Spend long on India’s highways and you’ll soon see them, vast and gaudy, their white-toothed heroes gazing out. Movie billboards, thousands of them, each showcasing some romance or spy flick as the trucks and taxis rattle by. Now, though, these Bollywood staples are joined by something new. There she is, her bob cut with streaks of white, atop a large pair of retro glasses. The actress is Kangana Ranaut: but it’s clear she’s trying to imitate Indira Gandhi, India’s first and only woman prime minister.
Emergency, which lately appeared in Indian cinemas, portrays the 21 months from June 1975 that Gandhi suspended the constitution and ruled the country by decree. Citing rising political violence, and long-standing tensions with Pakistan, the Premier’s actions have been deeply controversial ever since. But if you know anything about Kangana Ranaut, you shouldn’t expect subtlety alongside your popcorn. For beyond producing, directing and starring in Emergency, the 38 year old is also a member of parliament for the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party.
As a Hindu nationalist outfit, the BJP has always loathed Gandhi’s secular brand of politics. That’s clear enough from those billboards: Ranaut’s Indira practically snarls, a narcissistic demagogue as flames smoulder ominously behind. Not that she’s alone. For decades, after all, politicians here have understood the immense power of the big screen, especially when so many Indians remain illiterate. Yet if Indira Gandhi’s own Indian National Congress exploited movies in the past, the BJP is doing something new, borrowing its links to the stars to dehumanise its foes — not just long-dead Gandhis, but many millions of Muslim citizens too, a strategy that could yet turn deadly.
Since independence, Indian politicians have revelled in the silver screen. The cinema of the Fifties and Sixties, the heyday of Congress rule, reflected Jawaharlal Nehru’s founding vision of socialist nation building. One classic example here is Ab Dilli Dur Nahi (“Now Delhi is Not Far Away”). Released in 1957, it follows a young boy who visits the capital to secure justice for his falsely imprisoned father, pleading his case to none other than Nehru himself. Other movies from this period invoke similar progressive pieties, lionising ethnic minorities and assailing greedy landlords.
At the same time, Congress was happy to ban any movies it didn’t like. In 1975, for instance, it temporarily repressed Aandhi because it apparently drew on Gandhi’s relationship with her estranged husband. It’s a strategy that continued for as long as Congress was in power. In 2014, to give one example, it banned Kaum De Heere (“Gems of the Community”) because it allegedly glorified Gandhi’s killers. Gunned down by her own Sikh bodyguards, in 1984, they claimed revenge for an attack by Indian troops on the Golden Temple, the most sacred shrine in Sikhism. Politically, if not ethically, such sensitivity makes sense. Indian politicians have for long understood that cinema can sway voters in their favour. Boasting a vibrant film industry even before independence from Britain, in 2023 the sector pulled in $1.3 billion, with the industry pumping out some 1,500 films a year.
Yet if Congress pulled the plug on films for political gain, and on releases they felt could spark communal strife, its BJP successors have embraced film far more aggressively. Over their decade dominating the country’s politics, indeed, what can only be described as Hindu nationalist propaganda has flooded Indian cinemas. It’s worth returning to Emergency here, with Ranaut using her film to effectively paraphrase Modi that Gandhi’s rule by decree “was a dark chapter” in the country’s history. Considering Gandhi used the Emergency to suppress a range of Hindu nationalist organisations, that antipathy makes sense.
In truth, though, BJP-aligned films usually have a far bigger target in mind than the Gandhis: Muslims. It’s a history that runs deep. The BJP’s parent organisation, the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS), exists largely to undermine the Muslim presence in India, ever since its formation as a quasi-fascist organisation back in 1925. Vinayak Savarkar, the group’s founder, carefully curated the idea of Indian freedom from the British Empire, even as he hoped to be free of Muslims too, envisaging a state where Hindus reigned supreme. Even today, leaders from both the BJP and RSS label Muslims as “terrorists” and “termites” — and just a few weeks ago, a BJP official in the southern state of Kerala told Muslims to “go to Pakistan” if they weren’t happy in India.
