Nazareth

The side road from route 75 near Nazareth that leads to the Mount of the Precipice was once a pitted dirt track. Then last year it was upgraded and sealed for the occasion of the Pope’s visit. His intensive itinerary included a mass scheduled to be held at an appropriate site on the mountain.

So an access road was paved to an open air theatre hewn out of a worked-out quarry on the northern face of the hill. On a clear day the panorama seen from the summit is breathtaking. The Jezreel Valley and its Ksulot Valley enclave on one side and the Nazareth Mountains to the north dominated by the urban spread of Nazareth and Upper Nazareth, are tangible almost hands-on features.

Standing there on a sunny winter's day it occurred to me that even the tactual landscape can be deceptive. Both the Nazareth Mountains and the Mount of the Precipice are lower than the Moreh Hill a short distance east of the place where the Pope prayed and blessed 40,000 believers. However the Moreh Hill is associated with a vague almost forgotten Arab legend, whereas the Mount of the Precipice, according to Christian tradition, is where Jesus leapt from to escape Nazareth's angry synagogue congregation after preaching to them one Saturday.

However, according to Luke he escaped the angry crowd by passing through it. He didn’t jump and wasn’t pushed. However, as is the case in many places in Israel, tradition takes precedence over fact. Inconveniently the mountain fixed by tradition is only a hill and lies 2km from the site of the synagogue, also fixed by tradition, too far for an observant Jew to walk/run on the Sabbath. Alternative precipices have been suggested closer to the synagogue site, but none will replace the Mount of the Precipice.

In a cave not far from the rehabilitated quarry archaeologists found the remains of a Palaeolithic settlement. Perhaps the Hebrew name for the Mount of the Precipice- Har Kedumim alludes to these ancient dwellers. In the sixth century Christian hermits made secondary use of the cave. Maybe they were unaware of the identity of the previous tenants. Once the archaeologists had completed surveying the cave they arranged to have the Palaeolithic skeletons buried. If they acted according to precedent they were given a proper Jewish burial.

On Tuesday when I visited the Mount of the Precipice during a tour of Nazareth and its environs our tour guide Ghada Boulos emphasised this strange mixture of facts, doubts and traditions.

Although I know Nazareth well, I thought I could benefit from seeing Nazareth through the eyes of a “Nazarene”. I often go there with overseas visitors who come to our factory. Nevertheless, I was sure Ghada, pronounced Raada, could teach me something. Ghada, a native of Nazareth is an observant Greek Catholic, a feminist, liberal minded Arab woman who specialises in conducted tours of Nazareth and other places. A card-carrying qualified tour guide she is currently studying at Haifa University for a doctorate degree in Biblical Archaeology and Land of Israel Studies. An outstanding and knowledgeable tour-guide, Ghada blends fact, tradition, wit and her fine singing voice together to produce an all-round experience. When we visited St Joseph's church just north of the Basilica of the Annunciation Ghada gave an unforgettable rendition of Shubert’s Ave Maria.

At this juncture, in order to dispel any misconception, I hasten to add that my interest in Nazareth and Christianity is part and parcel of my pursuit of “Land of Israel” related knowledge.

I noticed how Ghada Boulos was recognised and warmly greeted by Christians and Muslims alike when we “hopped” between churches, nunneries and the market in Nazareth. What appears to be an idyllic religious coexistence is deceptive. Nevertheless, just below the surface there is religious tension in Arab Nazareth.. Two thirds of Nazareth’s 70,000 inhabitants are Muslims. In 1997 an attempt to build a new mosque next to the Basilica of the Annunciation caused riots in the town. The Christians haven’t forgotten the offending encroachment and the Muslims still hope to build a mosque grander and loftier than the impressive basilica.

Our after Christmas tour took place during Christmas according to the Gregorian calendar. Ghada briefly mentioned the message of Christmas – “peace on earth and goodwill to all men,” not long after we walked past a giant banner just below the Basilica of the Annunciation proclaiming in three languages that Islam is the only true religion and anyone who denies this has no place in the after life.

