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.