Certainly, these ideas are reflected in BJP-backed movies. A case in point is The Sabarmati Report. Released in November 2024, and produced tax-free after support by BJP officials, it covers an infamous 2002 pogrom in the northwestern state of Gujarat. The violence apparently started after an argument between Hindu pilgrims, returning from a shrine on the Sabarmati Express, and Muslim vendors at Godhra station. Even 22 years on, the details of what happened next remain murky. But what’s certain is that a fire started in one of the train’s carriages, killing 59, before vengeful Hindu mobs massacred over 1,000 random Muslims, raping and torturing as they went.
Watch the film, though, and you’ll get a rather different impression of what happened, with The Sabarmati Report bluntly blaming Muslims for the death of the pilgrims while ignoring the butchery that followed. Tellingly, Modi was chief minister of Gujarat during the slaughter — and was quick to praise the film, which earned almost 300 million Indian rupees. “It is good that this truth is coming out in a way that is accessible to everyone,” he wrote on X. “A fake narrative can only last so long — facts eventually prevail.” Statements like these unsurprisingly make India’s 170 million Muslims queasy, especially when Modi had the film screened at an auditorium in Parliament House, an event also featuring both the information and broadcasting minister and the defence minister.
And if victims and their families have little to cheer from The Sabarmati Report, films that cover the massacre more evenly have also been repressed. In January 2023, for instance, the BJP invoked emergency laws to block a BBC documentary examining Modi’s role during the riots. A month later, India’s Income Tax Department raided the BBC’s offices in Delhi and Mumbai, ultimately forcing the corporation to restructure its activities in the country. Feature films covering the pogrom have also faced legal challenges. That includes Kai Po Che, a 2013 movie that petitioners claimed unfairly blamed Hindus for the violence.
Nor, of course, is this simply a matter of a single film, or a single act of communal slaughter from many years ago. Rather, Modi and the BJP have developed close links with Bollywood to promote their jingoistic brand of Hinduism. As Kangana Ranaut hints, that begins with the stars themselves, with several backing the party in their public statements. And if it’s hard to know where ideology ends and professional expediency starts — Vicky Kaushal is just one of the actors to get big after playing a Hindu hero, with the rugged 36-year-old netting a National Film Award for his troubles — there are other links here too. That’s clear enough financially: several pro-BJP movies have received the same tax-free treatment as The Sabarmati Report. It helps, too, that Maharashtra, the home of Bollywood, is now under Hindu nationalist rule, with several stars recently attending the swearing-in ceremony of the state’s BJP president.
And if all this again speaks to the enduring power of cinema as a political tool in India, hardly surprising when 25% of people still can’t read and write, you equally get the sense that many films are best understood as telling one single story: Muslims are a danger to Indian life. One good example The Kashmir Files, which implausibly depicts the 1990 exodus of Kashmiri Hindus as a genocide systematically arranged Kashmiri Muslims, even though many actually fought to protect their Hindu neighbours. Article 370 covers similar themes, while The Kerala Story feels even more crass. Depicting Muslims as brutes intent on smuggling vulnerable Hindu girls into ISIS slavery, the film’s marketing initially suggested 32,000 women had suffered such a fate — until complaints forced the filmmakers to clarify that the blockbuster only compiled the “true stories of three young girls”.
Like with The Sabarmati Report, meanwhile, these movies have explicitly received the Modi mark of approval. And if that’s another reason for ambitious directors to stay on side — a good word from him can see box office takes soar — filmmakers have delved deeper into history to make their politics clear. One good example is the 2020 film Tanhaji: The Unsung Warrior. Released during Modi’s second term, and set in the 17th century, it paints the subcontinent’s Muslim Mughal rulers as barbaric, bloodthirsty monsters, whose ultimate goal is the economic and political subjugation of Hindus.
Nor, of course, is cinema the only place that the BJP is flexing its anti-Muslim muscles. From its muzzling of journalists, to its lavish funding of friendly broadcasters, it’s little wonder Reporters Without Borders ranks India 159th for press freedom worldwide. The media, for its part, is happy to oblige its paymasters: in 2020 several Indian news channels blamed Muslims for Covid. Though they never questioned how the BJP’s faulty vaccine provision resulted in mounting deaths, they did promote conspiracy theories claiming Muslims were intentionally spreading the disease.
