Typical response: Israel set to build elevator for all to access to Tomb of the Patriarchs, Palestinians claim it is only for Jews - by Elder of Ziyon

Right now people in wheelchairs need to be physically carried up some 60 stairs.

Elder of Ziyon..
21 April '20..

Palestinian site Safa reports that Israel's attorney general Avichai Mendelblit recently approved a plan use land next to the Tomb of the Patriarchs in Hebron to build an elevator and ramps to help access "for the Jewish disabled" to the holy place.

Even though they are quoting Arutz-7, the original report makes clear that the elevator is meant for all, Arabs and Jews as well as tourists.

Israel has tried for years to cooperate with the PA in helping give access to all to the site, and the PA refused to talk with Israeli authorities, as this 2019 report notes. Even the most right-wing Jews of Hebron insist that the elevator be open to Muslims, saying "The Cave of the Patriarchs and Matriarchs belongs to the people of Israel, and the state must ensure that every person of every religion can pray there."

Even the far left Meretz agrees that there should be universal access:

(Continue to Full Post)

Updates throughout the day at http://calevbenyefuneh.blogspot.com. If you enjoy "Love of the Land", please be a subscriber. Just put your email address in the "Subscribe" box on the upper right-hand corner of the page.Twitter updates at LoveoftheLand as well as our Love of the Land page at Facebook which has additional pieces of interest besides that which is posted on the blog. Also check-out This Ongoing War by Frimet and Arnold Roth. An excellent blog, very important work. 

Like to know what the Palestinian “Prayer Intifada” is all about? (Hint: not about prayers) - by Yishai Fleisher

It’s time for Israel to reverse the misguided Dayan doctrine and send a clear message that Palestinian “liberation” of the Temple Mount and the Tomb of the Patriarchs will utterly fail.

Yishai Fleisher..
JNS.org..
21 January '20..

There’s a new Palestinian intifada in the works, one that specifically targets the Temple Mount in Jerusalem and the Tomb of the Patriarchs in Hebron.

Called the Great Fajr (Muslim pre-dawn prayer), it’s roused thousands of Palestinians to converge on the holy sites for Friday prayers—which also double as anti-Israel rallies. The large turnouts, despite the cold and rain, have surprised police in both Jerusalem and Hebron.

The Jerusalem Post’s Khaled Abu Toameh reports that the prayer demonstrations are being organized by both Hamas and Fatah. Last Friday, a third jihadist organization, called Hizb ut-Tahrir (Party of Liberation), an Islamic State-like pro-Caliphate movement, led Temple Mount worshippers in chants of “O coward settler, Aqsa [Mosque] won’t be humiliated” and “With blood and spirit, we will liberate Al-Aqsa.”

Palestinian leaders claim the protests are aimed at stemming the growing tide of Jewish visitors to the Temple Mount and thwarting Israel’s decision to build a new Jewish neighborhood in Hebron.

But these are just excuses.

The truth is that the Palestinian national movement is deflated and is looking for a religious kick-start.

(Continue to Full Column)

Updates throughout the day at http://calevbenyefuneh.blogspot.com. If you enjoy "Love of the Land", please be a subscriber. Just put your email address in the "Subscribe" box on the upper right-hand corner of the page.Twitter updates at LoveoftheLand as well as our Love of the Land page at Facebook which has additional pieces of interest besides that which is posted on the blog. Also check-out This Ongoing War by Frimet and Arnold Roth. An excellent blog, very important work. 

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David Ben-Gurion - Hebron is Jerusalem's Sister

Hebron, City of the Patriarchs
The Jewish Community of Hebron
Year 46 of the Liberation of Hebron
29 Iyar 5773

Hebron is Jerusalem's Sister

Three cities hold a great and unique place in the ancient history of our people: Shechem, Hebron and Jerusalem. In the Book of Genesis (Bereshit) we are told that Terach took his son Abram, his nephew Lot and his daughter-in-law Sarai, Abram's wife and left Ur Kasdim bound for Canan. On route they reached Haran and dwelt there. Terach died in Haran.

