Winter 2012 Feature
The Iranian Nuclear Threat and Other Matters that Also Concern Us by Leo Haber
On Jewish/Christian Relations, on a New York Times Column by Tom Friedman, and on the Mufti of Jerusalem calling for the Murder of JewsEdward I. Koch
Exploring The Land of Israel;Nebi Musa: Muslim Gravesite for Moses in Judea by Michael A. Zimmerman
The Iranian Nuclear Threat and Other Matters that Also Concern Us
by Leo Haber
Midstream begins its 58th year of publication with this first issue in 2012. We confront this year with a heavy heart and a profound sense of trepidation. The continuing economic crisis that has persisted in our country and its inevitable consequences for us here at Midstream are surely a cause for concern. But in this case, our annual plea for financial help for Midstream must give way to a much greater concern. I’ll discuss Midstream’s problems later in this opening editorial.
The new year has begun with rumors of a pending strike by Israel to destroy the nuclear facilities of Iran hidden underground. It is suspected by Western nations including the U.S. and Israel that the Iranians are well on the road towards building atomic bombs. Iran is more than a rogue state. It is led by a government steeped in medieval religious fanaticism and serves as a center of support for Islamist terrorism. Its rulers, both the president and the Ayatollah who is the real head of state, have publicly expressed the desire to see Israel wiped off the map. The leading Ayatollah was seen on television in early January calling Israel a cancer in the Middle East that must be eradicated. Its president Ahmadinejad has been spouting the same evil message publicly along with the rant of Holocaust denial that labels him, not only an enemy of Israel, but of all the Jewish people worldwide. Are we to disregard such violent genocidal rhetoric coming from a country that refuses to open its nuclear program to U.N. inspection and may be building a nuclear arsenal? One recalls with horror a Muslim statement—the name of the speaker now eludes me—that he would welcome a violent nuclear exchange between his country and Israel even if his country is devastated, because Islam would endure since more than a billion Muslims live and rule in dozens of Islamic countries. But Israel and all its Jews would be wiped out. In his warped mind, the result would be worth the horrifc exchange. Should the world pay no attention to such insane genocidal threats? Can the world bear a second Holocaust aimed at wiping out the Jewish nation? If Israel sits back with folded hands, does it do so at its peril?
My wife is terrified at the thought of Israel’s launching a pre-emptive attack on Iranian nuclear facilities. I share her feelings. It would surely provoke a violent response. Can Israel endure a long-distance war with Iran and a torrent of missiles with powerful conventional warheads launched from three directions simultaneously—from Iran, from Hezbollah in Lebanon, and from Hamas in Gaza, the latter two armed by Iran? Does Israel have a defense system that can intercept all such missiles and destroy them long before they can reach Israel? Will the world support Israel’s defensive pre-emptive action? It did not do so when Israel took out nuclear facilities in Iraq and later in Syria. Will the world help protect Israel against retaliation by Iran, Hezbollah, and Hamas? All very doubtful. We hope and pray for American support, both with adequate defense systems against a missile assault and with diplomatic cover, but there are no certainties in this divided world. Russia and China seem to be ready to veto any U.S. initiative in the U.N. Security Council. The case for an Israeli pre-emptive attack against Iranian nuclear facilities while the underground structures are still within reach is a strong one, and to many decent people, an ethical one. The case against such an attack is also a strong one. Israel stands between the proverbial frying pan and the fire.
Should Israel wait and see if the U.S. plan to increase economic and financial sanctions against Iran can finally persuade Ahmadinejad and his cohorts to give up their nuclear ambitions and allow the U.N. to inspect their facilities effectively? I suppose most of us would say yes. But how long can we trust this process when such sanctions have never deterred a militant dictatorship spurred on by a violent ideology to change its course? And if it fails after a span of time that makes it too late to stop Iran from achieving nuclear capability, what then?
I do not know the answers to any of these questions. I distrust writers who act as if they know it all and are brazen enough to advise the Israeli government to undertake dangerous actions that could imperil the Jewish state. I don’t publish such pieces in Midstream.
And so we are left with the crushing Israeli dilemma—one that all of us who love Israel share. It is America’s dilemma too. It poses a choice between a pre-emptive strike that could lead to a horrible war or alternative political measures that could lead---God forbid—to living under threat of a nuclear attack by a suicidal enemy aimed ultimately at Israel.
I write this to express my fears and to urge Midstream readers to hope and pray for American success in its attempt to force Iran by other means to suspend its nuclear plans. All men and women of good will should support this effort. But I do not envy the President of the U.S. and the Prime Minister of Israel who must make the agonizing final decisions.
______________
And now to Midstream. The survival of this unique American Jewish Zionist intellectual journal is at stake. Our sponsors, with all good intentions, seem to be looking for ways to be rid of paying the steep cost of printing the magazine by making it solely an online publication with the consequent demise of the hard-copy magazine. We staff members have tried to persuade our sponsors to do otherwise. For years, we have featured a lead article from each issue for browsers to read in full online on Midstream’s Web site (www.midstreamthf.com). Sometimes we have featured two articles, and in recent issues, three. But in our view, even if we were to print the complete issue online and charge a fee for logging into the new Midstream, elimination of the hard-copy magazine would be a loss of the magazine’s stature, influence, and reputation.
