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(This story was taken from Dr.
Moshe Amirav's 1988 book on Ein Kerem, published in Hebrew by Arial; the
book was written when part of the house at #13 Ha-Ahayot Street still functioned
as an active synagogue. In 1999, a plaque commemorating the story was placed
in the building's courtyard. In a ceremony attended by Dr Amirav, Arab official
Faisal Husseini and members of the two families.
The story was also featured in a 1999 Israeli television documentary, on
the Channel 2 "Shabbat Salaam" series. Since 1998, "Allegra House" has served
as the home of Biblical Resources teaching center and garden-museum.)
The Story of the Jewish Woman Allegra
and the Arab Villager Jabra in Ein Kerem
(With Zionsake editorial
comment, including, "The Story of Ruth;"
The Husseinis)
The Tikva-Tenu (Our Hope) Synagogue
is in an old Arab house, two stories high. It is one of seven synagogues
in the village of Ein Kerem, four of them for the Moroccan
community, two for the Yemenite community and one mixed Moroccan-Turkish
Synagogue. The Moroccan synagogues had descriptive names like "The Gate to
Heaven," "The Prayer to Moses," and "Israel's Victory," while the Yemenite
synagogues were named after their founders, "Yaish" and "Haddad."
The people who prayed at Tikva-Tenu Synagogue
may not have known that the big room with the high ceiling from where their
prayers went up to heaven, was once the house of a Jewish woman named Allegra
and an Arab man named Jabra who lived there in the 1930's. Where the
ark of the Torah stood, Allegra Belu, the Jewish woman who became a Christian,
used to sit reading the New Testament and entreating the Virgin Mary
(instead of the God of Israel) that her father, Nahum Belu of Mehane Yehuda
might forgive her (for despising her Jewish lineage). Among the Arabs who
used to live in Ein Kerem and the old Jews of Mehane Yehuda, there are still
some who would remember the love story involving the daughter of the Belu
family, a family of respected undertakers, and the son of the Raheel family,
one of the wealthiest Christian families in Ein Kerem. The old people will
remember that in those days there was nothing more unlikely than such a love
- the times were difficult and tensions between the two peoples were
high.
In the summer of 1928, some men from Ein Kerem
attacked the Jewish residents of nearby Beit Vegan, but in spite of this
aggression, the same summer, Jabra Francis of the Raheel family found his
great love among the Arab's enemies, in the person of the Jewess Allegra
from Mehane Yehuda. He would come riding on his mare to Mehane Yehuda to
pick up the beautiful Allegra and, shamelessly and defiantly ignoring
the shouting of her father Nahum, they would go out on Jaffa Road for everyone
to see. In those days nobody would have given such a love relationship much
of a chance [and the situation has not changed up our time due to the
Arab's continued agenda to drive the Jews out the Middle East].
Nahum Belu was a religious Jew who wore a beard
and a kippa, and was the principal undertaker in Jerusalem. Descended from
the Jews who were expelled from Spain, he represented the eighth generation
of the Belu family in Jerusalem. And in Jabra Raheel Nahum found three reasons
- each in itself sufficient - to try to end the relationship with his daughter:
Jabra was an Arab, a Christian and a farmer.
Then one day, without telling anyone or saying
any good-byes, Allegra and Jabra disappeared as if
the earth had swallowed them up. Some months later their families learnt
they had been secretly married in Bethlehem and were living there.
That sane day, Nahum Belu tore his mantle, put ashes on his head, and "sat
shiva" (observed the traditional Jewish seven days of mourning): He and his
family considered Allegra to be dead. [In other words they both defied
their parents and their people to do their own thing -
compared
to Ruth of the Bible]
I will not be able to return to my village
with a Jewish woman, her husband told her. A year later Allegra again asked
to return to Ein Kerem, and it was then that she decided to become a
Christian
[comparison
with Ruth]. She entered St. Josephs Convent in Bethlehem and began
to embrace Christianity throught prayer, study and works of charity among
the poor of Bethlehem
Meanwhile her husband Jabra became very succesful
in his business of buying and selling meat.[With the help of the British
who did all they could to benefit the Arabs and to prevent the Jews from
returning to take up there inheritance or to defend themselves]
"O God, do not remain quiet;
do not be silent and, O God, do not be still. For, behold, Thine enemies
make an uproar; and those who hate Thee have exalted themselves. They make
shrewd plans against Thy people, and conspire together against Thy treasured
ones. They have said, "Come, and let us wipe them out as a nation, that the
name of Israel be remembered no more." Psalm 83:1-4 |
Two years later, in 1930, they returned to Ein
Kerem. Allegra wore a big cross on her chest and Jabra had a license enabling
him to become the main supplier of meat to the British Army in Jerusalem.
