JERUSALEM The Jewish state that Prime Minister Netanyahu demands that Palestinians recognize as such is certainly not all Jewish.
I refer not to Israeli Arabs, Druze, Circassians, Muslims, Christians, Bahai and other minorities long resident in Israel.
The scene: My rental car is being cleaned, readied for release. The rental agencys employee cleaning the car is black. I address him in Hebrew, assuming he is an Ethiopian Jew. No response.
I inquire of a nearby Israeli worker, who tells me the black man speaks no Hebrew. Well, what language does he speak? English, I am told.
I address him in English, which, it turns out, he learned . . . in his native Sudan.
Then I notice black employees in the major grocery stores and elsewhere. Once the ingathering of the exiles, Israel, the Jewish state, is now the ingathering of humanity.
Another scene: the new churva synagogue in the Old City of Jerusalem. Churva means ruin. Some ruin!
Built in 1700, destroyed by Arabs some 150 years later, rebuilt by Jews, then destroyed again by the Jordanians in 1948, the ruin has now been transformed into the most beautiful synagogue I have ever seen, breathtaking in its architecture, overwhelming in its holiness.
Visitors to Jerusalem may remember the magnificent arch rising alone into the sky in the heart of the Jewish Quarter of the Old City. They will no longer see it that way. Constructed as a reminder of a once beautiful synagogue, destroyed in 1948, the arch is now incorporated into the rebuilt structure, dedicated just three months ago.
The Churva synagogue is a must see; dont miss it on your next trip to Israel.
IF I had to advise the Israeli government on just one single site to show President Obama on his next trip to Israel (if he ever takes it), it would not be Yad Vashem, the Holocaust memorial; Masada, site of the last struggle for Jewish independence in 70 CE; the Golan Heights, which graphically illustrate Israels security needs; or the Jewish neighborhoods (which Obama calls settlements) in the post-1967 areas of Jerusalem.
Based on his speech to the Arab world in Cairo in June, 2009, Obamas greatest intellectual deficiency in the Middle East is his ignorance of the Jews, and Judaisms, roots there. There is no more compelling evidence of these roots than the underground tunnels alongside the Western Wall.
Why must the Western Wall, in its full length, be accessible only via tunnel? Because of Israels renunciation of Judaisms right to her own holiest place.
Let me explain.
What people see today as the Western Wall is only about one-eighth of the length of the Wall. The rest is covered by houses built by Muslims in the 14th century.
The construction of these settlements was a deliberate attempt to efface Judaisms holiest site. Ditto, the construction of the Dome of the Rock right on top of Judaisms holiest site.
Now, these Muslim houses are not holy sites. Yet, in 1967, when Israel won the Old City after Jordan attacked Israel, Israel did not invoke eminent domain in regard to these Muslim houses.
Rather, Israel left them alone and excavated underneath. It took 20 years to dig out all the dirt, carefully leaving and revealing the arches built under the houses to hold them up, and also revealing the lower regions of the Western Wall, otherwise untouched.
So, first of all: Obama would see the extreme lengths Israel has gone to so as not to disturb Muslim sensitivities and residences.
Second: Obama would see the unparalled levels and depths of archaeological evidence of the ancient Jewish presence in the region.
Third: Obama would see the centuries of evidence of brute attempts to erase the evidence of the Jewish presence and understand why Israel says she cannot relinquish her control of the Old City of Jerusalem.
Fourth: Obama would see all this while literally being underground, surrounded by spooky niches, narrow tunnels, deep pits all around, and magnificent arches above, some of which drip water into an ancient aqueduct.
He might even perceive the symbolism evident to Jewish eyes that even today, in the reborn, independent Jewish state, Jews still must crouch down and almost crawl to see seven-eighths of the length of their own holiest site.
Fifth: Obama would hear about the largest stone in Israel, which is at the base of a section of the hidden Western Wall a single stone 40 feet wide, 9 feet high and 12 feet deep! It weighs an estimated 570 tons!
He would hear about this 570-ton stone, wonder in sore amazement how it could ever have been quarried, let alone transported, in antiquity. He would see the lengths the ancient Jews went to to construct their ancient Holy Temple in Jerusalem, and he just might then get it, get the incredible Israeli attachment to, and determination to retain, the Jewish homeland, no matter what.
