Fundamentalist vs Secular Clashes Alive in Jerusalem

Clash of fundamentalists and secularists in Jerusalem, via NYTimes

Yesterday I posted an amazing piece over in Cultural Creatives, about Hamas forbidding the UN school in Gaza to teach about the Holocaust. I had no idea that the fundamental branch of Islam denies that the Holocaust happened, and therefore cannot be taught.

“Talk about the holocaust and the execution of the Jews contradicts and is against our culture, our principles, our traditions, values, heritage and religion,” Jamila al-Shanti, a Hamas legislative official, said in a statement distributed Tuesday after a meeting among elected leaders of the radical Islamist group and the head of the Hamas-run Education Ministry in Gaza.

Hamas spiritual leader Yunis al-Astal said teaching children about the murder of 6 million Jews during World War II would be “marketing a lie.” He characterized the possible introduction of the subject into Gaza schools as a “war crime.”

Today, the focus is on the religious-secular divide in Jerusalem. where Madonna wandered about on Monday. In Jerusalem for her “Sticky & Sweet” tour, Madonna is also attending a Kabbalah conference, dining with opposition leader Tzipi Livni and meeting tomorrow with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.

Besides the ongoing conflict between Israel and Gaza, inside Israel is caught in the worldwide web of fundamentalist and secular forces. The yelling and screaming is intense, irrational and often subhuman.

In a modest, recent Rosa Parks event, eight activists non-Orthodox Jewish men and women boarded the No. 40 bus, heading from the northern Jerusalem’s Ramot D into town.  The six women sat in the front of the bus; the two men sat in back.

Stunned, some Orthodox women stayed in the back of the bus — where Orthodox Judaism says they belong — and others snatched a moment of elusive ‘freedom’ and moved to the front.

And the beat rolls on … Anne