They lived in a two story house in the center of the village. The local people
called their old house where Allegra lived,"The "the house of the Jewess'"
and they had both great great pity for her, as she made way daily to pray
at St. Johns Church - while being considered dead by her own family in nearby
Jerusalem.
Seventeen years passed before circumstances offered an opportunity for her
to present herself to her family. Shimon Belu, great-grandson of Nahum Belu,
was just a child of eight years old at the time, but remembered the incident
all his life. It happened in 1945, the day after his great-grandfather, Nahum,
had died. The whole family, sons, grandchildren and great-grandchildren,
sat shiv'a when "the Arab woman" with her three children suddenly
appeared in the door. A murmer passed through the family: "Aunt Allegra has
come to sit shiv'a!" In the silence of the room, Nahum's wife spoke
and was clearly heard saying to her in Castillian Spanish: "Leave
the house, this was the wish of Nahum Belu before he died." Shimon Belu said
that Allegra left the house and sat down outside near the fence with her
children and wept there for a long time.
Her son, Yusef Raheel, who was then six, also remembered that moving scene
from his childhood. It was his only memory of his Jewish grandfather - and
his first memory of Jews. Later, sometimes when Shimon Belu, who became manager
of a Jerusalem bank, went to the Mount of Olives to visit the tomb of his
great-grandfather - on which only his name, Nahum Belu, was written,
he also went to visit Jusef Raheel at his bookstore on Salah ed-Din in East
Jerusalem. They politely asked each other about health and business matters,
but talked little about the grandfather Nahum or Allegra. For them it was
history they couldn't deal with. |
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History of anti-Semitism of the
Husseinis |
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The father, the Mufti of Jerusalem:
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Nazi ally, Hajj Amin Al Husseini, is
Arafat's "hero".
By Itamar Marcus
Palestinian Media Watch Bulletin
http://www.pmw.org.il
August, 5 2002
Introduction:
In an interview this week Arafat called the Arab leader and Nazi ally, Hajj
Amin Al Husseini, "our hero". Arafat referred to "our hero Al Husseini" as
a symbol of withstanding world pressure, having remained an Arab leader in
spite of demands to have him replaced because of his Nazi ties. This he compared
to Palestinian withstanding of world pressure for reform of the Palestinian
Authority today, which includes the American demand to replace Arafat.
Background:
"Hajj Amin Al Husseini (1895-1974) was the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem... He
supported the Nazis, and especially their program for the mass murder of
the Jews. He visited numerous death camps and encouraged Hitler to extend
the "Final Solution" to the Jews of North Africa and Palestine. In 1946 he
escaped to Egypt." [Simon Wiesenthal Center Web Site]
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Husseini
with Nazi soldiers and with Hitler |
The
following is the text from the interview with Arafat:
Interviewer: "I have heard voices from within the [Palestinian] Authority
in the past few weeks, saying that the reforms are coordinated according
to American whims."
Arafat: "We are not Afghanistan. We are the Mighty People. Were they able
to replace our hero Hajj Amin al-Husseini? ... There were a number of attempts
to get rid of Hajj Amin, whom they considered an ally of the Nazis. But even
so, he lived in Cairo, and participated in the 1948 war, and I was one of
his troops."
[Al Sharq al Awsat, a London Arabic daily, reprinted in the Palestinian
daily Al Quds, Aug, 2, 2002]
-
Haj Muhammad Amin Al Husseini set the the
trend for Arafat
Benny Morris: Peace? No chance
http://www.guardian.co.uk/g2/story/0,3604,653417,00.html
Thursday February 21, 2002 The Guardian
But my main reason, around which my pessimism gathered and crystallised,
was the figure of Yasser Arafat, who has led the Palestinian national movement
since the late 1960s and, by virtue of the Oslo accords, governs the cities
of the West Bank (Hebron, Bethlehem, Ramallah, Nablus, Jenin, Tulkarm and
Qalqilya) and their environs, and the bulk of the Gaza Strip. Arafat is the
symbol of the movement, accurately reflecting his people's miseries and
collective aspirations.
