On April 18, 2018, local time, Jerusalem, the Israeli people commemorated Independence Day and celebrated the 70th anniversary of the founding of the country. Visual China figure
As Israel celebrates its 70th anniversary, the United States will move its embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. The media hype that Trump has changed the middle east. In fact, nothing has changed, but it is a symbolic gesture of acknowledging the status quo. There has been no change in the birth of a State, the reduction of Palestinians to second-class citizens on their own land, nor the naming of palestinian States, except for a few symbols — a flag in the United Nations, sporadic foreign embassies, members or observers of international organizations, claimed territory encompassing the West Bank and gaza strip, and the capital in East Jerusalem, all of which are in fact under Israeli occupation. The Palestinians retreated again and again, from not accepting unidentified Un-State Resolution 181 in 1947, dreaming of restoring Arab-led Ottoman Palestine, to accepting Resolution 181 after the Six-Day War, wanting to reclaim the occupied lands of the first (1948) and third (1967) Middle East wars, to wanting to urge Israel to abide by UN Resolution 242 under the Camp David Agreement (1978), until the signing of the Oslo Accords (1993), Unilaterally established a state on 12 per cent of the territory allocated by resolution 181, but wherever it retreated, it was ultimately in vain. All the Palestinians can do is to recall and tell, and the previous generation will pass on to the next generation, and word of mouth will be a helpless struggle. If we do not submit to Israel's official view of history, only by remembering the past will the word "Palestine" not disappear into the desert of time.
despair. Reading an article that painstakingly searches for extremist ideas in the text, I cannot help but ask: Instead of digging through the roots of terrorism in the words of the Quran, why not confront the despair of the Palestinians? Don't forget, Israel's first Prime Minister Ben Gurion and sixth Prime Minister Beguin were the first generation of Middle Eastern terror gurus, who led the anti-British and conservative armies Haganah and Irgun, systematically developed terrorist tactics and strategies that inspired civilian resistance and terror movements around the world. Why not look for traces of terrorism in the Old Testament? Today's world has entered the "era of counter-terrorism", and the United States, Europe, Russia, and Turkey must first call it "counter-terrorism" before they use force against other countries, no matter what their purpose. "Counter-terrorism" turns into a magic wand overnight, and once it is in hand, it is the truth in its hands, and there is no doubt about it. Who else would listen to the heavens of the Empty Desert and help a scattered Semitic people? Only the precision strikes of drones from the air are the language that the stigmatized horror country can understand?
70 years ago, Jews celebrated the establishment of the State of Israel
The birth of a nation
Having been doing Jewish studies for several years, I have always wanted to go to Israel to see that there must be something special about this "man-made" country. An opportunity to exchange with the Hebrew University of Jerusalem finally came true. I didn't fly directly from Beijing to Israel, but via Europe, and after a short stay in the Netherlands, I flew from Amsterdam to Tel Aviv, just over four hours.
First, excessive prevention
Israel was truly different, and people learned it before they arrived. Early in the morning I rushed to Schipol International Airport in Amsterdam and hurried to find the el al counter, only to be startled by what I saw. Unlike other check-in counters, there are no passengers here, only heavily armed riot police, crowding the passenger aisles. Inside the security circle stood a few Israeli plainclothes men, looking me up and down with puzzled eyes. Knowing that I was on this flight to Tel Aviv, he "politely" invited me to a trained plainclothes for an interrogation. This middle-aged man had a cunning eye and "interrogated" me for ten minutes, asking me about my trip to Israel, who I met, contact information, and what the purpose was. I also asked who I had been to, who I had contact with in the Netherlands, which restaurant I had stayed in, etc. I was even asked if I had revealed Israel's intentions to the hotel attendant in the past, and whether the waiter might have put something in his luggage when I left the room, which was almost paranoid. I couldn't ask any more questions, so I released my checked baggage and stamped a safety stamp on my boarding pass. I felt like a passenger rather than a suspect again.