I recall a mention of Midstream not too long ago by one of the characters in a novel by the great Philip Roth. I doubt that Roth would have made a cultural reference to Midstream, if it were merely a little known online Jewish publication. We could never be The Huffington Post. Other important Jewish publications like Commentary have an online version, but only as a supplementary activity, retaining the hard-copy that made Commentary’s reputation with the cultured public. It is inconceivable to us that the world of culture and historical consciousness will give up the permanency and emotional impact of a book or a magazine for an ephemeral appearance on a screen even in this age of the Internet, the iPhone, iPad, and e-book. The written word on scrolled parchment or on paper bound into books or magazines will survive, just as books survived the popular triumph of movies and television despite dire predictions.
We Jews who honor the Torah scroll and study its sacred text in book form called the chumash are assured of their permanence. We are, after all, “the people of the book.” The great secular works, lehavdil, will also be cherished in books and journals. Midstream, a hard-copy journal with a 58-year reputation as a significant Jewish and Zionist voice, must continue.
I cannot be so sure about the survival of Midstream without significant help from those who admire this publication. I look back, for example, at our previous issue, Fall 2011, with pride. How many Jewish journals can cite the following variety of subjects in one issue: essays on the Israeli reaction to the liberation of Gilad Shalit from a Hamas kidnapping, the relation between territory and Israeli security, the impact of the Hasidic revolution on American popular culture, an essay on colorful Yiddish words that have entered American English, another on the Jewishness of classical composer Gustav Mahler, one on trends in American Jewish fiction, another on the Jewish Leopold Bloom in James Joyce’s novel Ulysses, a growing-up memoir in New York that links baseball great Joe DiMaggio with Hebrew school and a King of ancient Judah, a meditation on the Biblical prophet Jonah, a review essay on a book that reconsiders the tragic “Altalena” incident just after the founding of modern Israel, plus poetry and fiction on Jewish themes. Other Jewish magazines publish little or no poetry or fiction. Many represent the left or the right on Israeli affairs; we present responsible opinion across the full political spectrum of Zionism so long as they accept the existence of the Jewish State of Israel. I began by calling Midstream unique. Yes, we are a unique journal. We can use your help, if you agree.
Midstream readers know that we had a very difficult year at the magazine because all four quarterly issues of 2011 suffered delayed publication, coming out three months late each time. This happened because our sponsors delayed sending us our stipend for each issue. Our printer, understandably, would not print until he was paid. This meant that this first issue, Winter 2012, slated for dissemination in January, will probably also be three months late. The tension built up by waiting for our support money, never knowing when it will actually come, or even, chas v’chalilah, if it would come at all, is nerve-wracking and close to unbearable. We do not blame our sponsors; they too are victims of financial stress. Our sole consolation is that many of our readers still respond faithfully and valiantly to our annual appeal. We need many more of you stalwarts in this time of financial crisis. The funds received from our readers do help us with other expenses, but understandably, they cannot cover the major expense of printing, mailing, and staff salaries. But your generous past contributions have helped us pay our writers—a real mitzvah! And so, we turn again to our readers to do two things: to respond to this appeal in 2012 and to say a little prayer for wisdom on the part of our sponsors that will assure the survival of Midstream in hard copy.
As in the past, we expect to set up a special page to appear from time to time in our publication that will list the names of those of our friends who are generous enough to support us with a tax-deductible contribution. All contributors will also receive formal letters of acknowledgment and thanks. Here are the designations of honor that we intend to list with gratitude:
Friend: $36 to $99
Supporter: $100 to $499
Associate: $500 to $999
Patron: $1,000 to $4,999
Benefactor: $5,000 and above
Please do not be terrified by the largest sums listed above. We will gladly accept any contribution, however small, with equal gratitude. Please make checks payable to The Theodor Herzl Foundation/Midstream, and address your tax-deductible contributions to The Theodor Herzl Foundation/Midstream, 633 Third Avenue / 21st Floor, New York, NY 10017. Todah rabbah. •
leo haber, Midstream’s editor and author of the novel, The Red Heifer, taught Hebrew at Lawrence High School, Baruch College, and Hebrew Union College, and English at City College (CCNY).
About the author
Leo Haber, editor of Midstream, was educated at C.C.N.Y. (Phi Beta Kappa) and Columbia University, earning degrees in English language and literature, and at the Herzliah Hebrew Teachers’ Institute in New York. His novel, The Red Heifer, was published in 2001 and reissued in paperback in 2005.
On Jewish/Christian Relations, on a New York Times Column by Tom Friedman, and on the Mufti of Jerusalem calling for the Murder of Jews
by Edward I. Koch
Part i
Almost everyone who lives in New York City knows that I am Jewish. Most know that I am a secular Jew who believes in God, the afterlife, reward and punishment, and that I hope to be rewarded.
I have spent much of my professional life stressing how important it is for Jews to strengthen the Jewish-Catholic relationship. Jews should also convey their deep appreciation for the support that evangelical Protestants give to both Israel and the American Jewish community. Regrettably, a number of mainstream Protestant churches have been supportive of the Palestinians and Arab causes for years, and hostile to Israel.
The tie between Jews and Catholics, strengthened by Popes John XXIII and John Paul II, is very important. It has been emphasized less under the current Pope, Benedict XVI.
There are more than one billion Catholics in the world and only 13 million Jews. We Jews need their larger numbers and energy to help us fight the rising antisemitism, particularly in Europe. Jews are living in a Golden Age in the United States, and antisemitism exists here to a lesser degree than in Europe. The Anti-Defamation League recently reported that 15 percent of American adults—35 million people—are deeply antisemitic.
