wfn.org | Jewish Journalist Visits Christian and Muslim Shrines

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or

Israel Shamir
P.O.B. 23714, 
Tel Aviv 61236
shamiri_@netvision.net.il

By Israel Shamir

NABLUS, Occupied West Bank---March 4, 2001.  It is not easy to visit Joseph 
these days.  Roadblocks  manned  by nervous Israeli soldiers have  surrounded 
 his  city  of  Nablus;  trenches or heaps of  earth  block  the  smallest  
entrances  and exits.  

On  a  normal  morning,  commuters  pour  in  from  nearby
villages for work or shopping;  now they do so at their own peril,
and the local citizens venture out of their homes at the risk  of
their lives, as the soldiers shoot without  warning.  Still,  one
can sneak into the old capital of Samaria by foot.

The city rests as the sachet of myrrh between the twin breasts of
Mt. Ebal and Mt. Gerizim.  Nablus is Neapolis  of  old,  founded  by
Titus Flavius in the  heyday of the Roman Empire.   The  Roman
traditions did not die in this Palestinian San Francisco with its
lavish Turkish baths.  It is also famous for  the  fragrant  olive
soap, spicy kubbeh soup, and hardy  spirit  of  its  inhabitants.
They fielded a strong guerrilla force against Napoleon,  rebelled
against Egyptian invaders, and kept the Jewish settlers  at  bay.

During the last uprising, Nablus gained renown as Jabal an-Nar,
the Mount of Fire.  Israelis rarely dared to enter the narrow
streets of its old city.  Today, this defiant ancient city is  the
home of Marwan Barghouti, sometimes credited with the  leadership
of the uprising.

I came here to visit one of the most charming shrines of the Holy
Land, the Tomb of Joseph, the hero of Bible and Koran stories, a
local lad who 'made it' in Egypt and was  brought  back  by  Banu
Israel to be buried  in his ancestral home.  The locals have
venerated it, as numerous other shrines and tombs that adorn  the
hilltops and crossroads of Palestine.  The shrines have deep roots
in the Palestinian soul; they predate all modern faiths, survived
all religious reforms, and still are able to turn a man to God.

One needs to take their names with a grain of  alt, as they
change with the passage of time.  There are a dozen tombs for
Sheikh Ali, and even Joshua bin Nun has quite a few.  Other tombs
have multiple names, like the  cave on the Mt. of Olives,  called
Pelagia by Christians, Rabia al-Adawiya by Moslems and  Hulda  by
Jews. 

While some orthodox Moslem, Christian and Jewish clerics
object to venerating shrines, the common people still come to
beseech for favors,  men for glory and harvest,  women for
children and love. 

The tomb of Joseph is no exception.  It is a simple domed building, recently 
refurbished, standing next to the ancient mound of Shechem.  On any given 
day,  Palestinian peasant women in black dresses with rich embroidery can be 
seen paying their respects at the tomb of the chaste  lover,  whose long 
eyelashes reduced the fortress of Zuleika's heart.

A few months ago, Joseph's tomb was all over the news.  The people
of Nablus fought well-armed Israeli soldiers over the remains  of
their ancestor Joseph, as Achaeans fought Trojans for the body of
Patrocles.  Some two score Palestinians died there, Israelis lost
one mercenary and a few were wounded. The pictures of the gun
battle were transmitted around the globe,  as firefights raged,
ambulances raced  to hospitals and morgues,  heavy machinegun
bursts tore at stones and flesh.  The virtual reality of TV screens 
accompanied by the voices of the experts presented the ultimate proof of Arab 
hate for Jewish holy places.

The tale of the Tomb's destruction remained in the news for long
time.  An important Muslim divine from Russia was angry enough  to
write an open letter to the Palestinians, condemning  the
sacrilege.  Main international newspapers unleashed harsh
editorials on the subject.  A visiting Martian would have presumed
that the main desire of Palestinians is to go about desecrating
holy Jewish monuments. 

Knowing  the Palestinians, I had  difficulty  believing  that  those  who  
had worshipped at the shrine for uncounted generations, would destroy
it.

What I found at the site of Joseph's resting  place  was  like  a
replay of the old Jewish joke: "Is it true that Cohen won a
million in the state lottery?  Yes, it is true, but it was only
ten dollars, in a poker game, and he actually lost it".  Instead
of expected ruins, the tomb shone in its pristine beauty.  No
traces of war could be seen.  The Nablus  municipality  hired  the
best masons, brought in Italian experts and restored the tomb  to
its original state. They removed the barbed wire, the machinegun
positions, the armoured vehicles,  the soldiers' scrubby mess
hall, guard slots.  An Israeli-built military base vanished to  be
replaced by the resurrected holy tomb.  It was a joy to revisit
Joseph, as my previous visit, a month before the uprising, was
quite disconcerting.

