In its article “Six Key Questions About Trump’s Israel Agenda,” The Globe and Mail referred to the eastern part of Jerusalem as “historically, home to Arabs,” implying that there has never been any Jewish history in eastern Jerusalem.
Author Dakshana Bascaramurty wasn’t talking about all of Jerusalem. Just the part with the Western Wall, the Temple Mount (the holiest site in Judaism), the Old City with its ancient Jewish Quarter, and countless artifacts from Jewish history.
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Bascaramurty writes:
The Palestinians want to establish their future capital in East Jerusalem, while Israel sees the whole city as its own capital. While the western part of the city is almost entirely populated by Jews, the eastern part, historically, has been home to Arabs. Since the 1967 Arab-Israeli war, Jews began moving into that territory, though under international law, settlements in the region (as well as the West Bank and the Golan Heights) are considered illegal.
Historically home to Arabs?
So all those 3,000 years of Jewish history don’t count as…”historical”?
To be fair to The Globe and Mail, Jews were indeed absent from the eastern part of Jerusalem in 1967, and had been absent for a whole 19 years (out of approximately 3,000 years of continuous history).
Of course the reason Jews were absent during those 19 years was because in 1948 all of them were killed or exiled…by Arabs. The very Arabs who Bascaramurty claims are the only people with “history” in the eastern part of Jerusalem.
HonestReporting explored the topic of Jewish refugees from Jerusalem in this video:
The eastern part of Jerusalem was finally reunited with its western part in 1967, after Israel was forced to capture it from the Jordanians, who were using it to launch a massive military assault that was designed to utterly annihilate the Jewish state.
Certainly there is shared Arab and Jewish history throughout the Middle East, including in parts of Jerusalem.
Yet the Globe and Mail is not content to write about the richness and nuance of history and shared culture.
Instead, Dakshana Bascaramurty entirely ignores Jewish history in order to falsely paint Israel, and the Jewish people, as strangers in their own homeland.
Please share your considered comments with public editor, Sylvia Stead [email protected] and you may also contact her on Twitter at @SylviaStead