Catholic prelates like John Cardinal O’Connor, my close friend now deceased, spoke out regularly denouncing antisemitism from the pulpit at St. Patrick’s Cathedral. He pointed out that Jesus and his 12 Apostles were born and died as Jews. It is, he said, a sin against God to be antisemitic.
We need the Catholic clergy and secular leaders to speak up in a similar fashion in Britain, France and in Eastern Europe where antisemitism never died even after the revelations of the Nazi death camps in World War II.
Evangelicals support Jews for many reasons. A major one is that their faith requires a secure Israel in the land of ancient Israel if Jesus as the Messiah is to return to this earth.
Many Jews are distressed with the evangelical hope and desire that upon his return, the Jews will convert to Christianity or die. My suggestion to those who worry about this is as follows:
If it is reported that a Messiah is amongst us, seek him out. Ask him if he is Jewish. The Messiah in both the Jewish and Christian faiths must be of the line of David according to the Bible sacred to both Jews and Christians. If he replies, “Yes,” ask him if this is his first visit or his second. If it is his first, Christians should convert. If it is his second visit, Jews should convert.
Many commentators in our political system denigrate the evangelicals. I honor and respect them. Evangelicals support Israel in larger numbers than the young Jews in the U.S., many of whom have no or little Jewish education or appreciation of the Jewish people’s important contributions to the world, despite our small numbers.
This commentary is a kind of year-end statement of strongly held feelings. Often people ask me why am I so involved in and concerned about the security of Israel. I tell them I know that pre-World War II when Hitler offered to allow the Jews of Germany to leave if any country would take them, no country was willing to do so. Even President Franklin Delano Roosevelt refused to let a ship, the SS St. Louis, filled with German Jewish refugees, land in the U.S. in 1939. It returned to Europe, and ultimately, 254 passengers were murdered in concentration camps.
Ultimately, 6 million Jews perished in the Holocaust, victims of the Nazis and their collaborators. If Israel had existed in the 1930s, it would have taken every Jew in need of sanctuary, no matter how sick, old, or young. A strong Israel is required today to protect Jews in need of sanctuary and save Jewish communities in danger around the world. Today, Israel, surrounded by Muslim countries that are at war with it and that refuse to recognize its legitimacy, is in great danger, and except for the U.S. and Canada, has no one it can count on to help if it is attacked by conventional or nuclear weapons. Imagine if it ever lost a war with the Muslim nations, and it has won 5 such wars, what the consequences would be. One need only look to Syria where we see what the Syrian government has done and continues to do: killing its own citizens who protest the government’s despotic rule. Imagine those Syrian soldiers or their Iranian counterparts free to rule the streets of Tel Aviv. Is there any doubt that a new holocaust would take place in the Jewish nation itself?
Part II
Serendipitously on the day I wrote this column, I read a column in The Times (December 13th) by Tom Friedman that distressed me by its hostility and what I perceive as baseless and irresponsible attacks upon the state of Israel. The following comments flow from that reading.
Tom Friedman is a fine writer with a high public profile. Because he is Jewish and purports to be a supporter of Israel, he apparently believes that that gives him license to constantly criticize the Jewish state and its allies. This week, his attacks were especially outrageous and irresponsible. He attacked Newt Gingrich, Republican candidate for President for his “grovel” before a Jewish audience “by suggesting that the Palestinians are an ‘invented’ people and not a real nation entitled to a state.” I watched the Republican candidates debate before the Republican Jewish Coalition on television, to which he alludes. Gingrich was making an historical point that Palestinians had been part of south Syria and not a separate nation under the Ottoman Empire. Indeed when Romney and Paul both chastised Gingrich for making the historical reference saying it was not helpful to the situation, and the moderator asked each if Gingrich was factually correct, they both said “yes.”
Friedman also accused Gingrich of seeking to deny the Palestinians their own state. But Gingrich never said that, and I have no doubt that he like most American supporters of Israel (including myself), most Israelis and the Prime Minister of Israel Bibi Netanyahu and his predecessors since Oslo support a two-state solution. Friedman outrageously wrote that perhaps Gingrich supports “evict[ing] the West Bank Palestinians through ethnic cleansing.” Gingrich never said any such thing. Friedman offers a third alternative as a possible Gingrich option: one state which would overwhelm Israel’s Jewish citizens, which Gingrich never proposed. The historical fact on Palestinian roots makes no difference today since the Palestinians now perceive themselves and are perceived by others as having a national identity.
Friedman, in the same column, went on to attack Romney for being too willing to support the Israeli government in its goals, accusing him of wanting the U.S. to “serve as [Israel’s] ATM and shut up.” This is an outrageous remark by Friedman.
Friedman writes that the extraordinary positive reception that Netanyahu received when he spoke at the joint session of Congress was “not for his politics” but “bought and paid for by the Israeli lobby.” Coming from an alleged supporter of Israel, a Jew himself, this canard is especially offensive. This infamous statement will be joined with the Protocols of Zion, one a libel, the other a forgery – because of the status of its author – and used around the world by those who hate the Jews and Israel. No explanation or apology on the part of Friedman can undo the damage.
Friedman attacks the foreign minister of Israel, Avigdor Lieberman—originally from Russia—for not denouncing the recent election in Russia as fraudulent. How foolish can Friedman be to demand such masochistic behavior on the part of the Israeli government? Russia supplies military arms to Syria and supports Iran and Friedman wants the Israeli government to further antagonize Putin, when the Israeli foreign minister is seeking to woo Putin to Israel’s side? Friedman points to the fact that Israel’s representatives receive a hard time on college campuses. I believe they do in part because of the inciting comments of columnists like Friedman.