Nazareth’s municipal area is hemmed in by neighbouring towns and villages. Since there is no available land for building new dwellings there is a population spill-over to other places, mainly Upper Nazareth. Not all Jewish residents in Upper Nazareth are happy with their new Arab neighbours. Some choose to move elsewhere and the problem is exacerbated when the apartments they vacate are bought by more Arabs from Nazareth.

In the late 1950s Ben Gurion launched a plan to offset the burgeoning Arab population in Galilee by encouraging Jewish settlement in this northern region. Upper Nazareth was one of the new towns built to counterbalance the Arab majority.

The end of year and the decade was a time of reckoning. “Terror and a decade of complacency, “proclaimed the British Daily Mail,

“This is the Government, after all, which has introduced human rights laws making it all but impossible to expel terrorists.

In its zeal for 'multiculturalism', it has allowed extremists to preach murder in British mosques, while doing nothing to suppress terrorist cells in our universities.

Meanwhile, its disgracefully lax migration policy has thrown open our borders to new arrivals on an unprecedented scale, with few or no questions asked.

Indeed, since 2000, an astonishing 1.5million visas have been granted to foreign students - including terrorists such as Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, (the would be Christmas day bomber) whose attempt at mass murder was foiled only because his explosives failed to detonate.”

The paper warns that “Britain has become the most notorious centre of Islamist fanaticism in the western world.

In the coming years, this country must face up squarely to the terrorist threat. This will mean effective action against preachers of hate, with amendments to our human rights laws if necessary.”

Israeli analyst Sever Plocker summed up the last ten years in a similar vein
“It was a lousy decade. A decade filled with crises, downfalls, collapses, terror attacks, wars, disasters, victims. It was a decade in which the West found itself, against its will, in a head-on war for life and death against fanatical Islam.”

There was no Christmas cheer in Plocker’s assessment, “But history did not conclude with a happy ending. None of the old conflicts were resolved in the past 10 years. New conflicts have begun and they are bleeding.”

Sever Plocker is one of Israel’s leading economic analysts. So not surprisingly he relates to our local achievements and failures.

“The Israeli economy experienced ups and downs throughout the decade. There were two amazing achievements and two shameful failures.

The first achievement: The introduction of industries based on knowledge and information, science and the human brain. Thanks to them, from a country which owed the world net $12 billion we have turned into a country which the world owes net $60 billion. The greatest threat on Israeli people's standard of living, the threat of a foreign currency shortage, was removed and replaced within a decade with a problem of a foreign currency surplus.

The second achievement: Price stability. The annual inflation rate in the past decade shrank to 1.5%. We recovered from the malady of inflation which had destroyed our economy for generations.

These are the successes. But they are overshadowed by the failures. The first: the ongoing growth in poverty rates, in the percentage of poor families and poor children, making us the West's record-holder. To this we can add the shameful retreat in the achievements of Israel's students, the crisis in Israel's universities and the deepening gaps in education. “

Prize-winning Israeli journalist Ben Dror Yamini wrote about a Jihad against Muslims. In a series marking the end of the decade published in the Israeli daily Ma’ariv he maintains, “ The rhetoric of the world-wide Jihad is anti-western, anti- American and anti-Semitic, but in practice most of its victims are Muslims.

In Gaza the situation is no different. Since Hamas seized power there it has managed to kill and injure a few Israelis by firing at civilian targets in Israel. However, far more Gaza residents were killed in internecine clashes than by the ‘Zionist enemy.’ Among them at least 400 members of Fatah were killed in clashes with Hamas and scores of the radical Islamic Jihad members were butchered by Hamas while they were praying in a mosque.”

Ben Dror Yamini complains about inaccuracies and omissions made in the many terror assessments published recently. He sums up with a six-decade + summary of our region.

“Since the founding of the state, Israel has been accused of causing misery and death in the Arab world, however the fact is that more than twelve million Muslim Arabs have been killed by Muslim Arabs during this period.”

Gloom and pessimism aside, he winds up on an optimistic note claiming that there are signs that the Muslims themselves, aware of this terrible carnage, are beginning to rise against the world-wide Islamic Jihad.

Let’s hope for a better decade and live to see it out.

Beni 8^th of January, 2010.