Then the Almighty said to Abram: "Go forth from your land, from your birth place and from your father's house to the land that I shall show you...and Abram went forth as he had been told by the Eternal...and he took with him Sarai his wife, Lot his nephew, all their possessions and the souls that they had acquired in Haran...and they came to the Land of Canan. And Abram passed through the land until the place Shechem...and the Eternal appeared to Abram and said, "Unto your children shall I give this land." There Abram built there an altar unto the Eternal who had appeared to him-and Abram continued his journey shouthward ... and Abram made his camp and came and settled in the Plains of Mamre that are in Hebron and he built an alter to the Almighty." (Genesis 12-B).

Hebrew history begins in Hebron. In Hebron...there arose the first Hebrew armed force, which battled with four great kings:...because they had captured Abram's nephew Lot and his property. When Abram heard this in Hebron, he immediately mobilized 318 of his followers and pursued the four kings up to Dan in the north, where he attacked at night and destroyed them, and rescued all the property and his nephew Lot, the women and the rest of the captives. This was the first war in Jewish history, which ended not merely with victory, but also with a demonstration of Abram's breadth of spirit...

(Video) To Hijack Grandpa Abraham? Never!

hebronvideo
01 December '12..









Hebron is where the forebears of the Jewish People lived are buried. Lately, the Palestinian Authority is working to destroy the unique Jewish bond to the Tomb of the Patriarchs and Matriarchs in Hebron demanding that it be declared a National Palestinian Heritage Site.


Published on Dec 1, 2012 by hebronvideo

Make your opinion known. Learn more at www.Hebron.com

Updates throughout the day at http://calevbenyefuneh.blogspot.com. If you enjoy "Love of the Land", please be a subscriber. Just put your email address in the "Subscribe" box on the upper right-hand corner of the page.Twitter updates at LoveoftheLand as well as our Love of the Land page at Facebook.
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Roth - A stabbing in the Tomb of the Patriarchs

Frimet/Arnold Roth..
This Ongoing War..
05 June '12..

On Monday afternoon, a Palestinian Arab clutching what Haaretz calls "a large nail" approached a small group of Israeli security personnel posted to keep the peace at the ancient Machpelah Cave in Hebron. It's a site that has been revered by Jews for thousands of years (long before Islam was created) as the traditional burial place of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob as well as the matriarchs of the Jewish people Sarah, Rivka and Leah. Many know it as the Tomb of the Patriarchs.

The Palestinian Arab executed a stabbing attempt, managing to wound one of the Border Guard (Mishmar Hag'vul) servicemen in the head. His name, according to the Bethlehem-based Palestinian news agency Maan, is Laith Mashaal. It reports that he had come to the tomb to pray on Monday afternoon. Evidently feeling especially religious, he then stabbed the Israeli officer outside what Maan terms "the mosque". Another Border Guard police prevented a worse outcome by managing to use his weapon to fire a bullet at the Palestinian Arab, hitting him in the chest.

Times of Israel says the wounded Arab assailant received immediate care from a Magen David Adom rescue service unit called to the scene. They resuscitated him and rushed him to Hadassah Medical Center in the nearby Jerusalem neighbourhood of Ein Karem where he is in serious condition, but (in the customary irony that accompanies terrorist attacks in this unusual country) receiving the very best of Zionist medical care. The Border Guard man with the stabbing injury to the head was taken to the same hospital where he is in moderate condition and recovering.

Link: http://thisongoingwar.blogspot.co.il/2012/06/5-jun-12-stabbing-in-tomb-of-patriarchs.html

Updates throughout the day at http://calevbenyefuneh.blogspot.com. If you enjoy "Love of the Land", please be a subscriber. Just put your email address in the "Subscribe" box on the upper right-hand corner of the page.Twitter updates at LoveoftheLand
.

David Ben-Gurion: Hebron is Jerusalem's Sister

Hebron, City of the Patriarchs
The Jewish Community of Hebron
Year 45 of the Liberation of Hebron
29 Iyar 5772


Hebron is Jerusalem's Sister

Three cities hold a great and unique place in the ancient history of our people: Shechem, Hebron and Jerusalem. In the Book of Genesis (Bereshit) we are told that Terach took his son Abram, his nephew Lot and his daughter-in-law Sarai, Abram's wife and left Ur Kasdim bound for Canan. On route they reached Haran and dwelt there. Terach died in Haran.

