Tel Aviv has ordered a school to cancel Bar Mitzvah an eighth-grade Bar Mitzvah trip to the Western Wall in Jerusalem because of “the security situation in Jerusalem.”
City Hall explained that the cancellation of the Bar Mitzvah trip “includes tours of some of the places where violence has recently erupted.”
It turns out ”some places” means Ammunition Hill, the spokeswoman for Tel Aviv told The Jewish Press. The site is one of the most popular places for visitors because of a fierce and deadly battle there against the Jordanian army in the Six-Day War in 1967.
There have been no riots at Ammunition Hill. Nor there have been any Arabs throwing rocks there.
Someone in Tel Aviv must have looked at the map and noticed that Ammunition Hill is two or three minutes from the part of the route of the light rail train that Jerusalem Arabs have targeted on a daily basis. An Arab terrorist last week raced down the path next to a train and ran over anyone in his way, killing a three-month-old baby and another victim who died today.
That doesn’t make Ammunition Hill dangerous and more than it makes an ice hockey arena dangerous because two guys are fighting each other on the ice
If Ammunition Hill were not a safe place to visit, Jerusalem schools would not send dozens of children there every day.
But let’s say that the good citizens of Tel Aviv don’t know any better and are paranoid. The school tour no doubt wanted to include a visit to Ammunition Hill on the Bar Mitzvah trip, but why did it throw out the baby with the bath water and deprive the children of the Bar Mitzvah experience at the Western Wall instead of simply taking Ammunition Hill off of the schedule?
Tel Aviv’s reaction is as if it were in the Diaspora.
Hundreds of American Jews this past summer cancelled trips to Israel because of the war against Hamas, which attacked most of Israel with missiles, even though almost all of the rockets that reached the metropolitan area were intercepted by the Iron Dome anti-missile system.
The U.S. Embassy last week ordered its personnel not to travel on the light rail trains in Jerusalem because of the terrorist attack
The clueless and frightened ghetto-like reaction of the United States and Tel Aviv is the perfect response to encourage terrorists, who have two objectives. One is to kill Jews. The other is for Jews to go elsewhere – first Tel Aviv, and then the United States, or any other place where radical Islam has not yet taken over.
Cancelling a school trip to the Western Wall because of one nearby trouble spot makes as much sense as Jerusalem’s banning traveling to Tel Aviv because of fatal accidents on Tel Aviv’s inner city Ayalon highway or Mafia murders in broad daylight that often catch innocent bystanders in crossfire or simply target the wrong people.
Jerusalem’s deputy mayor Rachel Azaria called Tel Aviv’s ban “outrageous.”
Thousands of Jerusalem children and adults travel every day to the Western Wall. There also are visits to Ammunition Hill without incident. There is no requirement to take the light rail train..