When we arrived at the boarding gate, we saw a special police officer with live ammunition, and there was also a blast iron house for handling explosives. As soon as the ground crew saw me, their eyes lit up, and they did not hesitate to take me away to a basement. I felt guilty again, and although I couldn't figure out why, I was inexplicably weak-hearted. It turned out that they found a laptop in the luggage and had to open the bag for inspection. I was full of doubts, why did they know that this was my luggage as soon as I showed my face? Were there no other passengers on this plane? After entering the waiting hall, I realized that all the passengers arrived early, mostly Jewish, belonging to different travel groups, and I was the only individual passenger. Unexpectedly, the inspection was not over, and all the passengers' hand luggage was opened again and carefully examined. From the huge glass wall of the terminal building, the workers who loaded li at the airport had to be repeatedly checked every time they approached the plane, which was really appalling, but the heart was also more balanced. Not yet in Israel, already a little regretful, this trip is uncertain?
Second, the place name is doubtful
Flew to Tel Aviv and everything went smoothly. This is a very beautiful country, blue sea and clouds, the sky is bright. It was a cold winter in January, but it was like a summer scenery, and the local temperature was as high as 27 °C. When walking along the seashore, I saw people playing in the water, a wave of rough waves crashing into the huge reef behind them, breaking the waves, and setting up a rainbow of seven colors in the morning light. A few days before the meeting in Jerusalem, I decided to explore Israel by car. When I was in the United States, I heard that the Israeli car rental was ridiculously cheap, and when I went to the Hertz car rental company, the price was really far from the United States, which was very tempting. Also rented GPS satellite positioning, which can be navigated directly to Jerusalem. The distance is not far, an hour and a half to the city of Yeyes. In fact, the entire territory of Israel is only more than 20,000 square kilometers, which is much larger than the territory of Beijing. The place names you see along the way are familiar and can be found almost all in the Bible. At each exit on the highway, the prominent place name of the green traffic sign is reminiscent of the tragic story of an ancient Hebrew people in the Old Testament. Driving all the way down, I became more and more convinced that it had been a Jewish homeland since ancient times. But a small technical glitch made me realize that the truth is not so simple. Entering the city of Jerusalem, I searched for "King David Road" (King David Road) to stay in the hotel, repeatedly entered the English place name on the GPS, but the instrument did not recognize, so I had to get out of the car and ask for directions. A zealous man told me that this road was not called King David's Road, but was originally an Arab place name and had nothing to do with David. When I entered the Arabic place name she wrote to me, the GPS accepted it smoothly.
This little thing made me hard to let go, so I asked a history professor at the Hebrew University who told me the ins and outs of the matter. After the establishment of the State of Israel, the government established a "Israel Place - its Name Committee", changing most of the Arab place names to Place names in the Jewish Bible or with Zionist overtones, in order to reconstruct the national geography, strengthen the connection between the Zionist state and the land, and provide legitimacy for the establishment of the State of Israel, so that the people can remember the tragic history of their ancestors for generations. The Jews had left the land for more than 1,300 years, only to change their historical memory and make the Arabs accept the fact of the Jewish occupation. There is also a special history of King David Road, No. 23 of this street, there is a sky-high hotel, called The King David Hotel, which is not only the first luxury hotel in Yes City, but also a historical site, and a state guesthouse that receives foreign dignitaries. Tourists stay here to revisit history, which was once a milestone in Israel's military history, but also a historical landmark of modern terrorism.
This photo of the explosion of the King David Hotel was published in the Jerusalem Post in 1946.
Thirdly, the indiscriminate pursuit of terrorism
In 1916, in order to insert a knife into the hinterland of the Ottoman Empire, the British instigated the Great Arab Uprising and promised to restore the former glory of the Arab Empire. The Ottoman Turks were eventually defeated and lost large territories in the Middle East and North Africa. After the war, the British reneged on their word and joined the French in dividing up Arabia and undermining Arab unity. The British held Palestine in their hands, called the "mandate", and actually made the dream of the medieval Crusades come true, and the Christians occupied the holy city and built a bridgehead in the heart of the pagan world.