Then Friedman attacks Israel for a number of situations which would be intolerable if practiced in the U.S. He refers to West Bank settlers stoning Israeli soldiers “in retaliation for the army removing ‘illegal’ settlements that Jewish extremists establish wherever they want.” Shouldn’t the government be praised for the removal action and shouldn’t Friedman have cited the tough remarks by Bibi and Ehud Barak with respect to punishment for those settlers?
Friedman cites the fact that the government allows public buses in an ultra Orthodox community to segregate men and women. In the U.S., we would not allow that, but in Israel it is apparently legal. In Israel, religious schools are funded by the government. As opposed as I am to many of the special perks the ultra Orthodox receive, especially their not being required to serve in the I.D.F., I am not surprised they exist in a society seeking to accommodate the religious and the secular.
Friedman is distressed with recently-enacted laws that he believes stifle dissent and restrict freedom of speech and a host of other rights we take for granted in the U.S. But Israel has been in a state of war with Muslim countries that want to destroy it since it came into being in 1948. Israel has taken actions to protect its citizens in wartime, just as we have with the passage of the Patriot Act, which I support, but was foolishly opposed by every Democratic member of Congress from New York City. Friedman’s reciting these Israeli actions is obviously for the purpose of provoking denunciation of the state of Israel. Friedman is particularly outraged by one law that penalizes “Israelis advocating a boycott of products made in West Bank Jewish settlements.” Those Jewish boycotters would be joining the worldwide boycotters who advocate boycotting all Israeli products and promote disinvestment in Israel, and delegitimizing the Jewish state. He concludes quoting an Israeli writer that there is a cultural war taking place in Israel. Yes there is, and I hope the secular-minded prevail. But there is a larger war also taking place. Israel is surrounded by nations with populations aggregating more than 100 million people. Israel has a population of 7 million of which 1.2 million are Muslim. The Jewish state—the only such state in the world—deserves support. Instead, too often columnists like Friedman who claim they are supporters of Israel are among Israel’s greatest detractors. Friedman, as a result of his column of December 13, 2011, is now unmasked.
Part III
In The Times of January 24 is an article headlined, “2 Palestinian Legislators Are Arrested in East Jerusalem Protest.” The article reported, “Israel arrested two Palestinian legislators affiliated with Hamas as they staged a protest in the offices of the International Committee of the Red Cross in East Jerusalem on Monday, an act criticized by the Palestinian leadership as a blow to the first direct meetings between the Israeli and Palestinian sides in more than a year now underway in Jordan.”
Actually there were three men protesting: Muhammad Totah, a member of the Palestinian legislative council, Khaled Abu Arafeh, a former minister, and Ahmed Attoun, a Hamas legislator. The Times reported, “A police spokesman, Mickey Rosenfeld, said that the two legislators arrested were suspected of carrying out Hamas activities in Jerusalem. The Islamic militant group is considered an illegal organization by Israel.”
As a result of the arrests, Saeb Erekat, the chief Palestinian legislator, said in a statement that the detention of Mr. Totah and Mr. Abu Arafeh 24 hours later was a “flagrant act of aggression.” Hamas is a terrorist organization designated as such not only by Israel, but by the Quartet—the U.S., European Union, Russia and the U.N.
This is all by way of background. Now to the reason for this commentary. In the same Times article, it was reported the highest ranked member of the Muslim clergy on the West Bank, Gaza, and all of historic Palestine called for the death of Jews. The Times’ reference was, “The mufti of Jerusalem, Sheikh Hussein, addressed a crowd at an event marking the 47th anniversary of the founding of Fatah, the mainstream movement led by the Palestinian Authority president, Mahmoud Abbas. He quoted a hadith, a saying attributed to the Prophet Muhammad, stating: “The Hour will not come until you fight the Jews. The Jews will hide behind stones or trees. Then the stones or trees will call: Oh Muslim, servant of Allah, there is a Jew behind me, come and kill him.”
The Times reported: “Mr. Netanyahu described the words of the mufti of Jerusalem, Sheikh Hussein, as ‘morally heinous’ and compared the remarks to those of Haj Amin al-Husseini, the grand mufti of Jerusalem who notoriously aligned himself with Hitler in the 1930s. Palestinian television broadcast the mufti’s comments on January 9 and Palestinian Media Watch, an Israeli monitoring group, drew attention to them on January 15. An Israeli official said that the prime minister became aware of it only in the past few days.”
The Times further reported, “The mufti denied calling for the killing of Jews, telling Israel Radio on Sunday that he was only quoting the words of the Prophet Muhammad. He told Voice of Palestine Radio on Monday that ‘these allegations come within the Israeli incitement campaign against Jerusalem and its figures.’” Go figure that out.
My observation: I recall when two I.D.F. reservists took the wrong road on October 12, 2000 and ended up in Ramallah on the West Bank. They went into the Palestinian police station, were taken prisoner and thrown out of the window head first and killed. Currently, the two Hamas legislators, part of a government at war with Israel, were arrested not lynched. Not long ago, in May of 2011, I wrote to Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak the following:
Dear Ehud:
On my office wall there is a picture of an Israeli soldier being thrown to his death out of a window in a Ramallah police station where he had been taken prisoner. He was one of two soldiers killed having, as I recall, taken a wrong turn in their car bringing them into that Arab city. In the years that followed, were any of the perpetrators arrested and punished.?
