Here's a letter which I'm about to send to the FO once I get the proper address. Any suggestions for improvement will be welcome. This is an improved version over the one I first posted. Mostly, it's a correction of typos.
Denis
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FAO Simon Fraser, William Hague, and
Alistair Burt
Dear Sirs,
I write in support of a petition I have
recently signed, asking the British Foreign Office to alter its position on
what has become an unnecessarily vexed question concerning the capital of
Israel. As you know, Israelis are unanimous in regarding Jerusalem as their
capital, not Tel Aviv (where the British embassy is currently located), nor
Haifa nor Jaffa nor Petah Tikva nor anywhere else in the country.
It is not hard to understand why the
first Israeli parliament chose Jerusalem as its seat, even before it had built
an edifice suitable to the needs of the men and women who sat in its
chamber. For many centuries, Jews
in the Diaspora had clung to a hope, not only of a return to the Holy Land, but
to Jerusalem in particular, the erstwhile home of its holiest Temple and the
scene of so many primary events in Jewish and Christian history. This might be
dismissed on the grounds that religious belief should not determine a city’s
status, but many cities derive their significance from their role as religious
centres, from Mecca and Medina (the latter having been the first capital of
Islam), to Karbala’ and Mashhad, to Varanasi (Benares) and the Vatican City.
This original attachment, intensified by daily prayers while facing Jerusalem
and repeated wishes to return there, was later supplanted by the governmental,
educational, trading, defensive, legal and bureaucratic concerns of the capital
of a secular state.
As a people who have been
deeply wronged in the past, Jews have tried to build their own state along
lines of equal citizenship, a single legal system, human rights, and the
protection of all holy places. But when Jordan occupied East Jerusalem from
1949 to 1967, Muslim holy places were renovated while 58 synagogues were
destroyed and 38,000 Jewish graves were demolished. In addition, Jews were not
allowed to set foot in their own holy places, notably on the Temple Mount. By
contrast, when Israel retook Jerusalem in 1967, the Temple Mount was handed to
a Muslim authority on account of two Islamic structures built on top of it, the
al-Aqsa mosque and the Qubbat al-Sakhra or Dome of the Rock.
Such depredations and a lack
of reciprocity have made Israelis wary of a Muslim takeover of East Jerusalem,
where the holiest sites are located: the Temple Mount, the Western Wall (the
Kotel), the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, the Mount of Olives, and the famous
Jewish graveyards, still vandalized horribly by Arab criminals.
But the Palestinians have
made it their business to turn Jerusalem into a bastion of Islamic holiness,
not just because the al-Aqsa mosque and the Dome of the Rock are there, but
because they now claim that there has never been any Jewish connection to the
city or to the land of Israel. There was, they boast, no Jewish Temple there.
All Biblical references to the Temple and to Jerusalem as a city built by King
David are summarily and ahistorically dismissed.
Given that Muslims have
demolished the holy places of more than one religion, the Jews are rightly
concerned lest Jerusalem fall under Islamic control. In Saudi Arabia for
decades now, the government has been engaged in the destruction of Islamic holy
places in Mecca and Medina. Lest you think me in the grip of some obscure
fantasy, I should explain that the Wahhabi form of Islam, which governs Saudi
Arabia, is utterly ruthless in its condemnation of anything that may be
worshipped instead of God. They have demolished over 200 historical sites to
prevent pilgrims praying at them. In Mali, a similar form of Islam – Salafism –
has recently demolished dozens of shrines belonging to the Sufi form of Islam.
And in Iran, the government has demolished all the holy places and cemeteries
of the persecuted Baha’i religion. Israel, by way of contrast, protects and
nourishes the large international headquarters and two holiest shrines of the
Baha’is, places now recognized as UNESCO World Heritage Sites.
Is it surprising that the
Israelis, backed by Jews and others like myself round the world, are desperate
to maintain the integrity of the city, knowing as they do that Muslim Arab rule
would carry a greatly heightened risk to the Old City and its environs? Israel
has been generous towards Muslims and their holy places, but they fear that if
increased pressure were to come from Saudi Arabia or Iran or, nearer to hand
from Hamas, everything Jewish might be eliminated. Palestinians have taken
control of the Jewish Tomb of Rachel, the third holiest site for Jews. They
have commandeered most of the Ma’arat Ha-Machpelah, the Tomb of the Patriarchs
in Hebron and made access for Jews to a tiny space very difficult, as I can
personally attest. This is the second holiest site for Jews, containing as it
does the tombs of Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Sarah, Rebecca, and Leah.
In the earliest days of
Islam, the Prophet Muhammad adopted from his Jewish neighbours the practice of
turning towards Jerusalem during the five daily prayers. But in the year 622, a
few months after his arrival in Medina, he did an about turn during one prayer
session and from then on directed his followers to pray towards his home city
of Medina. He severed all direct ties with Jerusalem, and in the centuries that
followed Jerusalem was never a provincial capital, nor the heart of a Muslim
country or empire. Medina in the first years, then Damascus, Baghdad, Istanbul
and other cities became the capitals of Islam. Cairo was the major city in
North Africa, Fez and Rabat capitals of the west, Esfahan, Tabriz, Tehran and
others the royal cities of Iranian dynasties. And so on. But Jerusalem was
never given such signal importance. This is significant. Palestinian wishes to
make Jerusalem defy centuries of insignificance would lock us into a dispute
that could last one thousand years.
For this reason, Jews
everywhere will refuse to relinquish a city that was theirs from the beginning,
and they will not reward people who have tried to take what was never theirs,
who have tried to deny the historical record concerning the Jewish presence in
a city that has been Jewish for 3000 years. To confirm the place of Jerusalem
at the heart of Jewish life and prayers and as the eternal capital of their
only homeland, Jews and Israelis appeal to honest governments to do the right
thing and recognize that Jerusalem is the city where all the key aspects of
Israeli life converge. No Israeli regards Tel Aviv as his or her capital. It is
demeaning to treat Israelis as children by telling them this or that foreign
government knows better than they and their government when it comes to
designating Jerusalem their capital. I do not think you treat any other capital
city in this way. You do not call Cork the capital of Ireland, nor Glasgow the
capital of Scotland, nor the cathedral city of St. David’s the capital of
Wales, nor Marseilles the capital of France. I do not believe the Foreign
Office means to be insulting in this matter; but if foreigners called
Birmingham the capital of England and the UK, would you not feel aggrieved?
Israel’s enemies call in all
seriousness for the destruction of the country. Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has called
on all Islamic nations to ‘exterminate Israel’ (my translation). The Arabs,
faced by their repeated failure to achieve this by military means or terrorism,
have turned to secondary means, saying that there never any Jews in Israel,
that they themselves were there first, an impossible 9000 years ago, and that
Jerusalem was always an Arab city (a claim that directly contradicts the
accounts of Arab historians like al-Tabari). It is a cheap and dishonest
attempt to rewrite history itself and to introduce confusion into a simple
narrative. Denying the historicity and modern reality of Israel, of Jerusalem,
and of Israelis by refusing to liberate the city from the string of fictions
that has tied so many in knots, allows falsehood and deceit to rule in
international affairs. Britain is still a great country that is admired the
world round for its probity. I do not doubt that you, like myself, wish to see
that image remain untarnished. But I have to say that it is in some measure
tarnished when you try to steal the Israeli capital from the Israelis
themselves.
Yours sincerely,
Dr.
Denis MacEoin
15
Erskine Court
Lindisfarne
Close
Newcastle
upon Tyne
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