Friday, June 26, 2015

Eighteen Years an Ex-Pat: What You See From Here, You Can't See From There


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Leverage: How U.S. Presidents Use the American Jewish Community to Pressure Israel

A case study of the US-​American Jewish-​Israel triad by Elliot Jager

Decades ago policymakers realized that they could not force Israel back to the '49 lines if the American Jewish community stood in the way. It would just be too messy.


Available exclusively via Amazon on Kindle.

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When I left New York City on June 23, 1997 for Israel, the World Trade Center dominated lower Manhattan's skyline.  I had not yet gotten around to visiting the south tower's observation deck.

Rudy Giuliani was mayor, George Pataki was New York's governor, and Bill Clinton was in the White House. I was not enamored with any of them.

The Long War had begun, but most Americans didn't know it. The 1995 bombing by right-wing fanatics of the Oklahoma City Federal Building which left 168 Americans dead had largely displaced memories of the comparatively less lethal 1993 truck-bombing of the WTC by Islamist terrorists.

Only later would it become possible to  connect the 1990 assassination in New York City of Jewish militant Meir Kahane with the perpetrators of both the first and the September 11, 2001 attacks.  

When I left, Republican House Speaker Newt Gingrich sat astride Capitol Hill. Monica Lewinsky was unknown. By December 1998, I watched from Israel as a partisan House moved to impeach Clinton on charges of perjury and obstruction of justice related to his sexual peccadilloes. Gingrich was already gone, owing to the GOP's poor showing in the November midterm elections.

I was already in Israel a full year when the intelligence community made tracking a Yemeni-born Saudi named Osama bin Laden its top priority. It had connected him to the August 1998 bombings of the U.S. embassies in Kenya and Tanzania.

Later, I watched from afar as Texas governor George W. Bush was inaugurated president in January 2001. America seemed exponentially more polarized than it had been when George H. W. Bush vacated the White House in 1993 for Clinton.

Being a news junky I worried about how I would keep track of all that was going on in my Old Country. Copies of the International Herald Tribune arrived in Tel Aviv seldom less than two days old. Fortunately, there was the BBC World Service for breaking news.

Internet outlets were in their infancy; modems were of the dial-up variety. Yahoo was around. Google only came into existence in 1998. There was no social media. Many of my friends back in New York had no home email.

The Likud's Benjamin Netanyahu was in his first term when I moved to Israel. He would be ousted by Ehud Barak's Labor Party in 1999. I landed in a country that was still riven by Yitzhak Rabin's assassination two years earlier at the hands of Yigal Amir. The dovish camp had appropriated what was a national tragedy to push an accommodationist agenda in a peace process that Rabin himself probably wouldn't have  embraced.

Hamas, founded in 1987, the violent offshoot of the Palestinian Muslim Brotherhood, slaughtered its way onto the front pages after the 1993 Oslo Accords that Rabin signed with Yasser Arafat. 



The PLO leadership had been practically airlifted from Tunisia to the West Bank where Israel helped establish the Palestinian Authority. Hamas denounced Arafat for going wobbly on Israel. The PLO chief insisted that his embrace of negotiations was an astute tactic – that his strategy remained the destruction of Israel, albeit, in stages.

Meantime, I was trying to acclimate – learning modern Hebrew, deciding where to live, and growing anxious about work. Israel's cost of living was nearly New York-like, but the salaries, decidedly, weren't.

I'd assumed that Israelis shared the bourgeois values of American Jews – only that they spoke Hebrew.

I'd been willfully ignorant of the chasm between secular and Orthodox Israelis. In New York, I barley paid attention to the political and theological permutations within Israel's body politic. At the end of the day, weren't Israelis all in the same boat? Soon I discovered that secular Israelis were often illiterate about Jewish civilization, and ultra-Orthodox Israelis were mired in an insularity that was incompatible with civic duty in the 21st century.

Israelis generally detested the established Orthodox "church" yet the synagogue they didn't attend was Orthodox. Progressive streams like Reform and Conservative struck them as inauthentic.

