Author: David Mark

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How Big Is The Jewish Quarter?

When Mark Twain arrived in the Holy Land in 1867 he saw a barren land with few inhabitants. His depiction of Land of Israel is as follows:

“The further we went the hotter the sun got, and the more rocky and bare, repulsive and dreary the landscape became…There was hardly a tree or a shrub any where. Even the olive and the cactus, those fast friends of a worthless soil, had almost deserted the country”.

While in Jerusalem he did find connection to the spiritual, he still depicted it as hardly populated. Interestingly, according to the Ottoman census already by the 1860s the population he would have found there would have been majority Jewish. This begs the question, if the Jewish population was in the majority, how big was the Jewish Quarter over 150 years ago if the Jewish population was in the majority?

In the second half of the 19th century Jewish Jerusalem was bursting at the seams. More and more Jews were streaming to Jerusalem and the surrounding areas. So much so, that by the 1880s Jews started venturing outside the walls of Jerusalem for the first time.

The Jewish population lived throughout today’s Old City and beyond. There were Jews in abundance by the Flowers Gate in the North as well as in today’s Christian Quarter. What is known as El Khaladia Street in today’s Muslim Quarter was the main street of the Jewish population.

However, this began to change when the British took over the Holy Land as they employed the quarter system we are all used to today. In the years between 1917 and 1948 a series of Arab pogroms occurred with little resistance from British authorities. This decimated the Jewish population and pushed back to the current Jewish Quarter, which was extinguished in 1948 when the Jordanian were able to take control Jerusalem’s Old City for 19 years.

Upon liberating Jerusalem in 1967, Israel reestablished what is today known as the Jewish Quarter, but kept the erroneous four quarters the British had instituted. Unfortunately this gives a false impression that Jews only lived in that area.

In order for the Jewish people to have an authentic and honest connection to their ancestral homeland, they need a very real historical account of Jerusalem. That includes fact that most of the “Christian and Muslim Quarters” were in fact Jewish not so long ago.

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Can Israel Stop “Palestinian” Thieves From Stealing Its Land?

According to the website of the Jordan based NGO APNature masks itself as a environmental social justice organization,“concerned with the protection of the environment and the natural resources of Arab countries against all hazards, including the destructive impacts of wars and foreign occupations.”

APNature has taken upon itself to take over Area C, the area allotted to Israel according to the Oslo Accords and where very little Arabs presently live.

Their campaign to plant millions of trees in Area C has been effective. Hill after hill has been taken, turning what was set aside for growing Jewish communities and handing it to “Palestinian” squatters. APNature’s campaign is part of the broader Fayyad plan, whose namesake was the former “Palestinian” Prime Minister and saw Area C as the next stage for “Palestinian” Occupation.

APNature, like lots of faux social justice organizations functioning on behalf of the “oppressed and occupied” in Judea and Samaria claim they are only righting some sort of wrong and so can play on the sympathies of millions who also support environmental causes. What person wouldn’t want to plant trees in “the desert”?

What APNature and those like it, who use the guise of conservation to ensnare and harness the kindness of other for a destructive political cause are doing is land theft on a massiv escale.

Israel has only recently been engaged in enforcing and pushing back on this sort of insidious behavior and interference by foreign organizations.

Im Tirtzu, a Zionist Watchdog organization has brought this issue to the forefront. The group revealed that APNature planted nearly 2.5 million trees in Israel as a means of “green resistance” to “liberate Palestine from the river to the sea.”

Im Tirtzu CEO Matan Peleg said: “Israel’s enemies have learned that they don’t need weapons to conquer Israeli land; all they need is a tree and a camera. While IDF soldiers know how to deal with terrorism, it is much more difficult to fight against this sort of warfare.”

What Can Be Done?

While the government has decided to invest millions of shekels into combatting the “Palestinian” occupation of Area C and the State Lands within it, there is a real need for a change of mindset amongst everyone. The “Palestinian” national movement and its supporters are engaged in more than land theft, they are using environmentalism, not for saving the planet, but for the benefit of their national movement and the armed gangs that come along with it.

Besides a massive injection of cash into projects to plant more trees for Israel in these areas, as well as investments into farming projects, a new type of pioneer in Judea and Samaria needs to be supported. The youth are looking for their movement and if the government eases up on zoning laws for Jews, which the Arabs don’t follow anyway, young pioneers will be the tool to push back and remove the “Palestinian” occupation forces from Area C.

Illegal “Palestinian” house built on State Land.
More houses and trees built and planted without permit on State Land
Illegal houses built on State Land
Water mane being installed without permit, usually resulting in destroying legal water sources.
More illegal building.
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The Exchanged Children – Regaining Ourselves

The path to self awareness and inner connection weaves through the darkness of our world. It requires us to recalibrate the balance between our soul and our bodies.

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We are always descending within the darkness of the physical world. It is that descent, that confusion we find in our lives that we must abandon in order to rise up to the path of the light. This is the path of the Creator, who is hidden in all of Creation. Yet, until find the true Tzaddik, the loop that was forged at the time of our birth in this world will continue.

We rise only to fall – fall only to rise. We hold onto our false sense of self because we are too afraid to move forward. This is the job of the Tzaddik – to show us our own way. It is the path most carved out for each of us that allows us the comfort to let go of all of the false perceptions we have packed into our mind.

When we let go – we find ourselves and the body is once more ruled by the soul.