National Geographic Traveler Veers Off Track

The May issue of National Geographic Traveler magazine features an article by Michael Rosenfeld, “Jerusalem by the Book.” (Though the article is not available online, you can see the tearsheets on the Web site of the photographer.) The premise of the piece is summed up in the subtitle:

Toting a travel guide his parents wrote in the 1950s, a son revisits the city he knew well as a child — and discovers a new one along the way.

Unfortunately, Rosenfeld does not stick to the paths laid out in his parents’ book. When he ventures into territory liberated by Israel in 1967, the author steps into politics and outside the confines of journalistic accuracy. In the Old City:

I step through the door and into a spacious café. The owner serves me coffee, then stands in the center of the room, his arms outstretched…

We are on the border of the Jewish and Muslim Quarters, he tells me. “I am the UN for both of them.” It is an exaggeration, of course, but I notice some Jewish Israelis having coffee in this Arab shop. As it so often does here, the conversation turns to the situation. “Why you don’t tell your people the truth?” the shop owner asks. “Why I am not free? I am under occupation more than 42 years.”

Rosenfeld lets this assertion stand unanswered. He does not mention that, when Israel reunified Jerusalem, Israeli citizenship was offered to all residents of all religions. Most of the Arabs declined citizenship then, though many are availing themselves of it now. Even self-described “anti-occupation” blog +972 reports:

As an East Jerusalem resident, I am struck by a recent trend: many of my friends and acquaintances who hold Jerusalem identification cards — documents of permanent residency rather than Israeli citizenship — are quietly applying for and obtaining Israeli passports.

It’s not immediately clear why. Current residents of East Jerusalem — numbering over 350,000, or 38% of the city’s total population — already go about their daily lives, shop at Israeli malls, use Israeli services, frequent Israeli restaurants and bars, send their children to study at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, and receive Israeli social and health benefits. What does “upgrading their status” from East Jerusalem residents to citizens of Israel add? Why did East Jerusalem residents refuse the Israeli offer of citizenship in 1967, and why are they actively seeking to obtain it now, especially given that citizenship requires them to pledge the controversial oath of allegiance to the Israeli state?

Palestinians and their Jewish supporters demonstrate here every Friday afternoon, intent on stopping the displacement of Arab families, which they see as part of a plan to Judaize the Old City.

Religious and nonreligious Jews may meet in the public square, but they often seem uneasy in each other’s presence. It is one of the fault lines that runs through the bedrock of this holy city.

Later in the article…

Outwardly calm most of the time, the city still simmers with tension between Jews and Arabs.

And…

This, too, is Jerusalem, I think: still living through its age-old conflicts, still struggling to find an elusive peace.

And in the final paragraph…

…it is possible to believe that Jerusalem’s fault lines could remain submerged in bedrock. But I know they are there, waiting to have their inexorable impact, as they were in my parent’s day.

As anyone who’s been observing the Middle East lately well knows, tensions, fault lines and conflict have erupted in Cairo, Tripoli, Damascus, Baghdad, Tehran and other regional capitals in recent years, while Jerusalem — regardless of its multi-ethnic, multi-religious nature — has grown and prospered. Rosenfeld quotes a passage in his parents’ guidebook, feeling it appropriate:

Whose city is this? To which towering shade does it belong? Who among the million whose blood stained these ancient hills hold eternal lien on Jerusalem?

Omissions

Throughout the article, Rosenfeld leaves out important facts that would help the reader understand the true situation. Referring to an area near the Old City walls, he writes:

In 1951, when my parents wrote this book, this was no-man’s-land. You could get shot by a sniper perched on the Old City walls just for walking here.

It was a different world then, one still recovering from war. Some 30,000 Arabs had fled their homes in Jerusalem’s New City, which had been taken over by the victorious Israelis. Thousands of Jews from North Africa and the Middle East came here, giving the city a distinctively Eastern cast.

Although relatively overlooked, a large number of Jews — over 800,000 — became refugees during and after Israel’s war for independence. An overwhelming majority were driven from their homes in the Arab world, a result of anti-Jewish sentiment amplified by the war.

When he travels through the Old City, the author notes:

Since the Israelis took the city in 1967, they have been widening streets and even rebuilding one of Jerusalem’s oldest synagogues, the Hurva.

The implication is that the Hurva was in disrepair or ruin because it was so old. Rosenfeld neglects to inform the reader that the Hurva was intentionally destroyed by the Jordanians when they controlled the Old City. In fact, the CAMERA Backgrounder on the History of Jerusalem reports:

Fifty-eight synagogues — some hundreds of years old — were destroyed, their contents looted and desecrated. Some Jewish religious sites were turned into chicken coops or animal stalls. The Jewish cemetery on the Mount of Olives, where Jews had been burying their dead for over 2500 years, was ransacked; graves were desecrated; thousands of tombstones were smashed and used as building material, paving stones or for latrines in Arab Legion army camps. The Intercontinental Hotel was built on top of the cemetery and graves were demolished to make way for a highway to the hotel. The Western Wall became a slum area.