Palestinian Thugs Torch Joseph's Tomb (again)

In retaliation for the murder of a Jewish worshiper and the wounding of 5 others, last night at Joseph's Tomb, by official Palestinian Authority "policeman", dozens of Palestinians are rioting and burning down Joseph's Tomb in the middle of PA occupied Shechem/Nablus. (Israeli Radio, Channel B)

Preliminary Video, taken from Mount Grizim of the fire coming from the tomb minutes ago:



The murdered Jewish worshiper has been identified as 25 year old, Ben Yosef Livnat, the nephew of Minister of Culture and Sports Limor Livnat (Likud).

The JPost reports:

Livnat was married, a father of four and was a resident of Jerusalem. A 20-year-old man was injured in serious condition, suffering of an abdominal wound. He was airlifted to Bellinson Hospital in Petah Tikva where he underwent surgery. A 17-year-old youth was evacuated by a Magen David Adom Yarkon crew in moderate condition, suffering a wound to his shoulder. Another two individuals were injured in light condition. They did not require evacuation and received medical treatment on location. (JPost)

YNET interviewed one of the worshipers:

One of the Breslovers who was in the second car in the convoy and was lightly wounded told Ynet: "We arrived at the tomb like on many occasions in the past. Near the tomb we saw a spikes chain. One of the guys jumped out of the car and moved it aside.

"At this point a uniformed Palestinian police officer with a Kalashnikov in a jeep woke his colleagues up and they started firing into the air…I was in the front seat. We started driving fast in the direction of the tomb; we got out of the vehicles and kissed the tomb.

"When we got back to the vehicles the police shot at the vehicles, they were screaming 'Allahu Akbar'. ["Allah, The god of Islam, is great" -- the Islamic battle cry traditionally screamed before massacring infidels] It was crazy, they were shooting to kill. I screamed at the driver to drive out of there quickly. When we got to Har Bracha we attended to the wounded." (Ynet)

Haaretz was quick to write:

"The main problem is that they [the Israelis] entered the city without coordination," said Jibril al-Bakri, the Palestinian governor of Nablus.

I thought the main problem was the PA police yelling "Allahu Akbar" and then opening fire at unarmed Jewish worshipers.

Silly me.

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Wherever I am, my blog turns towards Eretz Yisrael טובה הארץ מאד מאד

Muqata and NYT on Kever Yosef

Over Sukkot, while visiting the Samaritan community on Har Greizim, we took a slight detour to "Mitzpeh Yosef" -- the lookout over Kever Yosef/Joseph's Tomb in Shechem.

View from Above -- Har Kabir on the left, Elon Moreh on the right,
with Shechem down below.

The view of Kever Yosef...to the bottom left.

Zooming in now...building in the center left.

Zooming in even more.

This past weekend, the NY Times rather accurately portrayed the state of affairs of the difficulties for Jews to pray at the site.

Crammed into a dozen buses and escorted by the Israeli military, the Jewish pilgrims slid quietly along deserted streets throughout the early hours of a recent morning while the residents of this Palestinian city, a militant stronghold ruled until recently by armed gangs, slept in their beds.

The destination was the holy place known as Joseph’s Tomb, a tiny half-derelict stone compound in the heart of a residential district that many Jews believe is the final burial place of the son of Jacob, the biblical patriarch.

The first group arrived around midnight. Rushing through the darkness into the tomb, they crowded around the rough mound of the grave and started reciting Psalms by the glow of their cellphones, not waiting for the portable generator to power up a crude fluorescent light.

They were praying to be infused with some of the righteousness of Joseph, as well as to be able to return. A gaping hole in the domed, charred roof of the tomb left it partly open to the sky, a reminder of the turmoil of the recent past.

Read it all here.

It brought back memories of my last trip to Kever Yosef, this past Chanuka.


Wherever I am, my blog turns towards Eretz Yisrael טובה הארץ מאד מאד

My Return to Kever Yosef.