Not, of course, that this matters simply for India’s spiralling international reputation. On the contrary, Modi’s usurpation of his country’s media is having a real-world impact on the safety of Muslims. In 2023 alone, India Hate Lab, a Washington DC-based group that documents hate speech against India’s religious minorities, recorded 668 hate speech examples targeting Muslims. Even more striking, there’s suggestive evidence that calumny against Muslims in the cinema can have an practical impact on the streets. Admittedly, the line between media and violence is hard to trace explicitly, but it’s surely telling that 59 cases of communal violence were reported in India last year, a significant rise on the 32 from 2023. Other links are even more explicit. After the release of The Kashmir Files, anti-Muslim videos soon went viral on WhatsApp, with one exhorting Hindus to shoot the “traitors” in their midst. Muslims themselves are clearly worried too, with one opposition politician comparing The Kashmir Files to Nazi propaganda.
Together with other ominous signs — an amendment to India’s citizenship act, coupled with a national register of citizens, may leave millions of Indian Muslims liable to detention and deportation — and the future looks bleak. That’s especially when you examine upcoming releases in Indian cinemas. One example is Chhava. Scheduled for release next month, it features a Hindu hero (once again) decimating evil Muslim kings. If only by comparison, Emergency almost feels balanced.
Great article and a very interesting read. I learned a lot. However, I thought the last paragraph was absurd: “…the spirit of tolerance and freedom that prevailed in the golden age of Arab thought in Al-Andalus…”
So the tolerance and freedom we ought to aspire to, has flourished before – in lands taken from Christian people by Islamic holy war? The Muslim invasion of Spain was islamist jihadism, and if that alone doesn’t condemn it to the modern reader, then reflect on the fact that along with every other Islamic conquest ever, it is a blatant example of violent imperial colonialism.
Why are academics and commentators so eager to admire and applaud it? Because they think Jews and Muslims got along well there? If so, a brief reminder that dhimmis, both Christians and Jews, had to pay the Jizya and the Kharaj (non-Muslim land tax) in Al Andalus (goodness, I wonder if anyone would think the term ‘apartheid state’ would fit? No comment).
‘Golden age of Arab thought’? The Muslims of Al Andalus treated Jews like second class citizens, the historical record is clear. If anyone can find an example of Islamic rule where this hasn’t been the case, please let us know.
It’s sad isn’t it . A load of interesting info vitiated by sentimental nonsense about Al Andalus . For me the Jizya isn’t decisive . After all all minorities were treated as second class citizens everywhere until recently in Europe where , even worse , they are set up as special and laudable way above the low born natives . That’s how grooming gangs were allowed to feast themselves on the flesh of white girls from less well off backgrounds , and why the only person campaigning on their behalf , at least for a long while , is persecuted by police , judiciary and MSM for his trouble . Even the free speech organisation I thought so great had the vapours when he wished to join up recently . Class antagonism presumably .
Palermo under the Norman kings during the 11th century. The Norman’s defeated the caliphate that ruled Sicily, but then kept Arab administrators and customs. The kingdom which lasted 100 yrs or so conducted buisiness in Latin, Hebrew, and Arabic. The architecture it produced has been called Arab- Norman . It was for a short while a pretty good good example of cultural co existence. Mosques and churches. Islam Western Christianity and Byzantine Eastern Christianity were all permitted religions.
Er, permitted by ‘Christian’ Normans.
and what happened to the Jews when the Catholic Monarchy took over ?
They were treated abominably. I have not claimed Jews in Spain were any better off after the Reconquista, that would be a rather silly position to take (and I’ve yet to hear anyone take it, here or elsewhere).
people have a distorted view of history.
There’s a very good book debunking this called the Myth of the Andalusian Paradise.
Yes. A most engaging volume.
Not a paradise but vastly more tolerant than the Catholic regime which followed after the reconquest, in which Muslims AND Jews were forcibly converted and eventually the remnants expelled.
Thanks David, I’ll look it up.
