The
Rape of Dulcinea
January 28, 2001
The touching words of Elie Wiesel (Jerusalem in My
Heart, NYT 1/25/2001) painted a beautiful portrait of
the Jewish people, yearning for Jerusalem, loving and
praying for it over the centuries and cherishing its
name from generation to generation.
This potent image reminded me, an Israeli writer from
Jaffa, of something familiar yet elusive. I finally made
the connection by revisiting my well-thumbed volume of
Don Quixote. Wiesel's evocative article is so
wonderfully reminiscent of the immortal love of the
Knight of Sad Visage to his belle Dulcinea de Toboso.
Don Quixote traveled all over Spain proclaiming her
name. He performed formidable feats, defeated giants,
who turned out to be windmills, brought justice to the
oppressed, and so much more for the sake of his beloved.
When he decided that his achievements made him worthy,
he sent his arms bearer, Sancho Pansa, to his Dame with
a message of adoration.
Now I find myself in the somewhat embarrassing position
of Sancho Pansa. I have to inform my master, Don Wiesel
Quixote, that his Dulcinea is well. She is happily
married, has a bunch of kids, and she is quite busy with
laundry and other domestic chores. While he fought
brigands and restored governors, somebody else took care
of his beloved, fed her, provided her with food, made
love to her, made her a mother and grandmother. Do not
rush, dear knight, to Toboso, or it would break your
heart.
Elie, the Jerusalem that you write of so movingly is not
now and never has been desolate. She has lived happily
across the centuries in the embrace of another people,
the Palestinians of Jerusalem, who have taken good care
of her. They made her the beautiful city she is, adorned
her with a magnificent piece of jewelry, the Golden Dome
of Haram al Sharif, built their houses with pointed
arches and wide porches and planted cypresses and palm
trees.
They do not mind if the knight-errant visits their
beloved city on his way from New York to Saragosa. But
be reasonable, old man. Stay within the frame of the
story and within the bounds of common decency. Don
Quixote did not drive on his jeep into Toboso to rape
his old flame. OK, you loved her, and thought about her,
but it does not give you the right to kill her children,
bulldoze her rose garden and put your boots on her
dining room table. All your words just prove that you
confuse your desires with reality. If you must continue
to ask why the Palestinians want Jerusalem? Because she
belongs to them, because they live there and it is their
hometown. Granted, you dreamed about her in your remote
Polish hamlet. So did many people around the world. She
is so wonderful and certainly worth dreaming about.
Elie, many people have adored this city across the ages.
Swedish craftsmen left their villages and moved there to
build the lovely American Colony together with the
Vesters, a devout Christian family from Chicago. You can
read about it in the works of Selma Lagerlof, another
Nobel Prize winner. On the slopes of the Mount of
Olives, the Russians built the dainty church of Mary
Magdalene. Ethiopians erected their Resurrection
monastery amid the ruins left by the Crusaders.
The British died for her and left as their architectural
legacy the St George Cathedral and St Andrew's. The
Germans built the lovely German Colony and nursed the
city's sick in the Schneller Hospital. My devout
great-grandfather moved into the protection of her thick
walls in 1870-s from a Lithuanian Jewish village and
threw his lot with the hospitable Jerusalemites. He
found his eternal rest until the day of Resurrection on
the slopes of Mount of Olives. None of them thought to
rape their Dulcinea. They just left bouquets of
architectural flowers as testament of their adoration.
Those who love Jerusalem are legion. It is disingenuous
of Elie Wiesel to reduce the struggle for this city as a
tug of war between Muslims and Jews. It is a question of
coveting property versus having the deed of ownership.
The resolution of this case should be based on the 10th
commandment, observed by our fathers. They knew that
veneration does not amount to the right of ownership.
Millions of Protestants venerate the Catholic-owned
Gethsemane Garden, but it does not transfer the garden
into their hands. Millions of Catholics visit the Tomb
of Mary, but it still belongs to the Eastern Church. For
generations, the Moslems have come to kneel at the
birthplace of Jesus in Bethlehem, but the church remains
Christian forever.
