Former Prime Minister Ehud Olmert on Sunday urged Israeli leaders to surrender large swaths of Jerusalem to the Palestinian Authority if they want peace.

In honor of the 45^th annual Jerusalem Day, Prime Minister Olmert – who served as Jerusalem’s Mayor from 1993 to 2003 – told the Maariv daily newspaper that  Jerusalem was never truly united, and while he called that a “tragedy”, he also said it will mean “inevitable political concessions”.

The Israel Defense Forces liberated eastern Jerusalem, including the Temple Mount and the Tomb of the Prophet Samuel from Jordan in the 1967 Six Day War, as well as the biblical heartland of Judea and Samaria, including heritage sites the Tomb of the Patriarchs in Hebron and Rachel’s Tomb in Bethlehem.

In his interview with Maariv, Olmert highlighted the division and separation between Jewish and Arab neighborhoods, and lamented that not enough had been done to homogenize the city.

Regarding Arab neighborhoods, Olmert said “apart from heartache we get nothing from them,” saying that peace will require Arab neighborhoods to be separated and given to a Palestinian state.

He also said that the Old City and the Temple Mount should be up for discussion in final peace talks.

Olmert lamented the peace deal he could “touch” in 2007 and 2008, and said that if he had been prime minister for a few more months, he believes an agreement on a Palestinian state would have been completed.

Israel’s current prime minister, Benjamin Netanyahu, had very different things to say about Jerusalem on this year’s Jerusalem Day.

“Israel without Jerusalem is like a body without a heart. And our heart will never be divided again,” he said.

He warned that dividing Jerusalem would lead to a war pitting Jews against Muslims in the city, and boasted that Israeli control of holy sites provided the highest level of accessibility and religious freedom to all citizens.

Jerusalem Mayor Nir Barkat chastised Olmert, calling the idea of dividing Jerusalem “a bigger mistake”.

“He lost his faith in Jerusalem when he was mayor,” Barkat said, accusing him of wanting “to run from conflicts in Jerusalem and give in to them, instead of coping with them and directing them.”

A group of Jewish children and their parents were targeted in a fierce rock attack Friday night outside the Maale HaZeitim neighborhood in Jerusalem, miraculously escaping serious injury.  Jerusalem police who arrived to investigate were also pelted with stones – and left.

The two families from Maale HaZeitim were returning at approximately 9:30pm from a special pre- Jerusalem Day Sabbath prayer service at the Seven Arches hotel at the top of the Mount of Olives, sponsored by Pirsumei Israel and featuring well-known Israeli musician Chaim Dovid.  As they passed by a series of Arab store fronts in the Ras al-Amoud neighborhood, adjacent to their homes on Jerusalem’s historic Mount of Olives, large hunks of stone and bricks began flying all around them.

“My friend and I were strolling behind our husbands who were walking with the children and pushing our baby carriages,” one woman said.  “Suddenly, giant rocks began whizzing past our heads and smashing all around us.”

“I saw my friend’s husband get hit by a rock.  I yelled out for my own husband, who whirled around and was also hit,” the woman said.

According to the female resident, her husband than began to scream and charged at the two hooded men, who fled the scene.

“I grabbed my 4 year old daughter by the hand, took hold of my 8 month old son’s carriage, called out to my friend and her 4 children – all of whom are aged 6 and younger – and we ran home,” she said.  “As we ran, my daughter was crying – she told me she had been hit by one of the massive stones, and cried in fear for her father, who had stayed behind, along with my friend’s husband, to deal with the situation as we escaped.”

When the women and children arrived at the gate of the community, they called out for help.  “I screamed at the top of my lungs, ‘Guards! Guards!’”, the woman said.  The community’s guards – who are stationed in shifts on premises 24 hours a day – ran out of the building to where the attack had taken place.

“I examined my daughter, and discovered that she had miraculously only been hit in the elbow, probably by a rock ricocheting off the ground.  The baby was also ok, as were my friend’s little children,” the woman said.  “I spent the next few minutes – as we waited anxiously for our husbands and the guards to return – calming down the children, promising them that their fathers were alright, and encouraging them to be proud that their fathers were telling the neighborhood that we refused to be treated that way.”

