Dhimmi Is As Dhimmi Does
Let me show you how dhimmi status has become so psychologically ingrained that we do not even notice it.
You know how there are those among us who say we have to share sovereignty over the land with the Arabs who now call themselves Palestinians – two states for two peoples and all that! Anything less than that is occupation or apartheid.
You know that they say we have to look forward and not back (history be damned!). That we have to recognize that our holy sites are also holy to them too, and to respect their rights at those sites.
And then I have a conversation with a Jewish woman who was born in Hebron and believes all of that as well. She was 8 years old when the 1929 massacre took place. She does not remember much about the town itself, and what she does remember is from the perspective of a young child for whom a few tens of meters can seem like a really long distance.
Among other things, I asked her:
Me: Do you remember your father praying at the Cave of the Patriarchs?
Her: Jews were not allowed there. We were only allowed on the lowest three steps.
That was during the time when Jews and Arabs supposedly got along “just fine”, a definition of the situation my interviewee agreed with.
Sure, Jews and Arabs get along just fine as long as we Jews know our place. As long as we know to stand at the bottom of the steps, and watch the entitled Muslims go all the way up.
Sheri, you have, once again, encapsulated why my ‘perspective’ has shifted over the past few years. We cannot and should not be forced to be less than ‘equal’ to our Arab cousins, especially at our own religious sites. Even being a secular Jew, I can see they are important to our narrative and once we allow them to be deemed not so, we have lost and have succumbed once again to dhimmitude. More please!