his last name is spelled wrong on the pamphlet.
Why don’t you ask Bibi Netanyahu who wrote the pamphlet.
Thank you Rob, for your response. As you note, Feiglin denies the pamphlet. Here is his press release: “As my friends and followers know, I ascend to the Temple Mount on the 19th of every Hebrew month. Over the weekend, somebody (we still don’t know who, but we are working on it) published a flier in my name and stirred up a hornet’s nest over the Temple Mount. Unfortunately, the libelous flier took on a life of its own and this morning when I arrived at the entrance to the Temple Mount, an army of reporters waited for me in anticipation of the next ‘Aaksa intifada’. The police prohibited all Jews from entering the Mount.
The real story here is not the incitement, but the fact that Israel’s police force is scared off by any shadow of Islamic threat, proving that the Temple Mount is truly not in our hands. When the heart of our Nation is not in our hands, the blood flow to the other organs is interrupted and gangrene begins to set in in places like Sderot and Be’er Sheva, quickly spreading to our sovereignty throughout Israel.
It is important to continue to knock on the gates of the Temple Mount and to restore our sovereignty to this holiest of places to the Jewish Nation. Everyone who ascends the Mount adds another slice of sovereignty in Israel’s heart and health throughout our nation.As my friends and followers know, I ascend to the Temple Mount on the 19th of every Hebrew month. Over the weekend, somebody (we still don’t know who, but we are working on it) published a flier in my name and stirred up a hornet’s nest over the Temple Mount. Unfortunately, the libelous flier took on a life of its own and this morning when I arrived at the entrance to the Temple Mount, an army of reporters waited for me in anticipation of the next “Aaksa intifada”. The police prohibited all Jews from entering the Mount.
The real story here is not the incitement, but the fact that Israel’s police force is scared off by any shadow of Islamic threat, proving that the Temple Mount is truly not in our hands. When the heart of our Nation is not in our hands, the blood flow to the other organs is interrupted and gangrene begins to set in in places like Sderot and Be’er Sheva, quickly spreading to our sovereignty throughout Israel.
It is important to continue to knock on the gates of the Temple Mount and to restore our sovereignty to this holiest of places to the Jewish Nation. Everyone who ascends the Mount adds another slice of sovereignty in Israel’s heart and health throughout our nation.”
There is very real difference between the pamphlet and his press release – one is far more provocative than the other. Nonetheless, as an outsider I read his press release as also disrespectful the beliefs and traditions of Muslims. My question about education for peace and self-control remains, though I do very much appreciate your clarification.
Stay away from politics, my friend. It takes more than a few months in Israel to understand what’s going on.
Feiglin isn’t a member of Knesset and his affiliation with the Likud is similar to Buchanan’s with the Republican party, and they are held in similar esteem by their respective parties’ leadership.
You won’t get a broad picture of the conflict by looking at the number of Palestinians killed since 2009. The conflict goes back much further than three years.
I suggest you stick to cultural and human interest stories/observations, because your position in the region probably makes you privy to an angle the rest of us don’t get. But if you do insist on wading in the mud, bear in mind that you are witnessing a present only 7 years after the end of a bloody 5-year-long terror campaign that brought death and destruction upon the country. The Jerusalem streets you now walk peacefully once ran red with blood, not very long ago. That, after seven years of peace negotiations conducted all along in bad faith on their part.
I was taken aback at your wondering why that man was armed in Jerusalem. How blessed we are that you feel so safe on our streets. May you never have the opportunity to attend the funeral of a 5 year old girl shot in her bed at point-blank range (Danielle Shefi, murdered in Adura in 2002), or of a bride and her father incinerated together on her wedding day (David and Nava Applebaum), or of eight sweet yeshiva students gunned down over their books (Mercaz Harav massacre, 2008) . Even though it would provide you with more perspective – the kind that stretches back further than 2009 – we all gladly forgo the PR.
Yours truly,
An Israeli reader.
Israeli reader, I am so sorry for your loss, and for the trauma such losses inflict not just on their families and friends, but on everyone in your small, tightly knit society. Also, thank you so much for reading through my blog, both the current and past postings.
Yeah, I figured this post was a risk. Thank you for the correction on Feiglin’s job! I’ve corrected it above. As you say, he has never been an MK. The phrase I’ve seen several times while trying to correct this post is “political activist.” He recently won 23% of the vote in the Likud leadership primary. This article also makes your point – as the title says, “Likud MKs fear Feiglin will drive centrist voters away.”