Over the past 18 years, I found myself abandoning ideological and theological certainties. I arrived opposing a Palestinian state in Judea and Samaria. I changed my mind during the second intifada when Ariel Sharon seemed to embrace the idea. I backed the 2005 disengagement from Gaza. Nowadays, I think that a pullback to any approximation of the 1949 Armistice Lines, to make space for a Palestinian state, would be wildly reckless.

"When the facts change, I change my mind," said John Maynard Keynes. Me too.

There are things I can see about Israel's predicament that its American friends-cum-detractors can't from 6,000 miles away. By the same token, I have a perspective on American politics that those caught up in its ruthless 24/7 views-cycle may be missing.

One thing hasn't changed. The fate of my birth country and that of my ancestral homeland remain coupled. 




 



Wednesday, June 24, 2015

Snowden, Fabius, Putin, and Wikileaks: Cui Bono


French Foreign Minister Laurent Fabius has called-in Jane Hartley, the American ambassador to the Quai d'Orsay, in response to media reports— citing Wikileaks— that the National Security Agency kept successive French presidents under surveillance,  The Wall Street Journal reported.

Wikileaks-released material shows that the NSA tracked former presidents Nicolas Sarkozy and Jacques Chirac as well as President Francois Hollande who has been in office since May 2012.

Six documents disseminated by Wikileaks appear to be sourced in confidential data purloined by Edward Snowden, the renegade NSA contractor now based in Moscow. 

The NSA had previously been shown to have conducted surveillance on German Chancellor Angela Merkel, Wikileaks noted.

Hollande's office put out a statement which said that "France will not tolerate any acts that compromise its security and the safeguarding of its interests."

A White House spokesman said that the U.S. does "not conduct any foreign intelligence surveillance activities unless there is a specific and validated national security purpose" and that the policy "applies to ordinary citizens and world leaders alike."

Some of the alleged eavesdropping related to discussions about French-German relations and Greece's economic collapse and took place between 2006 and 2012, according to the Journal.

Hollande plans to parlay with key lawmakers to discuss the Wikileaks material, the AP reported.

A Wikileaks press statement quoted Julian Assange as saying, "We are proud of our work with leading French publishers Liberation and Mediapart to bring this story to light."

Assange has been holed up in the Embassy of Ecuador in London for some three years. He is avoiding extradition to Sweden where he is wanted for questioning regarding accusations that he assaulted two women in 2010.

Ecuador, led by left-wing populist president Rafael Correa, is a key Wikileaks supporter. 

Under Correa, Ecuador also recently opened a Ramallah-based embassy in "Palestine."  In a separate incident, to a political opponent who called him a "fascist," Correa offhandedly tweeted "Heil Hitler."

While some 4,000 Jews found refuge in Ecuador during the Second World War, fewer than now 300 Jews remain in the country.

Snowden's leaks have played into the hands of Russian leader Vladimir Putin. They sow division within Europe and between Europe and the U.S., according to German analyst Josef Joffe, writing in the Journal

To maintain his bona fides and avoid being dismissed as a Moscow stooge, Snowden has lately leveled mild criticism of Putin. 

Max Boot, writing in Commentary speculated-- reasonably to my mind--
that it is likely Snowden's living expenses are being picked up by the Kremlin.

There is little question that Snowden's "whistleblowing" has mostly served Russian interests. A search of Wikileaks for any negative reporting on Putin comes up empty.

While Snowden's revelations exposed intrusive metadata gathering and possibly violations of civil liberties, they may have also undermined efforts to track Islamist terrorists. According to analyst Max Hastings, "Some small loss of privacy seems a fair price to pay for defense against the fanatics, who have already shed innocent blood enough."

Further reading:





Monday, June 22, 2015

Paris & Amsterdam – Random Impressions

One of the pleasures of traveling for me is returning home feeling glad that I'm back. But also feeling that I've learned something about the places I visited.

We are just back in Israel after five days in Amsterdam and another five in Paris.

We encountered two very different Jewish communities.

From a Jewish perspective, Paris is at once vibrant and moribund. There are over 300,000 Jews living in France. Some claim there are 500,000. On our final day, we had to wait for a seat in a kosher dairy restaurant during the lunch hour rush. There must have been 75-110 people inside; the place was buzzing.