“As I spoke to our sweet little children – all dressed in their beautiful Shabbat clothes – and saw my daughter look up at me with her big eyes, in her favorite flowery Shabbat dress, with just a bruise on her elbow, I realized that we had just experienced an absolute miracle,” the woman said. “There is no way, other than through divine intervention, that we had gone through such an attack and all the children were unharmed, and that our husbands had not suffered serious wounds.”

“We celebrate this Jerusalem Day knowing that the God of Israel is protecting us, and all the Jews of Jerusalem.”

Following the attack, police reportedly arrived on the scene, only to be met by more stone throwing.  The police did not question the victims of the rock attack, and left a short while later.

On Sunday morning, Jerusalem Day, the two men went to file a complaint at a brand new regional police station, located close to the Seven Arches Hotel.  Officers took down the information and said they would investigate the incident.  According to the men, they also said they might post additional police guards and coordinate an operation to nab any future attackers.

The Friday night event at the Seven Arches hotel was organized by Pirsumei Israel, a PR and marketing company which began doing what they call “cultural tours” in Israel, connecting participants with Jewish experiences, historic places, and meaningful content throughout Israel.

CEO Yisrael Goldberg told The Jewish Press that he coordinated a special Shabbat gathering at the Seven Arches Hotel to highlight the importance of the Mount of Olives in Jerusalem, and to take advantage of the magnificent view of the Temple Mount from the site. “There is a great thirst to hear about the Temple in Israel,” Goldberg said.  “After a Shabbat like this people connect. They live all over the country, and they just don’t know about the situation in eastern Jerusalem and the Mount of Olives. When you bring them in, it helps them understand.”

I came on aliyah in May, toward the end of Iyar, just in time for Yom Yerushalayim – Jerusalem Day. As we mentioned in an earlier blog, the same Rabbi Yehuda Hazani, of blessed memory, who co-founded the Volunteers for Israel/Sarel project, also began the joyous flag-waving parade through the streets of Jerusalem to the Kotel on Yom Yerushalayim. While Yom HaAtzmaut was widely celebrated throughout the country, Jerusalem Day, the day marking our re-conquest of the Old City and the Kotel hadn’t yet become the gala, inspiring event that it is today. After the Six-Day War, under the spiritual leadership of Rabbi Tzvi Yehuda HaKohen Kook, the Mercaz Harav Yeshiva would hold a festive dinner with speeches from government leaders and leading Rabbis. After midnight, students would join the Rosh Yeshiva in a joyous march to the Kotel. With each passing year, students would gather from other yeshivot around the country for the festive procession. Seeking to turn the march into a national event which would express the Nation’s eternal attachment to its Holy City, and proclaim to the world that Yerushalayim would never be divided again, Rabbi Hazani, who was studying at the Mercaz HaRav Yeshiva, organized another parade for the following day. Plastering the billboards of the country with posters, he handed out hundreds of blue-and-white Israeli flags and had the crowds follow a lively band from Emancipation Park across from the United States consulate to the Kotel. Every year the crowds increased, swelling to fifty thousand and more. Women entered the Old City through the Jaffa Gate, while men and families walked along the walls to the Shechem Gate, where they paraded through the narrow main street leading through the Old Jewish Quarter, who’s name had been changed to the “Moslem Quarter” after the pogroms of 1929, when Arabs had slaughtered dozens of resident Jews and chased the Jewish population out from the Old City. How wonderful it is on Jerusalem Day to see Arabs cowering in their doorways and windows as the Jews swarm through all the gates our eternal Holy City!

