Women in Green continued the battle for an Israeli presence at the abandoned Shdema army camp by celebrating Jerusalem Day at the site on Friday. More than 250 people, as well as the local IDF command staff, attended the event.
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Women in Green is a non-profit organization dedicated to the Jewish presence in the Land of Israel. It has spearheaded the fight to guarantee that the abandoned IDF base at Shdema, located between Jerusalem and Gush Etzion, becomes a Jewish community.
The army pulled out of Shdema in 2006, and reports surfaced that the Olmert government had considered turning the site over to the Palestinian Authority for Arab development. Women in Green currently holds events at the site every Friday in an attempt to ensure that the location remains in Israeli hands.
The featured speaker at the event, Israel Prize Winner and former Knesset Member Geula Cohen, spoke about Jerusalem Day and her successful initiatives to pass laws annexing Jerusalem and the Golan to Israel.
She also said that Israel had made fundamental errors with regard to Jerusalem and Judea and Samaria by not emphasizing the Jewish people’s basic connection to Biblical Israel.
Cohen claimed that the country’s leadership should have set out immediately after the 1967 Six Day War to establish a Jewish presence in eastern Jerusalem while letting the Israeli flag fly on the Temple Mount.
Likud MKs Ze’ev Elkin and Danny Danon sent letters of support to be read at the event which praised the struggle to keep Shdema in Israeli hands.
Tour guide Aryeh Klein pointed out that Shdema was originally a Hashmonean Jewish fortress from around the second century BCE. Between 1948 and 1967 it had served as a Jordanian military base, controlling the surrounding area.
Israel News Photo
Israel News Photo
Israel News Photo