What water did to Gremlins in Spielberg's movies,
Zionism has inflicted on the jolly Jewish folk of
Eastern Europe. It caused them to carry out the ethnic
clearing of Gentiles in West Jerusalem, to convert
Schneller hospital and church into a military base and
to build a Holiday Inn on top of the venerated shrine of
Sheik Bader. The Israeli State forbids the Christians of
Bethlehem to pray in the Holy Sepulcher and bans Moslems
below the age of 40 from attending Friday prayers at al
Aqsa mosque. These changes of the city by the Israeli
government amount to her rape.
In order to justify this rape, you invoke the names of
King Solomon and Jeremiah, quote the Koran and the
Bible. Let me tell you a Jewish Hassidic tale, one you
might have heard in your Polish schtetl. A Jewish
midrash, a legend, mentions that Abraham had a daughter.
A simple-minded Hassid asked his Rabbi, why Abraham did
not wed his daughter and his son Isaac. The Rabbi
responded that Abraham did not want to marry a real son
to a legendary daughter.
The legends are the stuff the dreams are made of. Some
are charming, some are horrible, and none is valid as a
deed to the land or as a political platform. Elie, you
certainly would not like to lose your private home in
New York because of a few verses written in the Book of
Mormon. This game of spreading the Zionist gospel is
becoming irrelevant, but I will play one more round with
you for the entertainment of the crowd. As every
archaeologist will tell you, King Solomon and his temple
belong to the fantasy realm of Abraham's daughter.
Moreover, and not that it matters, but the name of
Jerusalem is not mentioned even once in the Jewish Holy
Book, the Torah.
Elie, you want to play some more games? I'll tell you
more. The Jews are not even mentioned in the Jewish
Bible. Get that thick book off of your shelf and check
it. None of the great and legendary men you named, from
King David to the prophets, were called 'the Jews'. This
ethnonym appears the first and only time in the Bible in
the Persian story of the very late Book of Esther. The
self-identification of the Jews with the tribes of
Israel and with the heroes of the Bible is as valid as
the story of Rome being founded by the Trojan prince
Aeneus. If the modern Turks, who call themselves 'the
descendants of Troy' would conquer Rome, dynamite
Borromini's baroque masterpieces and expel her
inhabitants in order to re-establish the legacy of
Aeneus, they would just be repeating the folly of the
Zionists.
Our ancestors, the humble East European folk of Yids,
whose language was Yiddish, had a tradition of adorning
themselves with the impressive heraldic lions of
Biblical heroes. Their claim of descent from these
legends was as valid as the claims of Thomas Hardy's
ambitious farmer girl Tess. But event the fictional Tess
did not conspire to evict the lords from their castle
and claim the manor for herself.
Once, walking with the Christian pilgrims to the great
Church of the Holy Sepulcher, I was stopped by a
Hassidic Jew. He inquired whether my companions were
Jews, and, receiving a negative reply, exclaimed in
amazement: "What are these Goyyim Gentiles looking for
in the holy city?" He had never heard of the Passion of
Jesus Christ, whose name he used as a swear word. I am
equally amazed that a Jewish professor from Boston
University is as ignorant as the simple-minded Hassidic
Jew. Jerusalem is holy to billions of believers:
Catholic, Protestant, and Eastern Christians, Sunni and
Shia Moslems, to thousands of Hassidic and Sephardic
Jews. Still, as a city, Jerusalem is not different from
any place in the world; she belongs to her citizens.
Twenty more years of Zionist control of this ancient
city would turn her into just another Milwaukee and
forever ruins her charm. Jerusalem needs to be restored
to its inhabitants. The seized properties in Talbieh and
Lifta, Katamon and Malcha should be returned to their
owners. Professor Wiesel, respect the Gentile property
rights as you would like Gentiles to respect your right
to your lovely house. The holy sites of Jerusalem are
regulated by the 150 years old international statute
(Status Quo) that should not be tampered with. Last
attempt to touch it caused the siege of Sevastopol and
the charge of the light brigade at Balaclava. Next
attempt could cause the nuclear war.