Then the Almighty said to Abram: "Go forth from your land, from your birth place and from your father's house to the land that I shall show you...and Abram went forth as he had been told by the Eternal...and he took with him Sarai his wife, Lot his nephew, all their possessions and the souls that they had acquired in Haran...and they came to the Land of Canan. And Abram passed through the land until the place Shechem...and the Eternal appeared to Abram and said, "Unto your children shall I give this land." There Abram built there an altar unto the Eternal who had appeared to him-and Abram continued his journey shouthward ... and Abram made his camp and came and settled in the Plains of Mamre that are in Hebron and he built an alter to the Almighty." (Genesis 12-B).

Hebrew history begins in Hebron. In Hebron...there arose the first Hebrew armed force, which battled with four great kings:...because they had captured Abram's nephew Lot and his property. When Abram heard this in Hebron, he immediately mobilized 318 of his followers and pursued the four kings up to Dan in the north, where he attacked at night and destroyed them, and rescued all the property and his nephew Lot, the women and the rest of the captives. This was the first war in Jewish history, which ended not merely with victory, but also with a demonstration of Abram's breadth of spirit...

Ibrahim and Ibn-Rabah

Sarah Honig
Another Tack
04 November '10

Quite incredibly, representatives of Western democracies on UNESCO’s executive delivered a self-destructive blow to their own heritage when demanding that Rachel’s Tomb in Bethlehem and the Cave of the Patriarchs in Hebron be removed from the inventory of Jewish heritage sites. UNESCO’s resolution redefined them as mosques – as if Muslim from time immemorial. It sought to detach seminal biblical place-names from any Jewish connections.

It’s one thing to willfully subscribe to mind-blowing colossal deception; it’s quite another to shake the foundations beneath one’s own civilization.

Politically incorrect as it may be in our postmodern, multicultural existence, Europe’s and America’s democracies are constructed on Christian foundations. By accepting Muslim deconstructionist diktats, the West not only injures the Jews, it injures its own legacy.

To be fair, the world’s current most inveterate revisers of the past, the Muslims, are relative newcomers to the fanciful world of fabricated historiography. Long before Islam existed, Christians were obsessed with their own retrospective rewriting and they were preceded by pagans. Perhaps it was all already foretold by the biblical Balaam, who prophesied (Numbers 23:9) that Israel shall be “a people who dwells alone and shall not be counted among the nations.”

(Read full story)


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An Arab land

Sarah Honig
Another Tack/JPost
05 March '10

Were Israelis to unconditionally submit to ever-mutating Arab historiography, all attachments to the Western Wall and Mount of Olives would have to be abjectly relinquished.

Who says we’re not winning the war for the world’s hearts and minds? Even Arabs seem swayed by the argument that the oldest ties to this land are the ones that bind.

Apparently they were converted to the view that everything boils down to who was here first, who left all the place names of all this country’s towns and villages (including those which conquistador Arabs took over), who embedded this unlikely location in world consciousness and rendered it a cultural/religious byword in the farthest climes, whose national cradle this was, the hub of whose beliefs and aspirations this arid little territorial tract had been from time immemorial.

The Arabs, obviously, haven’t become overnight lovers of Zion. But despite their unabated enmity to the Zionist project – Israel – they commandeer Zionism’s logic and Zionism’s case and put these to their own use with a set of preposterous counterclaims that go spectacularly unchallenged in our postmodern existence. With moral-relativists throwing history to the wind, any absurdity can be propagated with colossal impudence and impunity.

The latest example was just furnished in the Knesset by Israeli-Arab MK Taleb a-Sanaa (Ta’al-Ra’am). In a plenum debate he embraced the premise that the land belongs to its earliest claimants: “You say that Abraham purchased Hebron’s Cave of the Patriarchs, but the man who sold it to him was a Palestinian Arab. Consequently, we were here first and Hebron is eternally ours.”

Thereby a-Sanaa made a huge leap from traditional Arab portrayals of Abraham as an Arab. A-Sanaa now categorizes him as the Israelites’ father and stakes Arab claims on real-estate vendor Ephron the Hittite (although the mosque which Arabs constructed over the second-holiest Jewish shrine is called the Ibrahimi Mosque – Ibrahim being the Arabic pronunciation for the Hebrew Avraham).