The last time I visited Kever Yosef (Joseph's tomb) in Shechem was right before the start of the current Intifada. Security was tight, Palestinian policemen snarled at us, but there was a constant Jewish presence there studying at the yeshiva adjacent to Kever Yosef. 3 days later it was all destroyed.

For years I have been trying to return, but it never worked out. I drove twice to Itamar, only to be told that due to security threats, the planned incursion was cancelled.

No formal method ever works to get to Kever Yosef; it's a combination of proteciza, luck, being at the right place at the right time, and siyata dishmaya (help from heaven).

But it never worked out. I drove at midnight once to the Tapuach junction, only to face a mass of Bresolver Chassidim pushing and shoving to get on the only bus. Rather than push and shove, I went home.

But Monday night, things worked out differently.

Not willing to push through the throng of chassidim, my group of friends arranged via a friend some "special" treatment. Parking at Tapuach junction, a high ranking IDF officer ran over to us and gave a hug. He invited me and 3 others to join him in HIS car, and he personally drove us through all he IDF checkpoints. North from Tapuach...going on road 60 through Chawara...up till the Har Bracha intersection.

He stopped his car, and we got out -- only to be introduced to an ever higher ranking officer. He smiled and introduced himself as the commander of the roadblock, and asked us our names. He repeated over and over again how lucky we were to be going to Kever Yosef, and how wonderful it is for the Jewish people to have representatives going to pray there.

Soldier after soldier smiled at us, shook our hands, and asked us to pray on their behalf as well.

After a few minutes, a packed bus showed up and was stopped at the roadblock. Our smiling commander told the bus driver he had 4 additional guest passengers, and we managed to get on the bus...

5 minutes later, we were stopped at a checkpoint going into Shechem, where we waited for our military escort. Trust me, going into Shechem makes my trip to Hevron last summer with Treppenwitz and Psychotoddler look like a stroll in the park. Forget Beirut...Shechem is a whole different universe.

IDF APCs, armored Hummers, Jeeps, military ambulances, and even tanks were part of the security detail for our entrance to Kever Yosef.

Snaking through the deserted 1:30 AM streets of Shechem, my heart was racing with excitement at the thought of finally returning to Kever Yosef.

We arrived, and were quickly ordered into the remains of the compound. Soldiers were everywhere, aiming their rifles up high, ready to shoot at any danger.

To get the jist of the experience, I put together the following video clip.

Enjoy!



The video can also be seen on youtube here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NZn1JHHxQJI

Chanuka Sameach!

Jameel.

PS: Later today I'll explain about my previous question, of מי לה' אלי...



Wherever I am, my blog turns towards Eretz Yisrael

Jerusalem: Who is the Real Mother?

Who is the real mother? The one who claims all of Yerushalayim, or the one who has no problem cutting it in half?

Report: Israel and the Palestinians have agreed that the Temple Mount as well as other parts of the Old City in Jerusalem will be under Jordanian control as part of a future peace deal, a Palestinian daily reported on Monday.

We saw what a wonderful job the Jordanians did when they controlled the Old City of Jerusalem from 1948-1967.

Major damage was suffered while the Mount was controlled by Jordan between the 1948 Arab-Israeli War and 1967, with Jordanians using the gravestones from the cemetery for construction of roads and army latrines, including gravestones from millennia-old graves. The late King Hussein permitted the construction of the Intercontinental Hotel at the summit of the Mount of Olives together with a road that cut through the cemetery which destroyed hundreds of Jewish graves, some of which were from the First Temple Period.[1][2][3] Some fifty thousand Jewish graves out of a total seventy thousand were destroyed or defaced during the nineteen years of Jordanian rule.[4] After the Six-Day War, the Israelis painstakingly repatriated as many of the surviving gravestones as possible (from Wikipedia)

Or here's what PsychoToddler wrote when visiting his Great Grandfather's grave on the Mount of Olives:

Many of the graves look new. This is partially because the cemetery is still in active use and new graves are being dug. It is also because the Jordanians overturned many of the graves during their occupation of the area between 1948 and 1967. My great-grandfather’s headstone was one of those that were rededicated after ‘67. How do we know where it was? First, because my Aunt Sara and her husband visited the grave before the Jordanians took over. And second, because the Chevra Kadisha (Burial Society) kept meticulous records going back hundreds of years.