As early as the end of the 19th century, the Zionist movement was in full swing, and the number of Jews immigrating to Palestine was increasing day by day. The Jewish population has risen from 3% during the Ottoman period (until 1918) to 32% during the British Mandate (until 1948) in just 30 years. The demographics of Palestine have changed dramatically, and the conflict between Muslims, Christians and Jews has been raging. The British Trusteeship Authority realized that the situation was out of control, regretted the promise of "Palestine as Jewish homeland" in exchange for Jewish gold dollars in World War I, and began to tighten the quota for Jewish visas. But the Jews had a piece of Paper, The Balfour Declaration, which would have allowed the British to be treacherous. The Jewish community wanted to impress Britain by going to war, but as soon as World War I ended, the British government disbanded the Palestinian Jewish Legion. When the veterans returned home, they formed a defensive force, the Haganah (meaning "defense"), to defend themselves against Arab raids on the ghetto. Britain did not recognize its legitimacy, and the Defence Forces had to relegate to the position of paramilitary illegal organizations. After the war, British trusteeship policy gradually turned to the Arabs, competing with Germany to buy Arabs, and the snubbed Jews regarded the British as enemies and pointed violence at the trusteeship authorities.
The Belfort Declaration was an open pledge by the British government to endorse the establishment of a Jewish state in Palestine, and was the first declaration by a major country in the world to formally support the return of Jews to Palestine. On 2 November 1917, British Foreign Secretary A.J. Belfort sent a letter to L.W. Rothschild, Vice-President of the Zionist Union of Britain. The letter came to be known as the Belfort Declaration.
In the late 1930s, extremists within Haganah, dissatisfied with leader Ben Gurion's strategy of riding the wall, decided to break with the British and pulled a small group of people to form a new army called Irgun (Italy" National Army), with the goal of establishing a Jewish state across Palestine and Transjordan. When World War II broke out, Gurion's Haganah sided with the British side, hoping to help Britain defeat the Nazis and liberate European Jews. As a result, the attitudes of Palestinian Jews toward Britain diverged radically, and a more extreme armed faction, LEHI (meaning "Israeli Freedom Fighters"), led by Avraham Stern, was also known as the Stern Gang. It advocated the resistance of the United Germans to the British, the restoration of the ancient Jewish kingdom of 2500 years ago, the use of European anarchism, assassinations, bombings and kidnappings, and even the British minister to the Middle East, Sir Moyne, died tragically under the black guns of the Stern Gang. After the end of World War II, three underground military organizations rose up to unite against the British, forced them to accept European Jewish refugees who had poured into Palestine, ended the trusteeship, and the bombing of the King David Hotel, which shocked the world.
The King David Hotel was originally an I-shaped 6-storey building, with a narrow main building connecting the north and south wings, the British Trusteeship Government Office, the British Military Headquarters in Trans-Jordan and Palestine, and the Military Police and Police Department Crime Investigation Division, all located in the south wing and part of the main building area. The remaining guest rooms are used by dignitaries and dignitaries, rich merchants and tycoons to meet guests, which can be described as the heart of Palestine. Blowing it up would be tantamount to storming down the Petronas Twin Towers on 9/11. In July 1946, Irgun leader Menachem Begin and Haganah leader Gurion planned the bombing. Dressed as Arab waiters, Irgun's team brought in seven milk vats, filled with more than 700 pounds of TNT explosives, from the hotel's kitchen, and pushed them into the basement of the South Wing. Then, the switchboard of the hotel received a call from a woman saying that there was a bomb to be evacuated. Beckyn issued this warning to reduce casualties, but the operators did not believe it and often received threatening phone calls. As a result, the entire south wing collapsed, killing 91 people and injuring 46 others. The 28 dead were British, 41 Arabs, and 17 Jews. Historians call it the worst terrorist attack of the 20th century, the classic case of modern terrorism. Afterwards, Gurion shirked the blame on Begin and publicly denounced Irgun's atrocities. Realizing that trusteeship was no longer viable, the British handed it over to the United Nations, which authorized arabs and Jews to establish separate states. Gurion became Israel's first prime minister, and Beguin was the 6th. He is the deserving originator of terrorism, but Beckyn prefers to call himself an anti-terrorism expert. Many years later, when U.S. troops raided an Al-Qaida training camp in Afghanistan, they found a copy of Beguin's memoir, "The Revolt," which bin Laden read to learn how to move from underground terrorism to international politics.
