What with his beating up on Israel and his shabby treatment of our prime minister, President Barack Obama has
No matter how many times I wander along the paths, I experience an almost palpable communion with the earlier tenants, whose fragmented footprints are all around me.
not been earning many admirers in our country.
Which is all the more reason for me offer these words of personal appreciation to the leader of the free world.
Let me explain.
I a volunteer guide at Jerusalem’s Tower of David Museum, located just inside the Old City’s Jaffa Gate.
Once a month, I drive from my Rehavia-area home to the Carta parking facility adjacent to the new Mamilla Mall, a ten-minute journey. I lock the car and mount several flights of stairs into the Alrov mall, enjoying the tony ambience of the upscale shops, the bold sculptures lining the wide pavement, and the hubbub of foreign and local shoppers taking in the scene. After about a hundred yards, I cross the narrow road into the Old City and, displaying my tour-guide identification, enter the Tower of David through the exit gate.
On my way to the front entrance, where I await visitors for the tour, I pass through the large courtyard encompassed by the walls, whose excavated ruins bear mute testimony to the formidable site’s 3,000-year history.
I usually arrive early and stroll through the area. No matter how many times I wander along the paths, I experience an almost palpable communion with the earlier tenants, whose fragmented footprints are all around me. In contrast to the inebriated recollections of E.A. Robinson’s Miniver Cheevy, I summon up not dreams of “Thebes and Camelot,” but images of Judean kings, of Hasmonean warriors and their Seleucid enemies, and of Roman, Muslim, Crusader and Ottoman conquerors. I celebrate the relentless perseverance and courage of our people, but I am also deeply moved and saddened by the price we have continued to pay to maintain our claim to our ancient patrimony.
But now Barack Obama has assured me that my sense of despondency is misplaced. Not me personally. I am talking about the urgent message he has been delivering to Israel and to our neighbors. Taking precious time from addressing other diplomatic annoyances such as Iran, he has made it clear that the stone specters in the museum do not belong to us, but are part of the great entity known as the West Bank.
I have no doubt about the president’s sincerity and his wish to ease my anguish. Why get yourself worked up about a bunch of old stones that have no connection to you, he seems to be telling me. Encouraged by his solicitude, I expect that the next time I meander through the courtyard I will no longer be overcome by sensations of angst.
The other day, contemplating my next scheduled tour at the Tower of David, I had a fleeting vision. Barack Obama stood beside me and a knot of tourists on the observation deck, his left arm reaching out toward the nearby Dome of the Rock on the Temple Mount and the slope of the Mount of Olives. “That, my friends,” he is proclaiming, “is the land of the West Bank. That and all that lies beyond.”
Parsing that vision, I dismissed the cynical notion that Obama was echoing a latter-day version of American imperialist hubris, along the lines, say, of the irrepressible 19th century frontier poet Joaquin Miller, who in “Westward Ho” exuberantly celebrated his country’s march across the vast territory toward the Pacific. After all, Barack was not seeking to add the West Bank to the United States. He was merely seeking to explain that Jews have no business there.
I have no desire dilute my thanks to President Obama for mitigating my ambivalent reactions to the silent witnesses in the museum courtyard, but I want to suggest he work a bit harder to get his message across. During my last tour, as I was concluding remarks on the history of the tower, a young visitor from Ireland asked, “Can we see the West Bank from here?” Mr. Obama, this guy doesn’t understand yet where you are coming from.