Joseph Revisited
By Israel Shamir
It is not easy to visit Joseph these days. Roadblocks manned by
nervous Israeli soldiers have surrounded his city of Nablus; trenches
or heaps of earth block the smallest entrances and exits. On a normal
morning, commuters pour in from nearby villages for work or shopping;
now they do so at their own peril, and the local citizens venture out
of their homes at the risk of their lives, as the soldiers shoot
without warning. Still, one can sneak into the old capital of Samaria
by foot.
The city rests as the sachet of myrrh between the twin breasts of Mt
Ebal and Mt Gerizim. Nablus is Neapolis of old, founded by Titus
Flavius in the heyday of the Roman Empire. The Roman traditions did
not die in this Palestinian San Francisco with its lavish Turkish
baths. It is also famous for the fragrant olive soap, spicy kubbeh
soup, and hardy spirit of its inhabitants. They fielded a strong
guerrilla force against Napoleon, rebelled against Egyptian invaders,
and kept the Jewish settlers at bay. During the last uprising, Nablus
gained renown as Jabal an-Nar, the Mount of Fire. Israelis rarely
dared to enter the narrow streets of its old city. Today, this
defiant ancient city is the home of Marwan Barghouti, sometimes
credited with the leadership of the uprising.
I came here to visit one of the most charming shrines of the Holy
Land, the Tomb of Joseph, the hero of Bible and Koran stories, a local
lad who "made it" in Egypt and was brought back by Banu Israel to be
buried in his ancestral home. The locals have venerated it, as
numerous other shrines and tombs that adorn the hilltops and
crossroads of Palestine. The shrines have deep roots in the
Palestinian soul; they predate all modern faiths, survived all
religious reforms, and still are able to turn a man to God.
One needs to take their names with a grain of salt, as they change
with the passage of time. There are a dozen tombs for Sheikh Ali, and
even Joshua bin Nun has quite a few. Other tombs have multiple names,
like the cave on the Mt Olives, called Pelagia by Christians, Rabia
al-Adawiya by Moslems and Hulda by Jews. While some orthodox Moslem,
Christian and Jewish clerics object to venerating shrines, the common
people still come to beseech for favours, men for glory and harvest,
women for children and love. The tomb of Joseph is no exception. It
is a simple domed building, recently refurbished, standing next to the
ancient mound of Shechem. On any given day, Palestinian peasant women
in black dresses with rich embroidery can be seen paying their
respects at the tomb of the chaste lover, whose long eyelashes reduced
the fortress of Zuleika's heart.
A few months ago, Joseph's tomb was all over the news. The people of
Nablus fought well-armed Israeli soldiers over the remains of their
ancestor Joseph, as Achaeans fought Trojans for the body of Patrocles.
Some two score Palestinians died there, Israelis lost one mercenary
and a few were wounded. The pictures of the gun battle were
transmitted around the globe, as firefights raged, ambulances raced to
hospitals and morgues, heavy machinegun bursts tore at stones and
flesh. The virtual reality of TV screens accompanied by the voices of
the experts presented the ultimate proof of Arab hate for Jewish holy
places.
The tale of the Tomb's destruction remained in the news for long time.
An important Muslim divine from Russia was angry enough to write an
open letter to the Palestinians, condemning the sacrilege. Main
international newspapers unleashed harsh editorials on the subject. A
visiting Martian would have presumed that the main desire of
Palestinians is to go about desecrating holy Jewish monuments. For
those who did not get it first 108 times, the NYT repeated the story
last week.
That was just one too many times for me. This well circulated Jewish
American newspaper always stirs the suspicious side of my brain. I
recall their reports on the impending Jewish pogroms in Moscow in
1990, that somehow never materialized, but the reports sent one
million Russian Jews to Israel. I remember their reports on the
Timishowara "massacre" in Romania, that turned out to be a fake. But
the report led to the summary execution of the president Ceausescu and
his wife. I remember how the Times agitated against the noble Cuban
military assistance to Namibia that broke the spine of South African
apartheid. Knowing the Palestinians, I had difficulty believing that
those who had worshipped at the shrine for uncounted generations,
would destroy it.
What I found at the site of Joseph's resting place was like a replay
of the old Jewish joke: "Is it true that Cohen won a million in the
state lottery? Yes, it is true, but it was only ten dollars, in a
poker game, and he actually lost it". Instead of expected ruins, the
tomb shone in its pristine beauty. No traces of war could be seen. The
Nablus municipality hired the best masons, brought in Italian experts
and restored the tomb to its original state. They removed the barbed
wire, the machinegun positions, the armoured vehicles, the soldiers'
scrubby mess hall, guard slots. An Israeli-built military base
vanished to be replaced by the resurrected holy tomb. It was a joy to
revisit Joseph, as my previous visit, a month before the uprising, was
quite disconcerting.
