Destruction and Peace At Temple Mount

John R. Cohn, a Clinical Professor of Medicine at Thomas Jefferson University, and a participant in the recent Herzliya Conference on The Balance of Israel’s National Security, wrote a very compelling letter to the editor of The Bulletin, discussing the Muslim world’s so-called claim on the Holy City of Jerusalem, located in what some would call “Occupied Palestine.” This letter sparked from a recent BBC article by Matthew Sparks, a 34-year old journalist who covered the oft and recent violent outbursts in the Old City over the building of a new ramp up to Temple Mount. If you don’t recall the story, The State of Israel had built a tempoary wooden ramp (the same wooden ramp in the picture on this blog’s headline) awhile back to replace the old ramp that was damaged in a snowstorm. Since then, the wooden ramp has been dismantled and excavations have begun at the base of Temple Mount, in Jerusalem Archeological Park, for the footers for the new ramp. Muslim governments around the Middle East raised arms in protests, claiming that the excavations and new ramp building was just a cover for the real work. The real work, of course, being the plan by the State of Israel to tunnel underneath Temple Mount and implode the Dome of the Rock from the inside; all this of course, to usher in the rebuilding of the New Temple (it’s silly on both sides – the Jews have already rebuilt the Temple, it’s just in the New City and not on a hill). And of course, nevermind the fact that the very architecture of Temple Mount makes the idea of tunneling underneath it absolutely ridiculous (it’s a massive flat surface built onto a hill, supported by a series of King Herod-era arches and waterways). Anyway, off track, but back to story about why the Muslim’s don’t have that much of a claim to Jerusalem, according to history books.

It’s gotten almost to the point of complete hyperbole on all sides, but this is what the Cohn had to say in one portion of his letter:

“So does Matthew Price and the BBC find it not the least bit curious that Jerusalem, which was the Jews’ most holy city and capital long before the birth of Mohammed, is thought by “most of the world” to belong to anyone else but Israel? 
It can’t be because the world and protesting Muslims love the Palestinians.  The United Nations Relief and Work Agency for Palestinian Refugees (UNRWA) recently reported that only 3 percent of their funds for Palestinian refugee relief comes from Arabs states.
It can’t be because they love Jerusalem. Jerusalem was a backwater for centuries. In 2001, Iran’s influential Ayatollah Ali Akbar Hashemi-Rafsanjani observed, “If a day comes when the world of Islam is duly equipped with the arms Israel has in possession, the strategy of colonialism would face a stalemate because application of an atomic bomb would not leave any thing in Israel but the same thing would just produce damages in the Muslim world.” 
It can’t be because of Christianity’s recorded history.  If Jesus lived and preached in Jerusalem, so did his fellow Jews. 
Muslims are willing to destroy Jerusalem, and their Palestinian brothers and sisters, if they can take Israel along.  Presumably a BBC reporter needs no reminder that Islamic radicals are willing to die if they can take others with them.
Could it be none of that matters – that much of the world rejects Israel’s remarkably benevolent rule over that holy city not because they love Jerusalem or the Palestinians, but because they just don’t want it to belong to the Jews?”

Read the full article at the link above, and let’s discuss.  I’m a bit more interested in this now, as I just received word that I’ll be traveling there again on a writing assignment – a week in Damascus, a week in Beirut, a brief layover in Greece, capped off with two weeks in Jerusalem. I can’t discuss why now, but soon. Interesting times…

