Knesset Members of the National Union faction toured the neighborhood of Shimon HaTzaddik (Simon the Just) in Jerusalem on Thursday. The MKs visited the houses that were recently restored to Jewish hands, as well as the synagogue and Torah study hall. Local Arab women shouted 'You are thieves!' at the Knesset members, who were unfazed.

The Knesset visitors also met local resident Yoni Yosef, grandson of Shas spiritual leader Rabbi Ovadiah Yosef, who told them that his illustrious grandfather receives regular updates on the neighborhood's development and is very pleased to see his grandson and his friends renewing it. Rabbi Ovadiah was the Torah reader in the neighborhood's synagogue when he was 13 years old.

Renewing an ancient Jewish neighborhood
Shimon HaTzaddik is a renewed ancient Jewish neighborhood built around the 2,000-year-old gravesite and tomb of the Tannaitic Sage Simon the Just. The neighborhood is half a mile north of Damascus Gate, and just east of Jerusalem's main artery running from the Old City to the northern neighborhoods of Ramat Eshkol and Pisgat Ze'ev.

MK Uri Ariel said that “with the help of G-d. there are Jewish families here, this was a Jewish site before the War of Independence and it will go back to being [a Jewish site] and we will assist the people on the ground in order to strengthen the neighborhood and its inhabitants.”

“It is a pleasure to see the Nation of Israel returning to the Shimon HaTzaddik neighborhood and I hope that in a few years' time we will see hundreds of families here,” MK Aryeh Eldad added.

"The Prime Minister likes to talk about the unity of Jerusalem,” said MK Michael Ben-Ari, “but the ones who bring about the unity of Jerusalem are the residents of the neighborhood here. On our tour we saw a Torah study hall and dozens of  families with children. This is the Return to Zion and a correction of a historic wrong. The residents here are the Nation of Israel's true heroes.”