4. Confession of Jerusalem
The holy city of Jerusalem is spectacular, built on rolling hills with no end in sight. Each hill holds up a huge complex of buildings, and Christian churches, synagogues and mosques are scattered like scales. From afar, I saw the golden dome of The Dome of the Rock, a landmark of the city of Yah, and knew I was going to enter the city. Originally speeding on the highway, I just turned a corner, but I had already entered the dome of the city of David. In the ancient alley of the thousand-year-old city, my car was sandwiched between the narrow arcades, and I couldn't retreat. A young Arab boy came and asked me what religion I believed, probably to identify non-Jews, before agreeing to take me out of David's labyrinth and give a few shekels (Israeli currency) rights as a reward. The city makes people feel that time and space are intertwined, history and reality, as if they are separated from each other.
Holy City of Jerusalem. The pilgrimage sites of the three major denominations of Judaism, Christianity and Muslimism are distributed in their respective districts. Religious terraces with very different styles are squeezed into the cramped space within the city walls, like a miniature landscape of world civilization.
By the time we arrived at the University of Jerusalem, Professor Eli Lederhendler, director of the Institute of Contemporary Judaism, was waiting at the door. Only to find out that the university is also heavily guarded, students have to open bags for security checks, check their documents, not like going to school, but like going back to the barracks to assemble. Professor Leder Hendler quipped that in fact, terrorists could not come in and out, the campus was like a maze, and even the faculty and staff were lost. This is the Campus of the Hebrew University of Mount Scopus, the main color is beige, the classic Jewish architectural style, full of marble rules of geometric low buildings, simple and solemn. Overlooking the city from Scopus Hill, the campus is supposed to be a scenic spot. From the top of the hill, the famous old city of Jerusalem is still faintly visible, and the Wailing Wall, the ruins of the temple, and the tomb of David make people yearn for it. The old city has a history of 4,000 years, the area is not large, not much larger than the Forbidden City in Beijing, surrounded by tall ancient city walls, enclosing the narrow xieyang ancient alley. The city is impassable and densely packed with people of all colors. The same city is not mixed, but divided into four districts according to faith and ethnicity - the Jewish quarter, the Armenian quarter, and the Christian and Muslim districts. The pilgrimage sites of the three major denominations of Judaism, Christianity and Muslimism are distributed in their respective districts. Religious terraces with very different styles are squeezed into the cramped space within the city walls, like a miniature landscape of world civilization. Although under the same Israeli government, Muslims, Christians and Jews seem to be separated from each other, and it is helpless and expedient to be together. I found it interesting that yes is rich in tour guides, and residents of all ethnic groups dare to come out and earn money from tourists as long as they can speak English. As a result, the Jewish and Arab guides talk about Jerusalem, and the versions are completely different. The Jewish tour guide started from David and King Solomon, the Jewish people have been in the same lineage for three thousand years, and this place is the holy city of ancient Hebrew, the dream and home of the Jews. It then complains that the Holy City was disgraced between 1948 and 1967, divided in two by the Jordanians, and desecrated jewish holy sites. Thanks to the victory of the Six-Day War, East Jerusalem was restored and united under the Israeli flag. The Arab tour guides were furious, condemning Israel's occupation of East Jerusalem and the expulsion of innocent Palestinians. When the Six-Day War broke out, the Arabs living in the West Bank (including East Jerusalem) had no time to take the soft clothes, so they fled in a hurry, locked their doors, and ran to Jordan. I thought that I would take refuge for a while and return to my home after leaving the chaos, but as a result, decades passed, and it was difficult to return home. In 1967, Israel occupied Al-Quds Al-Sharif by force, emigrated to the West Bank, confiscated Arab dwellings, and refugees in exile in Jordan clutched the keys to their homes, could not open the locks that their new owners had replaced, and their nostalgia became a nightmare.
