    Rape of Dulcinea

    by Israel Shamir
    January 27, 2001

    The touching words of Elie Wiesel (Jerusalem in My Heart, NYT 1/25/2001)
    painted a beautiful portrait of the Jewish people, yearning for
    Jerusalem, loving and praying for it over the centuries and cherishing
    its name from generation to generation.

    This potent image reminded me, an Israeli writer from Jaffa, of
    something familiar yet elusive. I finally made the connection by
    revisiting my well-thumbed volume of Don Quixote. Wiesel's evocative
    article is so wonderfully reminiscent of the immortal love of the Knight
    of Sad Visage for his belle Dulcinea de Toboso. Don Quixote traveled all
    over Spain proclaiming her name. He performed formidable feats, defeated
    giants, who turned out to be windmills, brought justice to the
    oppressed, and so much more for the sake of his beloved. When he decided
    that his achievements made him worthy, he sent his arms bearer, Sancho
    Pansa, to his Dame with a message of adoration.

    Now I find myself in the somewhat embarrassing position of Sancho Pansa.
    I have to inform my master, Don Wiesel Quixote, that his Dulcinea is
    well. She is happily married, has a bunch of kids, and she is quite busy
    with laundry and other domestic chores. While he fought brigands and
    restored governors, somebody else took care of his beloved, provided her
    with food, made love to her, made her a mother and grandmother. Do not
    rush, dear knight, to Toboso, or it will break your heart.

    Elie, the Jerusalem that you write of so movingly is not now and never
    has been desolate. She has lived happily across the centuries in the
    embrace of another people, the Palestinians of Jerusalem, who have taken
    good care of her. They made her the beautiful city she is, adorned her
    with a magnificent piece of jewelry, the Golden Dome of Haram al Sharif,
    built their houses with pointed arches and wide porches and planted
    cypresses and palm trees.

    They do not mind if the knight-errant visits their beloved city on his
    way from New York to Saragosa. But be reasonable, old man. Stay within
    the frame of the story and within the bounds of common decency. Don
    Quixote did not drive on his jeep into Toboso to rape his old flame. OK,
    you loved her, and thought about her, but it does not give you the right
    to kill her children, bulldoze her rose garden, and put your boots on
    her dining room table. All your words just prove that you confuse your
    desires with reality. If you must continue to ask why the Palestinians
    want Jerusalem? Because she belongs to them, because they live there and
    it is their hometown. Granted, you dreamed about her in your remote
    Polish hamlet. So did many people around the world. She is so wonderful
    and certainly worth dreaming about.

    Elie, many people have adored this city across the ages. Swedish
    craftsmen left their villages and moved there to build the lovely
    American Colony together with the Vesters, a devout Christian family
    from Chicago. You can read about it in the works of Selma Lagerlof,
    another Nobel Prize winner. On the slopes of the Mount of Olives, the
    Russians built the dainty church of Mary Magdalene. Ethiopians erected
    their Resurrection monastery amid the ruins left by the Crusaders.

    The British died for her and left as their architectural legacy the St
    George Cathedral and St Andrew's. The Germans built the lovely German
    Colony and nursed the city's sick in the Schneller Hospital. My devout
    great-grandfather moved into the protection of her thick walls in 1870-s
    from a Lithuanian Jewish village and threw his lot with the hospitable
    Jerusalemites. He found his eternal rest until the day of Resurrection
    on the slopes of Mount of Olives. None of them thought to rape their
    Dulcinea. They just left bouquets of architectural flowers as testament
    of their adoration.

    Those who love Jerusalem are legion. It is disingenuous of Elie Wiesel
    to reduce the struggle for this city as a tug of war between Muslims and
    Jews.

    It is a question of coveting property versus having the deed of
    ownership. The resolution of this case should be based on the 10th
    commandment, observed by our fathers. They knew that veneration does not
    amount to the right of ownership. Millions of Protestants venerate the
    Catholic-owned Gethsemane Garden, but it does not transfer the garden
    into their hands. Millions of Catholics visit the Tomb of Mary, but it
    still belongs to the Eastern Church. For generations, the Moslems have
    come to kneel at the birthplace of Jesus in Bethlehem, but the church
    remains Christian forever.