At the imposing Grande Synagogue de Paris, where we davened on a Thursday morning and over Shabbat, security was airport-like intense. At the Thursday service it took 45 minutes until a minyan of 10 men could be gathered. On Shabbat the decorous and better attended service includes a choir.

Jacques Canet, the synagogue's genial president told us that after the January terror attacks authorities had asked Jewish leaders to cancel Saturday services. The community responded that if they were able to maintain services during the Vichy era they were not about to go into hiding now.

We spoke with some young people over Friday night dinner (also at the synagogue) and none saw much of a future for themselves in France. One spoke of moving to LA where his Persian family is concentrated.

Hundreds (probably thousands) of Jews who can (financially) leave France are doing so or making plans to do so or doing some on a part-time basis. Anecdotally, I can say that we've never heard so much French spoken in our neighborhood as we have in the past year. 

Over 1,000 Jews made aliya in the past year from France.

We found it helpful to speak in Hebrew (rather than English) at many Jewish restaurants and shops.

France, like so much of Europe, loves it's dead Jews. 

The Holocaust memorial (an imposing museum with an attached book shop) was protected by heavily-armed militia and police. Plaques on the museum's parameter wall, along the Allee Des Justes, are filled with the names of hundreds of Parisian gentiles who helped save Jews during the Second World War.

Opposite the museum is another plaque memorializing 11,000 Jewish pupils who were rounded up by the Vichy authorities (French collaborators with the Nazis) in 1942 and sent to Auschwitz.

We were told not to miss the Islamic Center because of its interesting architecture. 





What we found at the entrance was a sign promoting "Palestine" – a reminder that Arab and Muslim mobilization against Israel is ubiquitous, worldwide, and unrelenting. 






A huge poster adorning the outside wall of the Islamic Center commemorating the protest against the January 2015 Islamist terrorists attacks. Israel's Premier Benjamin Netanyahu is airbrushed out of the photograph.





Those willing to pay the price of admission can see an exhibit on the Jews of the Middle East. It is unlikely the display notes that—in the best of times under Muslim rule, Jews were considered Dhimmi or second class non-citizens.





France has the second-largest Muslim population in Europe (behind Germany) with 4.7 million people or 7.5 percent of the population.

We very much enjoyed the Musée d'Orsay which contains a treasure of impressionist paintings. The structure is a converted a Beaux-Arts railway station constructed around 1898.



The Louvre Museum was overwhelming; more a circus and spectacle than a chance to contemplate great art. Still, there was plenty of great art and artifacts to see amidst the throngs of fellow tourists. From the Code of Hammurabi (circa 1754 BCE) 



 to Leonardo da Vinci's  Mona Lisa (circa 1503).



It may be that the museum does not like visitors from the Jewish state – but if you keep a low profile, and they don't know you are Israeli you can enjoy your visit just like anyone else.

Paris is a metropolis. Great Metro (endless warnings to watch out for pickpockets). Not many New York-like towering skyscrapers but heavy traffic and (very) occasionally menacing denizens.

Seemingly, people are constantly smoking outside stores and offices. Questions abound. How is it that Parisians are continually eating yet stay skinny? Why do Japanese & Chinese tourists line up to buy designer products most likely manufactured somewhere in Asia. 

Le Marais, the lower east side of Paris was bustling, mostly with non-Jewish tourists and young people. There were lots of kosher and kosher-style eateries and almost no security. The Chez Jo Goldenberg restaurant which was bombed by Palestinian Arab terrorists in August 1982 is now a clothes store.


We also traveled by railroad to visit an elderly relation in a once predominantly Jewish suburb. She told us that her synagogue still held regular services. Perhaps. Though from the railroad platform, on the way back to Paris center, it was the golden dome of the neighborhood's mosque that was visible.


AMSTERDAM'S COMMUNITY seems more at peace with its diminished prospects and circumstances.

There are something like 30,000 Jews in the country. Maybe at a stretch 0.3 percent of the population.

There are perhaps three Jewish neighborhoods in Amsterdam. One outlying area can be considered Jewishly self-sufficient.

Fewer kosher eateries (in stark contrast to Paris) but lots of good vegetarian and vegan restaurants.

We visited the historic (circa 1675) Portuguese synagogue several times.




It is near the Jewish museum and other Jewish heritage sites. 