The tour guide's explanation makes tourists wonder which Jerusalem they are in, the city of discourse construction, and various forces competing for discourse and moral resources. After all, the basic historical facts are clear: in 1947, Britain decided to end the Mandate and submit it to the United Nations for adjudication; the General Assembly passed Resolution 181, establishing two sovereign states in Palestine that were equally divided — the Jewish state and the Arab state, and the holy sites of Jerusalem and Bethlehem under international jurisdiction. Arab countries boycotted, and Egypt, Syria, Transjordan, Iraq and other countries regard Palestine as their own major affairs and unanimously go to the outside world. Israel, on the other hand, declared a unilateral state and declared Jerusalem its capital. The Arab countries formed a military alliance, with Egypt, Iraq, Jordan, Lebanon, and Syria as the vanguard, laying siege to the nascent state of Israel. The 1948 war was dubbed the "War of Independence" or the "War of Liberation" by israel, while history called it the "First Middle East War." The result was a truce between the two sides, israel annexing 60 percent of the territory allocated to the Palestinians by the United Nations, Jordan annexing the remaining part, and Egypt taking the Gaza Strip without giving the Palestinian Arabs a single inch of land. Jerusalem was also divided in two, with the northeastern region (including the Old City) going to Jordan and the southwestern part of the city to Israel. This is what the Jewish tour guide said: "The city of Jehovah is disgraced, and Jordan is divided into holy places."
Standing on the observation deck of the Hebrew University, Professor Ledhendler pointed to the quaint, Jewish-style teaching building and said that the campus was located in the eastern part of the city, which was classified in Jordan in 1948. However, the Hebrew University is an important city of Jewish culture, and there are important academic resources such as the Jewish National Library on campus, which cannot be occupied by Jordanians. The two sides compromised and left it in the custody of The United Nations forces. As a result, the Hebrew University became an israeli enclave, and Jewish scholars and students continued to teach and research on the "isolated island" until the "Six-Day War" (also known as the Third Middle East War) in 1967. Throughout the 1960s, there were constant conflicts along the borders of the Grand Heights, the West Bank, and the Sinai Peninsula, and relations between Israel and Egypt and Arab countries became increasingly tense, and war was imminent. In May 1967, the last straw broke. The Egyptian-Syrian alliance has once again allied with The Treaty and Iraq, and Kuwait, Algeria, and Saudi Arabia have also contributed to mobilize hundreds of thousands of troops to the Sinai Peninsula. Israel knew how to preemptively attack, and without waiting for the Arabs to do anything, on June 5, it struck a lightning attack, unexpectedly invaded Egypt, defeated the Arab coalition in only six days, and occupied the West Bank, the Sinai Peninsula, the Gran Heights, the Gaza Strip, and East Jerusalem, including the Old City. The Hebrew University's Scopes Hill campus ushered in "liberation". After the battle, Israel's territory expanded 300 kilometers to the south, 60 kilometers to the east, and 20 kilometers north, and the small country of projectile "became rich overnight". The impact of this war is far-reaching, and the Chinese people have watched the "news network" of the Arab-Israeli conflict for decades, and these place names are familiar to each other. This is the legacy of the "Six-Day War", and the frequency of the Daimyo Ofkin on the Chinese "Reference News" in the 70s is second only to Hoxha in Albania. As for 9/11 in the 21st century, the specter of this war also lingers.
