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Israeli President Lights a Hanukkah Candle in Hebron

(JNS) Jonathan S. Tobin - Is there something controversial about the president of the State of Israel visiting one of Judaism's holiest shrines to celebrate the start of Hanukkah? President Isaac Herzog gave the world a reminder that history matters, and that denying it is incompatible with both truth and peace. Hebron was King David's first capital of the ancient kingdom of Israel before Jerusalem was conquered. But long before that, it was the place where the patriarch Abraham made the first recorded purchase of property in the Promised Land when he bought a burial place for his wife, Sarah. The tombs of the next two generations - Isaac and Rebecca, and Jacob and Leah - are also there. In 1929, Arabs - egged on by the incitement of Haj Amin el-Husseini, the Mufti of Jerusalem - led a pogrom in Hebron in which 69 Jews were murdered. Herzog's great-grandmother, Faya Hillman, survived the massacre by feigning death among the corpses of her neighbors. The problem is that the Arabs continue to regard the Jewish presence at a place where Jewish life began as illegitimate. If Jews have no right to live in Hebron, can their presence in any other part of the country be considered legitimate? Herzog sent a loud message to the Palestinians that they need to give up their delusions about evicting the Jews. Those opposed to Jewish life in Hebron are encouraging an endless cycle of violence fueled by anti-Semitic and anti-Israel hate.
2021-12-02 00:00:00
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