Jerusalem in Jewish and Islamic culture

Jerusalem United

Netanyahu on Jerusalem Day: We'll Continue to Build Jerusalem

Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu spoke during Tuesday’s Jerusalem Day celebration at the Mercaz HaRav yeshiva in Jerusalem. As he entered the Beit Medrash, over a thousand students sang the words with which Moses blessed the tribe of Binyamin: "And to Binyamin he said: Beloved by God, he will dwell in security."

The head of the yeshiva, Rav Yaakov Shapira, welcomed the Prime Minister with warm words for his forthright speech in the US Congress, adding that our "roadmap" is the Bible and that all of the land of Israel stems from Jerusalem and has the same indivisible status as the hoy city.

Netanyahu started by recalling how the government ministers sit during their meetings and browse through letters and other reports. He noted, however, that one minister browses through the Tanach and sometimes the Talmud. That minister, said Netanyahu, is Justice Minister Ya’akov Ne’eman, who was sitting on the dais to the right of him.

“For Ne’eman, public service is holy work,” said Netanyahu, “and as such, from time to time he shares with me something new that he’s found. So I’m happy to be here with him and many other great people such as the Chief Rabbi of Israel, Rabbi Yona Metzger, the former Chief Rabbi of Israel and current Chief Rabbi of Tel Aviv, Rabbi Lau, Jerusalem Mayor Nir Barkat, and Rabbi Ya’akov Shapira who heads the Mercaz Harav yeshiva.”

Addressing Rabbi Shapira directly, Netanyahu said: “I just heard the song ‘Od Avinu Chai’ (our Father still lives, sung by the students as the PM took his seat). Your father still lives, too. I remember the great Rabbi Shapira, and he still lives in you, in your spirit, in the spirit of all the great rabbis, but above all, he lives in the spirit of all of you students of Mercaz Harav.”

Netanyahu thanked those present for their support during his visit to the United States last week.

“When I was overseas, I received all your blessings and support,” he said. “You wanted to strengthen me and you did it, because during that entire week I kept remembering one verse: ‘Chazak Chazak v’Nitchazek.’ (Be strong, be strong, and may we be strengthened). May we strengthen one another. We need that strength every day of the year. We’re undergoing a great struggle but we also have some great achievements. 44 years ago, Israel’s soldiers fulfilled the vision of the prophets and brought back Jerusalem to its proper place.

“My friends, almost 2,000 years have passed since the destruction,” continued Netanyahu. “And today Jerusalem is beautiful and is a pride to the entire country. We came back to Jerusalem as builders, and today Jerusalem is growing and flourishing. We need to continue and build and develop the city. We see how the citizens of Jerusalem walk in it proudly. Jerusalem has once again become the capital of the Jewish people.  Jerusalem is built, it is joined and unified forever,” he ended paraphrasing Psalm 132.  The Prime Minister did not repeat his words to the Congress about finding creative ways to keep the city united and satisfy the Palestinians.

He recalled the government meeting this week, which took place at Migdal David in honor of Jerusalem Day. “Before the meeting I went down to the basement and saw a model of the city from the middle of the 19^th century. In the model you see the synagogue standing upright, and then you see another synagogue. And you see the Jewish Quarter. We know that we were turned away from the city, but we came back and rebuilt. The synagogue now stands, complete, just like in its glory days.”

Netanyahu directly addressed the students of the Mercaz Harav yeshiva, telling them, “There is nothing more dear to you than the Torah, the people of Israel and the land of Israel, at the heart of which is its capital Jerusalem…There are a few here who were or will be in the sayeret (military commando unit) in the IDF, and just like the sayeret goes in front of the camp, so do you go in front of the camp to light its way.”

He then offered the students some advice. “Always keep in touch with the camp. A pioneer with no camp behind him becomes lost in the desert, but if he has a camp connected to him he becomes part of a great force. All of you – rabbis, avreichim, and students – you stay connected and I’m sure you’ll continue to stay connected to the entire people. Jerusalem can continue to develop only if the people of Israel continue to develop. And the people of Israel will develop only through unity. There’s great strength in unity.”

The Prime Minister ended with a blessing, perhaps a hint of no building freezes,  in honor of Jerusalem Day.

“There’s nothing more holy to us than Jerusalem,” he said. “We’ll keep Jerusalem, we’ll keep its unity, we’ll build it. We’ll protect Jerusalem and Jerusalem will protect us. I say to you not just Chag Sameach, but L’Shana Haba’a BiYerushalyim Habenuya Yoter (Next year in Jerusalem which is built even more)!”

Why — and whose — Jerusalem? On the 44th anniversary of the liberation and reunification of the Holy City, answering the questions few are so bold to ask,By Rabbi Dov Fischer

http://www.JewishWorldReview.com | Several covens of Jew-haters, ranging from the Middle East to the more troubled and confused of American campuses like those at the University of California at Irvine (UCI), recently marked their "Nakba Day" to protest that a Jewish country ever was created in the Middle East. Today, Jerusalem Day, is my chance to respond by affirming the Jewish claim to an eternally undivided capital city of United Jerusalem.

Ever since I learned to pray, I learned about Jerusalem. In time, as a little boy, I learned to pray three times every day in my "Sh'moneh Esrai" prayer (the central prayer in every formal Jewish service) for the return to and the rebuilding of united Jerusalem. It is the same prayer that my paternal grandfather recited in the late 1800s in Southern Poland and that my maternal grandfather recited then in Russia. The same prayer that their grandparents recited before them, and theirs before them. It did not matter to them that it seemed hopeless in those centuries, long before anyone even had fabricated the apocryphal notion of a "Palestinian People," that Jews ever might return to the land of Israel, which Rome had re-named "Palestine." It did not matter that the notion of Jews ever returning to hoist a Star of David atop a hill in Jerusalem was a craziness relegated to children and the ostensibly insane. They prayed fervently for the Jewish return to Jerusalem all the same. It had been handed down to them to pray for Return from the day the Romans had exiled the Jews, and my grandparents and parents handed it down to me, as I have handed it to my son who spent this year studying something about Judaism while based at a seminary in the Jewish Quarter of the Old City in East Jerusalem which Israel liberated on this day in 1967.

Since childhood, every time I have eaten a meal with bread, I have recited prayers of thanks for the food -- and for the rebuilding of united Jerusalem. If I eat a cookie, I follow with a prayer of thanks -- and for the rebuilding of Jerusalem. Nor am I unique. For 2,000 years and more, Jews throughout the world have cried for Jerusalem and laughed for her. As much as I deeply love America, am truly devoted to her as an American patriot who takes immense pride in the American exceptionalism that has made the United States the greatest country in the world, living out her Manifest Destiny, I have never met an American who can tell me the day on the calendar that the British burned the White House during the War of 1812. Indeed, does anyone deny that more than 99 percent of Americans have no idea that the White House ever was set on fire? Americans have no idea that the Madisons had to escape with their lives and with what little they could salvage — some Gilbert Stuart paintings, some basic art. No ice cream. My fellow Americans have no idea that the White House was burned down in war.

But I know that it was on the Ninth Day of Av that the Babylonians burned the Holy Temple in Jerusalem. And it was the very same day that Rome burned the rebuilt Temple. I know it. My son knows it. A dear friend of mine, an evangelical pastor, knows it. It was taught to me from childhood. It is in the Bible, the day that Jerusalem burned and the Temple was set ablaze.