This Never Happened

We were done. We were done with the churches, the memorials, the places that we visited that were supposed to make us feel spiritual or sad or remorseful or reflective, the places that had bombarded us with the guilt and burden that modern religion had felt the need to impose, in the name of the very man who had come to release such burdens. We had had our fill of sacraments, customs (Hats on in Jewish landmarks! Hats off in Christian landmarks! How dare you wear shorts in The Nazareth Cathedral when you stopped by only randomly, coming by here on your way to Tiberius!), and had even had our fill of Arab barkers – like Amir, who wasn’t at all hesitant to point out that his name means “price” Prince! in English – who seemed to befriend us all along King David Street and at Jaffa Plaza, and force upon us his cheap Palestinian wares imported into this country and sold to us, his American friends! at special prices. This city had drained us. We woke up at close to midnight, on the nights that we were in and not out on the abandoned streets of Mount Zion purchasing the last of the day’s baklava or scrounging inside the stone streets for a Jerusalem-esque Circle K for cigarettes or an open nargilla cafe in the Arab Quarter, to the prayer chants chanted loudly, on speakers, through the empty Old City streets – Islamic prayer chants that added a sense of beautiful reality to the city at day but brought annoyance in the late of night, annoyance that went on and on and on until you realized that no one could ever live in this city, the Holy City, and be free of this all. An atheist approach to life was not an option here. We finally fell asleep when the chants subsided but were awoken at six each morning, in our dormitory full of those living a life that Americans would not understand, awakened each morning by the bells of The Greek Orthodox Church on the other side of King David Street in the Christian Quarter, and these bells were supposed to bring peace, peace! but brought nothing but annoyance, just as the cleaning man did a mere two hours later when he announced to me and the other hostelers to awake to vacate the building, three stories above the marketplaces, for the daily cleaning. But the returns of each of us later in the afternoon, after hours spent doing what one does when bumming around Jerusalem with no real rhyme or reason or responsibility or plan – just the city at their feet for their fucking observing and taking and own personal interpretations of this and that and Jesus Christ – we wandered at what exactly it was they cleaned. Oh the smell, the smell daily as we would walk in on the third story of the city – this city not really divided in stories but rather continuous layers upon layers of stairs and pathways and narrow stone passages from the days of King Herod, all wrapped in barbed wire – we would walk in the lobby, buzzed in and viewed through security cameras, and into the pristine lobby that was marble and Christian Muslim greetings of glaring suspicion at us – the Americans – we’d walk back out onto the third-story patio and pass the glass awnings of the marketplace below and past the white young Jewish boys in Academy-style dress on one rooftop on their way from the yeshuva and olive-skinned Muslim boys playing hacky-sack and comparing pick-pocketing stories on the other rooftop, and past the views, looking down and across at Mount of Olives and the now oh-so-common, don’t-really-care views of Dome of the Rock and Temple Mount, past the lockers, down another outside hallway with gardens and mosquitoes and the fucking bats – and into the bathrooms at one door by the men’s dormitories to be assaulted by the fucking smell, the same kind of smell you think that a group of Generation X backpackers would bring to this city. We washed and slept and kept naps, and then, Daniel and I, oh so tired, we would make the pilgrimage down the Via Delorosa, daily, not to walk where Christ walked or to pray at the Stations of the Cross, no, but to go to Mike’s Place, and talk with the fat man who now employs cheap Palestinian labor from across the border at Bethlehem, and who runs private Internet booths, and we would come here and leave the world outside, leave the city, and return to this bastardly-implanted American cubicle-ville plucked down here amongst the relics of old, and check our MySpace accounts. Daniel would check on messages from his girlfriend in Amsterdam, and I my boyfriend, my new-found love in Mesa, and our days in this Holy City would become brighter when we received communication from either, and we would take those heart-felt messages and continue on, until one night we could not stand the sanctity of the city anymore, and forced ourselves to walk four miles beyond the city walls – four miles from dorms at Temple Mount and then to our right along more barbed wire and then down the L-shaped stairs cracking with age and the wooden doors of the residences who have seen many born and die within and then turn right down the streets of the bazaar and up more and down more stone steps, these ones polished with use, and then past the plaza and the Citadel and King David’s Tower and out the city gates, past the soldiers with guns who snickered at our singular command of language (they knew so many, and we knew so less!) and then down more steps to become flush with the old moat now filled in with modern concrete except where left to ripen with green and then past the bombed-out buildings on the right and through the triangular plaza and past the shops of New Jerusalem and the post office and the radio store and the coffee shop where we all ate French toast that one morning with the thickest maple syrup I’ve ever had in my life and then past the hookah shops and the goth clubs where the young and sexy European backpacking elite would mingle and dance and forgo the use of condoms and then down onto Ben Yehuda Street and then into Zoli’s Pub and drink – just fucking drink – with the soldiers who would soon die in Lebanon, and we would cheer and toast as we watched Tel Aviv basketball, then continue conversation into the late-hours of modern-day Israeli culture while Guns ‘n Roses blasted in the background, and we remained happy, only because they have not yet heard our stories, and we could tell them again. And in the middle of this all and the culture that seemed to suffocate us as constant clots of discoveries fall upon us, we could again be heard, and rise above the noise of the oldest city on earth, and just be fucking heard.  