That first year, being a greenhorn in Israel, the happy parade blew me away, walking side-by-side with so many proud Jews into the Old City, along the alleyways of the Moslem Quarter. When we arrived at the Kotel Plaza, Rabbi Hazani grabbed my hand and pulled me up onto the bandstand where a band led the joyous flag waving and dancing. Introducing me to the huge crowd as the director of Volunteers for Israel in America, who had just come on aliyah, he had me read out a Psalm in English for the foreign press. Talk about an aliyah! I felt 100 feet tall, as if I had suddenly become a giant Jew in my connection to Jerusalem and Clal Yisrael! That year, and every year since at the incredibly festive gathering at the Kotel, the joy is supernatural, above time and space, a spiritual high like no other, illuminated by the Divine Presence which still shines forth from the stones of the Kotel, and by the great light of Redemption that fills the air over the Old City as tens of thousands of Jews from all corners of the world pay tribute to God for His transcendental kindness in bringing us back to our beloved Holy City in fulfillment of prophecies of old.

I couldn’t imagine that there could be anything like it until the following week and the arrival of Shavuot. After the evening holiday meal at the home of Rabbi Hazani, I learned with Rabbi David Samson, the English-speaking hevruta he had arranged for me at the Mercaz Harav Yeshiva. In the wee hours of the morning, all of the students set off for the Kotel. As we walked along Jaffa Road toward the Old City, more Jews appeared from every direction, thousands of them, young and old, men, women, and children, Haredim, Hasidim, Religious Zionists with knitted kippot, even secular Jews. It was amazing! By the time dawn arrived, the Kotel Plaza was full!

Here I was, just out of New York, not knowing Hebrew, not knowing what the Torah was really about, surrounded by tens of thousands of ecstatic davening Jews, with the choruses of “Amen, yihe shamai rabbahs” ringing in my ears like the blasts of the shofar on Mount Sinai, standing beside Rabbi Hazani and a sea of Moses-like beards. What can I tell you? New York and Hollywood were blown out of my brain, like a dream that never happened, just like the Psalm says: “When the Lord brings back the captives of Zion, we were like those who dream.” I felt like I had been Star-Trekked into another time and planet – into another galaxy and totally different reality, into a living, vibrant, electrifying Judaism I had never experienced before.

On Tuesday, March 13, an archaeological site inspector in Hebron’s Old City discovered that the archaeological site there had been severely damaged – the diggings in progress were ruined and covered up.

A group of Arab workers, apparently contracted by the Palestinian Authority, breached an ancient terrace bordering the antique path that connects Avraham’s Well and the tombs of Ruth and Yishai. They further removed a fence near an IDF outpost. Next, they brought trash and dumped it in the archaeological diggings, which contain findings from the Canaanite period. They then set fire to the trash.

Remnants of an ancient mosaic at the archaeological site in the Old City of Hebron

This destructive process was stopped only after the inspector called the police, the army, and the Civil Administration. Surprisingly, the vandals were not arrested and were allowed to continue with their work, receiving only a warning about further damage to the archaeological artifacts around them.

It is significant to note that this is not the first time Arabs have been engaged in the destruction of archaeological artifacts in Hebron. They have previously perpetrated similar acts of vandalism, but have recently begun to work in an organized fashion, leading to suspicions that the acts are purposeful and orchestrated by an entity bent on the erasure of archaeological artifacts that testify to the ancient Jewish roots in Hebron.

Chaim Bleicher, a resident of Hebron, told Tazpit that they have been doing their best to combat these trends. The army and Civil Administration have made no real attempts to halt these actions, and it has been reported that the army even intends to close off part of the archeological site to eliminate friction, working only to maintain the peace, even if it means the irreplaceable loss of archaeological artifacts and the cover up of Hebron’s Jewish identity.

Theses incidents in Hebron are not unique to the area. Similar incidents have been recorded throughout Israel, especially in Jerusalem and on the Temple Mount. The Arabs are aware that the archaeological findings point to an ancient and prolonged Jewish presence in the Land of Israel, and therefore do all they can to destroy these artifacts, doing their best to cover up the simple fact that the Jews have deep roots in the Land of Israel.

On Friday, February 24, I had the honor of guiding a distinguished group on a tour of the Mount of Olives cemetery in eastern Jerusalem. The group included two U.S. congressmen – Eliot Engel (D-N.Y.) and Jerrold Nadler (D-N.Y.), Malcolm Hoenlein, executive vice chairman of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, and Rabbis Abraham and Menachem Lubinsky, who have spearheaded the International Committee for the Preservation of the Mount of Olives.

