Jerusalem Day and Marching Parade Through Jerusalem and Its Consequences

 Nadene Goldfoot                                               

Today, Friday-Shabbat.  Sunday is Jerusalem Day.  There is likely to be rioting in Jerusalem. 

US Ambassador Tom Nides is interviewed by The Times of Israel at the US embassy in Jerusalem, on January 7, 2022. (David Azagury/ US embassy)

Israeli officials have rejected a request by U.S. 

Ambassador Thomas Nides to Israel, to amend the route of 

the Jerusalem Day Flag March, to be held on Sunday, so that 

it avoids the Muslim Quarter in the Old City of Jerusalem. 

    Above is the US Embassy in Jerusalem.                                    

I believe this is former president Trump's daughter showing the placket on the wall of the embassy, which recognizes Jerusalem as Israel's capital once again.  Jerusalem had become Israel's capital with King David's recognition of it in 1010 BCE, over 3,000 years ago which lasted until 70 CE when Jerusalem was burnt down by the Romans.  Jerusalem had been the capital of the Jewish kingdom for 1,080 years!  

   Ambassador Tom Nides entered his Jerusalem  home on capital’s Emek Refaim Street, after old official residence in Herzliya was sold by Trump administration in 2020. Nides will be living in the German section of Jerusalem.  This is a street in the neighborhood. 

Jerusalem Day marks the annual anniversary of the liberation and unification of Jerusalem during the 1967 Six Day War. Right Wing young people tend to demonstrate Israeli sovereignty over the entirety of Jerusalem by marching through the city, including the Muslim Quarter of the Old City, carrying flags and chanting nationalistic slogans. 

Israel's security agencies and the IDF recommended that the traditional route not be changed in order not to display a show of weakness. PM Bennett also said the route must remain unchanged. Hamas has warned violence if the route is not changed.                            

Jews were expelled and banned from the Old City and prohibited from visiting the Western Wall by Jordan, from 1948 until 1967.

 For almost 2000 years prior to 1917 (when the British ruled Palestine), Jews could only live in the Old City and worship at the Western Wall under the mostly oppressive and persecutory rule of, first the Christian and then the Muslim rulers of the city. The last Muslim rulers before 1948 was the Ottoman Empire of Turkey who held the land but did not live on it for 400 years.  The Crusaders failed to retake Palestine despite further attempts. The Egyptian Mamluks took Palestine from the Mongols (who had conquered the Ayyubid Sultanate) in 1260. The Ottoman Empire captured the region in 1516 and ruled it until Egypt took it in 1832.

• 1832 May 10 – Mohammed Ali, leading Egyptian forces, and aided by local Maronites, seizes Acre from the Ottoman Empire after a 7-month siege.
• 1840 July 15 – The Austrian Empire, the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, the Kingdom of Prussia, and the Russian Empire sign the Convention of London with the ruler of the Ottoman Empire. The signatories offered to Muhammad Ali and his heirs permanent control over Egypt and the Acre Sanjak (roughly what is now Israel), provided that these territories remain part of the Ottoman Empire and that Ali agreed within ten days to withdraw from the rest of Syria and return to Sultan Abdülmecid I the Ottoman fleet which had defected to Alexandria. Muhammad Ali was also to immediately withdraw his forces from Arabia, the Holy Cities, Crete, the district of Adana, and all of the Ottoman Empire.
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• 1874 – Jerusalem becomes a Mutesarrifiyyet gaining a special administrative status.
• 1882–1903 – The First Aliyah took place: 25,000–35,000 Jews immigrate to Ottoman Syria.
• 1887–1888 – Ottoman Syria is divided into Jerusalem Sanjak, Nablus Sanjak, and Acre Sanjak
•                                                           
  
  
  

Christians in Jerusalem also faced persecutory restrictions and discrimination under Muslim rule. So let's all give thanks for the ability to live and visit Jerusalem and worship freely according to our own religious beliefs under the security and protection of the Israeli government, IDF and Israel Police. 

What do you think?  Would it be better to follow the US ambassador's advice  so that it avoids the Muslim Quarter in the Old City of Jerusalem?  Or is Israel acting correctly under the circumstances of showing that all of Jerusalem belongs to Israel.

I don't believe there are any other circumstances in the world like this.  I do remember in 1977, the Nazis wanting to march through parts of our own city, Skokie, Chicago, Illinois in the USA  where Jewish refugees lived and how upset they were, but of course those American Nazis had rights and that was recognized first and foremost.  

{48 years ago, in the Chicago suburb of Skokie, a planned Nazi march through a town full of Holocaust survivors led to a years-long legal battle over religious liberties and the strength of the constitution. While hate groups were ultimately not allowed to march on Skokie, their message still resonates with white supremacists and members of the far-right today, according to Heidi Beirich, the director of the Intelligence Project at the Southern Poverty Law Center.}

Once the courts finally ruled in all of the cases that the Nazis 

had a right to peaceful assembly, it became clear that they were going to have their assembly.  They announced that they would hold it in Skokie on June 24, 1978.  from this point on, I repeatedly warned Frnk Collin, the Nazi leader, that violent counter demonstrations were planned--and that I doubted that the Skokie police and allied police departments were up to the job. 

Nonetheless, he told me that the demonstration was on and as far as I could tell, his plans for it continued apace.   

The only other example I remember would be New York City which once held people on the British side and people on the rebellious American side when we broke away from Great Britain's hold on this USA and had our own Revolutionary War.  Once the war was over showing that the Americans won, that was it.  The British here either left for England or became Americans.  Have there been parades of Americans going through the British-held side?  There would be no point since all are now Americans.  1776 was the year that all was decided.                              

Israeli police carrying shields on Temple Mount to stop rock-throwing, attacks of Arabs on Jews.  

By marching through Arab neighborhoods, 

there will be fighting.  You can bet on it.  It will 

be the Arab who will show a resistance and 

attack the marchers.  Some may die.  

Nides told US senators at his confirmation hearing 

that he would be living in Jerusalem and respects 

the decision by the previous administration to 

recognize Jerusalem as Israel’s capital.

    Dancing at the Wall in 1967 with the right to see the wall once again.  

Israel captured East Jerusalem in the 1967 Six Day War and later annexed it in a move not recognized internationally. The Palestinians want East Jerusalem to be the capital of a future Palestinian state. 

                       Great Britain's embassy in Tel Aviv

Nearly all countries maintain their embassies in Tel Aviv because of the dispute over East Jerusalem.

Resosurce:

https://mail.google.com/mail/u/0/?tab=wm#inbox/FMfcgzGpGBGPrjpfrMFxMLRrGqFQZVCW

https://www.timesofisrael.com/us-ambassador-nides-moves-into-new-residence-in-jerusalem/

https://abcnews.go.com/US/skokie-legacy-nazi-march-town-holocaust-survivors/story?id=56026742

https://www.aclu.org/issues/free-speech/rights-protesters/skokie-case-how-i-came-represent-free-speech-rights-nazis

https://jewishbubba.blogspot.com/2021/12/stanley-goldfoots-letter-to-world.html