This is where honesty begins in any dialogue between and among the parties to the Middle Eastern conflicts. It may sound militaristic to some, strangely uncompromising to others. Too bad. Really, with all due respect — just too bad. My claim to Jerusalem is eternal and unyielding — a claim to a Jerusalem indivisible and united — because no one in my family line, going back to the beginning of the exile two thousand years ago, ever yielded our claim to Jerusalem.

We were driven out by Babylonians, and we outlasted them and returned. We were exiled by Romans, and we outlasted them and returned. They built an Arch of Titus in Italy to glorify in taking down our Jerusalem, and we have outlived Titus and Titus's family line and their whole empire. And we have returned.

For two thousand years, we have married and have broken glasses under wedding canopies all over the world to remember that Jerusalem once had fallen, the Temple shattered, even as we also recited a blessing at every such wedding moments earlier under that same canopy affirming an undying and unyielding expectation that the day yet would come when, once again, the sounds of Jewish joy and gladness, the celebrations of Jewish grooms and brides, again would be heard in Jerusalem, her outskirts, and throughout the cities of Judea throughout the West Bank (long before the ridiculous sobriquet "West Bank" was fabricated).

No one compromises on capital cities. America moved her capital around -- from Philadelphia to New York to Washington, D.C. -- but she never offered to split it with George III or Jefferson Davis. Yes, of course, our Presidents had enough respect and common decency not to talk during the playing of "G0d Save the King." But he was not going to get one inch of our capital city, not even if he did burn down the White House, because our flag continued to wave over the land of the free and the home of the brave. No one agrees to divide a capital city. No one offers to split Damascus or Tripoli or Cairo or Baghdad for peace. No one offers to split Paris or London or Madrid or Prague.

Even the experience with Berlin is instructive. The world forced onto the Germans the division of Berlin -- veritably shoved it right down their throats. It barely lasted half a century before the wall came down and the city was reunited. No one divides capital cities. In the end, Mr. Gorbachev had to stand by helplessly as the people of Germany, tired of waiting, tore down that wall.

We owe no apologies, no explanations. From 1948 to 1967, King Hussein of Jordan wrongfully occupied East Jerusalem. He made no effort to treat it as New Amman. Nor did any Arab ruler in all of history before him ever act to make Jerusalem a capital. When the Palestine Liberation Organization was created in 1964 — three full years before the 1967 Six Day War — to destroy Israel, all of the "West Bank" was in Arab hands, and Ahmed Shukairy or his successor, Yasser Arafat, could have acted to establish Jerusalem as a capital city. They never bothered. Rather, they wanted Tel Aviv and Haifa.

Jerusalem simply was not and never has been all that central to Arabia or Islam. Rather, Muslim prayers are directed toward Mecca and Medina. By contrast, praying from my locus in Southern California, I face east toward Jerusalem.

There is a corruption in the dialogue when I am challenged to speak "honestly" in defense of my right to see Jerusalem remain the eternally indivisible capital of Israel and the Jewish People. The Jews came back to Jerusalem with no less right than did America march to Washington, D.C.

If there is something wrong with entering a city by liberating it in battle, then it was equally wrong for any Arab conqueror before Israel to have entered the same city. But if a military victory places Arab negotiators at the table and drives out the British, who drove out the Ottomans, then a Jewish army's successful victory in a war of self-defense trumps all other secular-based claims to "right over might." Because, despite any revisionist attempt to rewrite what happened in 1967, the fact remains that Israel was not looking to expand her borders but to live.

As it happened, the Arab world just could not leave good enough alone in 1967. Gamal Nasser, president of Egypt, had to commit an act of war and blockade the Straits of Tiran. He had to ask the United Nations to remove its peacekeeping force from the Sinai so that he could invade Israel and drive the Jews into the Sea. The U.N. just had to comply instantly without batting an eyelash. Syria just had to join him. King Hussein of Jordan just had to send his armies to join them, too. They could not just leave good enough alone. They had to create a three-front war, seeing an Israel that was only nine miles wide, smaller than New Jersey. They just could not resist the ongoing temptation to drive the Jews into the Mediterranean Sea. And Israel also could not resist — the temptation to live.

Today is a day to recall how the contemporary dialogue over Jerusalem even came to begin. It began because Jews and our institutions and landmarks had been driven out by marauders. And the Arab world, primarily the Jordanians, aimed to eradicate what was left. There were synagogues in Jerusalem -- the Ramban Synagogue, the Rabbi Yochanan Ben Zakkai, shuls all over East Jerusalem -- that Jordan razed to the ground when they occupied the land from 1948-1967. They converted one venerable synagogue to a cheese factory, another to a stall for goats. They uprooted tombstones from the Jewish cemetery on the Mount of Olives and used them for pavement, for construction, even for latrines. They banned us from the Western Wall. They illegally occupied Jerusalem during those 19 years, and America never recognized their right to be there.

Jerusalem belonged to my ancestors. It belonged to my grandparents in Poland and Russia. It belongs to me. It belongs to my kids and theirs. Neither Barack Obama nor his Jewish donors nor his lemming Jewish voters can change that. Israel's former Prime Minister, Ehud Barak, could not change that. Benjamin Netanyahu, even if he were to shift 180 degrees tomorrow, cannot change that. Hillary Clinton's demands that Jews freeze all Jewish construction in Jerusalem cannot change that. Nothing can change that. Jerusalem belongs to those who never abandoned her through two thousand years in exile.

Nor can a United Nations vote in September change that. In 1975 the United Nations General Assembly foolishly and hatefully voted to ban Zionism, calling it "racism." Algerians who persecute Berbers, Egyptians who persecute Coptic Christians, Shiites who persecute Sunnis, Sunnis who persecute Shiites, Lebanese who persecute Maronite Christians, Saudis who won't even let women drive a car — all agreed: Zionism had to be banned. One man who sat in the chamber that day, with his pencil raised maximally above his upwardly outstretched arm to vote in favor of Zionism, is the only one who is remembered today, thirty six years later. All the others, aside from Daniel Patrick Moynihan, have evaporated from history and memory — even as half a million more Jews now live in Judea and Samaria today than did then. Thirty-six years from now, most of those voting in the United Nations this September also will be gone, evaporated, while united-and-undivided Jewish Jerusalem and its greater environs, including those cities of Judea and Samaria, will continue to grow to be more Jewishly populous than ever.

And that's the way it is as I celebrate this 44th anniversary of the liberation and reunification of Jerusalem.

Agricultural Moshavim Sector Marches to Salute Jerusalem

Thousands of members of the Moshavim (cooperative agricultural communities, as opposed to Kibbutzim, ed.)  Movement, and agricultural schols, from all over Israel, took part on Monday in the movement’s annual march to Jerusalem in honor of Jerusalem Day (Yom Yerushalayim), which celebrates the anniversary of the day Jerusalem was liberated by the IDF during the Six Day War.

Thousands of Jerusalemites filled the streets in the center of town to see them march by.

“This is a salute to Jerusalem by the those who settle and work the land. There are about 400 moshavim and tens of thousands of people participating in this march,” said Meir Tzur, Secretary General of the Moshavim Movement, one of the main, orignal settlement movements in Israel, whose members are cooperative villages organized as moshavim. Founded in 1920, the movement today has a membership of 253 moshavim. The regional authorities took responsibliity for organizeing and funding the parade.

Tzur added, “We are respecting Jerusalem so Jerusalem can respect us in the future. The importance is to bring youth to Jerusalem and know it and love it.”