I live near the cemetery in a Jewish enclave on the Mount of Olives in the mostly Arab neighborhood of Ras El Amud, across the valley from the Old City.

As we toured the ancient graveyard, I pointed out the layers of Jewish history before us. The Mount of Olives is the oldest existing Jewish cemetery, with 150,000 graves spanning 3,000 years. The biblical prophets Haggai, Zechariah and Malachi lie alongside modern day heroes like Henrietta Szold, the founder of Hadassah, Eliezer Ben Yehuda, who resurrected the modern Hebrew language, and Rabbi Shlomo Goren, chief rabbi of the IDF during the liberation of the Old City of Jerusalem and Hebron in the Six-Day War.

There are also signs of great pain. We saw the mass grave of forty-eight fighters who died trying to defend the Old City, which eventually fell to Jordan in the War of Independence. Those brave warriors’ bodies remained in the Jordanian-occupied Old City until 1967, when Rabbi Goren properly interred them in the cemetery. We also saw the remnants of the forty-thousand graves destroyed or vandalized in the 19 years of Jordanian occupation. In those years many Jewish headstones were used as Jordanian paving and building material.

Today, grave desecration is recurring at the Mount of Olives cemetery and the group saw firsthand the continuing travesty in the form of freshly smashed tombs and broken headstones.

But all is not dark. I told the group about the attempts at co-existence in our area. I showed the visitors Arab schools built by the Jerusalem municipality. I talked about shopping in Arab stores, being treated by Arab doctors, and talking Koran or Torah over coffee with my Arab neighbors.

I described my attempts to be neighborly and how I search for Arabs who want to live with us in decency and mutual respect. I reminded my audience that polls show that given the choice, some 70 percent of Arabs living in eastern Jerusalem would prefer living under Israeli sovereignty than under another flag.

As we came down the mountain, we entered my neighborhood’s traffic circle and stood in front of the mosque that has been cited for zoning violations as part of a large unauthorized expansion. I explained that I walk in this traffic circle daily and that while things seem calm right now, a Jihadist influence has radicalized some of the population and that violence can erupt at any moment.

Suddenly, as if on cue, rocks began to fly. The nature of these quick and life-threatening moments is that different participants can have disparate recollections of the details. I saw two projectiles for certain: one cement block hit a security vehicle and a stone flew in our direction, narrowly missing the group and the congressmen. Security personnel reacted quickly, drawing their weapons, but they were not as quick as the culprits, who escaped down into the Silwan neighborhood.

The group took the attack in stride, and the congressmen did not budge. I explained to them that while there is danger here, it should not translate automatically into fear. There are toxic elements that want to instill fear in our nation and in our neighborhoods so that we Jews will back off our 3,000-year-old claim to Jerusalem. They want us to be afraid to stand on this street corner but we won’t let those elements bully us like they do their own people, forcing our Arab neighbors to get in line and brainwash their children with hate.

As bad as the violent incident was, the distortion on the part of some commentators later showed how pernicious the hate is. One Jewish anti-Israel blogger basically called me a racist – and a provocateur for walking the streets of municipal Jerusalem. This blogger ironically accused me of planning to Judaize the Mount of Olives through ethnic cleansing while at the same time justifying the rock throwing and violence that is precisely aimed at driving Jews from the area.

His rhetoric mirrored the ugly words of the emir of Qatar, Sheikh Hamad bin Khalifa Al-Thani, who stated at the International Conference for Defense of Jerusalem in Doha: “We must act quickly to stop the Judaization of Jerusalem.”

He is right. We must act quickly. But we must act quickly to stop the toxic, peace-hating terrorists so that normal life for Jews and Arabs can become a reality. If the Doha-sponsored Jihad-friendly outlook wins the day, Jews would once again be evicted from the Mount of Olives, graves would once again be desecrated, and the Arabs living in those areas would be subjected to yet another repressive Middle Eastern regime.

