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The Philadelphia Forum, one of the city's free weekly newspapers, usually focuses on local arts and entertainment. But with Rosh Hashana approaching, editor Dan Rottenberg used his October 2 column to reflect on the Jewish future--and to smear Israel and the Jewish residents of Hebron.
Israel, Rottenberg asserted, "has been hijacked by fundamentalists and right-wing zealots who seem intent on doing to others what has been done to us for the past four millenia." In case any readers are wondering what it is that "has been done to us," Rottenberg offers a list: "4,000 years of [being] sold into slavery, driven into exile, blamed for the Crucifixion, tortured into conversion, buried alive, flung into the Rhine, crowded into ghettoes, forbidden to own land, accused of poisoning the wells, slaughtered in pogroms, drafted into the Tsar's army for 25 year-terms, marched into gas chambers, rejected for employment at blue-blood firms and Fortune 500 companies or prevented from living on the Main Line or joining the Union League."
Which "right-wing zealots" in Israel does Rottenberg believe are guilty of carrying out the crimes he listed? "The 400 Jews who settled in the West Bank city of Hebron, with the support of the Israeli government, in order to make an in-your-face political statement to the city's Arab population."
Rottenberg's accusation is as false as false can be. The Jews of Hebron have not marched their Arab neighbors into gas chambers, sold them into slavery, exiled them, or any of the other foul deeds in Rottenberg's list. In fact, it is the Jews who have been the victims of Arab violence and discrimination. In 1929, Arab pogromists slaughtered 69 Jews and raped and maimed hundreds more. Seven years later, the surviving remnants of the Hebron Jewish community were forcibly expelled by their Arab neighbors. Since returning to the city and rebuilding its Jewish Quarter after the 1967 war, Hebron's Jews have been the constant targets of Arab knifings, shootings, stonings, and firebomb attacks. Earlier this year, the Israeli Army released a report documenting over 600 Arab firebomb attacks against Jews in Hebron in a single one-month period.
Rottenberg's description of the rebirth of the Hebron Jewish community as "an in-your-face political statement to the city's Arab population" is an outrageous falsehood. The Jewish return to Hebron is a peaceful, legal, rebuilding of a neighborhood destroyed by Arab terrorist mobs. It is also the legitimate exercise of Jewish religious rights. Although Rottenberg forgot to mention it, the fact is that next to Jerusalem, Hebron is the holiest city in Judaism. Hebron contains numerous Jewish holy sites, including the Cave he Patriarchs (where Abraham, Isaac, Jacob and their wives are buried), the Tombs of the prophet Avner, the biblical matriarch Ruth, King David's father Ishai, and Otniel Ben Kenaz, the first Judge of biblical Israel. For 1,300 years --from the Muslim conquest of the Holy Land in the 7th century until the 1967 war-- the Jews of Hebron were treated like third-class citizens, and the Muslim ruling authorities prohibited Jews from praying in the Cave of the Patriarchs. It was not until Israel won Hebron in the 1967 war that 13 centuries of Muslim religious discrimination against Jews in Hebron was finally ended.
When a century of legal discrimination against African-Americans began to crumble in the 1950s, Rottenberg surely cheered. When decades of discrimination against blacks in South Africa came to an end a few years, Rottenberg surely cheered. But when Jews attempt to put an end to anti-Jewish discrimination --by living and praying in Judaism's second-holiest city-- Rottenberg insults the Jewish victims.
Ultimately, however, one wonders if Hebron's Jewish community is really what bothers Rottenberg--or if his hostility runs deeper. Back in the days when Rottenberg was editor of another Philadelphia weekly, the Welcomat, he once devoted part of his column (on Jan. 8, 1992) to the question of whether or not Israel has a right to exist. Rottenberg wrote that "Israel has a right to exist--but so does Palestine"--then he explained: "There is no such thing as a national right to exist. There are such things as individual human rights...But nations come and go...Come to think of it, no corporation enjoys a right to exist in perpetuity, either. Pan American Airways, the Pennsylvania Railroad, Drexel Burnham Lambert, Gimbel's and the Bulletin all once employed thousands of people, but they vanished when competitors proved more capable of attracting the loyalty of individual customers and employees." Has the PLO proved more capable of attracting Rottenberg's loyalty than Israel? One gets the feeling that he will not lose much sleep if Israel --not just the Jews of Hebron-- ever goes the way of Pan Am and Gimbel's.