Scuffling at the Mughrabi Gate

According to the Times of Israel, a UNESCO investigative team which was about to visit Jerusalem has been disinvited by Israel. Apparently part of the team's agenda was to investigate the matter of the Mughrabi Gate, which leads from the Kotel (Western Wall) into the Temple Mount compound. We don't have anything intelligent to say about this particular case, but it just so happens that we've got an interesting document about Israelis and Palestinians disagreeing about the Mughrabi Gate.

In early October 1967, four months after the Six Day War, Talmi al-Mukhtashev, head of the Waqf in Jerusalem, sent a letter to Levi Eshkol, Israel's prime minister. If he was in any way cowed by the new rulers, he managed to hide it, as he castigated Israeli actions at the Western Wall and the Mughrabi Gate.

Last month we sent your honor a telegram warning that Israeli forces had taken over the Mughrabi Gate and opened it to the public; we demanded this action be undone and the key to the gate returned to us. We received confirmation of the telegram's arrival, but when no change was seen on the ground we've sent additional letters demanding the same.
The open gate has enabled uncontrolled visits. Muslim worshippers have been cursed, Jewish tourists have misbehaved and some even had picnics and otherwise behave as tourists on the Temple Mount [the original Arabic probably called it Haram A-Sharif]. These events have caused offense to the Muslims, and we demand that the keys be handed back so the Waqf alone will control the area.

A note attached to the letter explained that it had been sent to various officials, including the police, Ministry of Justice and others, but that no answer was intended to the complaint. (File א-7921/3).

Golda Meir: The Israeli Black Panthers Aren't Nice

More than 30 years after her death, Golda Meir is still remembered fondly by many of America's Jews, or at least those old enough to have such memories. More than 30 years after her death, most Israelis still dislike her, and many dislike her intensely. This animosity has three main sources. The most important of the three is the Yom Kippur War, which Golda's government failed to foresee or prepare for; the lesser of the three is the perception that she failed to seek peace when Egypt's Sadat was seeking it.

The second most important reason Israelis still dislike Golda is because she once said of the Black Panthers that "they're not nice".

The year was 1971, and the day was May 17th. The previous evening there had been a violent mass demonstration of angry young men, mostly from families who had immigrated from Morocco, and not successfully integrated into Israeli society, and had provocatively given themselves the moniker of the angry young blacks of America. Their program was to shock the Israeli establishment into taking them more seriously than their immigrant parents had been taken, or so they claimed. When on May 17, 1971, Golda visited an assembly of Jews from Morocco, it was inevitable that the riot of the previous night would be discussed. Shaul Ben Simchon, one of her hosts and a fellow Laborite, commented that he had met some of the young men who had been arrested, and found them to be "nice guys" (bachurim nechmadim). To which Golda responded that "People who throw Molotov Cocktails at Jewish police aren't nice guys."

It was a statement identifying people by their actions; it was picked up and endlessly repeated and amplified and engraved into the national psyche as a statement identifying people by their ethnicity and divergence from that of Israel's ruling elite--hurting young uncouth Sephardi men being derided by elderly complacent and out-of-touch Ashkenzi power-brokers. It may be that Golda and her generation had partially earned the anger directed at them, though not as fully as it was presented at the time; yet even if so, it wasn't what she had said nor intended - and, to be fair, given her life-long record of actions - it was also unfair to present her that way. Yet the power of a soundbite can't be undone, and it can live on for decades even after it was never really said.

Months later, on November 1, Golda sent an open letter to "Comrade Ben Simchon" remonstrating with him for never speaking out in her defense as the rumour of her nasty (mis)quote spread far and wide. A few days later he responded ("Comrade Golda Meir, the Prime Minister"). Yes, her version of the event was accurate. He hadn't spoken out because he hadn't noticed the misquote had taken on a life of its own, and anyway, no-one had asked for his opinion on the matter. However, now that he had her attention, he would welcome her participation in various activities of Moroccan Jews, and this would undoubtedly be good for her as well as for the cause.

So that's done. Now that we've corrected the historical record (also on our Hebrew blog), the unfortunate story will disappear from history and never be cited again. Perhaps.

Truman Needs a Note...

The story about how Harry Truman more or less singlehandedly decided that the United States would recognize Israel in May 1948 is well known. The State Department was unanimously against the idea, although at the last moment the Secretary of State did call the President and tell him that since he was determined to do the wrong thing, he, George Marshall, wouldn't oppose him in public. Yet the decision itself wasn't enough. In order for the United States to recognize a new country, someone had to ask them to do so, and  no one in Tel Aviv had prepared for that. Clark Clifford, Truman's aide, called Eliyahu Epstein, a Jewish Agency official in Washington, and explained that there had to be an official request. Since neither Clifford nor Epstein knew what such a request might look like, Epstein was on his own. Ben Gurion had declared independence at 4pm Israel time, which was early morning in Washington, and the declaration would go into effect at midnight Israel time, on the first minute of May 15th, so there still were a few hours to figure it out.