THIS ISN’T an irrelevant frivolous footnote. A-Sanaa isn’t the first Arab to reinvent the past to suit current interests. Indeed, this is a long-established vogue. Way before the homicidal agitation of British-appointed Jerusalem mufti Haj Amin el-Husseini, it was a widespread Arab sport to hurl human excrement from atop the Temple Mount at Jews praying below. But Husseini decided to usurp the wall’s sanctity for Islam, decreeing it to be the hitching-post where Muhammad tethered his super-steed al-Buraq. That presumably overrode and erased all Jewish associations to the site.

(Read full article)
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Tell me what your heritage sites are...

Israel Harel
Haaretz
04 March '10

(You'll have to read the full piece to get to the punch line, but it's got punch. Y.)

Everyone expected Benjamin Netanyahu to surprise us once again by distancing himself from the Likud platform, just as he did when he adopted the two-state "vision" in his speech at Bar-Ilan University. But at last month's Herzliya Conference, the prime minister surprised us from a different direction. Israel's existence, he declared, "depends first and foremost ... on our ability to explain the justness of our path and demonstrate our affinity for our land. ... If our feeling of serving a higher purpose dissipates, if our sources of spiritual strength grow weak, then - as Yigal Allon said - our future will also be opaque."

Less than a month after that speech, the cabinet members went to Tel Hai, a foundational site in the pioneering Zionist ethos, and decided during a festive meeting to "rehabilitate and strengthen the infrastructure of our national heritage, which expresses the national heritage of the nation of Israel in its land." In accordance with this decision, two maps will be "branded and rooted" in the public consciousness: "the map of the historical Jewish story" and "the map of the Israeli-Zionist experience."

The map of the "historical story" will include foundational sites such as Al-Kanatir, Dir Aziz, Hamam Midya, El-Umdan, Qeiyafa, Anim and Madras. It will not include - doubtless because they truly are the "historical Jewish story" - the Tomb of the Patriarchs in Hebron, Rachel's Tomb, Mount Gerizim and Mount Ebal, Tel Shilo (which was the capital of the ancient Israelite polity for 300 years before it moved to Hebron), Givon, Tel Jericho, the ancient Shema Yisrael mosaic in Jericho, or many other sites located in the heart of the land of the Bible.

Heletz, Beit Haya'aran and the Timna mines are three sites on the second map, that of the "Israeli-Zionist experience." And they, no less than the sites chosen for the map of the "historical Jewish story in the Land of Israel," faithfully reflect the best of the Zionist experience, as chosen by a task force comprising more than 100 people, led by Cabinet Secretary Zvi Hauser. According to the task force's concluding report, the choices were "based on criteria that reflect our vision."

(Read full article)
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Why Palestinians Riot Over Jewish Heritage Sites

Moshe Dann
Frontpagemag.com
03 March '10

Last week saw an upsurge in Palestinian riots and attacks against Israeli vehicles in Gaza and the West Bank. What crime did Israel commit to invite the wave of violence? Israel’s government simply announced that it intended to honor the country’s heritage by including the Cave of the Patriarchs in Hebron, and Rachel’s Tomb in Bethlehem in a list of Israeli national “heritage” sites.

The violence-fueled Palestinian reaction may seem entirely disproportionate to Israel’s offense. But a look at the historical background shows that it is not without grim precedent.

For several decades, Palestinians have been attacking Jewish worshipers at the Temple Mount in Jerusalem, the Tomb of Rachel near Bethlehem, and the Tomb of Patriarchs and Matriarchs, Machpelah, in Hebron. After the Oslo and Hebron Agreements in the 1990’s, attacks intensified.

To protect visitors to Rachel’s Tomb, a fortified building was built around the tiny, 19th century building that had been built over the tomb. That wasn’t enough, since getting to the building from the closest Israeli checkpoint, a few hundred meters away, exposed Jews to sniper fire and bombs from adjacent buildings along the road. A new road was built, therefore, surrounded by high cement walls.

Palestinian riots against the rights of Jews to visit holy and historic sites are nothing new. In Jericho and Gaza, ancient Jewish synagogues from the Talmudic period have been destroyed and are off limits to Jews.