Great point about cherry picking specific dates for any statistic, including casualties. For another try at it, from 29/9/2000 – 26/12/2008 (Second Intifada to Cast Lead), 4,904 Palestinians were killed by Israelis, and 581 Israelis were killed by Palestinians.
Re: the guy in our park with the rifle. I actually was not surprised by his being armed, but the type of firearm and the specific context. As you know better than I do, one is much more likely to see army kids, police, and occasionally various kinds of private security carrying assault rifles. The more like a private citizen someone looks (older, for example) the more likely it is that they are carrying a pistol, or not carrying. So he was just further out on the distribution curve of likelihood.
I’ll keep trying to keep my posts as accurate as possible and as empathetic to peoples’ past experiences as I can – thank you for your taking the time to give me your feedback.
Shalom again.
First of all, the statistics aren’t very meaningful because dry numbers don’t give any context. A 15-year-old shot while throwing stones at a soldier together with 30 other youths is not the same as a 15-year-old shot while playing basketball (Itamar 2002). A baby killed by a stray artillery shell meant for a terrorist is not the same as a baby who has her throat slit in her crib in the middle of the night (Itamar 2011). Civilians who die as collateral damage (to use a term popular with your country’s former secretary of defense) are not the same as civilians killed by attackers who intentionally and skillfully bypass military targets in order harm non-combatants. Yes, even an accidental death is tragic, but only the morally depraved can equate both kinds of casualties.
(Most telling is the statistic “Palestinians killed by Israeli civilians.” Assuming the number isn’t pulled out of a hat (see below) there is absolutely no way the number of victims of Jewish terror is above the single digits, and certainly none from the Gaza Strip. The only conclusion is that the number includes terrorists killed by civilians in self defense, which regretfully did not happen often enough.)
That’s the “first of all” I wanted to get out of the way, but it leads me to another aside. The link you provided is indeed interesting because it shows how much Betselem thinks they can get away with. Every Israeli know that well over a thousand Israelis were killed in the Intifada. (See here: http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/Terrorism/victims.html )
Betselem’s figure insults the intelligence of every Israeli over the age of 15 — I remember the papers printing the names and faces of the murdered at every milestone, 100 dead, 200 dead, 500 dead, 1000 dead, first 1 page, then 2 pages, etc. Maybe this will help you understand the great hostility towards EU-funded left-wing NGOs in this country. They exist only to propagandize well-intentioned foreigners like yourself, since anyone who lived through these events knows better. (Breaking the Silence is another example of such an NGO. We all served in the army and didn’t see the horrors they describe, certainly not as a routine, so they’re reduced to lavishing attention on tourists.) Essentially they’re machines for turning European tax dollars into Palestinian propaganda.
Thus far this post came out as a bit of a rant. I apologize; a lot gets lost in e-communication, at least when I’m doing it. I’m not such an aggressive jerk in real life. (My mother loves me.)
The point I was trying to make in my previous post is that the current situation is the aftermath of a war. There were very few, if any, checkpoints in the West Bank before the Intifadah. That infamous single street in Hebron was open to Palestinians. (80% of the city was and remains closed to Jews, but never mind.)
War is hell. Imposing a war is criminal. Losing a war has consequences. If one ignores the context (1948 – 1967 – 1993 – 2000 – 2005 – present ) then indeed it looks like Israelis are eating at restaurants and going to museums and singing Shabbat songs while Palestinians have to pass through checkpoints to get to work. But the context is what created the situation. The context is a society able to produce – and celebrate! – acts of unimaginable barbarity, an attempt to make peace with that society (the Oslo Accords), and the disappearance of those dreams in an inferno of exploding buses and massacred families.
The Israeli public has lurched strongly to the right not because of high-school teachers but because it survived the policies of the Left. We have an expression in Israel, “searching under the flashlight” (instead of where the beam illuminates). Sometimes the answer is so simple, almost primitive, that it is discarded.
Peace,
IR
IR, no worries about “ranting” – I do hear your responses as rational, thoughtful, experienced, and seeking the explain the truth as you see it. I also appreciate your taking the time to engage me as I think through these questions.
Speaking of time, I’m juggling time right now, so I might take a bit of time to digest your many thoughts. But again, thank you for helping me learn about your country!