John R. Cohn: BBC, Different Religions Fail To Remember The History Of Jerusalem

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Dear BBC,
I found of interest your report on the conflict surrounding ongoing repairs to the ramp to the Temple Mount in Jerusalem. That area was under Arab control for only 19 years, from 1948 to 1967, when it was ruled by Jordan. Before that the British, the Ottomans, and various other invaders controlled that holy city. Since then, it has been reunited and ruled by Israel. Islamic and Christian holy sites have been preserved and protected. For more years than your 34 year-old correspondent, Matthew Price, has been alive, Jerusalem has been the undivided capital of Israel.
Free access to holy sites of all faiths has been limited only by violence-provoked security concerns. This is a stark contrast to the period of Jordanian control, when all Jews were expelled from the Old City’s Jewish Quarter and prohibited from visiting their holy places.
As the BBC knows, non-Muslims are also forbidden from entering Mecca and Medina, the holiest cities in Islam. Christians in the Middle East’s Arab states, like the Jews before them, have been emigrating in large numbers in response to ethnic violence and discrimination.
Yet, according to your reporter, “most of the world” (and I suspect him, too) believes this is “occupied territory,” although, “from whom” is left unsaid. A Palestinian state never governed it, and Arab control on the part of Jordan, which also seized the city by force, was the briefest of any sovereign entity for many centuries.
Presuming that the British believe their Bible – the Queen is head of the Church of England – they know that Jerusalem was a Jewish city well past the time of Jesus. According to more recent British census figures, Jerusalem has had a majority Jewish population for centuries, as well.
Jerusalem is, as well, the cradle of Christianity; although one would never know that from recently-manufactured Islamic propaganda masquerading as scholarship that claims that the Jews’ temple was elsewhere. Christians are a rapidly-shrinking group throughout the Middle East, even in traditionally Christian cites like Bethlehem, but not in Israel.
So does Matthew Price and the BBC find it not the least bit curious that Jerusalem, which was the Jews’ most holy city and capital long before the birth of Mohammed, is thought by “most of the world” to belong to anyone else but Israel?
It can’t be because the world and protesting Muslims love the Palestinians. The United Nations Relief and Work Agency for Palestinian Refugees (UNRWA) recently reported that only 3 percent of their funds for Palestinian refugee relief comes from Arabs states.
It can’t be because they love Jerusalem. Jerusalem was a backwater for centuries. In 2001, Iran’s influential Ayatollah Ali Akbar Hashemi-Rafsanjani observed, “If a day comes when the world of Islam is duly equipped with the arms Israel has in possession, the strategy of colonialism would face a stalemate because application of an atomic bomb would not leave any thing in Israel but the same thing would just produce damages in the Muslim world.”
It can’t be because of Christianity’s recorded history. If Jesus lived and preached in Jerusalem, so did his fellow Jews.
Muslims are willing to destroy Jerusalem, and their Palestinian brothers and sisters, if they can take Israel along. Presumably a BBC reporter needs no reminder that Islamic radicals are willing to die if they can take others with them.
Could it be none of that matters – that much of the world rejects Israel’s remarkably benevolent rule over that holy city not because they love Jerusalem or the Palestinians, but because they just don’t want it to belong to the Jews?
Et tu BBC?
John R. Cohn is a Clinical Professor of Medicine at Thomas Jefferson University. He writes frequently about the Middle East and recently returned from Israel where he participated in the Herzliya Conference on the Balance of Israel’s National Security. He is a member of the Board of Directors of SPME

John R. Cohn: BBC, Different Religions Fail To Remember The History Of Jerusalem

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AUTHOR

John R. Cohn

John R. Cohn, Thomas Jefferson University, SPME Board of Directors

John R. Cohn, M.D., is a physician at Thomas Jefferson University Hospital (TJUH), in Philadelphia, PA, where he is the chief of the adult allergy and immunology section and Professor of Medicine. He is the immediate past president of the medical staff at TJUH.

In his Israel advocacy work he is a prolific letter writer whose letters and columns have been published in the New York Times, the Wall Street Journal, the Jerusalem Post, the Philadelphia Daily News, the Philadelphia Inquirer, Haaretz, the Jewish Exponent, Lancet (an international medical journal based in the UK), and others. He was CAMERA’s “Letter Writer of the year” in 2003. He maintains a large email distribution of the original essays which he authors on various Israel-related topics.

He has spoken for numerous Jewish organizations, including Hadassah, the Philadelphia Jewish Federation and to a student group at Oxford University (UK). He and his wife were honored by Israel Bonds.

He wrote the monograph: “Advocating for Israel: A Resource Guide” for the 2010 CAMERA conference. It is valuable resource for all interested in maximizing their effectiveness in correcting the endless errors of fact and omission in our mainstream media. One piece of very valuable advice that he offers to other letter writers is: “Journalists and media are not our enemies, even those we don't agree with". Particularly for those of us in the academic community he urges a respectful and educational approach to journalists who have taken a wayward course.

In addition to the SPME board, Dr. Cohn is a member of a variety of professional and Jewish organizations, including serving on the boards of Hillel of Greater Philadelphia, the CAMERA regional advisory board, and Allergists for Israel (American allergists helping the Israeli allergist community). In the past he served on the board of the Philadelphia ADL. He participated in the 2010 CAMERA conference (“War by Other Means,” Boston University) where he led a panel with students on “Getting the Message Out,” and a break-out session called “Getting Published in the Mainstream Media.”

He is married, has three children and one grandchild. He belongs to two synagogues--he says with a chuckle, "So I always have one not to go to". He has been to Israel many times, including as a visiting professor at the Hadassah Medical Center in Jerusalem. His first trip was at age 10, when Jerusalem was still a divided city; and he remembers vividly standing before the Mandelbaum Gate, wondering why he could not go through it to the Old City on the other side.

He adroitly balances his wide-ranging volunteer activities on behalf of Israel with his broad and complex medical and teaching practice (including authoring numerous professional publications) while successfully maintaining good relations with a broad spectrum of Jewish community leaders and organizations -- no small feat.

Regarding his involvement with SPME, Dr. Cohn acknowledged first and foremost SPME’s Immediate Past President, Professor Ed Beck. Dr. Cohn has long perceived that under Professor Beck’s guidance, SPME has been doing an essential job on college campuses; so he was honored when Professor Beck invited him to join the board.

He finds it easy to support and be active in SPME because being a Jewish American and a supporter of Israel presents no conflict due to the congruence of both countries’ interests, policies and priorities. It is clear that Israel’s cause is not a parochial issue. It is a just cause and its advocacy is advocacy for justice.

For Dr. Cohn, the need for SPME is clear. The resources of those who speak out on behalf of Israel are dwarfed by the funding sources available to those who seek to denigrate Israel. Israel's supporters don’t have large oil fields to underwrite their work. And the campus is a critical arena for work today on behalf of Israel, because this generation’s students are next generation’s leaders.

For advancing SPME’s work in the future, he would like to see the continued development of academically sound analyses to counter the prevailing anti-Israel ideology of all too much academic research and teaching on campuses and in professional fields today. He points to Lancet’s creation of a “Lancet Palestinian Health Alliance,” which asserts that Israel is to blame for poor health care for Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. The documented reality, however, is that life expectancy, infant mortality and other measures of health are better for Palestinians in the West Bank and Gaza than in many of the countries so critical of Israel This is in large part thanks to Israel.

Dr. Cohn asserts that we need more research, analysis and publications to counteract such misleading allegations.


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