FORMER HEADQUARTERS OF A MONSTER IS TORN DOWN TO HOST JEWISH HOUSING INSTEAD

The Shepherd Hotel in the Sheik Jarrah neighborhood, which served as the headquarters for the nazi-collaborating mufti, has been torn down to make way for Jewish housing:

The old Shepherd Hotel, in the Shimon HaTzaddik-Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood was brought down today (Sunday) by bulldozers in preparation for the construction on the site of a new, 20-unit housing project. The hotel was the former home of Haj Amin Al-Husseini, the mufti of Jerusalem who engineered murderous riots against Jews in 1929 and 1936. During World War II, Husseini met with Hitler and mobilized Muslim support for the Nazis among Muslims.

"It is very symbolic," said Daniel Lurie, Executive Director of the Ateret Cohanim Association, "that the home of this former Nazi sympathizer is being razed – even so many years later – to make way for Jews to return to Jerusalem.

Watching the hotel go down, Lurie said, "This building is a symbol of genocide; Husseini was practically a full-fledged Nazi; the British arrested him for starting pogroms in the 1920's, and he established on his own a unit that murdered hundreds of thousands of Jews in Yugoslavia during World War II… The Jews are now returning to our natural home; no one can claim that Jerusalem is not Jewish, and this particular spot is in the heart of Jerusalem. Some Arabs live here, but it is a Jewish area; Simon the Just is buried here, Jews live right below, the Police Headquarters are located nearby. The natural process of the Jews returning home is continuing, and with G-d's help it will pick up even more steam."

The Shepherd Hotel was purchased by Dr. Irving Moskowitz of the U.S. back in 1985. His plans to build Jewish homes there met up with various bureaucratic and political obstacles, but now – 25 years later – they have begun taking on physical shape and form. Moskowitz and his wife Cherna also purchased the land on which the Ma'aleh HaZeitim complex continues to be built, opposite the Mount of Olives.

Unfortunately, once again, this could not go through without disgraceful reactions from the EU and US government, who again refuse to recognize that this is a privately owned project and oppose Jews living in Jerusalem:

"Calling Jerusalem a settlement is a misinterpretation, an insult to the history of the city," Israeli Foreign Ministry spokesman Yigal Palmor told the French news agency AFP. "It is incomprehensible that they are mixing questions of private rights, international law and politics," he added.

He was reacting to European Union and American condemnation of Israel for Sunday’s demolition of the old and unused Shepherd Hotel. The lot is owned by Irving Moskowitz, an American Jew and a strong supporter of a Jewish presence in all of Jerusalem, Judea and Samaria.

[...]

The Prime Minister's Bureau pointed out in a statement that the government was not involved in the demolition and that it was carried out “in accordance with Israeli law. There should be no expectation that the State of Israel will impose a ban on Jews purchasing private property in Jerusalem. No democratic government would impose such a ban on Jews and Israel will certainly not do so.

“Just as Arab residents of Jerusalem can buy or rent property in predominantly Jewish neighborhoods in Jerusalem," the statement continued, "Jews can buy or rent property in predominantly Arab neighborhoods in Jerusalem.”

U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton called the demolition a “disturbing development,” while Catherine Ashton, the foreign policy chief of the EU, repeated her oft-stated stand that ”settlements are illegal under international law, undermine trust between the parties and constitute an obstacle to peace."

The EU, the United States and the United Nations does not recognize Israeli sovereignty over what it calls “East Jerusalem,” meaning large areas of southern, northern and eastern Jerusalem that were restored to Israel in the Six Day War in 1967. The term "settlement" also has been used by U.S. President Barack Obama when referring to United Jerusalem.

Their statements only damage peace prospects and encourage more disrespect from the Islamic world. But we really can't expect much else from them at this point.