Come on ! El Andalus was not a “Golden Age” for Jewish communities, but it was not the yihadist hell you describe. You cannot judge medieval Al Andalus with reference to liberal values that only became standards of governance in the XIX century (and only in Western Europe and North America). When Jewish communities were being decimated by mobs and Crusaders in France, Germany and England in the 11th to 13th centuries, Jewish communities in Muslim Spain were much better off, tolerated according to prevailing standards of the time. In those times there was no concept of “citizenship”, but yes, you are strictly right, Jews and Christians in Muslim Spain were “second class inhabitants” paying special taxes and subjected to limitations, but living in much a more tolerant environment relative to Western Europe. Now, El Andalus was not the only place where Jewish communities flourished in relative tolerance, they did in the Polish-Lithuanian kingdom when invited to settle there to escape persecution in France and Germany.
Maybe ‘much more tolerant’ but not necessarily very tolerant. And even that ended when the Almohads took over in 1148 and did away with dhimmi status and the benefits of paying jizya, meaning that Jews and Christians were forced to convert or face exile. If they converted, they were still forced to wear distinctive clothing that, whether intended or not, would have marked them out as an underclass (because the conversions were often thought to be fake). People who could, like Maimonides, chose exile.
The Arab Berbers were in fact originally invited in to Spain by one of the Visigothic factions. We don’t have to romanticise Muslim rule, although until the 11th century it was very much more tolerant than the Christian medieval norm. Why not equally condem the previous Roman invasion?
I just ask for consistency. Do you equally condemn Charlemagne’s massacre of the Saxons, the bloody northern “crusades” or the wholesale destruction of Amerindian civilisation and culture by Christians? Or is suddenly Christianity defined irrelevant to the European conquests but of total centrality to the Arab one?
Thanks Andrew. To your second question: I generally do actually, yes. To all three questions: how is this relevant to my initial point? You’re welcome to attack the ‘Christian’ historical record as much as you like, but my ‘consistency’ isn’t really the point of discussion here. I’m not the one pointing to a ‘golden age’ of Islamic-Jewish cooperation. If I was, and if I then claimed that ideal time was under (say) the Roman empire, or Charlemagne, or during the discovery of the Americas, then you would be welcome to critique this, or demand consistency. I didn’t, so I think my point still stands.
Worth noting – just to add to the complexity – that Berbers are not Arabs; many Berbers speak Arabic and, after the Moslem conquest, that number increased but ethnographically, Berbers are a distinct people.
Today, in Morocco, Mauritania and Tunisia, many call themselves Amazigh; (Berber was an insult, derived from the Greeks derision of the Celts, who sounded, in their view like sheep, “Baa, Baa.”). The Amazigh have their own languages and a written script; it will be interesting to see how their sense of themselves plays out.
Another great essay by Ben Judah, but i feel there’s a sense of desperation in the writing, as if he needs to record so much detail – perhaps too much to readily digest – lest it becomes lost in the fog of the current conflict which it aspires to illuminate.
To those unfamiliar (such as myself) with the multiplicity of factions involved in the period of history the writer has sought to cover, i’m not sure i’m any the wiser due to the massing of names and shifting attitudes from one generation to the next.
Still, it remains a great essay because this is perhaps what Jerusalem has become, a pivot point of civilisations stretching back.into the earliest recorded history and still pivoting today.
For those of us fluent in the city’s history and who live and work in it and its environs (am I the only one here maybe?), this was a gem. BTW when Israelis talk of the “one state solution” this is it, when diverse populations who maybe don’t like each other but start living together, the walls of animosity, fear and segregation will eventually blur and even fall.
Would this one state solution of shared existence and grudging tolerance include giving all those Palestinians in Gaza and the West Bank the right to vote in the Knesset, even if this meant Israel losing its Jewish majority?
Yes. Which is one of the reasons why many people don’t believe in it, because it would only mean pushing war down the road. The other major objection is that it would mean immediate war as soon as military rule would be lifted from the virulently radicalised Palestinian population.
If you changed away from the proportional representation system (like the UK) you could avoid it swinging too far one way or the other (if done properly – unlike the uk) – yes some would again not be happy. But you could also reduce the number of disfunctional coalitions that plague the knesset of recent years.
Yes. Which is what should happen. If they are under Israeli rule they should get representation in Israel’s government. It shouldn’t be a problem, given that Hammas has no military presence in the West Bank and no one in Gaza has voted for them in years.
I would think this would turn into something like Iraqi Kurdistan.
Huh? Good luck with that notion.