On our way over we passed numerous graves that were still in a state of disrepair. My cousin told me that there were many that either could not be identified or that didn’t have family to rebuild them. In fact we passed one “mass grave” that was constructed from the headstones of multiple unidentifiable graves.

I was told that the Arabs had looted the cemetery, and that the marble headstones were used to make toilets.

Then again, why go back to the ancient history of 1948? Let's see how well the Palestinians are taking care of Kever Yosef, (Jospeh's tomb in Shechem/Nabuls) which was specifically mentioned by the historic Oslo accords...




Or how about what Arutz Sheva's report from the visitors to Kever Yosef over Chol HaMoed a few days ago...

Joseph's Tomb is Shechem's Garbage Dump

(IsraelNN.com) Shechem's Arabs have turned Joseph's Tomb into a garbage dump, Jews who visited the site during Chol Hamoed Sukkot discovered. The group of visitors, which included Rabbi Shmuel Eliyahu of Tzfat, prayed at Joseph's Tomb with IDF permission on the second day of Sukkot and was shocked to find that the holy site was in ruins.

Arabs have smashed the domes that capped the structure and the grave's marker. More disturbing, however, was the discovery of piles of freshly dumped, smoldering garbage. The walls of the structure were covered with soot, and it was clear that this was the result of recent burning.

In the past, local Arabs claimed that Joseph's Tomb was a holy site for Muslims.

So the bottom line is; the best way to ensure the desecration and destruction of holy sites in Jerusalem is to give control of them to Jordanians or Palestinians.

Thanks Ehud.

Wherever I am, my blog turns towards Eretz Yisrael

Almost made it to Kever Yosef last night.

This picture of Kever Yosef in Shechem, taken around the time of WWI by a British soldier is more interesting in what's missing, than what you see. Note the almost total absence of Arab homes.


This is the way I remember Kever Yosef...the last I time I saw it, 3 days before the IDF abandoned it under fire.


This is the way it looked after the IDF abandoned it, and an Arab mob burned everything (as they usually do to Jewish holy sites and Jewish cemeteries when they have the option)


Last night had all the ingredients for a perfect Muqata Blog Posting:

1. Late at night
2. Going to Kever Yosef
3. Unpredictable circumstances
4. Lots of craziness on the way

Unfortunately, after spending hours trying to get there, bypassing various IDF and police checkpoints, avoiding the Breslover nutcases trying to get on a bus, and driving through the peaceful Hamas village of Chawara just north of Shechem...I gave up and drove home.

We even made it to the famous IDF base, "Base 3"...but because of totally evil and pathetic Israeli policement, we missed the bus by a couple of minutes.

Had the police:

1. Let us through as they should have, since we had authorization (Dayeinu)
2. Not lied to us and led us on a wild goose chase. (Dayeinu)

We would have gotten to the bus with an hour to spare.

Rafi G gives his description of last night over here though he didn't make it in either.

Spoke to a friend this morning who DID make it there. He said the reasons I wasn't zocheh to get to Kever Yosef last night were:

1. Didn't go to the mikva first.
2. Didn't go with him at 2:00 AM.
3. I'm too square, and I should have ignored the policeman who had no reason to lie or prevent me from going on the road the way I planned to.

Don't worry, I haven't given up, and hope to try again soon. (And then the posting well definitely live up to your expectations!)

PS: Vote for the Muqata in the JIB awards! (JIBAwards.com). Only 30 more votes in each category would make the difference! You must know someone to ask...and officemate, roommate, someone...right? You may think that asking like this is silly, but when Arutz Sheva asks all their readers (40,000 daily readers, most of whom, have no clue what a blog is) to automatically vote for "their" bloggers...then it can't hurt to ask for some additional help...

Wherever I am, my blog turns towards Eretz Yisrael