He replied on August 29th:
Dear Edward:
Thank you for your letter, expressing interest in the aftermath of the barbaric lynch in Ramallah of the two IDF reserve soldiers, Vadim Norzhitz and Yossef Avrahami, may G-d bless their memory.
I should let you know that as a result of our extensive efforts to bring all those responsible for this heinous crime to justice, sixteen people have been indicted for various offences related to this event, in accordance with their level of involvement and the evidence at hand.
Among them, eleven people were directly indicted for murder—nine imprisoned for life and two others—for 20 and 25 years. Four other people were indicted for various charges of involvement in the crime short of murder and one last case is still pending in the Military Court of Appeal. I should add, we know very well that no punishment, no matter how harsh, will bring comfort to the families or bring back their loved ones. Nevertheless, from the very first moment, the Government of Israel, the IDF and the whole defense establishment have considered bringing the perpetrators of this atrocity to justice as a matter of top priority.
I thank you again for your concern and hope that we will never again witness such terrible acts in the future.”
The Times reporter, Isabel Kershner, to her credit, reported the incidents involving the arrests of the Hamas legislators and the mufti’s call for the murder of Jews. Apparently, the arrest of the two Hamas legislators was to The Times editor more important, therefore deserving the headline “2 Palestinian Legislators Are Arrested in East Jerusalem Protest” rather than a headline citing the call of the highest Muslim cleric for Palestinians and successor to the Grand Mufti Haj Amin al-Husseini who aided Adolf Hitler raising Muslim troops to fight on the side of Nazi Germany in World War II and responsible for the Arab pogrom of 1929 in Hebron in which 67 Jews were killed and the uprising throughout Palestine in 1936-1939 with the killing of more Jews. If you are a supporter of the Jewish nation, a Zionist like me, or simply an impartial observer, wouldn’t you conclude thatThe Times editor had his head screwed on wrong in determining the headline?
Will there be a Times editorial denouncing the mufti’s conduct? I haven’t seen any denunciatory releases from the J Street crowd in D.C. which constantly berates Israel for not being more forthcoming with concessions to the Palestinians. Will Times’ columnists Tom Friedman and Nicholas Kristof, who often criticize the Israeli government, denounce the Palestinian leadership for not removing this cleric? Muslim terrorists don’t simply murder Jews; they also murder Christians and have done so recently in Iraq and Egypt. The Coptic Christians comprise 10 percent of the Egyptian population are in great danger and very fearful. Their churches have been desecrated and destroyed. They have been assaulted and murdered.
Imagine what the outcry worldwide would have been had either of the two chief rabbis of Israel made a comparable call to kill Muslims. You know and I know there would have been U.N. Assembly and Security Council resolutions denouncing Israel, not only calling for the removal of the chief rabbi, but for sanctions against the state itself.
The lack of media attention given to these Arab threats and the constant unfair attacks by the media, cowardly governments, and U.N. officials on Israel is what angers people like me. •
About the author
Edward I. Koch served as mayor of New York City for three terms, and previous to that, he was a member of the House of Representatives in the Congress in Washington. At age 87, he remains active in politics, appears regularly on cable Channel 1 as a political analyst, and disseminates weekly essays via e-mail on a wide range of political issues, many on Jewish and Israeli affairs, and also critical reviews of current movies to a host of friends and colleagues including the editor of Midstream. The above article previously appeared in Mayor Koch’s e-mail series Parts I and II in December 2011 and Part III in January 2012, and is reprinted here with his approval. In March 2011, Mayor Bloomberg of New York City and the City Council honored Mayor Koch, by renaming the 59th Street bridge between Queens and Manhattan the “Ed Koch Queensboro Bridge.” Kol ha-kavod, all honor to our author!
Exploring The Land of Israel;Nebi Musa: Muslim Gravesite for Moses in Judea
by Michael A. Zimmerman
Several winters ago, two companions and I drove in a rainstorm from Masada to Jerusalem, carefully fording the flowing streams that crossed the Dead Sea shore road. We turned west on the highway to Israel’s capitol and began the climb of more than a thousand feet to sea level, and the capitol would be about 2,500 feet higher. Before passing the sea-level marker we came to a sign pointing to the left for Nebi Musa. I knew the place from long ago. I had photographed and written about Nebi Musa in the late 1970s. Here is a fresh look.
Years back during Passover week, a Jerusalem friend and I drove east into Midbar Yehuda, the Judean wilderness, and visited a lonely site of historic and cultural interest. Connected with it is what can be called “Pesach Politics” of the people of Eretz Yisrael. Down past the “Sea Level” signpost a few miles, another sign on the nineteen-mile Jerusalem-Jericho highway announces, “To Nebi Musa.”
A narrow road leads to it. We drove over a mile or so of undulating, barren landscape. The air is very dry. (I always found the juxtaposition of lower than sea-level altitude and extreme dryness rather incongruous.) The building compound enclosing a shrine is folded into the yellow-brown desert terrain and appears suddenly. High walls, rising minaret, numerous white turret-like domes. A sign at the entrance explained Nebi Musa was a protected holy site and accordingly, demanded proper behavior.
Back in the 1970s, when I visited several times, while a Muslim caretaker looked after the site, it was under the supervision of Israel’s Ministry of Religious Affairs. Today Nebi Musa is under the administration of the Palestinian National Authority.
Nebi Musa in Arabic refers to the Shrine of Prophet Moses.
The building complex has two stories. It once served as a khan, a “motel” of earlier Middle East days. There are at least twenty-five individually domed rooms on the second floor, and more on the ground floor. Most of the rooms are small. The compound encloses two large courtyards that are skirted by balconies.