Sorry, very much for the worst, Hamas is now very popular on the West Bank. One of the reasons they launched their horrible attack of 7 Oct.
That is a very good question. But would you say blithely accept a putative Muslim majority within parts of Europe – not far fetched, but anyway, voting to restrict women’s rights, gay rights etc?
Liberal democracy simply cannot function with that degree of difference in basic assumptions.
I’m no longer in Europe having moved to NZ, but ultimately if Muslims or any other became a majority and voted for those changes I’d begrudgingly accept it even if I detested the policies. I’d probably move back to England in all honesty but I believe that democracy is more important than my personal opinions
You’re not quite the only one, Rafi. I lived in Jerusalem from 2008 to 2013. I witnessed a lot of changes in that time – I felt the city that I loved was becoming more religious, less secular. The small number of non-kosher, open on shabbat restaurants and cafes were being taken over by proprietors who made them observant. Judah’s essay gives me hope that this trend is to some degree in reverse.
In this “golden age,” Jews and Muslims were officially second-class citizens under a Muslim regime. For the tenth century, it was good, but hardly something to yearn for now, given the changes in Muslim culture since then.
I don’t get the scare quotes. The writer himself refers to British Mandate Jerusalem as a city in which Arabs made up a minority of the population, and the house in question has been purchased fair and square, so in what sense is this not “reclaiming” the house for Israel?
I doubt the writer is responsible for the photo caption, but the gentleman depicted is not Hasidic. Hasidim do not wear short coats and downturned hats. He is likely a “Lithuanian” misnaged, a cultural descendent of the group of Jews who opposed the Hasidic movement.
Ha ha brilliant . How variation in the length of a black coat can be such a marker of ideology and history .He too has not really embraced modernity in his dress . Does this mean he too is likely to be orthodox in a non Hasidic way ?
Yes.
The caption says nothing about Hasidim. It identifies this man as “Haredi” not Hasidic. All Haredim are orthodox (or “ultra-orthodox”), but not all are Hasidim.
Wonderful history of Jerusalem, and a beneficial optimism which serves a needed counterpoint to all the doom-loop hysteria that is standard media fare lately. Thank you.
I found this very interesting in its stream of narrative way. I knew very little of this, so thanks very much. One thought springs to mind though is why exclude the Orthodox Jews from the military? Were I not orthodox I’d be pretty unhappy about putting myself front and centre whilst these guys sat around. Surely putting them into the military would force them to move into the modern world and see what is really happening. Couldn’t that generate a little more willingness to get along? I understand that once upon a time maybe this was a short term political solution, but as the numbers have surged rather than dwindled, this is clearly not so now. Perhaps one of the other learned commentators here could respond.
As it happens, Mark, the segregation of religious Jews from secular Jews in Israel is not as resistant to change as many on both sides have imagined. The war has already caused Israelis to rethink almost everything except their determination to survive. Although Israel has never required orthodox Jews to join the army, it has also never “excluded” them. Since 7 October, as one recent article shows, there has been a notable increase in the number of orthodox volunteers. See: Yehoshua Pfeffer, “Ultra-Orthodox Israelis Are Joining the Army,” Wall Street Journal, 14 November 2023; wsj.com/articles/ultra-orthodox-israelis-are-joining-the-army-gaza-conscription-exemption-ae3851be?mod=MorningEditorialReport&mod=djemMER_h.
Arab Israelis, too, are more integrated with Jewish Israelis than many in other parts of the world have imagined. Although Israel has never required Arab citizens to join the army, it has also never excluded them. And more than a few have joined–especially since the outbreak of war. See: “Meet Muslim, Arab and Bedouin Soldiers of Israel’s Army,” Firstpost, 3 November 2023; firstpost.com/explainers/meet-muslim-arab-and-bedouin-soldiers-of-israels-army-13343772.html
What happens there, or anywhere else, when Muslims become the majority?
Wonderful piece. Thank you Ben.
The Zionist movement was a product of the 19 century European nationalism akin to virtually identical movements by smaller European nations. Each one started with building its own mythological narrative ( imaginary Golden Age, Nation’s founding fathers, newly discovered national language, half-fictional nation’s land and so on) , basically, mimicking the “big” European nation states, all in order to get into the the European “big boys” nation-state game. Jews played by the rules, the only problem was that their “nation’s land” was across the sea.
