Jerusalem project reveals how Jews lived 2,000 years ago

DANIEL K. EISENBUD

Apart from a replica of the Madaba Map, nine other mosaics will illustrate the stories of people who lived and worked there during Byzantine times.

Housing and Construction Minister Yoav Galant (center) tours the Cardo section of the Jewish Quarter on Wednesday morning. Photo By: AVI HAYUN

More than 1,500 years after Jewish life flourished in the Cardo section of the Old City’s Jewish Quarter, renderings of ancient markets mounted on mosaics, discovery of a Byzantine arch and reconstruction of a bombed-out synagogue are breathing new life into the historically rich area.

The Cardo, which stretches north to south from Damascus Gate to David Street, dates to the sixth century CE and is depicted on the Madaba Map, a part of a floor mosaic discovered in 1884 in a Byzantine church in Madaba, Jordan.

The beautification project will celebrate the 50th anniversary of the reunification of Jerusalem.

The endeavor was initiated several months ago, but it was only made officially public on Wednesday.

The revitalization is being spearheaded by the Company for the Reconstruction and Development of the Jewish Quarter and the Tourism Ministry, with aid from Jerusalem Affairs Minister Ze’ev Elkin, the Jerusalem Foundation, the Jerusalem Municipality and the Israel Antiquities Authority.

To mark the capital’s half-century milestone, Pini Refael, manager of education and tours for the reconstruction and development company, said it was decided to focus on the area’s historic culture and art.

Apart from a replica of the Madaba Map, nine other mosaics will illustrate the stories of people who lived and worked there during Byzantine times.

“We are going to renew the Cardo by creating special mosaics that are going to show people what life was like here 1,500 years ago,” Refael said, speaking near two recently completed mosaics.

“We’re also going to recreate nine shops to illustrate that time.”

Refael said the shops will match mosaics of ancient jewelry, fabric, fruit, vegetable, animal and ceramics stores that once lined the ancient street.

“All the mosaics will be a replica of this period of life,” he said. “And the shops will only sell things from that time.”

The project commenced three months ago and is scheduled to be completed by mid-2017. The mosaics featured in the Cardo are part of a far more expansive project to build many more mosaics throughout the quarter, Refael said.

Renowned Israeli artist David Harel was present on Wednesday morning, along with Construction Minister Yoav Galant, to reveal the two completed mosaics. The colorful pieces depict ancient fabric and fruit and vegetable shops and are based on Harel’s oil paintings.

Hemeticulously researched the era he would be reproducing and later submitted the paintings to artists at Elon Mossaic, at Kibbutz Elon in the North, to reconstruct them with stones.

“I studied all the academic research from that time and got the exact details,” Harel said, noting that it took five months to complete seven of the nine portraits.

“I make a drawing, and it then takes about six weeks to complete each painting. Then I bring them to Elon Mosaic. I am painting many different shops – from spice, jewelry and food to ceramics – everything as it was 1,500 years ago.”

“I am very proud of this project because it is from our history, and my work will live for thousands of years,” he said.

Galant emphasized the Cardo’s historic importance and said the mosaics – along with a nearby, recently excavated Byzantine arch – will be seen by millions of tourists who walk through the area every year.

“This is a great [opportunity] to show all visitors – tourists, Jews, non-Israelis – what was happening here 2,000 years ago, how Jews lived, how they made their living in this area and to describe the [ancient] open market,” he said.

Galant, a former commander of the IDF’s Southern Command, discussed reconstruction of the nearby Tiferet Yisrael Synagogue, which he called long overdue. The synagogue is now being actively resurrected.

“This synagogue, together with the Hurva Synagogue, were destroyed by the Jordanians in one of the crucial battles in 1948, just days after the establishment of the Jewish state, and it took us another 19 years before we arrived back and recaptured this area,” he said.

“We have to make sure that all the Jewish symbols – all the synagogues, all the Jewish traditions and whatever symbolized Jewish life in Jerusalem – will be emphasized and will be greater than it was.”

“It is very simple,” Galant said.

“We cannot allow, under a free and democratic Israeli state – 50 years after we arrived back to the Jewish Quarter to the Kotel and Jerusalem – that such destruction will remain a scar on the life and prestige of the Jewish Quarter.”

When asked his opinion of last month’s UNRWA vote ignoring Jewish ties to the Temple Mount, Galant expressed palpable dismay.

“Even if you repeat a lie a thousand times, it doesn’t make it true,” he said. “I condemn this effort to try to twist history for political reasons. It won’t work – not on the political side, and definitely not on the historical side.”