The entrance to the mosque is through the smaller northern courtyard. Woven mats cover the prayer room floor. Visitors remove their shoes before entering. A smaller room to the right serves as the purported site of the tomb of Moses; it contains a large built-up sepulcher.
It was raining hard on my recent journey and so we did not stop to access the building. We stopped nearby, quickly snapped a few pictures, and went back on our way, but I told my companions about earlier visits, when the compound was clean and deserted except for an elderly Algerian-born caretaker. I had met him several times. He explained this had been his job for many years. Waving an arm, he said he came “from Algeria long ago,” and I thought, “Perhaps from time immemorial.”
He said that the place received few visitors.
In each courtyard is what looks like a water well with a metal lid, but they are actually cisterns that collect rainwater. The caretaker said that Bedouin living in or traveling through the area sometime use these water sources.
In the old days, my guide friend, Aaron Pick of Ein Kerem, explained that when the gate of Nebi Musa is closed, one can knock heavily on the thick timber door of the gate with a stone in hand, so the sharp sound will carry to be heard.
The caretaker who oversaw the premises was about sixty years old when I met him back in the 1970s. He lived alone, had a pickup truck, and went to Jericho for supplies. He said he had been at Nebi Musa some forty years, and shrugged when asked how he came to such a job.
Pick, who knew the region very well, and had visited Nebi Musa many times, later told me that the caretaker confided that he decided to look for a bride, from the old country. He was writing letters.
Ironically, from the rise east of Nebi Musa one can easily see Mount Nebo across the Jordan River. The Bible relates that Moses died and was buried there in an unknown sepulcher:
And the Lord spoke unto Moses… saying:
“Get thee up… unto Mount Nebo,
which is in the land of Moab, that is over against Jericho…
For thou shalt see the land afar off;
But thou shalt not go thither into the land
which I give the children of Israel.”
(Deut. 32, 48-52)
And he was buried in the valley of the land of Moab…
And no man knoweth of his sepulcher unto this day.
(Deut. 34, 6)
How is it that the Muslims mark this site with a shrine as Moses’ grave when the Bible is explicit? At least one guidebook describes Nebi Musa as a cenotaph, that is, a tomb erected in honor of a person buried elsewhere. But no local Muslim we asked, and we spoke of the subject with several in Jericho, acknowledged that this is not the actual burial site.
The caretaker himself said: “The Jews don’t believe Moses is here; they think he is across the river, in Amman!”
It may be that Nebi Musa’s location as an inn or motel of ancient times picked up its name because from its eastern side, one can see across the Jordan River into Jordan, ancient Moab, and see Mount Nebo, where the Biblical record states Moses died. The understanding may have morphed from a place where one can see the final resting area of Moses to the actual place itself. Or perhaps the Muslim choice derives both from a lack of careful concern for the original story as recorded in the Bible, and a linkage with an interesting bit of geology.
A certain type of rock found in the vicinity burns with a blue flame without being consumed. Pilgrims to these parts have long used this bituminous stone, containing hydrocarbons, as a fuel. It is called “hajar Nebi Musa,” the stone of Prophet Moses. The courtyard of Nebi Musa is paved partly with this stone. Since the site faces Mount Nebo, and is connected with Moses according to the Biblical narrative, the local Arabs may have connected the burning stone with the burning bush miracle from the Exodus story.
The dramatic locale of Nebi Musa in the desert lends itself to wide-ranging stories. A dirt track skirts a sprawling Muslim graveyard that abuts the wall of the compound. Sparse rough thorny weeds grow among the tombstones.
The graveyard spreads out over caked broken earth. A zoologist friend along on one visit, Professor Yoel Margalit of Be’ersheva’s Ben-Gurion University, pointed out other inhabitants, mostly alive. Within ten minutes, he found a yellow scorpion, a cream-colored poisonous spider related to the black widow, and a number of large black beetles impaled on thorns along the dirt track. Yoel explained that a local bird catches the beetles and stores them in this way as a reserve food supply. We began to call the poor creatures “the crucified beetles of Nebi Musa.”
One also encounters z’vuv ha-chol, the sand fly, which I was told carry bacteria that cause pox and stain human skin. The affliction is akin to that suffered by many older Iraqi and Persian/Iranian Jews in Israel today. In these parts the disease is curiously known as Shoshanat Yericho, Rose of Jericho.
The sand fly lives only within a narrow range of altitude and was not found in the mountains above Nebi Musa where the Jewish community of Mitzpe [Lookout] Jericho was located, nor at the now large suburban community of Maaleh Adumim, far up the watershed and closer to Jerusalem. For obvious reasons, Israeli hikers prefer not to sleep around Nebi Musa.
A few hundred yards south of Nebi Musa there is a savage canyon officially called Nahal Og, but also with other names. It is a rough course for hikers, and was often referred to in the old days as Wadi Golani, for the esteemed Israeli infantry brigade that trained there. It is also referred to as Wadi “Ugh” in English, playing on the Hebrew Nahal Og, as many hikers, including this writer, have lost skin from palms and fingers (Ugh!) descending its cliffs via slippery nylon ropes without the benefit of gloves.
The rolling plateau upon which Nebi Musa sits is strategic military ground. Near the end of The Great War, World War I, British forces fought over the erosion-torn terrain described by their military historians as the most difficult country they had encountered. They advanced eastward, descending from Jerusalem toward Jericho. The British pursued Ottoman forces to the edge of the cliffs above Nebi Musa and there established the security of Jerusalem against counterattack from the east (still controlled by Ottoman forces). Today the area provides a logical main defense line for Israeli forces behind screening defenses along the nearby Jordan River.
