A 'New Settlement'? "New"? Really?

Here's the latest from Peace Now:

A new settlement in Sheikh Jarrah

On July 16, the Jerusalem regional planning committee is intended to discuss several plans for settlements within Palestinian neighbourhoods. Of those, 4 plans will be discussed for the Um Haroun neighbourhood (located within Sheikh Jarrah)...two of the plans include the demolition of homes of 5 Palestinian families.The two plans for 13 housing units in Sheikh Jarrah will be established on properties in which 5 Palestinian families currently reside. These properties are under a legal battle through which settlers seek the evacuation of these Palestinian families. Although the Palestinian families are legally regarded as protected tenants they reside in properties that prior to 1948 were Jewish owned, and the Israeli law enables Israeli citizens to return to properties that were owned by Jews prior to 1948...

The accompanying map:

First, Um Haroun neighborhood?

Or...

Nahalat Shimon (Hebrew: נחלת שמעון‎‎. lit. Simeon's Estate) is a Jewish religious neighborhood in East Jerusalem. Nahalat Shimon was founded in 1891 by Sephardic and Ashkenazi Jewish Kollels, to house poor Yemenite and Sephardi Jews.

Second, new?

Or... 

The cornerstone of the neighborhood was laid in 1890, near the Tomb of Simeon the Just....The land was purchased in 1890 and the first homes were built soon after, housing 20 impoverished families. In 1947, there were 100 Jewish homes in the neighborhood. In March 1948, the British ordered the residents to evacuate within two hours due to mounting Arab violence.

You don't believe they had to leave due to Arab-initiated violence, in contradiction to a UN resolution of November 29, 1947?

And where is the Nashashibi Quarter?

Three, and you thought UNESCO was bad for Jewish history and national identity?

Think again.  And think about Peace Now.

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Distending

Ma'ariv reports (in Hebrew) that another plot in the reclaimed Shimon HaTzaddik neighborhood, ethnically cleansed of its Jews by Arabs in January 1948, will be developed.

Here's a picture of the site (to the right) and an aerial photo identifying other areas in the neighborhood (to the left):

The plan is that a public parking lot, with proper vehicular access, be constructed.  It will take a few months for all to be in order but Jerusalem Municipal Council member Rabbi Yaakov Halperin (Torah Judaism) is confident all will be okay.

Maariv, of course, starts off the story on the theme of 'provocation' and 'expected demonstrations' proving that reporting is a secondary effort to either stirring things up or plain selling newspapers through sensationalism.

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Hadassah Convoy Massacre Memorial

Friday, April 8, 2011 at 10:30 AM:

If you demonstrate at the Shimon HaTzaddik neighborhood that you might refer to as Sheikh Jarrah, you can come early and identify as humanists with the memory of the slaughter by Arabs of over 70 Jews, all of them Hadassah Hospital workers who dispensed medicine and health services to Arabs up until their deaths.

Meeting point is at Highway 1 at the corner of the Leonardo Hotel, formerly the Olive Tree.

Eliada Bar-Shaul will act as guide.  In Hebrew.

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Alas, Don't Think It'll Be Published

My letter to NYT:-

Bernard Avishai, in interpreting leaked documents from the Palestinian Negotiating Teams ("A Plan for Peace That Still Could Be", Feb. 7) suggests that former Israel Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, in referring to Jewish property in the former Jordanian-occupied section of Jerusalem, had "implied, but did not say, that these neighborhoods had been inflamed by Jewish settlers" who had "moved into expropriated apartment blocks there".

Whether or not any Jew is guilty of "inflammation" by residing in the Jewish people's 3000-year old capital, where our Temples were and where still is the center of our religious, national cultural and political ethos, can be a matter of opinion but the apartments and houses he refers to were purchased and in many cases re-purchased from persons who had gained entrance to those properties as a result of an ethnic-cleansing operation in the city in 1947-1948. For 19 years, Jews were banned from residing in those neighborhoods. All those purchases were then subject to rigorous judicial review. Opinions and facts should never, even by an academic, be interchanged.

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The UN is Concerned

The UN is concerned:

Evictions and house demolitions are a growing humanitarian concern for..says the UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs (OCHA).

The consequences for families can be devastating: In addition to losing their homes, their main source of physical and economic security, families are faced with high legal bills, fines and charges, including the cost of their own eviction, OCHA says.

Was that about Jewish families? During the War of Independence in 1947 when Jewish families had to flee Shimon HaTzaddik neighborhood that became known, incorrectly, as Sheikh Jarrah, which was actually a nearby neighborhood? During the disengagement? At satellite outposts?

Nope.


That was about "Palestinians living in East Jerusalem".



Source

(Kippah tip: SR)


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