MB: A clear example of blatant Anti-Jewish bias in Israel’s leftist dominated media.
Excerpts:
“A first visit to Hebron after almost 20 years. A strange feeling prevails when one exits the gate of Kiryat Arba, descends in the direction of the Cave of the Patriarchs. It wasn’t Shabbat, it wasn’t a Muslim holiday, it was noontime, the weather was glorious, and the streets were empty. Along the road from Kiryat Arba to the Avraham Avinu neighborhood, a kilometer and a half of road that winds among old houses and market streets, we saw perhaps two Palestinians walking.”
“The central part of H2, the area of Hebron that was left under Israeli control according to the 1997 agreement, emptied almost completely of its residents. Before the agreement, 30,000 Palestinians lived in the ‘Israeli’ part of Hebron, alongside about 500 Israeli citizens. The number of Israelis hasn’t changed, but the number of Palestinians has declined to a few thousand.”
“The plot of land on which the wholesale market stands was purchased in 1807 by ‘Haim Hamitzri the Jew, who is in charge of the Jewish community in Hebron, at a cost of 1,200 grush,’ says the bill of purchase found in the Sharia (Muslim) court of Hebron. Haim Hanegbi, one of the founders of the radical-left Matzpen movement, and an outspoken opponent of the renewed Jewish community in Hebron, says that Haim Hamitzri was one of the ancestors of Rabbi Heiem Begaio, Hanegbi’s grandfather, who was the last rabbi of the Jewish community in Hebron. The land of the marketplace was registered as Jewish hekdesh (sanctified property), and Begaio – together with another two Jews – was registered as its custodian.”
“‘The military explanation of what has happened in Hebron is simple: ‘Since September 2000, the Palestinians have fired thousands of bullets on the Jewish settlement in Hebron, from the hills that overlook Abu Sneina and Harat al-Sheikh,’ explains an IDF officer. ‘No Jewish settlement has absorbed so much fire.’ Added to that were attempts at suicide attacks, stabbings and other attacks on the settlers in Hebron. That is why it was necessary to impose a curfew for months on end, a need to prevent Palestinians from approaching the Jewish area, a need to separate Jews and Arabs.”
“‘We have a duty to protect the Jewish residents,’explains a very senior commander who served in the sector for a long time. ‘And as a military commander, you slowly begin to close the city. In a case like this, everything is legitimate. It may seem illogical to close a city of 200,000 people for a month because of a warning about an attack, but a military commander has no other choice.'”
Commentary:
The tone of this article is sooo blantantly one-sided as to cast the few hundred Jews of Chevron and the IDF as villians persecuting hundreds of thousands of Arabs when, in fact the reverse is true: .
The article totally ignores the fact of Jewish ownership dating back to Avraham Aveinu’s purchase of the Ma’arat HaMachpela. The writer tells of the document proving Jewish ownership of Shalchevet neighborhood dating back to 1807 and admits to the thousands of Arab snippers bullets which reined down upon the Jews from Abu Sneina. He then returns to spinning his diatribe of how a relative handful of Jews persecute thousands of Arabs while accusing the IDF command in Chevron and Israeli Courts of stonewalling on the issue expelling the Jews from Shalchevet neighborhood (the former Arab Shuk) and a host of other related issues. MB