The Nebi Musa compound, including mosque and khan, was built in 1269. A festival of Nebi Musa is first mentioned in written sources about 1500. Two Christian writers of the twentieth century provide some further religious-political motives for the Nebi Musa story.
“The Muslims relate a legend that Moses, becoming lonely in his grave, complained to God, who promised him an annual pilgrimage,” wrote British historian H. V. Morton. Morton proposed that a hitherto humble shrine of some obscure holy man near the Dead Sea was arbitrarily ordained the tomb of Moses, and an annual pilgrimage was organized to honor it. He added that the festival was actually introduced to balance the Christian Easter pilgrimage to Jerusalem with a Muslim pilgrimage which occurs at the same time.
James William Parkes, an American Christian scholar, suggested that the pilgrimage to a festival at the mosque in the Judean Desert also served to raise the dignity of Jerusalem in Muslim eyes. By making it an annual event, it would be comparable, though on a lesser scale, to the annual assembly in the city of Damascus of those whose pilgrimage is to Mecca. Parkes made a telling point: “Curious enough, its date is fixed by the Christian, not the Muslim, calendar.”
Its background would suggest that the nature of the festival is political and that it was created to provide Muslims an alternative feast of their own.
The Muslim pilgrimage goes out from Jerusalem into the desert to the east (the desert of Judea, from whence is derived the name Jew) rather than toward Jerusalem. The fact that the Nebi Musa festival was fixed by the Christian rather than Muslim calendar firmly suggests a political intention. (The Easter pilgrimage sometimes overlaps the Pesach aliyah to Jerusalem by Jews, depending on whether the Christian solar-based and Jewish lunar-based calendars overlap that year.)
For centuries the Nebi Musa festival’s anti-Christian tone was illustrated by attacks on Easter pilgrims in Jerusalem. On the Friday before Easter week, Muslims congregated outside the Al-Aksa Mosque (atop the Jewish-built Temple Mount) and marched to Nebi Musa where they would spend five festive days in its courtyards before returning home.
In the 1930’s, during a trance-like dance-march, they chanted the words “La illalah illa Allah ...” meaning “There is no god but Allah.” It is suggested in the literature that the chant may have been not only a glorifying proclamation but also an attack on the concept of the Christian trinity.
In those days, Morton reports, there were other Muslims carrying friends on their shoulders beating time with their hands or sticks like choirmasters and chanting something to which the crowd responded with enthusiasm. “I asked a man next to me what they were saying, ‘They are cursing the Zionists,’ he replied.’They are singing: ‘Oh, Zionists, what right have you in this country? What have you in common with us? If you stay in this country, you will all find graves.’”
At the beginning of the British Mandate, when the religion of the ruling power became Christian (because England was victorious in World War I) instead of Muslim (Turkey/Ottoman Empire, which was defeated), the Nebi Musa spring festival took on its anti-Jewish aspect. It was ironic that a Muslim pilgrimage honoring the Jewish prophet Moses should be the occasion for a major pogrom against Jews.
The political conflict in the Middle East after World War I engendered by the renewed ambitions of British, French, Arabs, Jews, (along with Greeks and Armenians) in the Ottoman vacuum came to several heads in 1920, with a Greek invasion of Asia Minor, and violence in Eretz Yisrael. The political chaos brewing in the Holy Land was highlighted by the fall of the Upper Galilee Jewish settlement Tel Chai to Arab marauders in February. That March, Arabs of the Ottoman territory that became Syria, in a calculated gesture of repudiation toward France (which sought a League of Nations Mandate over what was Syria and Lebanon), offered Arabia’s Feisal the throne of an enlarged Syria, to include Palestine (whose governing Mandate was sought by the British).
Ominous Arab nationalist pan-Syrian propaganda and agitation followed, and the British military government in Palestine was put on warning. The British military governor of Jerusalem was General Louis Bols, sometimes described as an antisemite whose administration responded to the alert by ordering the local population disarmed, but who enforced the order only insofar as Jews were concerned.
As the Nebi Musa festival week approached, coinciding in 1920 with Pesach and Easter, persistent rumors circulated that a large-scale Russian-style pogrom would be staged during the week by local Arabs. A British Army circular sent to every battalion in Palestine began: “As the government had to pursue in Palestine a policy unpopular with the majority of the population, trouble may be expected to arise.”
The first day of the Nebi Musa feast coincided with Good Friday. General Allenby, commander of the British Middle East forces, visited Jerusalem from Cairo. He left on Easter Sunday, April 4, that year also the third day of Nebi Musa and the second day of Pessach.
Muslim revelers in 1920 arrived in Jerusalem on April 4, notably two days later than usual, after General Allenby had left Palestine for Egypt. A large crowd gathered to hear a nationalist harangue. It has been suggested that the political purpose was to influence the Allies, who were scheduled to dispose of the mandates in San Remo within the next two weeks. Then the riot erupted.
The Arab mob rushed into the Jewish Quarter of Jerusalem shouting: “El Dowleh Ma’ana!” “The Government Is With Us!” The Arab police stood by or joined the rioters. The British military did not react initially and then moved slowly.
Order was not restored until the third day of rioting. By then, five Jews and four Arabs were dead and 211 Jews and 21 Arabs wounded. Two Jewish women had been raped. The Jews experienced situations similar to those in Russia from which many had fled.
