One-and-a-half million Arabs live in Israel. They are Israeli citizens. No Jews live in either Gaza or Palestinian-controlled territories on the West Bank. As if that were not apartheid enough, the recent pogrom in a Jerusalem synagogue transformed Palestinian irredentism in a radical way.
The murderers of four rabbis and one Druze in a Jerusalem synagogue on Nov. 18, 2014 were two Arabs who differed from previous terrorists. These two Arabs were part of the warp and woof of Jewish life in the Har Nof neighborhood of Jewish Jerusalem. One of the Arabs worked in the local fish store, near the synagogue, and one was the janitor in the synagogue where they perpetuated the bloodbath, and in another nearby seminary.
Until this pogrom, the best kept secret in international diplomacy was the daily peace between West Jerusalem’s Jews and East Jerusalem’s Palestinians. Countless thousands of Palestinian residents of Arab Jerusalem worked in Jewish Jerusalem — in its hotels, seminaries, groceries, kitchens construction sites and elsewhere. De facto peace reigned. Even an element of trust and congeniality.
All that was destroyed in a few moments of hatred on the morning of Nov. 18. No longer could the Arab residents of Jerusalem be seen as daily evidence of the capacity of both Jews and Arabs to live together. The murderers were not strangers. They had long interacted with Israelis, and Israelis with them, in a normal way. Absent was any hostility. If even these Arabs could bear so much hatred as to kill Jews at prayer with meat cleavers, then Palestinian residents of Jerusalem could no longer be trusted as employees in Jewish Jerusalem.
In fact, countless institutions in the holy city are now looking elsewhere to fill these jobs. This is a tragedy.
These two Arab murderers surely accomplished their goal: the radical separation of Arab from Jew in the one area on the land between the Mediterranean Sea and the Jordan River where de facto peace reigned. For these murderers, it was not enough that Palestinian areas be empty of Jews (it is a capital crime under the Palestinian Authority for a Palestinian to sell land to an Israeli). Palestinians must now make themselves persona non grata in Jewish areas of Jerusalem.
We have here apartheid not only in the sense of keeping others out, i.e., keeping Jews out of Palestinian areas, but also in the sense of being kept out, i.e., keeping Palestinians out of Jewish areas. Piled upon the grief of five widows and some 30 orphans, the pogrom in Har Nof “accomplished” political goals that killed, or at least severely curtailed, a beautiful, if overlooked, daily example of Israeli-Palestinian peace.
Copyright © 2014 by the Intermountain Jewish News