“I come here every year, and every year Jerusalem is in my blood,” one of the participants said. “It will be in the blood of the State of Israel and the people of Israel. No one can give it away!”

All photos by Hezki Ezra and Hillel Meir

Jerusalem's Reunification: Back in Time to 1967

This Tuesday night and Wednesday will be a special day for lovers of Jerusalem, which celebrates the 44th anniversary of its Six Day War reunification.

Among the central events planned for this Jerusalem Day are traditional festivities at Yeshivat Merkaz HaRav Kook, including all-night Torah lectures, singing, dancing to music of the famed clarinetist Musa Berlin, and each year since the liberation of the city, a march of hundreds to the Western Wall starting at 1 a.m.  Prime MInister Benyamin Netanyahu, many Knesset Members and rabbis from all over Israel come to join the yeshiva's celebration.

Festive prayers take place in central Jerusalem synagogues such as Heichal Shlomo and others.  A special program will take place at Yeshivat Beit Orot on Mt. Scopus, overlooking the Temple Mount, which will be followed by music, dancing, a dinner, and an inspiring presentation by noted historian Dr. Eyal Davidson.

The central event in the capital on Wednesday will be the traditional Rikudgalim - Flag Dance March - towards the Old City.  Though it has long been concentrated on Jaffa Rd., as well as on other streets – with separate routes for girls and boys – this year’s march will be adapted to meet the needs of the new light-rail transportation system. Many of the marchers will enter the Old City through Damascus Gate, while others will circle around the south, adjacent to Mt.of Olives, and enter through Dung Gate. Various tours of different parts of the city are sponsored by the municipality and other organizations all through the day.

The day commemorates the miraculous liberation of the Old City of Jerusalem on the 28^th of Iyar, 5727 (June 7, 1967), just days after several Arab armies threatened to wipe the State of Israel off the map.  Israel took the initiative with a surprise, defensive attack, wiping out the Egyptian Air Force in one day, and taking over Jerusalem, Gaza, Judea, Samaria, the Sinai and the Golan Heights shortly thereafter. Weeks of national trepidation and tension, including the preparing of thousands of body-bags in Jerusalem and elsewhere, suddenly gave way to celebration and thanksgiving.

It has been noted many times that in the days prior to the war, Israel used its informal ties with Jordan’s King Hussein to ask him repeatedly to hold its fire and forces and allow Israel to concentrate only on its Egyptian and Syrian fronts. Had Hussein listened, the course of history would have been very different, as Israel would not have liberated Jerusalem, Judea or Samaria – at least not then.

The war marked Israel’s return to the Old City of Jerusalem for the first time since having been ignominiously driven out in 1948, and for the first time in 1,899 years as sovereign rulers.

In fact, though most Jews were thrilled in 1948 when the renewed State of Israel was established, for others the joy was greatly tempered by the lack of inclusion in its borders of the holy sites of Jerusalem– and particularly the Temple Mount.

The continued longing for Jerusalem and other Biblical areas was expressed by Rabbi Tzvi Yehuda Kook, the head of Yeshivat Merkaz HaRav.  Speaking to his students on Independence Day of 1967, just weeks before the Six Day War, he appeared to be gripped by prophecy when he cried out, "Where is our Hevron? Have we forgotten it? And where is our Shechem (Nablus)?  Have we forgotten it? And where is our Jericho? Have we forgotten it?! ... And where is all the rest of the Land of Israel?  Where are all the pieces of G-d's Land?  Do we have the right to give up even one millimeter?  Heaven forbid!" 

One of his students, Rabbi Chanan Porat, who was later to be a leader in the movement to settle all of the Land of Israel, said that the rabbi's emotion was so extreme that it left an impression on him forever: "He roared and cried out from the depths of his heart; we saw that he was truly like one crying over someone who had just died, as if he was torn in pieces.  We felt as if he was speaking in the name of the Landof Israel, and that its tearing-asunder was tearing his own flesh as well."

Just days after Rabbi Kook’s emotional cry, Egypt placed a blockade around the Straits of Tiran leading into Israel, and preparations for war began. Within three weeks, Hevron, Jericho, Shechem and Jerusalem were once again in Jewish hands. Rabbi Kook and his friend the Nazir, Rabbi David Cohen, were given a special military escort to the Western Wall within hours of its liberation.

The continued longing for Jerusalem in the 19 years between ’48 and ’67 was expressed on another level by Naomi Shemer, in her famous song "Jerusalem of Gold." The original lyrics read, "The city that sits solitary, and in its midst - a wall... How the cisterns have dried, the market-place is empty, and no one frequents the Temple Mount, in theOldCity... Jerusalem of gold, and of bronze, and of light, Behold I am a violin for all your songs..."

Just a few months later, she was able to add these lyrics as the final stanza: "We have returned to the cisterns, To the market and to the market-place, A ram's horn (shofar) is heard on the Temple Mount, In the OldCity."  The song Jerusalem of Gold quickly became Israel's unofficial national anthem, sung in joy at every opportunity.

Jerusalem: 4000 Years in 5 Minutes

MKs See How PA Takes Over Jerusalem

(Israelnationalnews.com) Knesset Members from the National Union party recently toured neighborhoods in northern Jerusalem. During the tour, which was led by Aryeh King, chairman of the National Lands Fund, the MKs were shown how the Arab residents of east Jerusalem are trying to forcefully expand into west Jerusalem’s neighborhoods.



King explained to the MKs that despite the area being under full Israeli control, Jewish Israeli citizens are often not allowed to drive on the local roads, while Arab Israeli citizens are allowed to do so.
He also noted that the Palestinian Authority, with help from the American USAID, is building a road in Israeli territory that would end in the neighborhood of Qalandia, located within Jerusalem.
“We came here to see, under the guidance of Aryeh King, the reality here,” said MK Uri Ariel. “The reality here is that the one thing that perhaps every Israeli can identify with is being hurt: the sovereignty of the State of Israel. We speak of a united Jerusalem, the Prime Minister is giving speeches, and at the same time we’re standing here and it’s happening right before our eyes. It’s the middle of the day, and we’re standing underneath a Palestinian Authority sign inside Jerusalem. It’s simply an outrage.”
Ariel promised that his party will take action over the issue. “We’re going to take care of this using our own methods in the Knesset, with the police, with the Attorney General, and we’ll try to change this.”
“Netanyahu seems to be dividing Jerusalem in practice,” MK Michael Ben-Ari said during the tour.  “The State of Israel has lost all signs of its sovereignty.”
MK Aryeh Eldad said, “This shows us that the Israeli police and the authorities have abandoned an Israeli area and are allowing Hamas and the PA policemen to do as they wish. Only idiots can think that if they abandon northern Jerusalem, they won’t have to fight tomorrow for Jaffa street or the President’s Residence.”
Two reporters – including one from Arutz Sheva – were injured by rock-throwing Arabs while accompanying the MKs' tour.

The incident occurred at the Kalandia checkpoint, just north of Jerusalem. Arutz Sheva's Hezki Ezra and Daniel Ophir of the Israel Broadcasting Authority received initial treatment from MK Dr. Aryeh Eldad, who was once the IDF's Chief Medical Officer. %ad% 

Birkat kohanim on pesach at the kotel

2nd Jerusalem Dome of the Rock Temple Mount UFO video surfaces from 01/28/2011.