The aftermath of the pogrom was still more unnerving. Chaim Weizmann wrote (in Trial and Error): When one small group of men, under Captain Ze’ev Jabotinsky, had come out to defend their quarter, they had been promptly arrested… In the trials which followed before a military court, Jabotinsky received the sentence of fifteen years hard labour.”
Jabotinsky had been an officer in the British army during the recently concluded Great War, and had been instrumental in creating the military formation called the Jewish Legion to fight alongside the British against the Ottomans. (Later, Jabotinsky was a leading Zionist figure. His secretary in the late 1930s in New York was historian Benzion Netanyahu, one of whose sons would become Prime Minister of Israel.)
The reaction in England as in Jewish centers was outrage. An official court of inquiry was convened in Jerusalem, where British officers of the military administration defended their conduct, and Arabs accused the Jews of attacking them. The Jews accused the mandatory government of complicity in the Arab pogrom, and of encouraging Muslim nationalist unrest. At the same time, Colonel Richard Meinerzhagen, chief British intelligence officer in Cairo, astounded his superiors by fully endorsing the Zionist accusations.
Within the month following allocation of the Palestine Mandate to Britain, the military regime was replaced with a civil administration. Sir Herbert Samuel, an English Jew of high reputation in the British government, arrived in Jerusalem to take charge. Jabotinsky appealed his sentence, and in due course, it was quashed.
It was largely due to Sir Herbert Samuel that Amin Husseini became head of the Muslim Supreme Council and Mufti of Jerusalem. He gained considerable power and control over large funds. The results are well known: the Mufti was to arouse the Arabs repeatedly to murderous outrages against the Jews, and during World War II, was to dwell in Berlin and serve as an active ally of Hitler.
Through all of this, the Arabs learned a first lesson in dealing with appeasement-oriented Western democracies. Chaim Weizmann wrote: “The Arabs soon discovered that the High Commissioner’s deep desire for peace made him susceptible to intimidation.”
It is likely that the Nebi Musa violence convinced Sir Herbert Samuel that Arab disquiet could best be appeased by minimizing Jewish rights and the principle of unlimited Jewish immigration—this at a time of chaos and pogroms in Poland, Ukraine, and Russia. And so the concept of controlling, i.e., limiting, Jewish aliyah to the Jewish homeland became a policy of the British Mandate authorities. It ultimately cut off this logical Jewish refuge completely during the Nazi rule leading to the Holocaust.
Arab migration, meantime, was drawn across the open land frontiers of Eretz Yisrael/Palestine by the growing economic opportunities near flourishing Jewish communities. Land migration/immigration was uncontrolled, and the Arabs moved by land; the Jews mostly by sea. Jewish immigration was carefully regulated since the ports were tightly monitored by the British.
Two years after the Pesach violence, the British unilaterally sliced up the Mandate of Palestine, renaming the eastern three-quarters of it “Transjordan” and shifting the name of Palestine, which had applied to the whole, now only to the remaining one-quarter, really West Palestine. The British then prohibited Jewish settlement in Transjordan, i.e., East Palestine. In League of Nations documents, Jewish settlement in eastern Palestine was “postponed.”
History repeats itself, and people forget; but it only takes a little effort to remember, remind others, and draw valuable lessons.
In 1948 Arab military forces of Transjordan invaded West Palestine, i.e., the remaining, narrowly circumscribed, Jewish Homeland, and newly declared State of Israel.
After capturing Judea and Samaria in 1948, and soon after annexing the areas and renaming them the “West Bank,” the new Muslim authority, the Kingdom of Transjordan, prohibited the traditional spring pilgrimage and festival related to Nebi Musa. Apparently, it considered there was no appropriate target for the usual revelers except its own Hashemite regime, now ruling such massive parts of Palestine.
It soon renamed its country the Kingdom of Jordan, changing the name from the more limited Kingdom of Transjordan. The name Palestine was put in low-profile for the next nineteen years. That is, until Jordan in 1967 attacked Israel, was counterattacked, and lost Judea and Samaria to Israel. Soon afterwards, the Arabs again began to use the Roman name Palestine.
From 1948 to 1967—the entire period of Jordanian control over the site—the Nebi Musa religious shrine was desecrated by conversion into an ammunition dump and military base. In 1995, Israel gave administrative authority over the Nebi Musa site to the Palestinian Authority, which also would control nearby Jericho, although not the main highway or the hinterland towards the Dead Sea and into the Judean Desert to the south.
The Algerian-born caretaker of Nebi Musa had pointed to the old “No Smoking” signs written in Arabic and English, and explained when asked that they once warned of ammunition and fuel supplies.
In 1967, the Israelis found the domed stone sleeping rooms filled with army equipment, much of it U.S. Army surplus. One room was full of shovels, another of rubber boots! There was much ammunition, and thousands of jerry cans of gasoline. I was told that in the first weeks after the Six-Day War, some Israeli civilians as they explored the Judean and Samarian hills so central in their ancient history, had stopped at Nebi Musa to gas up their vehicles. The area and the site had been forbidden territory to Jews for the previous nineteen years of Arab-Jordanian occupation.
Currently, Nebi Musa is largely ignored, but a dramatic and telling story is represented by its presence. The Palestinian National Authority now administers the site, from nearby Jericho. •
About the author
Michael A. Zimmerman, an American political analyst and writer, lived in Jerusalem for some years and thoroughly explored the rugged canyon and ravine-creased region of the Judean Wilderness to the east and south of Israel’s capital. MikeZimmerman3@gmail.com