Jerusalem: Jews Confront Arabs after Stabbing Residents of Maale Zeitim say they've had enough after renowned Rabbi Tau's son is stabbed.

Jews confronted Arabs outside the Jerusalem neighbor hood of Maaleh Zeitim on the Mount of Olives Saturday evening, 24 hours after Arabs stabbed a Jewish man there.

The stabbing victim is Avraham Tau, son of the Dean of Har Hamor Yeshiva in Jerusalem, Rabbi Zvi Tau, a venerated Torah sage in the religious Zionist sector. Avraham Tau, whose wounds were defined as "moderate," is in the Intensive Care Unit of Hadassah Ein Karem Hospital, and is reportedly in stable condition.

Two Jews who tried to block the road in the course of the protest were detained by police. Arabs fired some fireworks into the air in order to intimidate the Jews. Police detained an Arab who tried to attack a policeman.

Avraham Tau and another Jew were walking together from the Western Wall toward Maaleh Zeitim when two terrorists attacked him, stabbing him in the back. The two Jews kept on walking toward Maaleh Zeitim, where the injured man received initialtreatment.

Jerusalem activist Aryeh King said that more than 50 Jews have been attacked in the same spot outside the neighborhood in the past two years. Residents demanded that police establish a deterrent presence in the location.

Photos: Yishai Fleisher

New Jewish Neighborhood in Eastern Jerusalem

Maaleh Zeitim Community Dedicated Thursday

A special dedication ceremony was held Thursday evening to celebrate theopening of 119 units for Jewish housing on the Mount  of Olives in eastern Jerusalem.
The dedication comes at a time when President Barack Obama's speech demanding that 1949 Armistice boundaries serve as the basis for Israel-PA negotiations has been countered strongly by Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu's refusal to consider the division of Jerusalem.

Daniel Luria, the Executive Director of Ateret Cohanim, which oversaw the project, told Arutz Sheva, "It was a magnificent evening ... The week of Yom Yerushalayim, on the day after, in fact, Prime Minister Netanyahu spoke about the indivisible Jerusalem, united, staying in Jewish hands we are celebrating the completion of this phenomenal and symbolic neighborhood."

"One has to remember there was a lot of pressure to stop this neighborhood. The world said it would not happen. Arafat, may his name be ground out, said the only Jews he would allow on the mount of olives - or in his Al Quds - are those who have been here for generations. He was referring to the dead Jews. Well, today there are Jews who are alive... running, jumping, living. This is the symbol of the victory of the Jewish people.

Chema Moskowitz, whose husband Irving Moskowitz purchased the property in 1990 and first moved Jews into the neighborhood, addressed the attendees by video.

"In 1998, when three [Jewish] families moved into a small building on this property, people in governments all across the world went a bit crazy. The media around the world attacked my husband for renting to those three families in east Jerusalem. There were front page articles in Finnish, Spanish, and even Chinese newspapers expressing their shock and dismay. President Clinton sent Ambassador Albright to Prime Minister Netanyahu to tell him to remove those families," Moskowitz recalled.

"What was the problem? These three families were not Muslim, not Christian, not Hindu, and not Buddhists. They were Jewish... It appears the one one place in the world where apartheid is applauded is east jerusalem when a Jews move into an Arab neighborhood... Today you see the result of that small beginning on Har Hazeitim - today there are many families living there," Moskowitz said.

"David Ben Gurion said, he who abandons his past forfeits his future, united jerusalem is both our past and our future and we will not abandon it," Moskowitz concluded.

 The American Friends of Ateret Cohanim annual dinner will take place on June 1st in New York.

ELDER OF ZIYON: The "new" neighborhood in Maale Zeitim

From Getty Images:

A Jewish settler girl in her living room during the inauguration ceremony of new settler homes on May 25, 2011 in the Jewish enclave of Maaleh Zeitim in the Palestinian neighbourhood of Ras al-Amud in east Jerusalem, Israel. Maaleh Zeitim was financed by American millionaire Irving Moskowitz who has bankrolled other settlement projects in the occupied West Bank, and east Jerusalem.

Interesting which "facts" Getty choose to highlight in the caption. In fact, the land was purchased by Jews in 1928 and Israel has upheld that purchase, and allowed Moskowitz to buy it legally.

But there is something else that is interesting about the Ras al-Amud:

Settlement remains dating to different phases of the Middle Canaanite period (2200-1900 BCE) and the last years of the First Temple period (eighth-seventh centuries BCE), including an inscription in ancient Hebrew script that mentions the name “Menachem”, were recently exposed in an archaeological excavation the Israel Antiquities Authority is conducting in the Ras el-‘Amud neighborhood, prior to the construction of a girls’ school by the Jerusalem municipality.

Among the remains from the First Temple period is a handle on which the Hebrew name (ל)מנחם  meaning (to) Menachem, is engraved. According to archaeologist Dr. Ron Beeri, the excavation director on behalf of the Israel Antiquities Authority,

I have a feeling that the area was not always known with the Arabic name of "Ras al-Amud."

New Jewish Neighborhood on the Mount of Olives

"You are invited to come rejoice in the joy of Jerusalem on the occasion of the inauguration of the Maaleh Zeitim neighborhood on the Mount of Olives, and to strengthen Jewish settlement in Jerusalem,” read the invitation sent out for the inauguration of a new Jewish neighborhood on the Mount of Olives.



The new neighborhood is a project of the Ateret Kohanim Yeshiva, which is located in the Moslem Quarter of Jerusalem's Old City. 


The dedication comes at a time when President Barack Obama's speech demanding 1949 Armistice boundaries serve as the basis for Israel-PA negotiations has been countered strongly by Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu's refusal to consider the division of Jerusalem. United States officials have expressed displeasure with Jewish building east of the 1949 armistice line, in eastern (where Maaleh Zeitim is located), northern and southern Jerusalem Knesset speaker Reuven Rivlin, Education Minister Gidon Saar, Minister of the Interior Eli Yishai, Jerusalem Mayor Nir Barkat and  other political and religious leaders are at the event.

The Mount of Olives, site of the new neighborhood, is where King David wept as he fled Jerusalem during his son Absalom's rebellion. It is also the site of a historic Jewish  cemetery which was vandalized during the period when Jordan occupied Jerusalem, from 1949-1967, and is now undergoing restoration. The gravestones, some used by Jordanians for latrines, tell the history of Jewish presence in Jerualem and are witness to the desire for Jews in the Diaspora to be buried there, as tradition has it that they will be resurrected first when the Messiah comes. Until now, the eight families living in the Jewish-owned Beit Choshen buiding on the Mount of Olives, were the only Israeli presence there. An Israeli flag waves atop the building, whose residents will soon be joined by those who make their homes on the mount in Ateret Kohanim's Maaleh Zeitim neighborhood.