Ancient Tunnel Discovered Beneath Jerusalem

ELDER OF ZIYON: Islamic leader in Israel demands mezuzot be removed from Old City gates

From The Muqata, a translation of an article in Ma'ariv:
The Israeli Northern Branch of the Islamic Movement, led by Sheikh Raed Salah, is now demanding the removal of all "Mezuzot" on the gates of Jerusalem's Old City.


According to the movement, the mezuzot are an attempt to Judaize the "Arab heritage" of the Old City.


In a statement issued by the movement, it stated that during a patrol in the Old City, they saw mezuzot on the various gates, and Jews touching the mezuzot as they passed through the gates.


"This is a disgusting attempt to Judaize the Arab and Islamic heritage of the Old City," the statement said, "and all the relevant Islamic institutions are called up to to act quickly to remove the mezuzot."


Mahmoud Abu Atta, spokesman for the institution "Mossad Al-Aqsa" said that he sees these mezuzahs "as continued attempts to Judaize the Old City. A Mezuzah is put on the door of a Jewish home yet this [the Old City of Jerusalem] is an Arab city."


A mezuza is a (protected) parchment handwritten with Judaism's holiest profession of faith, the Sh'ma, Deuteronomy 6:4-9 and 11:13-21. The Sh'ma itself is the source for Jewish law mandating that its words be affixed to the doorposts and gates of all areas controlled by Jews.


It is most appropriate to have mezuzot on the gates of Judaism's holy city!

Rare Footage of Jerusalem in 1918

Rare and unique film of everyday life in Jerusalem, circa 1918. Footage includes the Old City, Western Wall, Jaffa street, the market, Shaar Shchem. It also includes other Jewish holy places such as Kever Dovid, Kever Rochel, Yad Avshalom and others. The music was later added to the silent film. 

The was found at the home of a Jewish family in Amsterdam and it is unclear if the father collected the clips, or shot them himself in order to encourage Jewish tourism to Jerusalem after the British occupation. Some of the pictures were taken at the end of the era of the Ottoman Empire in 1917.


In the video you can see the new stores on Rechov Yaffa of Shlomo Cohen & sons and A.Y. Ladarebarag. The film was obtained by Meir Barak, edited by Yaakov Gross author of book Jerusalem 5678/1918. Those interested in purchasing a copy can contact P.O. Box 909 Givatayim 53 108.


At the 1:30 mark you can see Men and Women Davening at the Kosel without a Mechitzah. That was because the Turks did not allow any benches, chairs, Mechitza screens or any form of construction at the site. This was also enforced later during parts of the British rule as a political status quo agreement.


On Yom Kipur in September of 1928, British police forcefully removed the Mechitza. Women who tried to prevent the screen being dismantled were beaten by the police, who used pieces of the broken wooden frame as clubs. Chairs were then pulled out from under elderly worshipers. The episode made international news and Jews the world over objected to the British action. The Chief Rabbi of Jerusalem issued a letter on behalf of the Edah HaChareidis and Agudas Yisroel strongly condemning the desecration of the holy site. Various communal leaders called for a general strike. A large rally was held in the Eitz Chaim Yeshiva, following which an angry crowd attacked the local police station in which they believed the British officer involved in the fiasco was sheltering.


Commissioner Edward Keith-Roach described the screen as violating the Ottoman status quo that forbade Jews from making any construction in the Western Wall area. He informed the Jewish community that the removal had been carried out under his orders after receiving a complaint from the Supreme Muslim Council. The Arabs were concerned that the Jews were trying to extend their rights at the wall and with this move, ultimately intended to take possession of the Al-Aqsa Mosque. The British government issued an announcement explaining the incident and blaming the Jewish Gabbai at the Wall. It stressed that the removal of the screen was necessary, but expressed regret over the ensuing events.

What the Palestinians do not want Jews to know

Video made by a brave and righteous muslim . Copied with permission.
Thank you Mahmoudabuz.

The quran states very clearly :
The land was promised to ISRAEL .

5:21
يقوم ادخلوا الأرض المقدسة التي كتب الله لكم ولا ترتدوا على أدباركم فتنقلبوا خسرين

"Moses (Musa) :O my people, enter the holy land that God Has written for you, and do not turn your backs, or you will become losers."

The Quran also say that one day the Jews will return home to their land :

17:104
وقلنا من بعده لبني إسرءيل اسكنوا الأرض فإذا جاء وعد الاءخرة جئنا بكم لفيفا
And We said after him to the Children of Israel: "Dwell in the land, then, when the time of the second promise comes, We will bring you all together as a mixed crowd."

The palestinians removed the star from the Jordanian Flag and made their Flag (PLO)

The word "palestine" is not mentioned in the Quran .
"Free palestine" from the Arab occupation
Jerusalem Holy for them ?
It is so "Holy" for them that Jerusalem (Al Quds) is not mentioned in the Quran even once .

On the Temple mount they have picnics and they play soccer .
Not only that , when they pray there , they turn their behinds towards Dome of the rock Mosque and the temple mount .

The palestinians who claim to be natives , are actually migrant workers who came to the land from neighboring Arab countries ( mainly from Egypt, Jordan, Syria, Lebanon, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia, and Iraq) to work for the British mandate and the Jews who developed the land .

Learning About the Destruction at the Excavations of the City of David

Learning About the Destruction at the Excavations of the City of David

There Are No Settlers in Jerusalem

To the Editor:

In “Eviction of Palestinian Family, After a Legal Battle, Underlines Tensions Over Jerusalem” (news article, Nov. 24), you call Israelis who move into homes legally purchased from Palestinians in Jerusalem “settlers.”

Today, hundreds of Palestinians are moving legally into homes owned by Jews in Jerusalem. We, however, do not disparage them as “settlers.” Rather, we call them “residents” and “neighbors.”

The notion that some areas of Jerusalem — the capital of the Jewish people for 3,000 years — should be off-limits to Jews, while the entire city is open to Arabs, is deeply prejudicial. The suggestion that Jews, or any other ethnic group, would be denied residence in an American city would instantly be condemned as racist.

Moreover, there are no settlers in Jerusalem, which is sovereign Israeli territory, just as there are no settlers in Tel Aviv and Haifa.

While The Times often reports on construction in Israel, it reports much less often on the constant incitement against Israel from the Palestinian Authority, including a delegitimization campaign against the State of Israel — the biblical sites, the history and the borders of the country.

