If you listened only to
leftwing and human rights groups, you would conclude that Jews had no rights in
'Arab' East Jerusalem, argues Lyn Julius in the Times of Israel.
This Lag BaOmer, Jewish pilgrims will be flocking to
the tomb of a Second Temple-era high priest, Simeon the
Just (Shimon Hatzaddik), in East Jerusalem. But the celebrations will be
subdued compared to times gone by: in the 19th century, witnesses report that
the entire city, in which Jews were a majority, took part in a massive festival,
watched by Christians and Muslims. There was candle lighting, dancing, prayers,
haircuts for children. The pilgrims made donations according to the weight of
the trimmed hair.
In 1876 Ashkenazi and Sephardi communities in
Jerusalem jointly purchased the site next to Shimon
Hatzaddik’s tomb. They built dwellings for the pilgrims on part of the site.
The Jewish residents of some 100 homes were among the first to be expelled when
hostilities broke out at the end of 1947. Arab families moved into the empty
Jewish homes. From 1949 to 1967 Jews could not visit the holy sites under
Jordanian rule — a violation of the 1949 armistice agreement.
This year’s celebrations will take place against a
backdrop of legal wrangling over the ownership of Shimon Hatzaddik, Nahalat
Shimon and Jewish neighborhoods adjoining the Arab neighborhood of Sheikh
Jarrah. Over the last few years, human rights and left-wing groups have held
weekly demonstrations protesting Jewish settlement in “Arab East Jerusalem.”
Jewish revelers at the Tomb of Simeon the Just in
Jerusalem (photo credit: Uri Lenz/Flash90)
Some Jewish former owners have been resorting to the
Israeli courts to have their properties returned to them in areas conquered by
Israel in 1967.
” I demand to get my property back,” 76-year-old
Elisha Ben-Tzur told Ynet News a
couple of years ago. “My grandfather built this house and the synagogue that was
burned down by Arabs in 1948. Before Sheikh Jarrah, we lived in Silwan, but were
expelled out of there as well.”
The courts have not always ruled in the Jewish
petitioners’ favor, recognizing that the current inhabitants’ rights must also
be protected under the law. The only those Arab tenant families to be evicted
from Sheikh Jarrah where those that had
failed to pay rent. But groups such as Sheikh Jarrah Solidarity have
insisted on portraying these cases as “Israeli settlers evicting the rightful
Palestinian owners.”
More recently groups such as Yachad — known as the
British J-Street — have taken up the cause of the Arab Sumarin family in Silwan,
charging that they are victims of an Israeli policy to “Judaize” Jerusalem. The
Sumarins had protested that settlers, backed by the JNF, wished to take over
their house, but an Israeli court ruled they had no title. Even the Independent newspaper conceded that technically, Israel
was “acting within the bounds of its own law” in the
Sumarin case. The current occupier is not the legal owner, although he
initially won his case in the Israeli courts, before it was proved that he had
forged ownership documents. The media fumed with indignation that settlers
linked to the very heart of the Israeli establishment were taking over “Arab”
property. An international outcry has forced a delay in the implementation of
the verdict.
Again, Silwan is being misrepresented as a Palestinian
village in East Jerusalem, despite the fact that poor Yemenite Jews lived in
stone houses at the southern end of the village for about 50 years. Only in
1938, after attacks on the Jewish residents, did Silwan become Judenrein on the advice of the British.
Human rights groups eager to defend Arab property
rights are curiously indifferent when it comes to Jews reclaiming their
property. Many of these claimants are Sephardim or Mizrahim, but a veil of
silence is drawn over their rights.
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