Here's the result: A letter from Epstein to Truman, in English of course, in which he informed the president that a Jewish state had been declared, that it was called Israel, that it had a provisional government, and that it was requesting the recognition of the United States. At loss as to his own position, Epstein signed as an "agent of the provisional government".

And here's Truman's response. And notice that someone added the name of the new country, Israel, after the letter had already been typed. Originally it had simply said that the United States recognized a Jewish State.

The full story of the intigues and maneuvers leading to Truman's decision can be found in David McCullough's magesterial Truman from page 595 onwards, and this particular vignette is on pages 617-18.

The Four-and-a-Half-Pronged Program to Reinvent the ISA

Blogging has been a bit disappointing recently, we admit. All sorts of things have been going on, and since tomorrow evening is a holiday, the rest of the week doesn't look too promising, either.

Some of the problem, however, has a fine excuse behind it: the ISA finds itself in the throes of a major upheaval these days.

Last year the government adopted its Resolution 4473, which foresaw a major reform in the way the Israeli administration creates, processes, preserves and opens its documentation for the citizenry. The reforms were to start in 2013, and the lack of a national budget so far this year has made things a wee bit more complicated. One of the easier segments of the resolution, however, required the State Archivist to submit a master plan to the prime minister.

The master plan was basically completed last Fall, but just about then there was an election campaign underway, a point in time in which politically elected officials are not supposed to make strategic decisions if they can be put off until after the elections; then, after the elections, the prime minister and his aides were a bit busy with such matters as forming a new coalition. Only in April were we finally able to re-submit the final draft of the master plan. We are happy to tell that it was promptly accepted and confirmed.

The plan calls for four major spheres of change:

1. The bureaucracy and the ISA must devise new methods to identify important documentation at the time of creation and ensure its eventual arrival in the ISA; the rest of the documentation must likewise be identified so as to be correctly disposed of.

2. A large-scale project of scanning will be launched, so that the paper documentation which has been collected can be processed and accessed in digital form (such as online).

3. The whole system of declassification must be revamped, so as to deal with the backlog, while aligning the methodology with the Freedom of Information Act..

4. The documentation is to be put into the public realm using the full gamut of available (and future) technological tools.

On top of which, the Law of Archives must be re-legislated. The current law was passed in 1955, when very few people used iPads or the Internet, and although some of its sections have been re-visited since then, the legal edifice on which the entire practice of archives in Israel stands is, well, a bit precarious.

So we've got our work cut out for us. Some sections, we're happy to tell, were launched even before the official OK, and in recent weeks we've been a bit preoccupied.

a. We've started the large logistical challenge of scanning millions of pages of documents each month. This is actually not a matter of technology (the technology is mostly simple) as much as one of logistics, quality control, and generally being careful and systematic.

b. We're developing new software systems to work in; the first segments are already being implemented, even as some of the latter ones are only in various stages of planning.

c. We're cooperation with a handful of forward-looking government ministries in evolving and applying new methodologies for the identification and processing of digital documentation.

d. We're seriously scratching our heads about the declassification process. It's tricky, that one is, but must be dealt with.

e. We're outlining the issues of a new law of archives. Legislation, of course, is the job of the parliament, but since this is to be a government-sanctioned law we've got lots of studying, defining, planning and initial formulating to do before the legislators even begin their deliberations.

All of which is not to say that this blog is going silent. Hopefully it isn't. But we've had a rather full plate recently, and the adjustment may take a bit.

Is this the Note that Launched Maaleh Adumim?

In early July 1974 (there's no precise date) Ariel Sharon, a recently elected Member of Knesset in the opposition Likud party, dashed off a note to Yisrael Galili, a minister without portfolio in Yitzhak Rabin's brand-new first government. Galili, it must be noted, though he didn't run any ministry, was one of the most powerful, behind-the-scenes movers in Israeli politics at the time.

Here's the full content of the note, which comes from file number 7458/3-ג:

Yisrael,
A fellow by the name of Eliezer Ben-Arye called me a few minutes ago. He says he's part of a group of 75 families who wish to settle in Maaleh Adumim. [Underlined in the original]. I suggested he call your office. I hope you'll be agree to meet them.
Arik

1971: Planning for Jerusalem in 1980

In December 1971 Uri Mor wrote a report titled The Arabs of East Jerusalem, A Forecast for the 1980s. We recently met Mor, a staffer of the Office for Arab Affairs in the Prime Minister's Office. The copy in file גל-13908/2 is unfortunately truncated, and ends abruptly at page 13, but since by then it has covered quite a bit of ground, it seems safe to assume we've looking at most of the original.