Joel Lion
Spokesman and Consul for Media
Consulate General of Israel
New York, Nov. 24, 2010

Rachel's Tomb, a Jewish Holy Place, Was Never a Mosque

• UNESCO has declared that Rachel's Tomb near Jerusalem is the Bilal ibn Rabah mosque - endorsing a Palestinian claim that first surfaced only in 1996 and which ignores centuries of Muslim tradition.
• As opposed to the Temple Mount and the Cave of the Patriarchs which also serve as the location of mosques, Rachel's Tomb never served as a mosque for the Muslims. The Muslim connection to the site derives from its relation to Rachel and has no connection to Bilal ibn Rabah, Mohammed's first muezzin.
• Rachel's Tomb, located some 460 meters south of Jerusalem's municipal boundary, has been identified for over 1,700 years as the grave of the Jewish matriarch Rachel. Many generations of Jews have visited the place for prayer. The depiction of Rachel's Tomb has appeared in thousands of Jewish religious books, paintings, photographs, stamps, and works of art.
• There is a Muslim cemetery on three sides of the compound mainly belonging to the Bedouin Taamra tribe, which began burying its dead at the site due to its proximity to a holy personality. Members of the Taamra tribe harassed Jews visiting the tomb and collected extortion money to enable them to visit the site. With this background, Moses Montefiore obtained a permit from the Turks to build another room adjacent to Rachel's Tomb in 1841 to keep the Muslims away from the room of the grave and to help protect the Jews at the site.
• Jewish caretakers managed the site from 1841 until it fell into Jordanian hands in 1948. In contravention of the armistice agreement, Jordan prevented Jews from accessing the site during all the years of its rule (1948-1967). On October 19, 2010, the anniversary of her death, some 100,000 Jews visited Rachel's Tomb.
• In 1830 the Turks issued the firman that gave legal force to Rachel's Tomb being recognized as a Jewish holy site. The governor of Damascus sent a written order to the Mufti of Jerusalem to fulfill the Sultan's order: "the tomb of esteemed Rachel, the mother of our Lord Joseph...they (the Jews) are accustomed to visit it from ancient days; and no one is permitted to prevent them or oppose them (from doing) this."
• Ironically, Turkish Prime Minister Erdogan, whose government has been described as "neo-Ottoman" in outlook, told the Saudi paper al-Watan (March 7, 2010) that the Cave of the Patriarchs and Rachel's Tomb "were not and never will be Jewish sites, but Islamic sites."

On October 21, 2010, UNESCO (the UN Educational, Scientific, and Cultural Organization) declared that Rachel's Tomb near Jerusalem is the Bilal ibn Rabah mosque - endorsing a Palestinian claim that first surfaced only in 1996 and which ignores centuries of Muslim tradition. 

In a series of decisions condemning Israel, the UNESCO board called upon the government of Israel to rescind its decision in February to include Rachel's Tomb and the Cave of the Patriarchs in Hebron on Israel's official list of national heritage sites. The sharp protests by Israeli Ambassador to UNESCO Nimrod Barkan to the UN body's decision were expunged from the record by the chairman of the session, the Russian representative, on the pretext that they were too aggressive.¹ 

A scrupulous examination of testimonies and historical sources demonstrates that defining Rachel's Tomb as a mosque does an injustice to historical facts and traditions anchored in both Muslim documents and Jewish sources, and constitutes distortion, bias, and deception. As opposed to the Temple Mount and the Cave of the Patriarchs which also serve as the location of mosques, Rachel's Tomb never served as a mosque for the Muslims. The Muslim connection to the site derives from its relation to Rachel and has no connection to Bilal ibn Rabah, Mohammed's first muezzin. 


Rachel's Tomb - A Jewish Holy Site 

Rachel's Tomb is located on the northern outskirts of Bethlehem some 460 meters south of Jerusalem's municipal boundary. The site has been identified for over 1,700 years as the grave of the Jewish matriarch Rachel. The copious literature of Jewish, Christian, and Muslim pilgrims identifies and documents the spot as the place where Rachel is buried.² 

Many generations of Jews have visited the place for prayer, requests, and entreaties. The site has become a sort of Wailing Wall to which Jews come to pour out their hearts and share their troubles and requests with the beloved matriarch, hoping to find solace and healing. Jewish tradition attributes unique and wondrous qualities to Rachel's tears,³ and visitors to her grave ask her to cry and pray on their behalf. 

According to the Book of Genesis (ch. 35), Rachel died when she gave birth to Benjamin: "And Rachel died, and was buried on the way to Ephrath, which is Bethlehem." In Jewish tradition, her tears have been identified by authors, poets, and biblical commentators with almost every disaster that befell the Jewish people.⁴ 

Over hundreds of years, visitors to her grave have established the tie between Rachel and her burial place. "The house with the dome and the olive tree" became a Jewish symbol.⁵ An additional room that was attached to the original structure by Sir Moses Montefiore in 1841 has only enhanced the link. The depiction of Rachel's Tomb has appeared in thousands of Jewish religious books, paintings, photographs, stamps, and works of art. 

Yet anyone visiting the site today will find it difficult to identify the image known to generations of Jews. The small, domed structure now sits within an armored concrete sleeve containing firing positions and defensive fortifications, and covered with camouflage netting. At the height of the Second Intifada, the Israeli government decided on September 11, 2002, to place the sacred compound inside the area of the Israeli security barrier in the Jerusalem area. 


The Muslim Link to Rachel 

The Muslim link to the site derives from the figure of Rachel rather than from Bilal ibn Rabah, who is buried in Damascus. The accepted Muslim tradition which venerates Rachel identifies the site at the outskirts of Bethlehem as her grave. According to Muslim tradition, Rachel's name comes from the word "to wander," because she found her death on one of her wanderings and was buried on the way to Bethlehem.⁶ Rachel is alluded to in the Koran⁷ and other Muslim sources where, just as in Jewish sources, Joseph tearfully falls upon the grave of his mother, Rachel, when the caravan of his captors passes by the site.⁸ 

For hundreds of years, the shape of Rachel's Tomb resembled the grave of a vali (a Muslim saint). The building received its distinctive shape in 1622 when the Turkish governor of Jerusalem, Mohammad Pasha, permitted the Jews to wall off the four pillars that supported the dome and for the first time Rachel's Tomb became a closed building.⁹ This was allowed by the Turkish governor to prevent Arab shepherds from grazing their flocks at the site.¹⁰ Yet according to one report, an English traveler claims this was done "to make access to it more difficult for the Jews."¹¹ 

For centuries, Rachel's Tomb was considered only a Jewish holy place. The sixteenth-century Arab historian Mujir al-Din regarded Rachel's Tomb as a Jewish holy place.¹² Beginning in 1841, the keys to the place were deposited exclusively with Jewish caretakers who managed the site until it fell into Jordanian hands in 1948.¹³ In contravention of the armistice agreement, Jordan prevented Jews from accessing the site during all the years of its rule (1948-1967).¹⁴ Following the Six-Day War, Jews returned to Rachel's Tomb, with millions of Jews from around the world having visited the site. According to Jewish tradition, Rachel died on the 11th day of the Hebrew month of Heshvan (October 19); in 2010, some 100,000 Jews visited Rachel's Tomb on that day.¹⁵ 


The Harassment of Jews at Rachel's Tomb 

For many centuries, Jews were compelled to pay protection money and ransom to the Arabs who lived in the area so they wouldn't harm Rachel's Tomb and the Jews who visited it. In 1796, Rabbi Moshe Yerushalmi, an Ashkenazi Jew from central Europe who immigrated to Israel, related that a non-Jew sits at Rachel's Tomb and collects money from Jews seeking to visit the site.¹⁶ Other sources attest to Jews who paid taxes, levies, and presented gifts to the Arab residents of the region. 