From here, it’s not hard to see the Zionist movement as an alien, European, “orientalist” and colonizing one. Its idea was building a new “Jew” , who would be working the land, muscular, confident and, certainly, a secular nationalist. Isn’t it ironic that decidedly secular Zionists claimed the land based on promise by God in whom they didn’t believe?
On top of it the Zionist project would’ve never succeeded unless the horrors of Holocaust pushed millions of refugees to the Promised Land. So it was a double European push for the Zionist project, first, ideological, second, violently physical.
The Zionist project succeeded not only in creating one powerful national narrative but two! It was quite an achievement to create two powerful and mutually exclusive identities – Israeli and Palestinian, interlocked in the state of permanent struggle.
It gives sense of mission, purpose and general meaning of life to an amazing amount of human beings, Jews and Arabs. ( death and pain are in fine print )
Alien to what exactly? If your view point arab-muslim normativity in the middle east it might be. Talking the Hebrew language and Judaism are Middle Eastern at their core. At the same time as Jews were becoming pro-Zionist, other movements were viewing them as alien in their European countries. You are right that the critical mass of population needed for a Jewish state was as a result of the creation of refugees due to nazi oppression. Then Stalin, instead of giving Jews eastern Prussia so survivors had somewhere to go allowed jewish militias to be armed in palestine and rest is history. Arab countries added to the critical mass Jewish population needed to sustain Israel by persecuting them resulting in them throwing their eggs in with Israel
Islam is essentially a form of Judaism anyway , closer to Judaism than Christianity in that it adheres pretty much to Jewish food rules and injunctions about graven images .
Christianity was born in Palestine. Does it mean that Christians can claim nationhood there?
That’s a very trivial connection. Islam is more like Christianity, in that both are religions of belief. Judaism is a religion of covenant, about what you DO rather than what you believe.
There are thousands of things Muslims have to do . Ritual prayers 4 times a day ( or is it 5 ) , all the laws of what and how to eat ( which hand you use to eat , which to wipe your bum ) . Some of it comes pretty much from Judaism , some not .
The distinction you are possibly after is that Judaism is not a religion that seeks to convert others and has a quasi ethnic conception of who is a Jew . Christianity and Islam seek converts .
Christianity is a faith of covenant including the covenant that God made with Abraham.
A very important difference is that in Islam you go to heaven on your own merits whereas in Judaism there is a redeemer. This speaks of a VERY different God.
Alien to mentality, history, culture, language and what not of the region, and consciously alien with that. Contempt of Israelis for Arabs is maybe justifiable but unfortunate feature of the Zionist identity. It’s just too tempting to not quote from the foundational Zionist document by Theodor Herzl “The Jewish State” ( the Israeli rhetoric didn’t change for the past 100 years )
Hertz died over 50 years before Israel was born. Israel isn’t a full realisation of Hertz’s original pamphlet or your selective quoting of it which is clearly part of a trained narrative put together to discredit Israel.
Hertz didn’t think Jews would be talking Hebrew. Israel is a Hebrew nation though. Hebrew is a local language of the levant. Arabic originates further south.
Jews were told they didn’t belong in europe in the 1930s and 1940s. Now they are told they don’t belong in the middle east. Only the despicable racists dehumanises Jews like this again.
Israel in 2023: bands playing pop music with traditional Middle Eastern instruments sung in a mix of Hebrew and Arabic. See the bands A-WA and Liraz.
Author surprisingly doesn’t dwell on the UN Plan, approved in 47, for a ‘Corpus separatum’ for the City. Jordanian Forces firstly crushed that in 48 and then Israel did similar with it’s annexation in 67. And yet where we stand now does it not seems the vision the UN architects had in 47 remains the best that could have been?
The failure of both sides to grasp that vision and instead insist it’s own narrative crush that of others, has had consequences that may accurse both for decades yet to come.
Lovely work, from a fine soul, thank you. This is what Albert Einstein had in mind when he supported the Zionist cause.