FROM NEW YORK TO PARIS: ANTISEMITISM AT UNESCO

SHIMON SAMUELS

A general view of the UNESCO headquarters in Paris. (photo credit: REUTERS)

This week, 58 of the 195 member-States of UNESCO convened for two weeks as its 205th biennial Executive Board. They will consider reports on budgets, programs, failures and achievements. They will barter, horse-trade within and beyond their regional blocs.

Some will be intimidated, others will market their votes for supporting electoral candidates across the UN system. But above all, they will pull every lever to humiliate and demean the Jewish state.

The Simon Wiesenthal Center in 1992 organized UNESCO’s first ever international conference on “Containing Antisemitism.” In 1993, then director-general Federico Mayor – so proud of his Jewish antecedents – came to Los Angeles to open the center’s Museum of Tolerance.

In 2003, his successor, Koichiro Matsuura, opened the second conference on “Containing Antisemitism” at its Paris headquarters and visited the museum a few months later.

In 2012, director-general Irina Bokova followed in their footsteps in a very different atmosphere. “Palestine” had entered UNESCO in November 2011 with a voracious appetite for mayhem.

The Simon Wiesenthal Center, in its capacity as “associate partner” to UNESCO, fought the gathering storm through its exhibition, “People, Book, Land: The 3,500 Year Relationship of the Jewish People with the Holy Land.” Postponed, vetted, canceled, it finally opened at UNESCO with huge Jewish and gentile support in 2014.
Thus had begun a theft campaign of the Jewish heritage to validate “Palestine,” and more resolutions to demonize Israel than – among the voting states – Iran, Iraq, Myanmar, Venezuela and Zimbabwe all combined together. These have led to a remorseless antisemitic politicization of UNESCO.

The current director-general, Audrey Azoulay, deserves plaudits for her intent to depoliticize this UN agency. Her opening of a symposium on educating against antisemitism last week, at UN headquarters in New York – the city with the largest Jewish population in the world – was a courageous challenge.

Her attempts to postpone votes on antisemitic resolutions, such as those that call for the “de-Judaization” of the Temple Mount in Jerusalem, the Cave of the Patriarchs in Hebron and even the Western Wall, are tactical measures, but not a strategy to cure UNESCO of its antisemitism disease.

From UN headquarters in New York, the perpetrators have now returned to UNESCO headquarters in Paris.

We count on the director-general to keep the spirit of her symposium to combat antisemitism. She must use her authority to approach decision-makers and, as minimum, demand balance: the Temple Mount must always accompany its Muslim name of “Haram al-Sharif” (The Noble Sanctuary), the Western Wall of the Temple always acknowledged as Jewish – a balance that would be welcomed in the optics of other conflicts.

This will require an in-house education in 3,500 years of Jewish history.

An understanding that “postponement” of antisemitic resolutions is only tactical. They should never even be tabled.

The day that Azoulay was inaugurated, I left the ceremony with some 15 Ambassadors and UNESCO officials. Number 3 in the hierarchy ran after me. In earshot of his colleagues, he shouted: “Shimon, are you now happy to have your Jew as director-general?”

I told him, “We are delighted that we will have an accomplished [director-general].”

“Ah, yes,” he responded, “but you can no longer call us antisemites and can continue to kill children!”

The listeners stood in embarrassed suspended animation. They now understood what is antisemitism.

The author is Permanent Observer of the Simon Wiesenthal Center to UNESCO.

GRAPEVINE: REMEMBERING BERNADOTTE

GREER FAY CASHMAN

The Swedish government refused to believe that Bernadotte had been the victim of a terrorist attack and blamed the Israel government.
Ambassadör Magnus Hellgren / Foto: Kristian Pohl, Regeringskansliet

Swedish Ambassador Magnus Hellgren will next week host a memorial evening for Count Folke Bernadotte, who, as vice chairman of the Swedish Red Cross during the Second World War, successfully negotiated the release of several thousand prisoners from Nazi concentration camps and secured their transport on what history has recorded as the White Buses.

As noble a mission as the White Buses had been, the effort was surrounded by much controversy, including a debate among historians as to whether Bernadotte had initially refused to rescue Jews and had given priority only to Scandinavians. Some historians say that he was pressured by the Danes to organize the release of Danish Jews from Theresienstadt, but others say that at no time did he discriminate against Jewish prisoners. Many eyewitnesses, including the World Jewish Congress representative in Stockholm, testified on his behalf.

