One of my Jerusalem friends supplies me with another piece of the Jewish mosaic by talking about his youth in Mashhad.
Mashhad is a sizable city and religious center in the northeast of Iran, where the Jewish community was given a choice of conversion or death in the 1830s. Some died in the pogrom that accompanied the decree, some moved away, and most accepted Islam outwardly, but continued to be Jews at home. A century later the Jews of Mashhad began to live more openly. Nonetheless, the Mashhadis I have met carry deeper scars than those traceable to my having to sing Christmas songs and recite the Lord's Prayer in Fall River.
Israeli Jews from Muslim countries, and their children, tend to be on the hawkish side of the hawk-dove spectrum. Some of this may derive from lower than average levels of income and education, and the populist element in right of center Likud. Some also derives from residual feelings of discrimination, and being forced to leave their homes, typically with few if any possessions. While there are well known intellectuals and politicians from these communities who speak out prominently from the dovish sides of the spectrum, it is not difficult to find individuals willing to talk about family suffering, as well as their distrust of Palestinians and other Muslims.
One should not exaggerate the impact of these communities on Israel. We are not talking about the residents of refugee camps subject to regime incitement for more than six decades. Although Israel's poor "development towns" continue to have a disproportionate share of "Oriental" Jews (as well as migrants from the former Soviet Union and Ethiopia) Jews tracing their families to the Middle East have moved throughout the country and into every sector of the economy and politics. So many of them have married Israelis whose families came from Europe, North or South America as to render the categories of "Sephardim," "Oriental," or "Jews from Asian and African backgrounds" increasingly elusive for social research.
My Mashhadi friend responded to one of my recent notes where I mentioned the Palestinians' creation of an ownership tale for what has long been described as Rachel's Tomb. He urged me to write about how the Muslims have created similar fabrications about the importance of Jerusalem. "What do they mean about the third holiest city in Islam? I grew up hearing that Mashhad was one of the holiest cities. Muslims who visit Mashhad call themselves Mashhadi. I've never heard of a Muslim who visits Jerusalem giving himself the Arabic name of this city."
I responded by recalling my own visit to Samarkand. The tour guide described it as the "third most holy city in all of Islam."
No doubt that Muslims have touched up the status of Jerusalem (al Quds--the Holy City), largely in response to the Jewish presence. However, the story is not a simple one. Jerusalem does figure in the writings associated with Mohamed, and the city was an important focus in the struggle against the Crusaders. The Dome of the Rock and al-Aqsa Mosque have been on the Noble Sanctuary/Temple Mount since the 7th century, and the main shopping street in East Jerusalem carries the name of Salah al Din, the Kurdish warrior who led the fight against Crusaders in the 12th century.
The Muslims never made Jerusalem anything more than a provincial town during the several regimes that ruled until the British conquest in the 20th century. Baghdad, Damascus, Ramla, Nablus, and Gaza were more important. During the 16th century, Jerusalem's population was less than 5,000. The city was a miserable place with garbage and dead animals in the street, and widespread disease when Europeans and Americans began building churches and hospitals in the 19th century. There has been a Jewish majority since the late 19th century. When the Jordanians controlled the Old City and other neighborhoods from 1948 to 1967, they invested more heavily in Amman.
Voltaire said that History is the lie commonly agreed upon. Napoleon softened that to history as accepted myth.
So whatever the truth to the claim that Jerusalem is one of Islam's holiest cities, or that Rachel Tomb is really Bilal ibn Rabah mosque, there are many who will accept and act on those beliefs. Tour guides in Samarkand and Mashhad will continue with their descriptions. Tempers about Jerusalem and other sites will rise and decline with events. Muslim politicians will incite their followers when they need an issue, or when Jewish politicians are careless in how they make a point about their own claims.
Currently the concern is not so much with historical accuracy, as with the possibility that speeches and stone throwing will develop into something more serious. A resident of Jerusalem should not say that history is unimportant. Only that the details do not depend on what really happened.
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Ira Sharkansky (Emeritus)
Department of Political Science
Hebrew University of Jerusalem
Tel: +972-2-532-2725
Fax +972-2-582-9144
irashark@gmail.com