After the "Six-Day War" in 1967, the US media announced Israel's victory
Fifth, time is staggered
It has been two days since I arrived in Jerusalem, busy with meetings and exchanges, and I have not settled down to savor the ancient city. At dusk, with the mentality of a traveler, wander through the ancient streets and alleys in the old city. Dazzling spotlights shine on the yellow marble walls of the Jafa Gate, where magnificent ancient buildings meet a trendy commercial street outside the door, European-style cafes, avant-garde fashion stores, postmodern galleries, and colorful neon winding under the promenades of the ancient city gatehouse. Inside the Gate of Gaffa, quaint Armenian restaurants, old antique shops like the next world, money exchange stalls rebuked by Jesus... A stone door is like a time machine, separating the inside and outside of the old city into ancient and modern, allowing you to travel between the two eras. There were gongs and drums, and a group of Arabs blew and waved bunting flags, and came with songs and dances, quite performative religious ceremonies, as usual several times a week. Not far away, a large group of Jews dressed in black and black hats shook their heads in front of the Wailing Wall and recited the Bible aloud. Every evening, Orthodox Jews from all over the world gather here, weaving through the atmosphere of mourning and sorrow. Conflicting beliefs meet at the intersection of different civilizations, competing for the show, making noise, attracting the eyes of the onlookers, collecting sympathy and recognition, and justifying themselves. I realized that going to temples and churches to worship idols, though pious, might drain the deity of religious rituals. In fact, the true meaning of faith in the basic way of daily life, the faith in the old city of Jerusalem is very different from modern society, neither the soothing of anxiety and stress, nor the consolation of life or spiritual comfort, but life itself. Everyone's daily routine revolves around religious activities, living for faith, going to war, and dying. Love, hate, affection, hatred, violence and peace are all entangled with faith, which defines the meaning of the existence of Jews, Muslims and Christians. Here, religion has not yet been stripped from public life and become a private matter of the individual. Even the Israeli mainstream media ridiculed the fact that the Old City of Jerusalem still lived in the religious life of the Middle Ages. To understand the Palestinian-Israeli conflict from the perspective of modern people and according to the logic of international politics, it is difficult to discern the subtlety of its emotions.
Step back in time to the day of June 7, 1967, when Israeli paratroopers marched into the Old City from the Gate of Gafa and captured the Temple Mount and the Wailing Wall. After more than two thousand years of exile and dispersal, the Jews recaptured the Holy Land by force for the first time. Countless generations of Jewish poets and rabbis have wept to God in the long sleepless nights, weeping blood and complaining to their hearts, day after day, hoping to one day return to the Sabbath and rebuild the temple. Unexpectedly, after the genocidal Auschwitz, the Jews, a "holy book nation", also learned the rape logic of the perpetrators, the Nazis, and returned to the Holy Land at the expense of the Palestinians. The mighty Israel Defense Forces, born out of the three underground armies of Haganah, Irgun and LEHI, forged a division of steel after decades of guerrilla warfare and maneuvering with the British. Mordechai Gur, commander of the Paratrooper Brigade, commanded the attack, reporting the progress to the base camp in real time: "We have sat on the ridge and looked out into the Old Town, and we are about to take the place that the Jews have dreamed of for generations, and we will be the first to approach the 'Wailing Wall'..." The Temple Mount is in your hands! Again, the Temple Mount is already in our hands! The recording, which has been played repeatedly on many occasions, has inspired generations of Israelis to be patriotic.
It is full of contradictions and paradoxes, but there is no lack of passion and vitality. Although the world is moving towards integration, and the world is converging day by day, it is still the same, unique, inspiring people to think, the world we live in may have a different future?