On May 20, 1948, less than a week after David Ben-Gurion proclaimed the creation of the State of Israel, Bernadotte, who was a grandson of King Oscar II of Sweden, was appointed United Nations mediator in Palestine. He was the first official UN mediator. A comprehensive plan that he proposed included the whole or part of the Negev as Arab territory, the whole or part of the Western Galilee as Jewish territory, and Jerusalem as Arab territory with municipal autonomy for the Jewish community, coupled with guarantees of protection for all the holy places.

This did not sit well with the leadership of the newly established state, and demonstrated that Bernadotte had not properly studied the history and traditions of the region, especially with regard to Jerusalem. The proposal was rejected, and Bernadotte came up with an alternative, placing Jerusalem, which was a problematic area, under UN control, with separate community autonomy for its Arab and Jewish residents.

GERMANY’S BEST-SELLING PAPER CALLS FOR END OF IRAN TRADE TO PROTECT ISRAEL

BENJAMIN WEINTHAL

“It is high time to ask oneself where the money that Iran is earning by this trade is going,” Dr. Schuster said.

Supporters of Maryam Rajavi, president-elect of the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI), attend a rally in Villepinte, near Paris, France, June 30, 2018.. (photo credit: REUTERS/REGIS DUVIGNAU)

 In an eye-popping commentary on Monday, Germany’s top-selling paper Bild urged businesses to stop trade with the Islamic Republic of Iran because of its terrorism and the mullah regime’s goal to obliterate the Jewish state.

“This Iran cannot at this time be an ally,” Bild’s foreign policy editor Julian Röpcke wrote. “Neither in the fight against terrorism, nor as as oil supplier or trade partner.” Röpcke, who reports on the Syrian war, termed Iran’s missile launches into Syria as a “message of terror. Because they carry the meter-long inscriptions ‘Death to Israel and ‘Death to the USA’ — and that is deadly serious for the mullahs.”
“Iran’s rockets were not fired against the Islamic State, rather against those who stand in the way of the corrupt regime in Tehran,” Röpcke wrote. “Against those who do not want to stand inactively by when Iran’s leader again and again propagates the ‘extermination’ of Israel.” Bild has a daily circulation of 1,580,977.

Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps said on Monday that it launched six missiles at paramilitary groups located close to the Euphrates River in Syria.

Iran’s clerical regime claims the missile attack was in response to a terrorism attack on a military parade in the Iranian city of Ahvaz last month. The attack killed 25 people in Ahvaz and injured an additional 60 people. Bild’s commentary is believed to be first instance in the best-selling paper of a call for the complete end of business deals with the Islamic Republic of Iran.

German Chancellor Angela Merkel and her foreign minister Heiko Maas are supportive of the European Union’s “special purpose vehicle (SPV)” to permit financial transactions with Iran. The SPV is designed to bust robust US sanctions on Iran’s energy and financial system. Germany’s federal government provides credit insurance guarantees to companies who wish to conduct business with Iran.

On Saturday, the US embassy to Berlin tweeted a quote from the head of the Central Council of Jews in Germany, Dr. Josef Schuster, who said: “I endorse an immediate end to any economic relations with Iran. Any trade with Iran means a benefit for radical and terrorist forces, and a hazard and destabilization for the region.” Merkel and Maas, who said he entered politics “because of Auschwitz,” have ignored Schuster’s plea.

“Courageous honest leadership by Dr. Schuster,” Rabbi Abraham Cooper, the associate dean of the Simon Wiesenthal Center, told The Jerusalem Post. “Chancellor Merkel continues business with a Jew-hating Ayatollah who bankrolls terrorism around the world and threatens 6 million plus Jews in Israel.”

Chancellor Angela Merkel arrives in Israel this week for a joint-cabinet consultation with Israel’s government. She has defended the Iran nuclear deal that Israel vehemently rejects because it allows Tehran a patient pathway to a nuclear weapon.

Schuster, who represents nearly 100,000 Jews in Germay, told the Post in August: “The Central Council of Jews in Germany has been criticizing German-Iranian trade relations for a long time. It seems paradoxical that Germany – as a country that is said to have learned from its horrendous past and which has a strong commitment to fight antisemitism – is one of the strongest economic partners of a regime that is blatantly denying the Holocaust and abusing human rights on a daily basis. Besides, Germany has included Israel’s security as a part of its raison d’etre. As a matter of course this should exclude doing business with a fanatic dictatorship that is calling for Israel’s destruction, pursuing nuclear weapons and financing terror organizations around the world.

“It is high time to ask oneself where the money that Iran is earning by this trade is going,” Schuster said. “Furthermore, we witness demonstrations in Iran of people that are yearning for freedom and equality. We should stand up for these people who are risking their lives because they are asking for rights that we here can fortunately take for granted.”

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