Then I visited Nablus in the company of two tourists, a Christian and
a Jew. We visited the Samaritan synagogue, drank water from Jacob's
Well in the church, looked into the Green Mosque and decided to pay
our respects to Joseph the Beautiful. An old Palestinian policeman,
who cut his teeth in the British army, allowed us to approach the tomb
but warned us that we won't be let in. He was right. Young Russian
boys in the Israeli army fatigues, helmets and rifles, popped out and
told us, that in order to enter the tomb one has to go to the army HQ
out of town, submit to security check and interrogation, and come back
by the armoured bus. We moved on to more accessible sites.
For generations, the Tomb of Joseph was cherished and attended by the
people of Nablus, but it was seized by the Israelis in 1975. The
infamous Oslo accords left it as an armed Israeli enclave in the heart
of the Palestinian city. It became a Yeshiva of a Cabbalist sect led
by Rabbi Isaac Ginzburg. His name should ring a bell. He stated in
the interview with Jewish Week, that a Jew is entitled to cut off the
liver of any Gentile in order to save his own life, as the life of a
Jew is incomparably more precious than the life of a Gentile. He was
asked by the interviewer to soften his message, but he remained
adamant. Many Israeli papers republished this interview, as name of
Ginzburg was well known.
A year earlier, Ginzburg's disciples made a sortie to a neighbouring
Palestinian village, and a sect member murdered a 13-year old girl. He
was arrested and brought to trial. Ginzburg was called as a witness of
defence, and under oath, he proclaimed that a Jew could not be tried
for murdering a Gentile, as the commandment "Thou shall not murder"
refers only to Jews. Killing a Gentile is, at worst, a misdemeanour,
said he, as "one can not compare the blood of Jews and the blood of
Gentiles".
In his Cultural History of the Jews, Zvi Howard Adelman of Jerusalem
(available on the website of The Department for Jewish Zionist
Education), quotes Ginzburg and some of his colleagues. One of his
fellow-Cabbalists, Rabbi Israel Ariel, wrote in 1982 in the time of
Sabra and Shatila massacre, that "Beirut is part of the Land of
Israel. . . our leaders should have entered Lebanon and Beirut without
hesitation, and killed every single one of them. Not a memory should
have remained".
Now, every faith has its fringe extremists and fanatics. Certainly,
the vast majority of Jews, including religious Jews does not subscribe
to, indeed are repulsed by such cannibalistic sentiments. But such
revulsion did not stop the Israeli army from guarding Ginzburg's
Yeshiva. The revulsion did not stop the Israeli government from
subsidizing it, or from forcing the Palestinians to accept this
enclave of hatred in the heart of Nablus, or from waging a mini-war to
promote Ginzburg's zeal. The revulsion did not stop the American Jews
from their blind support of Israeli policies. The revulsion did not
stop me from paying my taxes to the government of Israel, knowing full
well that part of it went to support of Ginzburg's sect. The
revulsion did not stop the New York Times and its American media
affiliates from propagating the blood libel of "Arabs despoiling a
Jewish holy place". Ginzburg is entitled to his obnoxious beliefs. We
live in an age when our tolerance extends to all save a Christian
prayer in schools. One is free to join a Satanist or a Cabbalist sect.
But should such people be armed with Apache gunships at the expense of
American taxpayers? Ginzburg and his sect have influence far beyond
their tiny numbers. They are dangerous for all Gentiles, and for the
"rebellious Jews" like the late Prime Minister Rabin. In what might
have been a small rehearsal for the coming confrontation over
Jerusalem's shrines, twenty young Palestinians were made to pay with
their lives to restore their right to worship at the tomb.
Now, as before 1975, local folk and tourists, Moslems, Samaritans,
Jews, Christians and freethinkers can visit the place freely, if they
can escape Israeli sharpshooters. They can put a flower on the
gravestone of a favourite hero of the Bible, the Koran prophet, the
lover of Ferdowsi's poem and Saadi verses, the truth-seeker of the
Sufi revelation of Jami. Joseph came back to the people who always
venerated him. You are free to visit him, but please leave your tanks
behind.
Palestinians fought the army base, not the holy place. The holy places
of Jerusalem, Bethlehem, Hebron would be safe in Palestinian hands, as
they have been for uncounted generations. Without the local
veneration, none would have survived. Please remember it when (very
soon) the problem of Jerusalem will come forth.
This latest saga on the events surrounding the Joseph's tomb is just
one more proof that the American mass media machine is an unreliable
source. The great nation, the formidable superpower gets its knowledge
and navigates its course in the sea of world politics by using a
Mickey Mouse telescope instead of electronic magnifying glasses. If
the Jewish media lords cheat you about Palestine, why do you think
they are honest in any other way? Perhaps the suffering of the
Palestinians should help the Europeans and Americans to notice the
reefs ahoy their own ship.
Israel Shamir is an Israeli writer and journalist. His articles
The Rape of Dulcinea, The Test Failed, Galilee Flowers could be found
on many Internet sites, www.thestruggle.org, www.antiwar,
www.NileMedia etc. He can be reached at shamiri_@netvision.net.il, or
write P.O.B. 23714 Tel Aviv 61236
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