In Shechem, Nablus , the site of Joseph’s Tomb, was attacked by Palestinian mobs in 2000, fire-bombed and destroyed. A wounded Israeli soldier inside bled to death while Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak and his Defense Minister, Shaul Mofaz, negotiated with the Palestinian Authority.

(Read full article)
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Israel’s Latest Sin—Honoring Its Heritage

P. David Hornik
Frontpagemag.com
01 March '10

When the Israeli cabinet announced the other day that the Cave of the Patriarchs in Hebron, and Rachel’s Tomb in Bethlehem, would be included in a list of Israeli “heritage” sites, it touched off a wave of Palestinian violence and threats—along with diplomatic protests that were all too concordant with the Palestinian bullying.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, who has launched the “heritage” program as a way of strengthening Israelis’ connection with their Jewish and Zionist roots, initially left the two West Bank sites (though other West Bank sites were included) off the list, apparently fearing various kinds of fallout. Netanyahu was only persuaded to include them at the last minute by Shas, a religious party that is part of his coalition.

Sure enough, the West Bank heated up with an increase in rocks and Molotov cocktails thrown at Israeli vehicles, and, particularly, daily disturbances in Hebron, where crowds of Palestinians burned tires and threw rocks and bottles at Israeli soldiers. By Sunday the disturbances had spread to Jerusalem.

On the verbal plane a spokesman for the Gaza-based Islamic Jihad terror organization declared that “If the Israelis continue to damage our mosques and holy places, we will respond [i.e., mount terror attacks] within the Zionist territory”—alluding to the fact that the Cave of the Patriarchs is a compound with a mosque as well as a synagogue, while Rachel’s Tomb has recently been claimed to be a mosque as well.
Ismail Haniyeh, Hamas prime minister in Gaza, piped up with “Jerusalem is ours, the land is ours, and God is with us. We will not accept these decisions….” And Mahmoud Abbas, president of the official, West Bank-based Palestinian Authority and considered secular and a moderate, was hardly more moderate in his reaction, calling the decision to add the two sites to the heritage list “a serious provocation which may lead to a religious war.”

(Read full article)
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Let’s Be Honest with the Palestinians

Jennifer Rubin
Contentions/Commentary
01 March '10

Obama’s now ill-fated Middle East policy has proved to be disastrous. The Israelis distrust him. Ths Syrians snub him. The Palestinians are contemplating another intifada, the pretext this time being Israel’s decision to include the Cave of the Patriarchs and Rachel’s Tomb within its heritage-protection program. Obama began his foray into the Middle East by declaring that it was essential to speak “honestly” with the parties and to say the same thing in public and private. Fair enough. But alas, he seems to have reserved all that honesty for the Israelis, for whom heritage programs, apartment buildings, and the blockade of Gaza are all taken as offenses against Palestinian sensibilities. Don’t aggravate them! Don’t inflame things! Israel is expected to forgo its legitimate interests, whether for security or cultural preservation, because the Palestinians apparently are incapable of accepting it is a normal state with normal concerns.

Not only does the perpetual stream of American complaints strike the Israelis (and others) as intensely one-sided and irrelevant to the core issue that prevents peace from breaking out of “process” and into reality, but it infantilizes the Palestinians, treating them as psychotic children and playing to their worst tendencies. The upcoming Naqba Day — the epitome of victimology — is explained poignantly here:

(Read full post)
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What about Ezekiel's tomb, Irina Bokova?

Bataween
Point of No Return
01 March '10

UNESCO's Director-General, Irina Bokova, has 'expressed concern' at the Israeli government's plan to include in its renovation programme the biblical heritage sites of the Tomb of the Patriarchs and Rachel's tomb in Hebron. We've yet to hear any expression of concern from Mrs Bokova at Iraq's planned islamicisation of Ezekiel's tomb, or indeed news that control of renovation works has passed to UNESCO, as promised by the Iraqi authorities. This lucid article in The American Thinker reminds us that Ezekiel's tomb, like the Prophet Ezekiel in his own lifetime, is in the forefront of a cultural war:

A short fifteen-minute drive outside Kerbala, Iraq, one can witness the frontlines of the clash between East and West, Islamism and progress. There, in the small town of Al-Kifl, lies -- at least at the time of this writing -- the 2,500-year-old Tomb of the Prophet Ezekiel. But for the first time in recorded history, the Tomb is threatened not by the collateral damage of war, nor the ignominies of thieves and bandits, but by a planned, government-authorized, and taxpayer-funded demolition.