Making predictions is always tricky, as the saying goes, and especially predictions about the future; making predictions about the future of Jerusalem seems, frankly, like a fool's errand. Making predictions about the future of Jerusalem then filing them in an archives whence they can be extracted and re-read in light of what actually transpired is, well, not recommended.

Mor prefaces his predictions about Jerusalem in 1980 by enumerating many of the things that could skewer his assumptions: there might be political changes in the West Bank or in Jordan. A new Pan-Arab hero such as Nasser might rise and excite the Arabs of Jerusalem. He notes various alternatives in which the Arabs of the West Bank and Jerusalem might coalesce around a leader of their own (though he doesn't see an obvious candidate). There might be negotiations between Israel and Jordan, which would inflame Arab public opinion on the West Bank where King Hussein is so hated following his massacre of Palestinians (in 1970 - and interestingly, he manages not to use the word "Palestinians"). Nor is he comfortable in projecting what the economic relations between Israel, West Bank and Jordan will be in the coming decade. Having said all that, however, he then sets out to make his projections.

He starts with demographic projections. In 1967 there were 68,500 Arabs in the city, and 200,300 Jews. In 1980 there will be 97,000 Arabs and 292,000 Jews. Of the Arabs, some 82% will be Muslim, and the rest Christians. Here is a demographic report from 2010 - 30 years later than Mor's target date - which comes from this useful website. So far as I can make out, Mor's figures for 1980 weren't far from the mark, though the trends were a bit different: a steady 3-1 relation of Jews to Arabs in Jerusalem has eroded significantly in the interval (it's now about 2-1 and sinking); the proportion of Christians among the Arabs has eroded even more.

He correctly foresees a sinking birthrate of Jews and Arabs, and fails to see that the death rate would also sink. He wonders if there's any chance of unifying Jerusalem with Bethlehem and Ramalah, apparently an idea he'd heard somewhere, but saw no sense in it. On the other hand, he also speculates that Ramalah might someday become the capital of the West Bank (true, since the late 1990s). He suspected there might be significant immigration of Arabs from the Hebron area into East Jerusalem, and wondered what this would do to the internal political dynamics of the Arabs.

On employment, he seems to have correctly foreseen that a significant chunk of the Arabs would work in construction in the Jewish sector. He didn't see much future for Arab light industry (there's isn't much heavy industry in Jerusalem and never has been). He did expect there to be a growing number of jointly-owned Jewish-Arab commercial or light-industry enterprises. This didn't happen. He saw a growing problem of educated Arabs who wouldn't find proper employment in Israeli institutions.

Interestingly, he expected growing integration to result in a growing number of Arabs acquiring Israeli citizenship.Within a decade, he dared to expect, they'll all be voting in the municipal elections. In national-level elections he expected Jerusalem's Arabs to support the Israeli Arab leaders. None of this happened, not in the 1980s, and hardly in 2013, either.

He went back and forth on what to expect regarding security and violence, but seems to have decided, on balance, to expect an encroaching pseudo-peace. As a projection for 1980, this wasn't bad.

He was considerably more optimistic about the Christian Arab community than time warranted. He knew they'd been declining for years, but expected, for some reason, that Israel's presence would reverse this process. It didn't.

Finally, he turns to the relations between Jews and Arabs. He felt the most significant factor would be how Israel relates to the Arab leadership - and then he continues his discussion on page 14 which we don't have.

It's Our Train Company - or: Salaries Will Come Later

Still rummaging around in the special ISA Independence Day publication, here's the story of the first day of a Jewish train company in 2,000 years.

On Sunday, May 16, Moshe Paikowitz came to his office in Haifa. It was his first day of work on the first day of operations at the brand new Israel Train Company, of which he was now in charge. That the train company was up and running on that day was actually a moment of historic significance. Bear in mind that Israel is one of the only countries among dozens and dozens of post-WWII states which managed to remain a democracy throughout its existence, while maintaining a functioning state bureaucracy and society. Figuratively but also practically, the ability to come to work on the first workday after independence and have the trains run, was crucial to this success. Countries which can hit the ground running, will run; the ones which can't, won't.

Perhaps the first thing Paikowitz did that morning was to dictate a proclamation to the workers of the company. It began with high pathos: "It is a great honor for me and for you ... so far we've been employed by a foreign nation; now we're working for our own nation..."

Then he addressed what might have been feelings of inferiority among his staff, given the battles that were being fought in many corners, even as they were being called on merely to run trains: "At this crucial moment, the trains are a small but important cog in the national defense machine. Let each and every one of us regard themselves as soldiers on the field of battle." And also "We must all adhere to orders, be steadfast in our discipline, and remember that we're all in this together!"

Only near the end of his proclamation did he refer to individual motivations: "Of course I never forget that we've always been underpaid and over-worked. I assure you I'll work to convince our government that we deserve better! But first, we must win the war!"