    What water did to Gremlins in Spielberg's movies, Zionism has inflicted
    on the jolly Jewish folk of Eastern Europe. It caused them to carry out
    the ethnic clearing of Gentiles in West Jerusalem, to convert Schneller
    hospital and church into a military base, and to build a Holiday Inn on
    top of the venerated shrine of Sheik Bader. The Israeli State forbids
    the Christians of Bethlehem to pray in the Holy Sepulcher and bans
    Moslems below the age of 40 from attending Friday prayers at al Aqsa
    mosque. These changes of the city by the Israeli government amount to
    her rape.

    In order to justify this rape, you invoke the names of King Solomon and
    Jeremiah, quote the Koran and the Bible. Let me tell you a Jewish
    Hassidic tale, one you might have heard in your Polish schtetl. A Jewish
    midrash, a legend, mentions that Abraham had a daughter. A simple-minded
    Hassid asked his Rabbi, why Abraham did not wed his daughter and his son
    Isaac. The Rabbi responded that Abraham did not want to marry a real son
    to a legendary daughter.

    The legends are the stuff the dreams are made of. Some are charming,
    some are horrible, and none is valid as a deed to the land or as a
    political platform. Elie, you certainly would not like to lose your
    private home in New York because of a few verses written in the Book of
    Mormon. This game of spreading the Zionist gospel is becoming
    irrelevant, but I will play one more round with you for the
    entertainment of the crowd. As every archaeologist will tell you, King
    Solomon and his temple belong to the fantasy realm of Abraham's
    daughter. Moreover, and not that it matters, but the name of Jerusalem
    is not mentioned even once in the Jewish Holy Book, the Torah.

    Elie, you want to play some more games? I'll tell you more. The Jews are
    not even mentioned in the Jewish Bible. Get that thick book off your
    shelf and check it. None of the great and legendary men you named, from
    King David to the prophets, were called "the Jews." This ethnonym
    appears the first and only time in the Bible in the Persian story of the
    very late Book of Esther. The self-identification of the Jews with the
    tribes of Israel and with the heroes of the Bible is as valid as the
    story of Rome being founded by the Trojan prince Aeneus. If the modern
    Turks, who call themselves "the descendants of Troy" would conquer Rome,
    dynamite Borromini's baroque masterpieces and expel her inhabitants in
    order to re-establish the legacy of Aeneus, they would just be repeating
    the folly of the Zionists.

    Our ancestors, the humble East European folk of Yids, whose language was
    Yiddish, had a tradition of adorning themselves with the impressive
    heraldic lions of Biblical heroes. Their claim of descent from these
    legends was as valid as the claims of Thomas Hardy's ambitious farmer
    girl, Tess. But even the fictional Tess did not conspire to evict the
    lords from their castle and claim the manor for herself.

    Once, walking with the Christian pilgrims to the great Church of the
    Holy Sepulcher, I was stopped by a Hassidic Jew. He inquired whether my
    companions were Jews, and, receiving a negative reply, exclaimed in
    amazement: "What are these Goyyim Gentiles looking for in the holy
    city?" He had never heard of the Passion of Jesus Christ, whose name he
    used as a swear word. I am equally amazed that a Jewish professor from
    Boston University is as ignorant as the simple-minded Hassidic Jew.
    Jerusalem is holy to billions of believers: Catholic, Protestant, and
    Eastern Christians, Sunni and Shia Moslems, to thousands of Hassidic and
    Sephardic Jews. Still, as a city, Jerusalem is not different from any
    place in the world; she belongs to her citizens.

    Twenty more years of Zionist control of this ancient city would turn her
    into just another Milwaukee and forever ruin her charm. Jerusalem needs
    to be restored to its inhabitants. The seized properties in Talbieh and
    Lifta, Katamon and Malcha should be returned to their owners. Professor
    Wiesel, respect the Gentile property rights as you would like Gentiles
    to respect your right to your lovely house. The holy sites of Jerusalem
    are regulated by the 150 year old international statute (Status Quo)
    that should not be tampered with. Last attempt to touch it caused the
    siege of Sevastopol and the charge of the light brigade at Balaclava.
    Next attempt could cause a nuclear war.