(Read full article)
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UN “Peace” Coordinator: Jewish Heritage an Invalid Concept

Jonathan Tobin
Contentions/Commentary
22 February '10

Earlier today I wrote about the implications of an important new archeological discovery that highlights the 3,000-year-old Jewish heritage in East Jerusalem. Such finds have political significance specifically because the whole focus of Palestinian nationalism has been to deny Jewish ties to the land and to attempt to rewrite history in such a way as to expunge the historicity and continuity of the Jewish presence.

But the reason why this issue is so important was brought home again today by a statement coming from Robert Serry, the United Nations Special Coordinator for the Middle East Peace Process. In it, Serry went out of his way to condemn the recently announced National Heritage Plan announced by Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu because two ancient Jewish religious shrines were included in the list of sites to be preserved and protected. Serry objected to the inclusion of Rachel’s Tomb outside Bethlehem and the Cave of the Patriarchs in Hebron in the list of essential places in Jewish history, because the two are in the West Bank and thus, in his view, “occupied Palestinian territory.” The fact that they are located on land that is subject to dispute between the two parties is of no interest to the UN official who, despite his status as a peace mediator, is ready to dictate where the borders of a putative Palestinian state must be. But Serry’s argument is not merely one of borders, because in the same statement he claimed that the sites “are of historical and religious significance not only to Judaism but also to Islam, and to Christianity as well.”

It is true that Christians and Muslims have an intrinsic interest in any biblical site. And since Muslims, like Jews, consider Abraham to be one of their patriarchs, they have a religious stake in the Cave of the Patriarchs. But Muslims have never been willing to share this most ancient of Jewish shrines with other faiths. Throughout the history of Muslim control of the land of Israel, through the Ottoman era and even during the time of British rule, Jews were forbidden to enter the cave and were, instead, constrained to ascend no higher than the seventh step of the entrance to the sacred place. Jewish prayer inside the cave only resumed in June 1967, after the Israeli conquest of Hebron, after which the two religions have shared the place despite the history of tension and bloodshed in the Hebron area.

(Read full article)
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Document: Palestinian NGO's objection to Israeli "Heritage" ties to biblical sites illustrates absence of pluralism

Dr. Aaron Lerner
IMRA
22 February '10

Here is where we are:

1. There are numerous places in the "Holy Land" beyond the "Green Line" that are intimately linked to Jewish history and thus to Jewish identity and heritage. Recognizing these historical links in now way rules out a priori that some of these places may not be under Israeli control in a final status arrangement.

2. There are numerous places in "Historical Palestine" within the "Green Line" that are intimately linked to the history of Arab Palestinians and thus to the identity and heritage of Palestinian Arabs. Recognizing these historical links in now way rules out these places (Jaffo, for example) will remain under Israeli control in a final status arrangement.

3. In the instance that a place that is holy to both Islam and other religions is under Moslem control, non-Moslem prayer is prohibited at the site.

4. As demonstrated in the "Tomb of the Patriarchs" (a place that is holy to both Judaism and other religions is under Israeli control), non-Jewish prayer is also accommodated at the site.

5. As for the Hague and Geneva Conventions cited, inasmuch as Israel has preserved and improved rather than destroyed,.are we to understand that the Palestinian Centre for Human Rights believes that international law somehow supports discrimination against Jews in places holy to Jews and Moslems?

====================

PCHR
Palestinian Centre for Human Rights
Press Release

Ref: 10/2010
Date: 22 February 2010
Time: 11:30 GMT

PCHR Condemns Israel's Decision to Include the Ibrahimi Mosque and Bilal Ben Rabah Mosque on the List of Israeli Archaeological Sites

The Palestinian Center for Human Rights (PCHR) condemns a decisions taken by the Israeli government on Sunday, 21 February 2010, to include the "Tomb of the Patriarch" (the Ibrahimi Mosque) in Hebron and "Rachel Tomb" (Bilal Ben Rabah Mosque) in Bethlehem on the list of Israeli archaeological sites.

(Read full PCHR press release)
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