Also worth a visit if you have never been is Anne Frank House (get your tickets in advance). It is said to be the second most popular tourist attractions. 

Don't miss the Rijksmuseum (Rembrandt) and the Stedelijk Museum of modern art which has a special exhibit on Matisse this summer. 

Curiously, their book shop is loaded with anti-US (Chomsky), Marxist and pro-Arab (Said) books which don't have anything to do with the exhibited art. Go figure.



Suggestion: Buy the "I'm Amsterdam Card" as soon as you get into town at the visitor's center near the main train station. I'm told you can also purchase it at the airport. 

The card allows you to enter certain museums and gets you on public transportation. Swipe when boarding and de-boarding. Those of us from Jerusalem, where there is one tram line, can only marvel at Amsterdam's advanced tram system.

Amsterdam, though packed with tourists, the occasional beer lout, and a decided level of sleaze, is simultaneously quaint with picturesque canals and townhouses. It is walk-able (though watch out for the bicycles) & all around delightful. The city is in a good place right now – so this is the time to visit. Enjoy the parks. Tilt at a windmill.





Wednesday, April 29, 2015

A City Divided: Jerusalem 1949-1967


Following the War of Independence, Israelis faced economic hardship, Arab aggression, and life in a divided capital — nevertheless the western sections of the city thrived and developed.


On 30 June 1967, the first Friday after the official reunification of Jerusalem, Muslim and Christian Arabs — whom, respectively, Jordan had banned from the Dome of the Rock and the Aksa Mosque, and the Church of the Holy Selpulchre — were permitted to worship freely in the Old City for the first time in 19 years and mingle with their coreligionists from the West Bank.

Meanwhile, hundreds of thousands of Israeli Jews had been converging on the Western Wall in the biggest pilgrimage since the destruction of the Second Temple in 70 A.D.

Gone, writes historian Sir Martin Gilbert, were the STOP! DANGER! FRONTIER AHEAD! notices. 

Gone, too, were the 15-foot walls, barbed wire fencing, and mines that had blocked off through streets.

It's now been 47 years since the city was reunited — and memories of life during the 19 years when the city was divided, between the end of the War of Independence in 1949 and the 1967 Six Day War, seem to have faded.

The armistice between Israel and Jordan, signed on April 3, 1949, did not connote a political end to the conflict or an agreement about borders. This tentativeness left the city in limbo. Still, it didn't stop people from trying to carve out a sense of normalcy.  

Elections for the first Knesset had taken place in January 1949, with the parliament's opening session held on February 14 in the Jewish Agency building on King George Street. Soon thereafter the Knesset moved a few blocks further north along King George to Froumine House, a former bank.

Municipal elections were also held in 1949. The city's first mayor was Shlomo Zalman Shragai, a journalist with the Hebrew newspaper Hatsofeh, mouthpiece of the Orthodox Zionist Mizrachi Party. 

As a result of the fighting, Jerusalem had hemorrhaged population. The number of Jews dropped to 69,000 with many people leaving for opportunities in Tel Aviv. Fewer than 1,000 Christians remained and virtually no Muslims.

As the epicenter of Zionism, it was only fitting that, in August 1949, the remains of Binyamin Ze'ev (Theodor) Herzl, the father of modern political Zionism, were reinterred at the Jerusalem military cemetery that now bears his name. Herzl, who died in 1904 at age 44, had been buried in Vienna.  

For ordinary Jerusalemites life in the divided city was both thrilling and hardscrabble.

Just before ushering in the Sabbath, on February 11, 1949, Moshe Sachs dashed off a letter to his parents in the States. He thanked them "loads!" for their latest package — canned milk, chicken, baby food, and bars of soap.

Sachs, an ordained Conservative rabbi, had come to Jerusalem after serving in the U.S. Army during WWII and wound up in the Haganah, the pre-state Jewish underground headed by Jewish Agency leader and Israel’s first premier David Ben-Gurion.

Though he worked for the semi-governmental Jewish Agency, Sachs’ salary didn't cover such "luxuries" as a stove, refrigerator, and washing machine. His letters home show how appreciative he was of the generosity of his parents who, bit-by-bit, shipped the appliances from the United States.