Dr. Ludwig August Frankl of Vienna, a poet and author, related that the Sephardi community in Jerusalem was compelled to pay 5,000 piastres to an Arab from Bethlehem at the start of the nineteenth century for the right to visit Rachel's Tomb.¹⁷ Other testimonies relate that in order to prevent damage to Rachel's Tomb, payment was transferred to Bedouin members of the Taamra tribe who lived in the region, who had also begun to bury their dead near the tomb during that era.¹⁸ There is a Muslim cemetery on three sides of the compound that mainly belongs to the Taamra tribe and the entire attitude of the Muslims to Rachel's Tomb derives to a large extent from this tribe, which began burying its dead at the site during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries due to its proximity to Rachel's Tomb. The origins of the practice, as the Land of Israel researcher Eli Schiller writes, is the popular Muslim belief that "the closer that the deceased is buried to the tomb of a sainted personality, the greater will be his rewards in the world to come."¹⁹ 

Taxes were also collected from the Sephardi Jewish community in Jerusalem to pay the authorities for various "rights," such as passage to the Western Wall, passage of funerals to the Mount of Olives, and for the protection of gravestones there, as well as payment to the Arabs of Bethlehem for safeguarding Rachel's Tomb.²⁰ 

One of the scribes who managed the accounts of the Sephardi Kolel during the eighteenth century reported on the protection money that the Jewish community at that time had to transfer to the "non-Jews and lords of the lands who are called toeffendis...(15,000) Turkish grush...and these are the people who patrol the ways of Jaffa Road, Kiryat Yearim, the people of the Rama, the site of Samuel the Prophet, the people of Nablus Road, the people of the Efrat Road, the tomb of our matriarch Rachel...so they would not come to grave-robbing, heaven forbid. And sometimes they complain to us that we have fallen behind on their routine payments and they come scrabbling on the gravestones in the dead of night, and they did their things in stealth because their home is there. Therefore, we are compelled against our will to propitiate them."²¹ 

Rabbi David d'Beth Hillel, a resident of Vilna who visited Syria and the Land of Israel in 1824, testified about a Muslim cemetery in the region of Rachel's Tomb. "No person is living there, but there was a cemetery. On the opposite hill there is a village whose residents are Arabs and they are most evil. A stranger who comes to visit Rachel's Tomb is robbed by them."²² 

In 1856, fifteen years after Montefiore had built another room to Rachel's Tomb, James Finn, the British consul who served in Palestine during the days of Turkish rule, spoke about the payments that the Jews were forced to pay to Muslim extortionists at some holy places including Rachel's Tomb: "300 lira per annum to the effendi whose house is adjacent to the site of crying" (the Western Wall) for the right to pray there and "100 lira a year to the Taamra Arabs for not wrecking Rachel's Tomb near Bethlehem."²³ 


Jews Expand Rachel's Tomb in 1841 to Prevent Muslim Violence and Strengthen the Jewish Presence at the Site 

In 1841 Moses Montefiore obtained a license from the Turkish authorities to refurbish Rachel's Tomb and add another room to it, which changed its appearance and improved its formerly neglected status. A door to the domed room was installed and keys were given to two Jewish caretakers, one Sephardi and the other Ashkenazi. Fourteen years previously, an official of the Sephardi Kolelim (religious study centers) in Jerusalem, Avraham Behar Avraham, laid the groundwork for Montefiore's activity at Rachel's Tomb when he obtained recognition from the Turkish authorities for the status and rights of Jews at the site. This was, in practice, the original firman (royal decree)²⁴ issued by the Ottoman authorities in Turkey recognizing Jewish rights at Rachel's Tomb. 

The firman was necessary since the Muslims disputed ownership by the Jews of Rachel's Tomb and even tried by brute force to prevent Jewish visits to the site. From time to time Jews were robbed or beaten by Arab residents of the vicinity, and even the protection money that was paid did not always prevail. Avraham Behar Avraham approached the authorities in Istanbul on this matter and in 1830 the Turks issued the firman that gave legal force to Rachel's Tomb being recognized as a Jewish holy site.²⁵ Additionally, the governor of Damascus sent a written order to the Mufti of Jerusalem to fulfill the Sultan's order. 

This is our order to you: (the following matter) was submitted to us by the subject of our order, the sage representative of honored Jerusalem's Jewry and his translator that the tomb of esteemed Rachel, the mother of our Lord Joseph...they (the Jews) are accustomed to visit it from ancient days; and no one is permitted to prevent them or oppose them (from doing) this....It turned out that at this holy site, they have been visiting since ancient times, without any person preventing them or trespassing on their property and they (have it) as was their custom. In accordance with the respected judgment, I order that our commandment be issued to you so you will treat them accordingly without addition or without subtraction, without hindrance and without opposition to them by anyone in any way whatsoever  - written August 10, 1830.²⁶

An additional firman from April 1831, eight months later, determined inter alia:²⁷ 

To inform and demonstrate to all interested parties and the appointed officials, the right of the Jews who are residents of holy Jerusalem to visit the grave of Rachel, the mother of the Prophet Joseph, peace be upon him, without hindrance....The deputy translator and other public functionaries, members of the Jewish community of Jerusalem, approached me with many requests regarding the tomb of Rachel, may peace be upon her, the mother of the Prophet Joseph, peace be upon him, and it is known that this grave is located outside the city of Jerusalem opposite the town of Bethlehem, on the highway...and that since ancient times the Jews have tended to visit this holy grave without anybody preventing them from doing so, as an inviolable law. And now people have emerged who have begun to hinder them, although as aforesaid and as proven the Jews have a right to visit the grave according to the Sultan's order. Hence I approach his honor the governor, may he be exalted, reminding him of the contents of the existing order. I also order him to attempt to remove the obstacles from the Jews, residents of Holy Jerusalem and others, so they can visit the aforementioned holy grave unhindered. Rendered in Istanbul at the end of the month of Shawwal in the year 1246 to the Hejira. Signed: The Sublime Porte.

Ironically, Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, whose government has been described as "neo-Ottoman" in outlook, told the Saudi paper al-Wattan (March 7, 2010) that the Cave of the Patriarchs and Rachel's Tomb "were not and never will be Jewish sites, but Islamic sites."²⁸ 

The two firmans were preserved in the archives of the Sephardic Community Committee in Jerusalem. In 1910 they were transferred to Pinhas Grayevsky, one of Jerusalem's most important researchers, who published them 22 years later. They were also published in Miginzei Kedem, a more scientific publication.²⁹ 

Montefiore received the permit for building an additional room attached to the existing structure from the Sublime Porte in Constantinople. The permit, bearing the seal of the Sublime Porte, resided for many years in the museum named after Sir Isaac and Lady Edith Wolfson at Hechal Shlomo in Jerusalem. Many saw it, but it was lost and quite possibly stolen.³⁰ 

We have no details regarding the conversations of Montefiore with the Turkish authorities on this topic. Nevertheless, one can assume that Montefiore arrived at an informal arrangement with the authorities on a modus for dividing the rights to use the additional room, the room that leans on the older structure from the south. 

We can find support for this in the mihrab - a niche symbolizing the direction of prayer to Mecca that was built in the new room.³¹ Subsequently, Muslim dead were purified in this room on occasion.³²Yehuda Burla, the son of Yehoshua Burla, the caretaker of Rachel's Tomb, and his wife Miriam recount in their memoirs that the additional room was built so the Muslims would keep their hands off of the room marking the grave itself.³³ The Jews who came to Rachel's Tomb also used this room either as a waiting room or as a prayer room, especially on those days when a large public had gathered at Rachel's Tomb.³⁴ In practice, in any event, presumptive ownership at the location was Jewish. Shlomo Freiman, the last Ashkenazi caretaker of Rachel's Tomb, documents in his diary the friction with the Muslims who from time to time attempted to purify their dead in the additional room until they desisted from the practice in return for a sizable amount of money.³⁵ 


Here, for example, is one of Freiman's descriptions from his diaries: 

The 18th day of Sivan 5705: On Wednesday they brought a slain person from Bethlehem. We suffered greatly. They spent around two hours in the outer room and fought among themselves regarding revenge....The sheiks said that one had to wait three more days and the others claimed that it was a pity to wait. The grave was closed until they quitted the place.

