We told you before about the ongoing (low-burn) violence and media circus surrounding the Jewish state’s adding two major tourist and spiritual pilgrimage spots to a list of sites of “Jewish cultural heritage.”
Well, on Friday, worshipers at the Western Wall were stoned by rioters on top of the Temple Mount and 15 Israeli policemen and dozens of the rioters were injured in the resulting scuffles. (Don’t Islamic leaders mind their followers using the high ground of what is ostensibly a holy site to attempt to maim worshipers below?)
So let’s go over this again: Israel added two spots to a list that designates sites of historical and cultural relevance. And this caused Palestinians to riot? (Continuing the long tradition of the Palestinian Authority using violence or threats of it where other governments use diplomacy.) And countries ranging from Jordan, Egypt, and other Arab league states, to–predictably– the UN felt the need to condemn the list-making (while not condemning the violence fomented by the PA). And, of course, the U.S. hasn’t retracted the State Department’s comments on the matter, which were that the Israeli list was “provocative and unhelpful.”
So what are these sites anyway?
What exactly are these sites? One is Rachel’s Tomb, which sits on the edge of Bethelehem close to Jerusalem. The second is the Cave of the Patriarchs, which sits in the middle of Hebron. Just how “provocative” is it to add these to the list of sites of Jewish cultural import?
Rachel’s Tomb is identified in Genesis 35:19-20: “So Rachel died and was buried on the way to Ephrath (that is, Bethlehem). Over her tomb Jacob set up a pillar, and to this day that pillar marks Rachel’s tomb.” As the Bible relates, the site has been holy to Jews for thousands of years — more than a thousand years before Islam even came into existence! (And holy to Christians hundreds of years before…)
The case of the Cave of the Patriarchs is even more ironic: Genesis 23 records how Abraham insists on purchasing a burial cave near his home in Kiryat Arba (next to modern-day Hebron) from Ephron the Hittite, even when Ephron offers it to him as a gift:
Then Abraham rose from beside his dead wife and spoke to the Hittites. He said, “I am an alien and a stranger among you. Sell me some property for a burial site here so I can bury my dead.” (Genesis 23:3-4)
The Hittites offer him “the choicest of our tombs,” but Abraham asks them to “intercede with Ephron son of Zohar on my behalf so he will sell me the cave of Machpelah, which belongs to him and is at the end of his field. Ask him to sell it to me for the full price as a burial site among you.”
Ephron offers to give Abraham the cave for free: “No, my lord,” he said. “Listen to me; I give you the field, and I give you the cave that is in it. I give it to you in the presence of my people. Bury your dead.” (Genesis 23:11-12)
A recorded real estate transaction
But Abraham insists on paying for it:
Again Abraham bowed down before the people of the land and he said to Ephron in their hearing, “Listen to me, if you will. I will pay the price of the field. Accept it from me so I can bury my dead there.”
Ephron answered Abraham, “Listen to me, my lord; the land is worth four hundred shekels of silver, but what is that between me and you? Bury your dead.”
Abraham agreed to Ephron’s terms and weighed out for him the price he had named in the hearing of the Hittites: four hundred shekels of silver, according to the weight current among the merchants.
So Ephron’s field in Machpelah near Mamre—both the field and the cave in it, and all the trees within the borders of the field—was deeded to Abraham as his property in the presence of all the Hittites who had come to the gate of the city. Afterward Abraham buried his wife Sarah in the cave in the field of Machpelah near Mamre (which is at Hebron) in the land of Canaan. So the field and the cave in it were deeded to Abraham by the Hittites as a burial site. (Genesis 23:12-20)
The Jewish Sages comment that part of the reason that Abraham was so eager to pay for the burial cave was so that no one could ever dispute that fact that the Jewish people owned it. (The only other sites so recorded are the Tomb of Joseph, which is near the Biblical Shechem, now present-day Nablus, and the site of the Holy Temple, the Temple Mount – both of which Palestinians claim as being of dubious import to the Jewish people.)
Commentator Michael Freund says it best:
Sites such as Rachel’s Tomb and the Cave of the Patriarchs are part of the national and religious patrimony of the Jewish people, and we do not need anyone’s permission to renovate and maintain them. Our reverence for these sites and attachment to them predates Muhammad and precedes Jesus, and no one has the right to lecture us about where and how we choose to serve God.
In fact, this entire episode provides a revealing glimpse of just how transparently hypocritical our critics have become. After all, it was nearly 15 years ago, in the September 1995 Oslo II Accords, that the Palestinians themselves recognized Israel’s attachment to Rachel’s Tomb. In Article V, Annex I to the agreement, the Palestinians agreed that “the present situation and existing practices in the tomb shall be preserved,” meaning that they clearly consented to Israeli control and use of the site, which has never been anything other than a place of Jewish worship.
So for chief Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat to say last week that Israel’s move amounts to a “unilateral decision to make Palestinian sites in Hebron and Bethlehem part of Israel” is not only absurd, it is patently false.
And since the accords were signed on the White House lawn in front of the world, and were formally witnessed by representatives of both the US administration and the European Union, one would expect them to see right through the Palestinians’ shenanigans.
Worse yet, by playing along with the feigned outrage of the Palestinian leadership, the international community is merely giving credence to their boorish denial of the Jewish essence of these sites.
You don’t have to be a Biblical scholar or a learned archeologist to recognize the long-standing and incontestably Jewish nature of Rachel’s Tomb and the Cave of the Patriarchs. Arguing otherwise is akin to asserting that the earth is flat, Elvis is still alive and the moon is made of cheese, and that is how the Palestinian claims should be viewed.
Is it offensive to call Jesus’ birthplace a Christian site?
Can the world imagine a case in which Israel would list the Church of the Manger (Jesus’ birthplace) in Bethlehem and Jesus’ family home in Nazareth as sites of historical importance to Christians — and the Palestinians would protest?
Unfortunately, I think we can. But that doesn’t make it any more crazy.