In a letter dated March 29, 1949 he wrote: "Last Shabbat, we took a long walk through Julian's Way [today King David Street]. It was the first time I'd been right in front of the King David hotel and the Jerusalem YMCA. The area had been secured in the fighting immediately after May 15, but civilians had been kept out until recent weeks. Now the area is again humming — with immigrants and families that are spreading out."

Water supplies were erratic. By being thrifty and drawing water from a cistern under the porch, the Sachs family had enough to meet most of its household and drinking needs.

"The electricity question was resolved only three weeks after we moved in [May 14, 1949]," he writes. Moshe found an electrician to wire his house and finally prevailed on the electric company to link them to the main line. Electricity costs were so dear that the family used kerosene for cooking and heating. People would line up to buy kerosene which was sold out of the back of a truck. There was one thing where they didn't stint on electricity: laundering the diapers in the washing machine.

But there was no money for furniture so the Sachs family ate off boxes and suitcases — and yet they regularly entertained.

Few people had telephones. When back in the US, Moshe's father had a heart attack he tried to keep up to date by relying on ham radio operators.

"Most people have no money for a telephone. A phone is a real luxury in Jerusalem; we do not have one," he wrote his folks. "Phones are scarce in Israel, so to keep down the demand there is a neat system which requires a non-refundable payment of a fair amount of money to have one… if you do scrape together the money for a phone, your monthly bill is relatively high."

There were not many stay-at-home moms in Jerusalem in those days. Women worked to help make ends meet though even then many folks were in the red. Workers could never count on getting paid on time. Luckily, corner grocery stores and butchers shops operated on credit for months on end.

Yet the atmosphere was far from glum.

Here, as conveyed in Sir Martin Gilbert's Jerusalem in the 20th Century, is how Benjamin Ferencz, a Hungarian-born American lawyer and a former prosecutor at the Nuremberg war crimes trials, found Jerusalem in 1950:

"Everyone seemed so full of hope and enthusiasm… that a new era was dawning for them. And the children were all so beautiful and the source of so much pride to all and not merely to the parents. The Jews I knew back home were all lawyers, doctors or businessmen, and here I saw workers in the streets, cleaning and digging ditches, and Jews from Yemen and other faraway places that had no connection to Brooklyn or the Bronx."

Gilbert also recounts the experiences of Mary Clawson, a Californian whose husband was an adviser to the Israeli government. She evokes the ambiance of the city in a 1953 letter home:

"Almost everyone looked poor; I did not see a single woman wearing hose, and the men wore no neckties; I must say I think the lack of hose and neckties were both excellent ideas. There seemed to be an astounding number of good bookstores around.

"We have no ration cards yet. So no coffee, eggs, meat, margarine, sugar, soap, etc. The neighbors have been unbelievably helpful and friendly and given or loaned us precious rationed things to eke out our meals, though I have been eating a huge amount of plentiful bread. I have never met so many people I like in so brief a time."

Food was indeed a problem for the entire country.

About half the city's food supply needed to be trucked over rudimentary roads up to the capital.

In January 1954, having now resided in Jerusalem for seven months, Mary Clawson wrote home describing how hard it was to make ends meet:

"There is no money for a car; the food budget needs constant watching and scrimping, and no dining out; there is not enough money for clothes; there is money for very few gifts; few, if any face creams, and hand lotions; no smoking or drinking and not much money for charity. There is no money… for household furniture and repairs; no items for upkeep of a garden, if you like to garden; much less is there any money left for the hobbies many Americans especially at this [her husband's] job level, consider in the category of essentials."

If anything, life in the Arab sector of divided Jerusalem was even harsher.

Other than demolishing the Jewish Quarter and dozens of synagogues in the Old City, desecrating Jewish graves on the Mount of Olives, and formally annexing east Jerusalem in December 1948, the Hashemite Kingdom made little constructive investment in the city. 

On July 27, 1953, King Hussein announced that Jerusalem would be his "alternative capital" though he remained in Amman most of the time.
Israelis responded to Arab rejectionism and intimidation by carrying on with their lives and by building the area of Jerusalem they did control.