 

We Left It On the Porch One Night

As said in my most recent post, I have been busing to work on most days. My car still barely works, but I am busing it to try and save my car for those small local trips around Mesa and Gilbert. Being as it may, and due to the recent theft of my ipod, I have been extremely bored these most recent mornings and afternoons during my two-hour commute down Broadway.

Yesterday, not being able to read anymore of “Bono In Conversation” due to my motion sickness, I begun rummaging through my trusty green backpack. I never clean out my backpack, so its interior pockets are filled with ticket stubs from U2, one-way rail passes from the Middle East, cable car passes, MUNI and BART maps, MAX schedules, and hostel guides.

A suprising find in this mess was the pictoral walking guide for the Via Delorrosa from Israel. The Via Delorrosa is the traditional path of Christ that winds through half of the Old City of Jeruslaem, and I took this walk from the Temple Mount to the Church of the Holy Schepulchre, and about mid-way was the convent where I crawled on my hands, knees, and stomach to get to Herod’s giant cisterns five stories below the city.

I then found my red notebook that I completely forgot about, even though it was the same one that I took with me to Huntington, Seattle, and Brazil (DO NOT ask me about Brazil). Within the notebook were a ton of old journal entries about things I had completely forgotten about whilst in Israel. The bind of it had to be duct-tapped because of a sudden rainstorm in Jaffa, so it was a little banged up. Of course, it was nowhere near Jamie’s notebook, that got completely trashed after being left out on top of the bomb shelter just before a sudden thunderstorm over Haifa.

Both these items are helping me tremendously as I approach the last half of the book, dealing with my time there this last spring. Memories and places that would have been omitted are now restored, and for that I am glad. It’s my silver lining: these things would most likely not have been found, and the book less then it could have been, if it were not for the car breaking down and leaving me to boredom on the bus.

Good little things along the way.

Banner Pic #2

This photo was taken one day when I was bumming around Jerusalem solo. I had spent most of my time, even when I was with Jamie and David, in the Christian and Arab Quarters of the Old City. This particular day I had wandered from my youth hostel back down King David Street to the Jaffa Gate — and instead of going through the Jaffa Gate to the New City as I usually did, I made a left at the plaza and begun exploring the Armenian Quarter. The Armenian Quarter is what you might consider the ghetto of Old Jerusalem — as I felt a bit unsafe there, but only because of the very militent fliers posted onto the walls, the chain link fences with barbed wire, and the gates on the windows. The people there seemed very — hard. They seemed like people who had been beaten and now were just angry.

This was all in stark contrast to the Christian and Arab Quarters — the Christian Quarter having been a shrine to pious atttitudes, rituals, and shrines divided by denominations, and the Arab Quarter being home to the barters and slick salesman but also the very kind runners of hookah establishments and juice and schwarma stands.

After exploring the Armenian Quarter and Mount Zion, just outside the city gates, I went back in the Old City and walked the ramparts to the Jewish Quarter, which was mostly closed up to the fact that it was Shevat, their holy day. The Burn House Museum was closed, as was a few other points of interests. I truly had no idea where I was in the city and was completely lost — but I kept walking deeper and deeper through the tattered walkways of the city, thinking about all those that have come before and what it must liked to have lived there.

I know I was nearing the City of David and Mount of Olives, only because I could see the spire of the Church of Transfiguration in the distance. Then, suddenly, the Jewish Quarter came to an abrubt stop and I found myself on an old staircase ledge, starring out at the Wailing Wall, the Temple Mount, and the huge amount of above-ground crypts covering the Mount of Olives just behind it.

I took this picture about halfway down the staircase, before I entered the courtyard of the Western Wall silently and respectfully, and stood among the praying Jews. The wooden ramp in the picture is what is used to access the top of the Temple Mount on non-holy days, and is how you can come to stand at the front entrance of Dome of the Rock and walk above the Western Wall.

The tunnels just to the left of the ramp are how you get to the Wall from the Arab Quarter, and is how we came to the Wall the first time. It really is intense and dramatic standing here, looking out upon this scene, knowing that this very place has been the scene of such destruction, prayer, torment, and war since the beginning of time.

Banner Pic #1

I think every week or so I’m going to continue rotating the banner pic at the top of this blog. Every pic is an image I have photographed on my travels. This current one is the fourth or so banner pic, but I think I will begin telling what exactly the picture is of and the story behind it.

