Jerusalem is a special city

Jerusalem is a special city. If you ever doubt this, try staying away for a little while. True, many Israelis have become so practiced in the art of staying away from Jerusalem that this has been elevated from simple aversion to full-blown abhorrence. True, many of us who bring up children in this city know that our offspring are preparing to spring off and leave as soon as the opportunity presents itself. True, increasingly Jewish visitors from abroad are becoming inured to the blandishments of the holy city, and developing a marked preference for the lure of Tel Aviv (The Big Pineapple) or Haifa (The Bahai Chapel) or even Hadera (the Big Falafel), over Jerusalem - the Big Grapple.

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Testing loyalty

"This is preeminently the time to speak the truth, the whole truth, frankly and boldly. Nor need we shrink from honestly facing conditions in our country today. This great Nation will endure as it has endured, will revive and will prosper. So, first of all, let me assert my firm belief that the only thing we have to fear is fear itself - nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance."

In order to avoid any unpleasantness with copyright lawyers I should make clear that these stirring words are not mine. And however germane they may appear to be to these times and this region, their origin (as many of my readers will have identified) is different. It was with these words that Franklin Delano Roosevelt accepted the office of President of the United States of America, a little over 75 years ago.

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Life and death on King David street

For much of my adult life I have studied, taught and worked on King David Street in Jerusalem. It is certainly no ordinary work address. World leaders stay there - in recent months we have played host to Bush, Blair, then Bush again, Blair, Rice, Blair Carter, Sarkozy, Blair (I'm beginning to think that man has nothing better to do), Brown, Mc Cain, Obama - and that doesn't do justice to the tens of less famous officials - Fishing Ministers from Ruritania and Tax Inspectors from Uzbekhistan.

Then there are the Life Cycle Events. Families compete with each other to hold the most opulent and often gaudy events: barmy Bar Mitzvahs, wild weddings, and far from circumspect circumcisions. And let's not forget the welcome crush of tourists, staying in comfort and often returning home with some expensive artifacts purchased at one of our street's many upscale emporia. More hotels are on the way, along with a plethora of swanky apartment buildings aimed at visionaries and speculators.

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Denial, Dismissal and Defensiveness

The recently-issued Annual Report by the Association of Civil Rights makes grim reading. In the section on racism in Israeli society, it notes that there has been a steep rise in expressions of hatred by Jewish Israelis towards Arabs. 2006 saw a 26% increase in the number of racial incidents directed against Arabs; the intensity of feelings of hatred towards Arabs has almost doubled. Over half of the Jewish Israelis polled said they would not live in the same building with Arabs, that they opposed the inclusion of Arab parties in the government, that they approve of plans to encourage Arab emigration, and so on. The report also talks about the systematic degradation of Israeli Arab citizens when they want to get on an airplane at Ben Gurion Airport. Most of those interviewed thought that Arabs smell, and are unclean.

In Israel, this report has been met by what might be described as a 3-D response. I don't mean to suggest by this that we have all decided to engage in a three-dimensional soul-searching treatment of the weighty and distressing evidence before us. Rather, the three Ds we prefer to employ are Denial, Dismissal and Defensiveness. We deny the veracity of the evidence, suggesting that whoever could claim that such views abound in Israeli society must be a self-hating traitor. We dismiss the data – clearly those interviewed were not representative of most people, or they were joking when they answered the questions. That so-called increase in incidents, we say, it is just our Arab neighbors being over-sensitive over nothing.

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