Unable to use its historic Mount Scopus campus because it was encircled by Jordanian-controlled territory, the church-owned Terra Sancta compound in central Jerusalem became the main Hebrew University site, with classes also held at dozens of locations around the city until, in 1958, the new Hebrew University campus in Givat Ram was inaugurated.
Hadassah Hospital on Mount Scopus was similarly off limits, so a new hospital was constructed on the hills overlooking Ein Kerem and opened in 1961. The hospital became a reality thanks to the generosity of thousands of American Jewish "Hadassah ladies" who helped raise the funds for its construction.


Terra Sancta


Large-scale manufacturing never took root in Jerusalem though small industry did find a niche in such outlying neighborhoods as Givat Shaul. The Binyanei Ha'uma (People’s Congress) convention center, begun in 1950, was fully completed in 1963. And in 1958, Heichal Shlomo was completed to be the seat of the two chief rabbis. Ben-Yehuda Street became the heart of the business district, and nearby Mahane Yehuda continued to thrive as the city’s fresh produce market.

Tourism became an important element in the city's economy and a number of new hotels were constructed.

Some tourists passed through west Jerusalem on their way to the Arab side. In 1958, Rev. John Keppel, his wife Mildred and their two children Daniel and Mark visited the Holy Land. Rev. Keppel was on his way to his new congregation in Indianapolis after three years of missionary work for the Disciples of Christ in Falkirk Scotland.

The family flew to Lod Airport outside Tel Aviv via Athens. Dan was about 10 at the time. The Keppels would have crossed the Mandelbaum Gate checkpoint into the Jordanian side. From there they toured the Old City, the River Jordan, and the Dead Sea before heading to visit an orphanage in Jordanian-held Bethlehem.

Dan, now a financial consultant in New Jersey, showed me some of the slides his parents took of the visit. There is a forlorn photograph of the Western Wall and a striking interior shot of the Temple Mount or the Dome of the Rock.

Back on the Jewish side of town, another journalist, Gershom Agron, the founder of the English-language Palestine Post — later the Jerusalem Post — became mayor in 1955. Agron was a Labor Party stalwart and the newspaper was its English-language mouthpiece. Even as mayor, Agron insisted on reviewing the Post's daily editorial before the newspaper went to press, according to Jerusalem Post veteran staffer Alexander Zveilli. When Agron died in office in 1959 another laborite, Mordechai Ish-Shalom, led the city until 1965.

All the while, the menace of Arab snipers and infiltrators was never far away.

Jerusalem was surrounded on the north, east, and south by enemy territory — with a narrow makeshift corridor to the west that connected the city to Tel Aviv and the coastal plain. 

Refugee camps known as ma'abarot housed Jews from Morocco, Libya, Iraq, and Yemen who had come to Israel with practically nothing. In Jerusalem, the camps were often situated just within the Israeli side of the armistice line, along Hebron Road in the outlying Talpiot neighborhood and other places. These areas usually took the brunt of random Arab violence.

Most often, the snipers took up positions at Arab Abu Tor and fired at Jewish Abu Tor and on the Jordanian-held Old City walls, aiming at Musrara. Arabs in Jabel Mukaber also directed their fire at Kibbutz Ramat Rachel, situated east of Talpiot on the southern edge of Jerusalem’s armistice line and overlooking Bethlehem. In 1956, for instance, five people attending an archeological conference at Ramat Rachel, were killed by Arab marksmen. Among the killed was a dentist, Rudolph Rudberg, who'd reached Palestine in 1938 from Germany and had become president of the Israel Dental Association.

Arab infiltrators all too often crossed from the Jordanian-held territories to rape or kill. Many victims were children or teenagers.

And still, the Jews kept building. The Van Leer Institute, a combination of think tank and foundation was established in 1959. Nearby, the Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities opened up shop in 1961. The Beit Ha'am cultural center went up and served as the improvised venue for the trial of Nazi war criminal Adolf Eichmann in 1961.

A foreign ministry building never got built and instead its offices were housed — and remained so until relatively recently — in a warren of prefabricated one-story huts near the entrance of town. But the Israel Museum — home of the Shrine of the Book which houses the Dead Sea Scrolls — was established in 1965 thanks to a grant by the Anglo-Jewish Rothschild family. Reform Judaism built a branch of Hebrew Union College overlooking the inaccessible Old City. And the Knesset, finally, convened in its own building at Givat Ram on August 30, 1966.