Then I visited Nablus in the company of two tourists, a Christian
and a Jew.  We visited the Samaritan synagogue, drank water from
Jacob's Well in the church, looked into the Green Mosque and
decided to pay our respects to Joseph the Beautiful.  An old
Palestinian policeman, who cut his teeth in the British army,
allowed us to approach the tomb but warned us that we won't be
let in.  He was right.  Young Russian boys in the Israeli army
fatigues, helmets and rifles, popped out and told us, that in
order to enter the tomb one has to go to the army HQ out of town,
submit to security check and interrogation, and come back by the
armored bus.  We moved on to more accessible sites.

For generations, the Tomb of Joseph was cherished and attended by
the people of Nablus, but it was seized by the Israelis in 1975.
The infamous Oslo accords left it as an armed Israeli enclave in
the heart of the Palestinian city.  It became a Yeshiva of a
Cabbalist sect led by Rabbi Isaac Ginzburg.  His name should  ring
a bell.  He stated in the interview with Jewish Week, that a Jew
is entitled to cut off the liver of any Gentile in order to save
his own life, as the life of a Jew is incomparably more precious
than the life of a Gentile.  He was asked by the interviewer  to
soften his message, but he remained adamant.  Many Israeli  papers
republished this interview, as name of Ginzburg was well known.

A  year earlier, Ginzburg's disciples made a sortie to a
neighbouring Palestinian village, and a sect member murdered a
13-year old girl.  He was arrested and brought to trial.  Ginzburg
was called as a witness of defence, and under oath, he proclaimed
that a Jew could not be tried for murdering a Gentile,  as  the
commandment 'Thou shall not murder' refers only to Jews.  Killing
a Gentile is, at worst, a misdemeanour, said he, as 'one can not
compare the blood of Jews and the blood of Gentiles'.

In his Cultural History of the Jews,  Zvi Howard Adelman of
Jerusalem (available on the website of The Department for Jewish
Zionist Education), quotes Ginzburg and some of his colleagues.
One of his fellow-Cabbalists, Rabbi Israel Ariel, wrote in 1982
in the time of Sabra and Shatila massacre, that "Beirut is part of the 
Land of Israel.  .  .our  leaders should have entered Lebanon and Beirut 
without hesitation, and  killed every single one of them. Not a memory should 
have remained".

Now, every faith has its fringe extremists and fanatics.
Certainly, the vast majority of Jews, including religious Jews,
does not subscribe to, indeed are repulsed by such cannibalistic
sentiments.  But such revulsion did not stop the Israeli army from
guarding Ginzburg's Yeshiva.  The revulsion did not stop the
Israeli government from  subsidizing it, or from forcing the
Palestinians to accept this enclave of hatred in the heart of
Nablus, or from waging a mini-war to promote Ginzburg's zeal.  The
revulsion did not stop some American Jews from their blind support
of Israeli policies.  The revulsion did not stop me from paying my
taxes to the government of Israel, knowing full well that part of
it went to support of Ginzburg's sect.  The revulsion did not stop
the American media from propagating the blood libel of "Arabs despoiling  a 
Jewish holy place".  

Ginzburg is entitled to his obnoxious beliefs. We live in
an age when our tolerance extends to all save a Christian  prayer
in schools.  One is free to join a Satanist or a Cabbalist sect.
But should such people be armed with Apache gunships at the
expense of American  taxpayers?   Ginzburg  and his sect have
influence far beyond their tiny numbers.  They are dangerous for
all Gentiles, and for the 'rebellious Jews' like the late Prime
Minister Rabin.  In what might have been a small rehearsal for the
coming  confrontation over Jerusalem's shrines,  twenty  young
Palestinians were made to pay with their lives to restore their
right to worship at the tomb.

Now,  as before 1975,  local  folk  and  tourists,  Moslems,
Samaritans, Jews, Christians and free thinkers can visit the place
freely, if they can escape Israeli sharpshooters.  They can put  a
flower on the gravestone of a favourite hero of  the Bible,  the
Koran prophet, the lover of Ferdowsi's poem and Saadi verses,  the
truth-seeker of the Sufi revelation of Jami.  Joseph came back  to
the people who always venerated him.  You are free to visit him,
but please leave your tanks behind.

Palestinians fought the army base, not the holy place.  The holy
places of Jerusalem,  Bethlehem,  Hebron  would be safe in
Palestinian hands, as they have been for uncounted generations.
Without the local veneration, none would have survived.  Please
remember it when (very soon) the problem of Jerusalem will come
forth.

This latest saga on the events surrounding the Joseph's tomb is
just one more proof that the American mass media machine is an
unreliable source.  The great nation, the formidable superpower
gets its knowledge and navigates its course in the sea of world
politics by using a Mickey Mouse telescope instead of electronic
magnifying glasses.  If the media cheat you about Palestine, why do you think 
they are honest in any other way?  Perhaps  the  suffering  of  the  
Palestinians should help the Europeans and Americans to notice the reefs ahoy 
their own ship.

<end>

Israel Shamir is an Israeli writer and journalist.  His  articles
The Rape of Dulcinea, The Test Failed, Galilee Flowers  could  be
found on many Internet sites,  www.thestruggle.org,  www.antiwar,
www.NileMedia etc.  He can be reached at
shamiri_@netvision.net.il, or write P.O.B. 23714, Tel Aviv, 61236.