On Jerusalem, Wiesel: 1, DeKoven Ezrahi: 0

Tamar Sternthal
CAMERA Media Analysis
25 April '10

Sidra DeKoven Ezrahi of Jerusalem, an academic affiliated with the Hebrew University, penned a lengthy letter, published in the April 21 edition of the International Herald Tribune, indignantly condemning author and Nobel Prize Peace winner Elie Wiesel for his full-page ad "For Jerusalem" which appeared in that newspaper and elsewhere. In her letter, she poses a challenge to the celebrated author, and in doing so exposes herself as entirely ignorant of what she possessively calls "Jerusalem, my city," and its inhabitants.

Professing to speak for "real people who want to live together in peace," DeKoven Ezrahi disparages "Mr. Wiesel's sentimental claim over all of Jerusalem on behalf of some misty-eyed notion of three thousand years of Jewish 'belonging.'" Pointing out that Mr. Wiesel does not live in Jerusalem (and is thus presumably unqualified to comment on the capital), she rebukes him:

After representing to eloquently the victims of history's injustices in Nazi and then Soviet Europe, Mr. Wiesel would surely, we assumed, turn to the injustices perpetrated by his own people, and cry out against the tragic occupation and dispossession of the Palestinian people.

And then comes DeKoven Ezrahi's defiant challenge (which was proudly reproduced by her husband Bernard Avishai on his blog):

Instead, Mr. Wiesel tells us, with no evidence on the ground, that "Jews, Christians and Muslims are allowed to build their homes anywhere in the city." I defy Mr. Wiesel to find three Muslim families in all of West Jerusalem.

In fact, it doesn't take a Jerusalem scholar, or even a Jerusalem resident, to track down Muslims living in Jewish neighborhoods of western Jerusalem. It took this CAMERA researcher, who, unlike DeKoven Ezrahi, neither lives nor works in Jerusalem but lives some 30 kilometers away, only minutes to track down the names of multiple Muslim families living in neighborhoods like Talbieh, Arnona, Ein Kerem, Kiryat Yovel, Kiryat Moshe, Ramat Denia and Katamon. These names were passed along to Serge Schmemann, the editor of the editorial page of the International Herald Tribune, but will not be published here out of respect for the residents' privacy.

According to the Jerusalem Yearbook published by the Jerusalem Institute for Israel Affairs, 3,576 Muslims were living in western Jerusalem as of 2007 (Table III/11).

(Read full analysis)

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