The divided city lacked the vibrancy of today's united Jerusalem. There were few restaurants and not much to do at night, but there were sidewalk cafes. Mercifully, the orchestra came to town; so did the theatre. In fact, the cornerstone for the Jerusalem Theater was laid in 1964. Plans to construct an official residence for the president of Israel went forward.

The legendary Teddy Kollek, who had been Labor Party prime minister David Ben-Gurion's right-hand man became mayor in 1965. His City Hall office was just 150 yards from the armistice line.

The right man, in the right place, at the right time, Kollek's mayoralty saw the reunification of the city. His tenure would span 28 years and he would help build many of the amenities that we Jerusalemites nowadays take for granted in a city that's history-rich but remains cash-poor.

Kollek had a knack for raising money from abroad. He created the Jerusalem Foundation and identified donors who were as generous as they were wealthy to fund parks, museums, and promenades in the new united Jerusalem.  

The 1967 Six Day War in Jerusalem lasted from Monday morning  June 5, 1967 to Wednesday afternoon. On June 28, 1967 the Knesset amended the law of 1950, which proclaimed Jerusalem as Israel's capital, to reflect the newly defined municipal boundaries. Nevertheless, from that Wednesday afternoon when the IDF recaptured the Old City, there have been those who have begrudged the Jews their unified Jerusalem.

During the recent 2014 summer disturbances, a key target of Arab rioters was the light rail station and line in the Shu'afat Arab neighborhood in north Jerusalem. Though Arab residents of Shu'afat and Beit Hanina have benefited greatly from the state-of-the-art light rail service, to the rioters the tracks and stations symbolized the unity of the city — and, moreover, the possibility of Jewish-Arab coexistence under Jewish sovereignty.
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I Remember When...
Rivka Reiner, 70 

The Jerusalem I grew up in was a small town. The running joke when I was in college was that the best thing about Jerusalem was the bus to Tel Aviv.

There were few outlying neighborhoods. Everything was pretty concentrated. Bus services were provided by the now-defunct Hamekasher company which went out of business in 1967. 

My Jerusalem was an intimate place. My father was a rabbinical scholar, a dean at a Talmudic academy near where we lived. Mother was a housewife. We were two girls and three boys. Life was simple. No one told us not to speak with strangers. Strangers could be counted on to help. People lived modestly in the late 1950s and through the 1960s. There really wasn't much choice.

I attended the Horev Girls School on Strauss Street. When the weather was bad we'd take a bus. But that was an extravagance. I remember we always had the same driver. He actually got to know us by name.
Naturally, my parents could not afford a car. Very few people owned automobiles.

We had no telephone. In the event of an emergency one of our neighbors who was a physician — actually it was Prof. Ehrenfeld who taught at the medical school — had a telephone. My parents were on a waiting list for a phone and only got one after I was married at age 24.
The hardest economic times were during the 1950s. Though even in the 1960s life had few frills. We ate plenty of vegetables but seldom had any fruit. My father once went on a fundraising trip to London. When he came home he brought an apple which was served on the plane. We were thrilled and the entire family shared it.

Chocolate was also rare.

I remember that when my youngest brother was born, my parents got a washing machine which meant my mother didn't have to wash the diapers by hand. Of course, it was very expensive. I also remember that much earlier we got a refrigerator that was Israeli made.

Mom baked in an aluminum wonder pot – a si’ir peh-leh in Hebrew – on the stove top. We didn't have an oven.

When I was in high school there was a choice of five movie theatres — I liked the Smadar and the nearby café on the same block.

There were lots of cafes — and they were not expensive. Different cafes for different types. Atara on Ben Yehuda was for the movers and shakers. 

My father never went to any café, firstly because he was strictly Orthodox and it seemed frivolous and also because it just wasn't his lifestyle.

Of course, we had no television. There wasn't any.

I began working as a secretary at the medical school in Ein Kerem where the new Hadassah Hospital campus was located. To get there, I'd take a bus from near my house to a hitchhiking post and wait for someone driving to the campus. People would routinely stop and give others a lift which for some reason was called a 'tramp'. Most people got to work by tramp.

 This piece was first published in Israel My Glory