This particular one was taken in Haifa, Israel during my first week there. It is of a pub on the top of Mount Carmel called The Beer House. One night when our friend David had to go do some work at a neighbor’s, he dropped Jamie and I off and told us to walk about half a block or so to French Carmel, an outdoor street similiar to the Promonade in Santa Monica, but on this huge top ridge of the mountain that Elijah once roamed, overlooking the sea. Well, we ended up walking for over eight miles round trip, because the signs for French Carmel were all facing the opposite direction of which we were walking. We eventually came to Carmel Center, which is another huge maze of hotels, clubs, restaurants and stores that sits just north of the Bahai Temple Gardens.

After climbing all over and stopping to view the Gardens from the top down onto the entire city of Haifa, we finally found this place, a Crusader-style cave built into the side of the mountain, surrounded by a little park on the side. We were the only people inside except for the two ladies and the cat who owened the joint. I chugged down a pint of specialty beer made by Catholic-Israeli monks, and we helped ourselves to bowls of free pretzels.

We paid our bill, and still getting used to the monatery routine of this foreign country, realized that I forgot to tip. I turned back inside and apologized, and laid a ten shekal coin on the counter and petted the cat one more time. The lady laughed the laugh that natives give to foreigners like myself, and I returned to the busy street and bustling city lights. We found David, who was looking for us along the main drag, and we rode back halfway down the mount in the cool Israeli night air.

Exhausted, I turned in and curled up in my bed at the end of the hallway, put in my earbuds to the tune of Blindside’s “Shakina,” and slept a sound and peaceful sleep of walking and alcohol, at least until the air raid sirens ringing through the city woke me up at 8am the next morning. I ran to the window and porch, and saw Haifa standing still, but not running. Then I remember the sirens were sounding for Holocaust Rememberance Day, and the city was safe.

Blessed be those who had to be scared of those same sirens a mere month-and-a-half later.

Jewish Atonement

Mel Gibson has asked a “path to healing” from the Jewish community; the Jewish community has responded with “witty criticism”. Do I think that the media is blowing this instance out of proportion? Of course. Do I think that Mel Gibson himself was grossly irresponsible and foul and should be held fully accountable for his actions? Doubly of course. Do I think the Jewish community is extremely quick to pounce down Mel’s throat and play the guilt-laden race card in order to bring themselves “oh-poor-Jews-look-at-us-attention?” Tripply yes. Do I think that the Jews have a right to this attitude? Quadrupably yes.

Do I think that the Jewish community’s response to Mel is harsh and not representative at all of the values they claim and the forgiveness that Jews are supposed to be known for? Absolutely. Do I think Mel’s tirade, even induced by alcohol, was extremely inappropriate? Yes. Mel has made a fool of himself, and the Jewish Community has not done much better. Their interests are self-serving, harshly criticizing Mel for the portrayal of Jews killing Jesus in “The Passion of the Christ” on one side and then asking Mel to donate the $350 million in profits from “Passion” to Israel for restoration and defense efforts. It’s kind of like taking blood money from someone who profited off the murder of your son.

I love the Jewish people, and love Israel. I am a big fan of Mel Gibson, and think that his upcoming film “Apocolypto” makes him none short of a modern-day prophet. But damn — bad form, bad form. If this isn’t an example of Satan using someone’s weakness to undercut the good they’re doing, I don’t know what is.

But even as I criticize the Jewish response — I must also chuckle a bit at it — especially at this article detailing a interesting 12-step program suggestion for Mel to overcome any possible racism of the Jews:

A 12-step program for Gibson

1. Read “The Diary of Anne Frank”; “Night,” by Elie Wiesel; “The Chosen,” by Chaim Potok; “From Beirut to Jerusalem,” by Thomas L. Friedman, and “Maus,” by Art Spiegelman.

2. See the films “Life Is Beautiful,” “Sophie’s Choice,” “Schindler’s List,” even “Exodus.”

3. Watch “Paper Clips,” a documentary about Christian children who, to comprehend the number of Jews killed in the Holocaust, collected 6 million paper clips.

