When we arrived in Nazareth on Tuesday the town was almost deserted. It was Independence Day, not an occasion that attracts many visitors to Israel's largest Arab metropolis. Here too all state and municipal institutions banks and chain stores were closed. The sole purpose of our visit was to find a place to eat. We had gone with guests to Mount Precipice, a vantage point near Nazareth reputed to be the place where Jesus leapt to Mount Tabor.
The Synagogue Church
Now we were hungry and disappointed. The restaurant recommended to us was closed, so our default choice was a small place on Paul VI Street run by a Christian Arab called Abu Rifaq.
The same thoroughfare leads to the Franciscan Basilica of the Annunciation.
Further up the hill beyond St Joseph’s church, in the heart of the market lies the Synagogue Church. A strange title given to a small Crusader house of prayer built over an earlier structure, supposedly the synagogue mentioned in Luke's gospel. Adjacent to it is a functioning Greek Catholic church. My daughter Daphna and her husband Mark surely remember the time we visited the Synagogue Church. In Luke 4:16 the author mentions Jesus’ visit to a synagogue in Nazareth: “And he came to Nazareth where he had been brought up and as his custom was he went into the synagogue on the Sabbath day…” Following his reading from the Book of Isaiah an argument developed with members of the congregation which led to a violent eviction, “And they rose up and thrust him out of the city, and led him to the brow of the hill…” Supposedly the same hill we had visited earlier, Mt. Precipice. Well the hill would have been too far away for the observant Jews of the congregation because of the injunction limiting the distance a Jew may walk on the Sabbath day. Therefore to suit the narrative we must move the hill closer to the synagogue or move the synagogue closer to the hill. It’s possible that another hill is the site of the miraculous jump. However Luke didn’t mention a jump. Just the “brow of the hill wheron their city was built, that they might cast him down headlong. But he passing through them went his way.” Well the legendary leap as far as Mount Tabor is a later embellishment to the narrative.
A common enough addition used a lot by our rabbis as well.
Likewise the story of Mary’s fright has no basis in the gospel texts. A later tradition tells that Mary saw Jesus being dragged to the precipice by the angry crowd and fainted. To the north of Mount Precipice close to Upper Nazareth’s industrial zone is a small nineteenth century chapel recently refurbished- the Church of Mary’s Fright. Two thousand years ago Nazareth was an insignificant village. Earlier still it was too insignificant to earn any mention in the Old Testament.
The Minister of Tourism wisely prefers to leave the Synagogue Church where it is and has clearly signposted the road to Mount Precipice. New paths have been paved by the vantage point enabling wonderful views of the Jezreel and the Ksilot Valleys as well as a broad Nazareth panorama.
Perhaps the particular event is more important than pinpointing with geographic accuracy where it happened. What’s more even if the event lacks cross references and hard proof it’s more prudent to let the believers believe.
It certainly doesn’t hurt the government coffers.
We left the hill and drove on past Upper Nazareth through Raina a large Arab town close to Nazareth before we found Abu Rafiq’s restaurant.
When we left Ein Harod along the road to Afula and north as far as Tel Adashim every kibbutz and moshav was decorated with Israeli flags. We are big on flags, after all we had to wait two thousand years to fly our own flag so on Independence day we hang flags everywhere.
From the Iksal junction the road to Nazareth was bare not a flag to be seen anywhere. Above us we saw the Israeli air force fly-past but on the road and in the Arab towns not a flag, pennant or hint of blue and white.
All over Israel millions of Israelis were busy barbecuing .Every patch of grass became a picnic site. Some went on to visit the national parks or to attend the holiday celebrations held everywhere.