We love Jerusalem. We’ve visited four times and to us the area around the German Quarter is wonderful. It’s not mentioned here. Wandering around the old city we mingle with many Muslims and jews and sit in coffee shops with glamorous Muslim women with diamonds pinned in their hijabs. The market is much like all Middle Eastern markets and we stroll around eating halva and fending off jovial young men tempting us to buy things. My nephew is our guide. We walk the dogs and life a pleasant life – at least we did, before 7/10. We eat wonderful food. There’s a lot of greenery. Jerusalem is full of locally produced food. My Arabic/French speaking father was part of the “literati” I suppose, he was a musician and he too loved Jerusalem.
I feel the version of Jerusalem portrayed is sadder than it need be.
When were you last there? I loved Jerusalem from an experiential and a spiritual sense, but many years since I was there. Would love to go back.
Indeed – there is a strange mixture of tenses going on ….
“when the spirit of tolerance and freedom that prevailed in the golden age of Arab thought in Al-Andalus will return” Good luck with that. The Arabs haven’t contributed anything to world civilization since the Middle Ages.
Wrong. Not since well before the Middle Ages.
Scriptural literalists of any sect–Christian, Muslim or Judaic–are an overall menace. I am not an atheist or even an anti-religionist but the One True Path approach–a form of which exists in every major religion–is corrosive.
I plan to re-read Mr. Judah’s dense, informative article soon.
I thought I had done a fair bit of research on the present problem and its antecedents but this article showed me I had only scratched the surface. I am left with the feeling that the history is complicated and personal and that we in the west would do better to withhold judgement.
Oh my. Abstain from harsh opinions merely because one knows little to nothing about a complex subject? How revolutionary!….How enlightened:)
I fear the world is becoming far less secular and tolerant, and much more nationalistic, very like in the 20th C. Jerusalem just seems one of the many harbingers of this.
Setting whole peoples against one another killed 100 million during that time.
Looks like the Beast is loose again…
Ben Judah’s essay provides a very good and accurate description of Jerusalem. The developments he recounts fit my own experience, having lived there in 1987-1990 as a postdoctoral fellow at the Hebrew University and returning for a visit in 2016. However, I disagree with extending the Jerusalem bubble as a sort of depiction of a future Israel. I also disagree with the claim that Zionism failed to create a new national secular identity for Israeli Jews.
Haredim make about 15% of the Jewish population and are practically absent in the Mediterranean coast and the so-called “Development towns”. A future vision based on Jerusalem encompassing all people “from the river to the sea” would include much more secular Israeli Jews. Also, Palestinian Arab society has its own Islamic Haredim, likely in higher proportion than in the Jewish side.
The essay does not consider that the majority of Israeli Jews are “secular”, in the sense of not having lifestyles constrained by ultra-orthodox Judaism, even if practicing various shades of religious observance and having a wide spectrum of political stances. Israeli Jewish nationalism is defined officially as Jewish nationalism that encompasses world Jewry, but this is a fiction, in practice Israeli Jews are nationalist in an Israel-centered way responding to their specific local conditions, which are different from the ones facing Jewish communities abroad (hence the natural drift in politics and identity between them and Israeli Jews).
Israeli Jews are not just “Jews”, they are in every sense a new national formation produced by historical Zionism, distinct from Jewish communities, centered around Hebrew language and common experiences in a common territory, as well as by many cultural manifestations of their own. Israeli Jewish identity is far from what Teddy Kolek envisioned or from being merely a manifestation of settler colonialism as many anti-zionists argue. Irrespective of historical developments, the Israeli Jewish nation is real and alive and will not go away.
The majority political stance among Israeli Jews is currently moving to an increasingly toxic right wing populist nationalism, with theocratic overtones and religious coercion, but there this is widespread resistance to this within Israel, so it is not necessarily an immutable destiny. Rather internal Israeli and Palestinian politics are deeply interlocked and tied to the peculiarities of their conflict and might change with the evolution of Middle Eastern geopolitics.
Eminently sensible and thoughtful. One question I have though — how can Jews be “colonialists”? A colony is another land governed by a pre-existing country. Jews were never a country, so they can’t be colonialists. The whole point of Zionism was, after all, the need for a country, not a colony.
Right or wrong, that was beautiful.
If Mohammed “ascended to heaven on a horse” in Jerusalem, why isn’t Jerusalem mentioned anywhere in the Koran?
