Why Stay in a Place of Fear? It’s Home

HEBRON -- It happened in May 2001, about eight months after the Oslo War -- otherwise known as the second intifada -- began. At 11 one night I was still in the office, five minutes from our home. Again, the sound of gunfire could be heard from the hills surrounding Hebron’s Jewish community, hills transferred to the control of the Palestinian Authority several years earlier.

The phone on my desk rang. It was one of my daughters, then 16. Breathless, she exclaimed, “Dad, they’re shooting again.” I answered lackadaisically, “Yeah, I hear it.” In other words, “What’s new -- it’s the same, every day.”

“But they shot into our apartment. And I was standing there,” my daughter cried.

Arriving home, I discovered five holes in a wall opposite the window in the children’s room. Two of my children had been standing not more than three feet from where the bullets hit. Miraculously, they weren’t injured.

People frequently ask why we live in Hebron, a so-called Arab city in the heart of the “West Bank.” Why are 800 Jews -- men, women and children -- so stubbornly willing to risk their lives to remain in Hebron?

To outsiders, it’s hard to understand why I would choose to bring up my seven children, now ages eight to 23, in a tiny, barricaded community, surrounded by enemies who hate us, under constant threat of bombings and other violence? Why am I living in a place where more than 40 of my Jewish neighbors and friends have been killed or wounded since I moved here in 1981?

The answer is that Hebron is the first Jewish city in the land of Israel, home of our patriarchs and matriarchs -- Abraham, Isaac and Jacob and Sarah, Rebecca and Leah. King David ruled from Hebron for more than seven years before moving the capital to Jerusalem.

Jews have lived in Hebron almost continuously for thousands of years. Our community offices are in a neighborhood founded in 1540 by Jews exiled from Spain in 1492. Jewish presence in Hebron came to an abrupt end only in August 1929, when Arab riots led to the murder of 67 Jews and the wounding of 70. All survivors were exiled from the city by the ruling British.

In other words, when Israel returned to Hebron in 1967, Jews did not occupy a foreign city; rather, they came back home.

Hebron is home to Ma’arat HaMachpela, the Cave of the Patriarchs, the second holiest site in Judaism after the Temple Mount in Jerusalem. The building atop the original caves was constructed by Herod, king of Judea 2,000 years ago, 600 years before the advent of Islam. Despite this, the structure was off-limits to Jews and Christians for 700 years, from 1267 to 1967. The stated reason: The site houses a mosque and only Muslims can worship in a mosque.

The Arab deputy mayor of Hebron, Kamal Dweck, in a 1999 interview stated that if the entire city were returned to Arab rule, this site would again be off-limits to Jews, for the same reason. The Tomb of the Patriarchs would face a fate identical to that of Joseph’s Tomb in Nablus. It would be Judenrein, or without Jewish presence. Why should a Jew in 2003 be barred from worshiping at one of the holiest places in the world?

Jews in Hebron are willing to risk present dangers because acquiescence is nothing more than a reward for terrorism. Arab terror seeks to expel us from our homes, using murder as a means to an end. However, “our homes” include not only those in Hebron but also in Jerusalem, Tel Aviv and Haifa. New Palestinian textbooks contain maps of “Palestine” that include the entire state of Israel.

Eviction from Hebron, the first Jewish city in Israel, would be tantamount to the removal of Americans from Boston or Philadelphia upon terrorist demands. Except, of course, that American history is less than 250 years old; Jewish history in Hebron is more than 3,700 years old. Hebron, home of Abraham, is not just the place where Judaism got its start. It is the source of monotheism in the world.

Jewish people in Israel and around the world support a strong, vibrant Jewish presence in Hebron. We do not expect an Israeli government to attempt to follow in the footsteps of the British and expel Jews from the city. In any case, we would never abandon our homes.

Besides which, why should the state of Israel be forced to chop off its roots to appease Arab terror? We know the result of eradicating the roots of a tree. God forbid that Israel should suffer such a fate.

David Wilder is a spokesman for Hebron’s Jewish community.