While we ate Abu Rifaq’s kebabs it occurred to me that Nakba Day is a flexible event.Usually it is commemorated on the 15th of May. Palestinian Arabs and their supporters around the world coordinate some Nakba Day events to coincide with the Israel’s Independence Day celebrations. However, because our Independence Day is celebrated according to the Jewish calendar it occurs on the 15th of May only once in a cycle of 19 years. In Israel our Arab citizens, sometimes nudge Nakba day so that it falls on Independence day
Dr. Azmi Bishara an Israeli Arab and former member of the Knesset, currently a fugitive from the law, once wrote in Maariv: "Independence Day is your holiday, not ours. We mark this as the day of our Nakba, the tragedy that befell the Palestinian nation in 1948"
Strangely it took the Palestinians fifty years to inaugurate Nakba Day. This year we celebrated Independence Day on the 10th of May. As far as I know our Arabs are commemorating the Nakba event as a weekend happening. This coming Friday will be a warm-up with suitable anti-Israeli sermons in the mosques while the main events will take place on Saturday and Sunday. The security forces are preparing for every possible contingency.
As we left the restaurant Abu Rifaq wished us a happy holiday – "Chag Sameach" .Across the street a small group of Arab youths, some of them wearing Che Guevara tee shirts sauntered away from the town centre. Two of them carried Palestinian flags. I'm hard put to describe what we saw as either a parade or a procession. They were two few and too apathetic to fit that description. Well I had found the flags, admittedly the wrong ones.
A few months ago Sol Stern a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute wrote about the "Nakba Obsession" in the City Journal, "Every year, on the anniversary of Israel’s independence, more and more Palestinians (including Arab citizens of Israel) commemorate the Nakba with pageants that express longing for a lost paradise. Every year, the legend grows of the crimes committed against the Palestinians in 1948, crimes now routinely equated with the Holocaust. Echoing the Nakba narrative is an international coalition of leftists that celebrates the Palestinians as the 'quintessential other', the last victims of Western racism and colonialism."
Stern mentions an interesting personal view of the Palestinian refugee problem. “Several years ago, I briefly visited the largest refugee camp in the West Bank: Balata, inside the city of Nablus. Many of the camp’s approximately 20,000 residents are the children, grandchildren, and even great-grandchildren of the Arab citizens of Jaffa who fled their homes in early 1948.
For half a century, the United Nations has administered Balata as a quasi-apartheid welfare ghetto. The Palestinian Authority does not consider the residents of Balata citizens of Palestine; they do not vote on municipal issues, and they receive no PA funding for roads or sanitation. The refugee children—though after 60 years, calling young children ‘refugees’ is absurd—go to separate schools run by UNRWA, the UN’s refugee-relief agency. The ‘refugees’ are crammed into an area of approximately one square kilometer, and municipal officials prohibit them from building outside the camp’s official boundaries, making living conditions ever more cramped as the camp’s population grows. In a building called the Jaffa Cultural Center—financed by the UN, which means our tax dollars—Balata’s young people are undoubtedly nurtured on the myth that someday soon they will return in triumph to their ancestors’ homes by the Mediterranean Sea.
In Balata, history has come full circle. During the 1948 war, Palestinian leaders like Haj Amin al-Husseini insisted that the Arab citizens of Haifa and Jaffa had to leave, lest they help legitimize the Jewish state. Now, the descendants of those citizens are locked up in places like Balata and prohibited from resettling in the Palestinian-administered West Bank—again, lest they help legitimize the Jewish state, this time by removing the Palestinians’ chief complaint. Yet there is a certain perverse logic at work here. For if Israel and the Palestinians ever managed to hammer out the draft of a peace treaty, Mahmoud Abbas, president of the Palestinian Authority, would have to go to Balata and explain to its residents that their leaders have been lying to them for 60 years and that they are not going back to Jaffa. Which, to state the obvious again, is one of the main reasons that there has been no peace treaty.”
Our Independence Day trip was meant simply to view our landscape from another angle and eat lunch somewhere along our route. The quest for the flag was a subconscious afterthought. Obviously we can’t force our Arab minorities to fly the national flag and sing our anthem.
However as long as they continue to commemorate Nakba Day and expect Israel to accept the Palestinian refugees back we will continue to suspect their loyalty.
Have a good weekend
Beni 12th of May, 2011.
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