Elul 5706: Most of the (Muslim) dead do not enter inside (the anteroom). Only in isolated cases where they bring a slain person from Jerusalem, or a dead person from the hospital, and have not managed to pray at the spot, they bring the dead body into the corridor and pray. Many times they bring the dead deliberately in order to disturb the prayers, for they as well recite a long prayer. Many times they sit for hours upon hours without disturbance....I think that one has to correct this distortion and must not allow them to do as they want. Yesterday I felt that they were afraid. They saw many Jews, so they didn't bring the dead person inside.

How Rachel's Tomb Was Islamicized and Became the Bilal Ibn Rabah Mosque 

Between 1993 and 1995, Palestinian groups committed terror and suicide attacks that killed 80 Israelis. In February 1996, the Israel Defense Forces feared that Rachel's Tomb would furnish a convenient target for an attack of this sort, as it was situated on the main highway connecting Jerusalem and Hebron, with heavy Jewish and Arab traffic. Demonstrations of a nationalist Palestinian character erupted at Rachel's Tomb as Muslims began to raise the argument that the site involved "Islamic soil."³⁶ 

At the end of September 1996 the "Western Wall Tunnel Riots" broke out. After the attack on Joseph's Tomb in Nablus and its fall to the Palestinians, hundreds of Arab residents from Bethlehem and the Aida refugee camp attacked Rachel's Tomb. They set on fire the scaffolding that was erected around the tomb as part of fortification work at the site and tried to break into the compound. Marching at their head was Muhammad Rashad al-Jabari, the Governor of Bethlehem, an appointee of the Palestinian Authority. The IDF dispersed the demonstrators with gunfire and stun grenades. Scores were wounded, including Kifah Barakat, the commander of Force 17, the presidential guard force of Palestinian Authority Chairman Yasser Arafat.³⁷ 

With the outbreak of the Second Intifada in 2000, Palestinians again attacked Rachel's Tomb, and for 41 days Jews were prevented from visiting the site due to shooting incidents.³⁸ 

The Muslims also escalated their rhetoric. They stopped calling the site "Rachel's Dome," as they had done for hundreds of years, and began calling it the mosque of Bilal ibn Rabah.³⁹ The Muslim religious authorities (wakf) first began to employ this name in 1996, and it eventually took root in Palestinian national discourse. 

Bilal ibn Rabah, an Ethiopian by origin, is known in Islamic history as a black slave who served the household of the prophet Mohammed as the person in charge of calling the Muslims to prayer five times a day - the first muezzin.⁴⁰ Upon the death of Mohammed he went to fight the wars of Islam in Syria, was killed there in 642 CE, and was buried in Damascus.⁴¹ The Palestinian Authority raised the argument that, according to Islamic tradition, the Islamic conquerors of the country called the mosque that was established at Rachel's Tomb after Bilal ibn Rabah. 

Yet the Palestinian argument ignores the presumptive ownership that the Jews acquired at the site for many hundreds of years and from the firmans that the Ottoman authorities issued awarding Rachel's Tomb to the Jews at the beginning of the nineteenth century.⁴² 

The Palestinian arguments ignore even the accepted Muslim tradition that venerates Rachel and identifies the site as her burial place. Professor Yehoshua Porat termed the claim of a mosque at Rachel's Tomb as mendacious. He noted that the place was known in Arabic as "Rachel's Dome, a Jewish place of worship."⁴³ 

For many years in official publications of Palestinian national bodies, there was no reference to any other name for the site, including in the Palestinian Lexicon issued by the Arab League and the PLO in 1984, or in the Al-mawsu'ah al-filastiniyah published in Italy by the Palestinian Encyclopedia organization after 1996. The book Palestine the Holy Land simply relates that "At the northern entrance to the city the Tomb of Rachel appears, the mother of the matriarchs, who died while giving life to Benjamin."⁴⁴ The book The West Bank and Gaza - Palestine also fails to mention the location of Rachel's Tomb as a mosque.⁴⁵ Despite this, the Deputy Minister of Religious Trusts and Religious Affairs in the Palestinian Authority defined Rachel's Tomb as an Islamic site.⁴⁶ 

On Yom Kippur 2000, six days after the IDF retreated from Joseph's Tomb in Nablus, the official PLO newspaper Al-Hayat al-Jadida published an article indicating Rachel's Tomb as the next Palestinian target. "Bethlehem - Rachel's Tomb or the Mosque of Bilal ibn Rabah is one of the stakes that the occupation government and the Zionist movement drove into most of the Palestinian cities....This grave is spurious and was originally a Muslim mosque."⁴⁷ During the Second Intifada, Rachel's Tomb was attacked by gunfire both from the direction of the Aida refugee camp between Beit Jalla and Bethlehem, as well as from the rooftops of houses to the west, south and east. Palestinian Authority forces, who were presumably in charge of preserving order and should have prevented violence, not only did not prevent it but took an active part in the fighting. 

At one point, 50 Jews found themselves besieged at Rachel's Tomb while a gun battle between the IDF and Palestinian Authority forces was taking place around them.⁴⁸ On April 2, 2002, the IDF returned to Bethlehem in the framework of Operation Defensive Shield and remained there for a protracted time. At the outset, the IDF besieged wanted terrorists holed up in the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem not far from Rachel's Tomb. Violence continued sporadically in the following years as well. A bomb was thrown at Rachel's Tomb on April 10, 2005, and another on December 27, 2006, while on February 10, 2007, scores of Palestinians attacked the site with rocks.⁴⁹ Israel's High Court of Justice has recognized the clear security need of defending this holy site. On February 3, 2005, it rejected petitions by Palestinians who wanted to change the route of the security barrier near Rachel's Tomb, ruling that the current location of the barrier preserved the balance between freedom of religion and the local residents' freedom of movement.⁵⁰ 

*     *     *

Notes

1. Report by Gideon Kutz, Israel Radio, October 29, 2010.

2. For more documentation, see Avraham Yaari, Jewish Pilgrims' Journeys to the Land of Israel  (Gazit, 1946) (Hebrew); Zeev Vilnai, Sacred Tombstones in the Land of Israel (Rav Kook Institute, 1963) (Hebrew); Michael Ish Shalom, Christian Pilgrimages to the Land of Israel (Am Oved, 1979) (Hebrew); Natan Shor, "The Jewish Settlement in Jerusalem according to Franciscan Chronicles and Travelers' Letters" (Yad Ben-Tzvi, 1979) (Hebrew); Eli Schiller, The Tomb of Rachel (Ariel, 1977) (Hebrew). For a summary of these and other sources, see Nadav Shragai, At the Crossroads, The Story of the Tomb of Rachel, Part I, 1700 Years of Testimony (Jerusalem Studies, 2005) (Hebrew).

3. See the summary in Gilad Messing, And You Were Better than Us All (Private Publication, 2001) (Hebrew), pp. 161-4.

4. See, for example, Shragai, At the Crossroads, pp. 163-5.

5. Ibid., p. 14.

6. Eli Schiller, The Tomb of Rachel, p. 18. 

7. Ibid.

8. Ibid.

9. Mendel Reicher, The Gates of Jerusalem (Warsaw, 5639), p. 40, Entry: Bethlehem.

10. See Mordechai Ha'Kohen, The Holy Places in the Land of Israel (Ministry of Religious Affairs, 1971) (Hebrew), p. 33.

11. Shor, p. 413, cites the words of the English traveler Richard Pocock and writes: "in speaking about Rachel's Tomb he says, the Turks closed the spaces between the arches in order to make access to it more difficult for the Jews."