And why are Arabs so often given a free pass for their seemingly instinctive violence for addressing disagreements? The US is on great terms with Germans and Japanese after smashing them in war. Arabs are still fighting wars of decades ago in their heads. Sort of like the “legacy of slavery” crowd in the US, living in the past.
“…unemployment. Months would go by without matches”. Literal fire-starters? Or is this Brit-slang for employment? or?
Jerusalem is all about faith and passion, and there is no city on Earth that people get more passionate about. The light is luminous. In high summer it almost shimmers. The very air is full of prayer and politics, passion and pain, and the rocks and stones virtually sing a hallelujah chorus of history. I am not a religious person, but I cannot help getting excited by the place – although I do not transcend to transports of delight and delirium.
I’ve loved the Old City since my first visit in 1971, and have returned many times since. And I concur with Ben Judah that it has changed much in fifty years. The population of the Old City is overwhelmingly Muslim – are an estimated thirty thousand Muslims here, and the population is growing due to high birth rates.
In the past, Christians, predominantly Armenian and Greek Orthodox, constituted a significant minority, concentrated in the centuries-old Christian and Armenian Quarters. The Arab Christian population has declined significantly since 1967, and stands at less than 6,000 according to the latest census figures. As with so many things in Jerusalem, appearances are deceptive. In the Christian Quarter, where pilgrims and clergy throng 24/7, almost all of the shops that cater for the tourists and the faithful are owned by Muslim Arabs as Christian owners have sold up and departed.Christian numbers have declined drastically over recent decades, a development that has been mirrored throughout East Jerusalem and the Occupied Territories. From some 20% during the Mandate, to under 1% today. Bethlehem was once a predominantly Christian city, and this is no longer the case. Ramallah’s population used to be about 20% Christian, but no more.
The Jewish Quarter, which appears so vibrant and fresh since being rebuilt and repopulated 1967, and bustling with people visiting the Kotel and the many synagogues, is home to some three thousand souls only. In addition, there are some two thousand transient yeshiva students. Apart from the Jewish Quarter, Jewish residents are very few, living in dwellings scattered throughout the Muslim Quarter.
If Jerusalem the capital.of the Jewish people for over 3,000 yrs and site of their first two temples is an invention of modernity as Ben Judah implies in this eloquently penned article, then it’s no less so than this article itself which reads like fiction fantasy & dream- not unlike Amos Oz’s depiction of its dark wet cold dreamlike wintry streets haunted by tormented ghosts, lingering passions & anguish, in his fictional works set in that city – to which Ben Judah alludes
I defy anyone not to be entranced by this city- one of the most beautiful diverse multi-cultural multi-ethnic multi-faith & multi-lingual cities in the world. And one moreover with a thriving secular life. I’ve travelled around a good part of the world and can confidently say that Jerusalem, with its Western, Eastern & surrounding suburbs & outer areas, is staggeringly beautiful, set on hills of dense forests, and full of greenery & still wild plots of fragrant Mediterranean shrubs, wide avenues, winding streets and cafes snackeries markets fancy & simple eating places, public tree-lined squares, children’s playgrounds, & tiny free outdoor libraries
It’s served by huge snaking freeways on its peripheries, modern buildings & hotels, lovely old Ottoman villas and snd has an infinite variety of treasures to explore around every corner and over every hill. Many districts evoke calmness and its common to.find young and older women confidently walking alone, by day & night, fesring none of the harassment they might encounter in other cities
It’s infinitely more delightful expressive humane & multi-textured than Tel Aviv.
The Jerusalem described here by Ben Judah bears absolutely no relation to the city I’ve been visiting twice yearly over the last 5 or 6 years
Go and see for yourself. Explore the Baka, Rehavia, Ben Yehudah market, the German & Italian Colony Districts, the downtown, the Old walled City, & Arab East Jerusalem East of it, or districts such as Yefe Nof, which back.onto hiking trails in the Jerusalem hills, where jackals howl each dawn & dusk
Ben Judah is a fine writer & essayist with an undeniable flair for the complexities of contested histories & cultures, but … the Jerusalem he describes here is unrecognisable to me. It”s his fantasy- nothing like what is actually there
Go.and see it for yourself, wander around, and you may well be as pleasantry surprised as I have been