Diaspora Jews Add Voice to Jerusalem Debate

When nearly a quarter of a million Jews from Israel and around the world rallied here earlier this month, they hoped to demonstrate unified opposition to the notion that Israel might share sovereignty over this holy city with the Palestinians.

Instead, the rally unleashed a storm of controversy over how much say Jews living outside Israel should have in Jerusalem’s fate and how they should express their views.

In the past, although they have been vocal on many issues, diaspora Jews usually have accepted the notion that only Israelis have the right to decide existential issues in their land. But Jerusalem--and particularly the Old City site known as the Temple Mount--is holy to all Jews. In the diaspora and among political leaders here, some argue that its fate cannot be left to Israelis alone.

Caretaker Prime Minister Ehud Barak has “no mandate” to discuss sharing sovereignty over Jerusalem with the Palestinians, said Likud Party leader Ariel Sharon, now the leading candidate for premier in a Feb. 6 election.

“Jerusalem does not belong to us, the Israelis,” Sharon said in an interview with Kfar Habad magazine. “It belongs to all of the Jewish people. And not only that. The Jewish world of today does not have the right to give up the Temple Mount, nor does it have the right to give up Jerusalem, because it belongs to the Jewish people throughout the generations and we are faithfully watching over it for the coming generations.”

Nonsense, say other Israeli political leaders and some U.S. Jews. They insist that decisions about Jerusalem will be made by Israel’s government, parliament and people.

“There is a difference between the sacred and the profane,” said Colette Avital, a Labor Party member of the Knesset, or parliament. “What we are discussing about Jerusalem is a political issue.”

If diaspora Jews are demanding a say in that decision, Avital said, it is because Israeli politicians of both the left and the right have previously actively enlisted their involvement on other political issues.

“We should all be blamed,” Avital said. “We started exporting politics from Israel to the diaspora in the early 1950s, so we can’t come and say that they don’t have a right to be politically involved. The question is how far does this political involvement go, and what is legitimate and what is not?”

Avital and others attacked Ronald Lauder, leader of the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, for speaking at the Jerusalem rally Jan. 8, saying his appearance at what many here considered a right-wing political event was improper. Avital said the speech set “a dangerous precedent” of diaspora involvement in Israeli politics.

At the rally, Lauder said he was speaking as a private citizen who represented the feelings of “millions of Jews” that the city must not be divided. But his critics charge that few in the huge audience understood that he was not speaking in his capacity as head of the Conference of Presidents.

Lauder “had an absolute responsibility to make crystal clear that he was not speaking for the conference or for some broad consensus of American Jews, and he did not do that,” said Rabbi Eric Yoffie, president of the Union of American Hebrew Congregations, an umbrella organization that includes hundreds of reform synagogues in the United States. American Jews, Yoffie said, are as divided on the question of sharing sovereignty over Jerusalem as are Israelis.

“For 30 years, every government in Israel has said that there must be a united Jerusalem, and now the government is saying something different,” Yoffie said. “There is not a little bit of confusion among diaspora Jews.”

The Temple Mount is known to Muslims as Haram al Sharif and contains Islam’s third-holiest site, making its fate a major stumbling block in negotiations with the Palestinians.

The bitter debate over Lauder’s appearance is just a piece of the larger, more painful argument among Jews over Jerusalem’s future, a controversy that has blurred the distinction that those in the diaspora have tried to make between issues that are strictly the purview of Israelis and those that involve Jews everywhere.

“The debate is a very old one,” said Abraham Foxman, executive director of the Anti-Defamation League. “It is: What is the role of American Jews vis-a-vis Israel? Nobody questions our right to have an opinion. Every Jew in the world has the right to an opinion, but it is the Jews whose kids stand guard on the borders of Israel, whose kids might die on the Temple Mount, who have the right to make the decision.”

Malcolm Hoenlein, executive vice chairman of the Conference of Presidents, agrees that the decision over Jerusalem’s fate ultimately is Israel’s to make. But the notion of bargaining away control over Judaism’s holiest site is shocking to American Jews, he said.

“I can tell you--and this is true of everybody I’ve spoken to, all over the country--we’re getting huge turnouts” at forums where Jerusalem’s future is discussed, Hoenlein said. “Every event is packed because this is something that goes to the heart of Jewish history, to the heart of Jewish identity. Jerusalem was on the lips of people who died in the Holocaust or in the Inquisition.”

If there have been no mass rallies in the U.S. opposing concessions on Jerusalem, Hoenlein said, that is only because “this is a transitional period, both in the United States, where we are changing presidents, and in Israel, where there are about to be elections.” American Jews don’t have a specific target for their protest, Hoenlein said, because the negotiations with the Palestinians are ongoing and it is unclear just how far Barak is willing to go.

Still, he said, “I think emotions are higher on this than on any other issue that I recall. The depth of feeling and the breadth of feeling are unprecedented across the spectrum.”

Lauder’s appearance in Jerusalem drew hundreds of letters from people thanking him “for speaking up for their concerns,” Hoenlein said.

Ultimately, however, even a decision by Israel to make compromises in Jerusalem is likely to be supported--or at least accepted--by the vast majority of diaspora Jews, Yoffie said.

“Would some Jews be unhappy? Yes. At a certain level, I would be unhappy, I would find it difficult religiously, even though I would support it politically,” Yoffie said. “But whatever their reservations, American Jews welcome peace, they bless peace, and they will come to grips with the reality of the necessity of compromise. I have no doubt about that.”