Unfortunately, he has proven himself a worthy successor to Haj Muhammad Amin
al Husseini, the mufti of Jerusalem, who led the Palestinians during the
1930s into their (abortive) rebellion against the British mandate government
and during the 1940s into their (again abortive) attempt to prevent the emergence
of the Jewish state in 1948, resulting in their catastrophic defeat and the
creation of the Palestinian refugee problem. Husseini had been implacable
and incompetent (a dangerous mix) - but also a trickster and liar. Nobody
had trusted him, neither his Arab colleagues nor the British nor the Zionists.
Above all, Husseini had embodied rejectionism - a rejection of any compromise
with the Zionist movement. He had rejected two international proposals to
partition the country into Jewish and Arab polities, by the British Peel
commission in 1937 and by the UN general assembly in November 1947. In between,
he spent the war years (1941-45) in Berlin, working for the Nazi foreign
ministry and recruiting Bosnian Muslims for the Wehrmacht.
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The son, Faisal
Husseini:
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"The Palestinians are waging war of independence
- someday we will decide if Israelis get a state."
Ha'aretz Services, 6 December 2000
Palestinian Minister for Jerusalem Faisal Husseini has said the Palestinians
are waging a war of independence that will end only when the last Israeli
settler leaves the territories, and that when Palestinians become a majority
in the Holy Land, they will decide whether to allow the Jews to have a state,
Israel Radio reported Wednesday.
It quoted Husseini as saying that the clashes in the territories are not
a another intifada, or uprising, but a war of independence that will end
only when the last Israeli leaves land captured in the 1967 Six-Day War.
Husseini also said that in another few dozen years the Palestinians will
constitute a majority in the area, and that it will be they who will decide
whether to grant Israelis a state, if Israel continues with its present
policies.
-
A sample quote from Feisel Husseini: "Peace
for us means the destruction of Israel. We are preparing for an all-out
war... we have become the most dangerous enemy that Israel has. We shall
not rest...until we destroy Israel."
(Feisal al-Husseini, Bulletin of the Jerusalem Institute for Western Defence,
Bulletin 2, June 1994, quoted by the Int'l Christian Zionist Center
(iczc@iczc.org.il)).
Oslo accords are a Trojan Horse:
"Had the U.S. and Israel realized, before Oslo, that all that was left of
the Palestinian National movement and the Pan-Arab movement was a wooden
horse called Arafat or the PLO, they would never have opened their fortified
gates and let it inside their walls. This effort [the Intifada] could have
been much better, broader, and more significant had we made it clearer to
ourselves that the Oslo agreement, or any other agreement, is just a temporary
procedure, or just a step towards something bigger... We distinguish the
strategic, long-term goals from the political phased goals, which we are
compelled to temporarily accept due to international pressure. . [Palestine]
according to the higher strategy [is]: 'from the river to the sea.' Palestine
in its entirety is an Arab land, the land of the Arab nation." [Al-Arabi'
-Egypt, 24 June 2001 - translated from Arabic by Palestinian Media Watch.
PMW Special Report No. 31, June 26, 2003.
http://www.pmw.org.il]
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Husseini, who was long viewed as a "moderate,"
began to be seen in a different light following his recent death. In a speech
in Beirut in April 2001, Husseini said, "There is a difference between
the strategic goal of the Palestinian people, which is not willing to give
up even one grain of Palestinian soil, and the political [tactical] effort
that has to do with the [present] balance of power... We may lose or win
[tactically] but our eyes will continue to aspire to the strategic goal,
namely, to Palestine from the river to the sea..." On his way this
past May to Kuwait, where he died of a heart attack, Husseini gave an interview
- which turned to be his last - to the Egyptian daily "Al-Arabi," in which
he said:
"The [ancient] Greek Army was unable to break into Troy... [Following the
Greeks' apparent defeat,] the people of Troy climbed on top of the walls
of their city and could not find any traces of the Greek army, except for
a giant wooden [Trojan] horse. They cheered and celebrated thinking that
the Greek troops were routed, and while retreating left a harmless wooden
horse as spoils of war. So they opened the gates of the city and brought
in the wooden horse. We all know what happened next.
"Had the U.S. and Israel not [thought], before Oslo, that all that was
left of the Palestinian National movement and the Pan-Arab movement was a
wooden horse called Arafat or the PLO, they would never have opened their
fortified gates and let it inside their walls..."
Arutz-7 News Brief, Aug. 24, 2001
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