Tuesday, March 3, 2009
You won't be hearing about any UN resolutions to condemn this, unless it's against Israel enforcing the building codes: An outpost in David's Garden
Progress has brought troubles along with it to the King's Valley. For hundreds of years floodwaters drained into the garden of the kings of Judea, east of the Shiloah Pool in Jerusalem. In winter it was a swamp, but in summer it became a blooming garden.
With a bit of imagination and with the help of varied historical sources it is possible to imagine King David strolling in the royal garden with its abundant greenery and water among the olive, fig, pomegranate and almond trees, singing Psalms.
According to one tradition, this is where the Book of Ecclesiastes was composed.
About 20 years ago, the Jerusalem municipality shored up the water runoff there, and in the open green area (al Bustan, in Arabic), which the Turks and the British took care to preserve for hundreds of years as a public area intended for preservation and development of parks and tourism, an illegal Palestinian outpost arose.
Within 18 years 88 buildings went up there, under the noses of mayors Teddy Kollek and now outgoing Prime Minister Ehud Olmert. Under former mayor Uri Lupolianski, the construction was halted, after the municipality confiscated tractors and heavy machinery from the lawbreakers.
Last summer the director general of the Antiquities Authority, Shuka Dorfman, noted in a kind of "post mortem" that the construction in the King's Garden caused significant and irreversible damage to antiquities.
Representatives of the municipality and Dorfman admitted that they had no good explanation for what has happened in this lovely garden, which is described in the Books of Nechemiah and Ecclesiastes, in midrashim (rabbinic Biblical homiletics) and in many historical sources. Dorfman stressed that together with Tel David, the garden constitutes the only complete archaeological garden of first-rate importance...
Listed below are links to blogs that reference this entry: Arab Settlers in Jerusalem Destroy Antiquities.
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So we're being asked to set the PLO/PA up with yet another television station. Khaled Abu Toameh knows exactly where that's going to lead: New Palestinian TV - To Broadcast What? American and European taxpayers are now being asked to... Read More
This is so incredibly sad that in order to promote progressivism, secularism and "tolerance", we become complicit through our failure to act or speak out while as much of the treasure of our heritage as they can get away with destroying, is destroyed. It should be their treasure too. But its not - because its Jewish. Can you imagine if this were the Jews destroying Muslim heritage? While Muslims kill thousands around the world in some of the most barbarous ways imaginable, the world is silent. Jews have the effrontery to protect themselves or seek to have some assurances life and safety along side a Judenrein Palestinian state, and suddenly the world is ending.
Everyone knows in their hearts that this is a fools errand, this "Land for Peace Process". If it were about land it could conceivably work. But its not about land and never has been. Its a lovely dream and a noble goal, but in this case its also the equivalent of assisted suicide.