4. Visit the Holocaust museums in New York, Washington and Jerusalem.

5. Visit Auschwitz.

6. Or the Western Wall.

7. Read the Old Testament.

8. Go to a Passover Seder.

9. Or a Sabbath dinner.

10. Sit shiva.

11. Have a sitdown with Mel Brooks, Woody Allen and Billy Crystal.

12. As atonement, eat 10 pounds of pastrami, which Zero Mostel said “killed more Jews than Hitler.”

Because I Can

You Grow Weaker Now

From the Catholic News Service:

Cardinal Sodano told Italian state television that the Vatican would be following the summit’s progress with “great attention.”

“The Holy See tries to be ‘super partes’ (above all parties); it has a universal mission to unite all of humanity,” the cardinal said in the July 24 interview with RAI television.

His remarks echoed Pope Benedict’s July 21 comments that the Vatican tends to leave diplomatic bargaining to other nations “because we do not get involved in politics even if we do everything for peace.”

However, the Vatican supports everything that can facilitate and lead to peace, the pope had said.

The Vatican would like to see results, but again, instead of the Church using its authority and power, it stands limply aside while the Holy Land is engaged in war. There’s a difference between “not being politcally involved” and “neutral” and just being plain afraid, chicken shit of offending some group in the international community … all in an effort to bring about world-wide peace. What these Christians fail to realize is that the Bible that they held so dear never promised peace for Israel, but quite the opposite …. and I would be a bit leary of a pope who could bring about absolute peace to begin with.

So while the land of Abraham and Christ are under attack again, and the world is once again siding against the Jews, the Vatican can continue being aloof and alone “super partes” and then wander why its attendance is down and the faithful are viewed as the weak.  

About A Burning Fire

I’m allowed to discuss this now.  

In a little less then three and a half months, I return to Israel. I have accepted an offer to return to the Promised Land all expenses paid, gratis of an independent film production company out of Phoenix. We will be making a full-length theaterical documentary on the Israeli-Palastenian conflict. We are a crew of four. The previous photojournalist/writer dropped out when Lebannon littered Nazareth and Haifa with bombs. Pansy.

None of the other three have ever been to Israel, thus my presence. This will be the fourth independent film I have worked on, but the first full-length, and the first to be released into theaters (a potential distribution deal is said to be in the works with the same indie-distro-owened-by-a-big-corporate-people whom brought you Showgirls and Kids …. that’s right, Disney!).

Will it be the next Invisible Children or A Closer Walk? Will it be the next The Postman or North? I don’t know … but I don’t care. We will spend three weeks in Israel, Palastine, and the West Bank. Yes, I think that includes Gaza someplace.

Giddyup.

I Read More Maps Than Books

Some of my good friends and I were sitting on the back porch of a Mesa home the other night, a bit after dusk and we had cloves to smoke and bellies full of homemade food, and we were discussing perspectives.

A couple of us, myself included, are “what if?” people. We spend alot of time and reflection looking back at what could have happened had only this or that been different … and I don’t think we look at that with regret as much as we do curiosity. Some other people in the group, myself strongly excluded, look at things with a “so what if what if would have happened? It didn’t.” These people are the ones always looing towards their futures and the possibilities that are out there.

I like to look at things such as my trip to Israel or this job I hold or this relationship I’m in and trace them all back to their origins … the fact that Jamie Mulhern convinved me to go to Israel and that Ryan Lombard introduced me to Brenden Roe who helped me get a job at University of Phoenix or that Carrie at Starbucks introduced me to Justin and how all that came about … and then I like to dissect those events and think about what would have happened if just one of the hundreds of things along the way would have been altered.

As part of my reflection last night and my continual looking back at time, I realized all the places I had been the last six months. Six months ago today I was with Tim Trainor aboard the Queen Mary in Long Beach, bumming around to kill time in Southern California. Three months ago today I was in Haifa, Israel, and took this photo on my first night out on Ben Gurion Street. Two months ago today I was with Justin, Sparkles, and Ryan Larue in downtown Portland, browsing the shelves at Millenium Music.

Good times. I’m also in a bit more reflective of a mood then I usually am because I am working on compiling all of my traveling photographs onto a new photo-displaying software developed by David Mulhern. Right now I am about halfway through loading all the Israeli trip pictures and not even an eighth through the descriptions, and am also making the galleries for Phoenix, Chicago, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Portland, Seattle, and Toronto. A feeling and even a scent seem to accompany every picture. And sometimes its hard or interesting to stop at a picture and realize what I didn’t know, what had just recently happened, and what was soon to happen.

Right now I feel on top of it all, but six months from now I will look back on this moment and realize that I was just as lost.