12. Shmuel Berkowitz, The Wars of the Holy Places (Jerusalem Institute for Israeli Studies and Hed Artzi, 2000), p. 301.

13. Shragai, At the Crossroads, pp. 65-76.

14. See Nadav Shragai, "The Palestinian Authority and the Jewish Holy Sites in the West Bank: Rachel's Tomb as a Test Case" November 14, 2007,http://www.jcpa.org/JCPA/Templates/ShowPage.asp?DRIT=2&DBID=1&LNGID=1&TMID=111&FID=377&PID=0&IID=1923&TTL=The_Palestinian_Authority_and_the_Jewish_Holy_Sites_in_the_West_Bank:_Rachel%E2%80%99s_Tomb_as_a_Test_Case.

15.  Data from the Authority for the Holy Places.

16. Yaari, Jewish Pilgrims' Journeys to the Land of Israel, p. 450.

17. Shoshana Halevi, Affairs at the Beginning of the Yishuv's History (1989) (Hebrew), p. 71.

18. S. Avitzur, Daily Life in the Land of Israel in the 19^th Century (Am Ha'Sefer, 1972) (Hebrew), p. 108.

19. Schiller, The Tomb of Rachel.

20. Yehoshua Kaniel, In Transition, Selected Articles (Yad Yitzhak Ben Zvi, 2000) (Hebrew), p. 29. For details, see Yehoshua Ben Hananiah, "Taxes and Burial Pangs in Jerusalem," Yerushalayim[n.d.], pp. 43-46, and Meir Benayahu "More on Burial Taxes in Jerusalem," ibid., pp. 47-49.

21. Avraham Ben Yaakov, Jerusalem between the Walls: a History of the Meyuhas Family (Reuven Maas, 1977) (Hebrew), pp. 60-70.

22. Yaari, pp. 508-9.

23. Ish Shalom, p. 635.

24. A firman was an official order by the governor in the oriental countries. In this case it was a letter on behalf of the central government in Constantinople bestowing authorization and rights.

25. The firmans that were found in the Sephardic Community Committee and subsequently published bear the dates 1830 and 1831. They were received after an agreement in principle obtained in 1827 by Avraham Behar Avraham to award a firman.

26. Malachi Ha'Doar XXVI (5707), Issue 38, pp. 1170-1171; Meir Benayahu "Five Years that Turned Jerusalem into Bedlam," in Asufot (Yad Harav Nissim, 5752) (Hebrew), pp. 250ff.

27. Miginzei Kedem, Documents and Sources from the Writings of Pinhas Grayevsky, ed. Yitzhak Beck (Yad Yitzhak Ben-Tzvi, 1977) (Hebrew), pp. 33-34.

28. "Rachel's Tomb Was Never Jewish," Jerusalem Post, March 7, 2010, http://www.jpost.com/MiddleEast/Article.aspx?id=170394.

29. Miginzei Kedem, pp. 30-32.

30. Dov Genachowski, the author and journalist who studied this document when it was still preserved at the Wolfson Museum, told me that it was signed by the Sublime Porte. A search conducted by museum personnel for the documents in October 2003 did not turn up anything. Genachowski also saw the accompanying letter of Montefiore's secretary, Eliezer Halevi, beseeching Jerusalem's rabbis in Montefiore's name not to commemorate his name because of the site's refurbishing and the construction of the additional room. A copy of this letter is preserved with Genachowski.

31. The mihrab was installed in the southern wall to the right of the window and was concealed after 1967. Details on this matter are included in a letter from Shmuel Hamburger, the Coordinator of Religious Affairs in the Judea and Samaria Civil Administration, to Minister of Religious Affairs Rabbi Yitzhak Cohen, dated November 15, 1999.

32. Details on this matter are included in the Rachel's Tomb diaries of Shlomo Freiman, the caretaker of Rachel's Tomb between the years 1918-1948. Photocopies from its pages are in the author's possession, as well as in the explanations by Yitzhak Ben Zvi, the second president of the State of Israel, that are included in a letter dated November 22, 1961, after information was received that the Jordanians were desecrating Rachel's Tomb, State Archives Het Tzadi 2963/2. Eli Schiller informs that the purification of the dead at the site was stopped just before the War of Independence in return for a substantial bribe. Miriam Burla also divulges this in her memoirs.

33. Miriam Burla's Memoirs, photo of a printout in the author's possession.

34. Freiman Diaries.

35. This emerges from a study of the Freiman Diaries.

36. Danny Rubinstein, "Bethlehem Does Not Want to Be Berlin," Ha'aretz, February 16, 1996.

37. Shragai, At the Crossroads, p. 216.

38. Ibid., p. 229.

39. Ibid., pp. 230-231.

40. Danny Rubinstein, "The Slave and the Mother," Ha'aretz, October 9, 1996, and a private conversation with Orientalist Yoni Dehoah-Halevi.

41. Ibid.

42. Shragai, At the Crossroads, pp. 48-52; Miginzei Kedem, pp. 30-32.

43. Yehoshua Porat, "Two Graves, Two Worlds," from an issue of Maariv from that period.

44. The book was published by PACDAR with an introduction by Yasser Arafat.

45. Islam adopted a similar fable regarding the Western Wall. Further information can be found in Dr. Berkowitz' book. He found that until the eleventh century Muslim scholars disagreed as to where the prophet Muhammad had tethered al-Buraq, his winged horse, after he had landed following his celestial night ride from Mecca. Some identified the place as the southern wall of the Temple Mount, others as the eastern wall, but none of them suggested any connection to the western wall, sacred to Judaism. The claim was only raised after the "Wall conflict" broke out between Jews and Muslims before the 1929 riots.

46. Shragai, At the Crossroads, p. 233.

47. Al-Hayat al-Jadida, October 8, 2000.

48. Shragai, At the Crossroads, p. 242.

49. From newspaper chronicles and reports on Israeli websites based on the IDF Spokesperson's Office.

50.  From the High Court of Justice decision on this matter.

*     *     *

Nadav Shragai, author of At the Crossroads, the Story of Rachel's Tomb (2005), is a senior researcher at the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs. His recent publications include Demography, Geopolitics, and the Future of Israel's Capital: Jerusalem's Proposed Master Plan (2010); Jerusalem: The Dangers of Division, An Alternative to Separation from the Arab Neighborhoods (2008); "Protecting the Continuity of Israel: The E-1 Area and the Link Between Jerusalem and Maale Adumim" (2009); "The U.S.-Israeli Dispute Over Building in Jerusalem: The Sheikh Jarrah-Simon HaTzadik Neighborhood" (2009); and "The Mount of Olives in Jerusalem: Why Continued Israeli Control is Vital" (2009). His books include: The Mount of Foundation, The Struggle for the Temple Mount, Jews and Muslims, Religion and Politics Since 1967 (1995); and the essay: "Jerusalem Is Not the Problem, It Is the Solution," in Mr. Prime Minister: Jerusalem (2005). He served as a journalist and commentator at Ha'aretz between 1983 and 2009, and has documented the dispute over Jerusalem for 30 years.