Recently my wife and I spent Shabbat in Jerusalem with some friends. They made aliyah a year and a half ago and invited us to spend the day with them in the Holy City.

On Shabbat morning Ken and I, with two of his children, made our way to the Old City, to the Muslim Quarter, about a 35-minute walk. The Jerusalem winter air was crisp, cold and clear. Just as I remember it from when I first lived in Israel, in Jerusalem, some 37 years ago.

As the sun rose, lighting up the sky with a seeming sanctity that might only be sensed in the holiest city in the world, we walked briskly down the street, onto Aza Road, and then down Agron. Crossing the main street we entered an area I’d never visited, the Mamilla promenade. It is really a combination of the old and the new. Externally it has a kind of quaint atmosphere, but the storefronts are far from old-fashioned, selling anything and everything you can imagine, at prices I’m sure aren’t from the Middle Ages.

The walkway led to narrow stone stairs, directly in front of Jaffa Gate, leading into the Old City. As we crossed from the twenty-first century into a time warp going back about 2,000 years, I recalled the first time I’d crossed that threshold, back then. The day after we arrived – it was probably late Friday morning – I stood outside that huge stone wall, waiting for all the group to arrive so that we could all go in together. I remembered the excitement, the anticipation, knowing that in a few moments we’d be marching to the Kotel, the Western Wall, in the Old City of Jerusalem.

It’s a little different today. The “gate” is no longer there, just a big opening, like a hole in the wall. But walking through an almost empty Arab market, down the smooth stone stairs, under arches people are used to seeing only in pictures, it was quite a feeling.

We didn’t make a right turn toward the Kotel, to pray at the Wall. Rather we turned left, into the Muslim Quarter. We walked past a memorial to Elchanan Atali, a young yeshiva student murdered there some 21 years ago. And then, on the left side of the road, we came to a door with a sign hanging on the wall: “Chazon Yechezkel Synagogue – Young Israel of the Old City of Jerusalem.”

Young Israel, of course, is an association of Orthodox synagogues, located primarily in the United States. There are some here in Israel as well. This particular Young Israel is located about 5 minutes from the Kotel, in the Old City of Jerusalem.
Walking up the stairs in what must be a fairly old building, I came to the sanctuary, a small haimish room, with a few people already in attendance. It was then about 7:10.

Standing in the middle of the room, by the pulpit, was an older, scholarly, kindly looking man studying the weekly Torah portion. I introduced myself, telling him we have a mutual friend living in Chicago. He asked if I was from there too; I told him I’m from Hebron. He told me he has a son there. I responded that his son was my youngest son’s teacher in the yeshiva high school in Kiryat Arba.

Then I sat down and listened to his Torah shiur.

Rabbi Nachman Kahana really is a great Torah sage. He has authored well-known books, is an accomplished speaker and a leader of the Jewish presence in the Old City, and here, in the Muslim Quarter, where the Jewish presence has grown by leaps and bounds over the past years, thanks to people like Rabbi Kahana.

And if the name rings a bell, yes, he is the brother of the murdered Rabbi Meir Kahane.

One theme repeated itself in Rabbi Kahana’s talks on Shabbat – the need for Jews to live in Israel. Most of the people attending the rabbi’s synagogue are former Americans who came to live in Israel, some many years ago, others more recently.
There were some young men also in attendance who perhaps hadn’t yet made that fateful decision to stay in Israel rather than return to the U.S. I’m sure his words, which he spoke in both English and Hebrew, didn’t fall on deaf ears.

Whenever he’s in Israel, my friend Jack from Chicago usually turns down my invitations for Shabbat, saying he prefers to be with Rabbi Nachman Kahana in the Old City. Now I know why. It’s an unbelievable experience.

Actually, the Young Israel of the Old City isn’t really so young; it’s a segment of the chain of Jewish history, culture and Torah, adjacent to the holiest place in the world, the Temple Mount.

Rabbi Kahana and his congregation are helping to ensure that this site will remain Jewish forever.

David Wilder is a longtime activist, writer, spokesman and lecturer on behalf of Hebron’s Jewish community, where he resides.