David Rodeback is an American Fork resident who has recently returned from Israel after a week-long business trip. He wrote the following account for the American Fork Citizen. 

At Jerusalem I felt the ineffable stirrings of a Christian, and a Mormon Christian at that, returning to the scene of history’s greatest Holiness. This was my first trip, but where Jerusalem was concerned, I felt as if I were somehow returning. Perhaps that is the common experience of pilgrimage, but I was not just a pilgrim. For me the sacred there is inextricably mixed with the historical and the political.

I went to Israel determined not to start conversations about politics or religion, but willing to engage in them within limits, if others started them. A few wanted to ask me about my religion. Far more wanted to discuss politics.

I hadn’t left Ben Gurion Airport in my rental car before I had had my first substantial political conversation. Next to me in the car rental line was a couple from Kandahar, the second largest city in Afghanistan. They now live in Toronto. As soon as they discovered that I’m an American, they told me that they had been watching our presidential campaign very closely. They had even watched the presidential and vice presidential debates. Ronald Reagan is their American political hero, and they think they see a bit of Reagan in Mitt Romney. But they had also been watching the polls, and they were not optimistic about Romney’s prospects. When I told them why I have long predicted a minor Romney landslide, they were surprised and pleased.

Life goes on in the Jewish Quarter of the Old City, under the shade of an olive tree.

One Israeli after another asked me how I think the presidential election will go. Almost as many asked me what I think of President Obama and Governor Romney. I wanted to listen more than I talked, so I generally confined my thoughts on Romney to praise for his sense of fiscal responsibility, his understanding of economic growth, his vision of his nation’s unique role in the world, and his commitment to Israel as one of our most important allies. There was general agreement.

Of President Obama I usually just said, “Unlike most Americans, he is no great friend of Israel.” To this, too, there was general assent. The most restrained Israeli response was a shrug and the statement, “We don’t love him, but he could be worse.” I confess that I have to agree. Israel has one-tenth the land area of Utah and is surrounded by hostile nations. Some of those nations’ tyrants have openly vowed to erase Israel from the map. President Obama may appease them, but he does not actively join them, so, yes, he could be worse.

When asked what I think of Israel in a political context, I noted that one of my highest political priorities is religious freedom, and Israel is the only nation in the Middle East where even Muslims are free to worship as they choose. And I described my voracious reading of military history as a youth, which led to my great admiration for the strength and flexibility of the Israeli Defense Force, especially in the Six Day War of 1967 and the Yom Kippur War of 1973.

A few conversations ranged as far as Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, whom I have long admired. Here we quickly discovered that I see only the foreign side of him, which looks very good to me and to many Israelis. When he spoke several months ago to the US Congress, I recalled, “It sounded like leadership, which we haven’t heard much lately from Washington.” On the domestic front, however, Israeli attitudes toward him are quite mixed. One Israeli told me, “He’s a complete [expletive], but he’s the best [same expletive] for Israel right now.”

I spent a summer in Russia when the Soviets were in power, but I flew in and out of Moscow, never passing through the Berlin Wall, which divided the Free World from the Communist Bloc. Passing through the new wall between Palestinian territory, the West Bank, and the Israeli-controlled city of Jerusalem was less dramatic than I imagine a similar Berlin Wall passage might have been. We were on our way to Bethlehem. Our Israeli guide could not enter Palestinian territory, so we left him on the Israeli side and picked him up a couple of hours later. On the Palestinian side we changed one small tour bus for another and picked up an equally capable and charming Palestinian guide.

Buildings on the Palestinian side are noticeably shabbier, and the streets have far more litter. There is graffiti on the Palestinian side of the wall where we crossed, but not the Israeli side. There were guards armed with submachine guns on both sides of the checkpoint; one quickly grows accustomed to this in Israel. Even tour groups of Israeli soldiers are armed.

The wall is 70 percent complete; it has already dramatically reduced terrorist incidents in Jerusalem. While I was there, some trouble erupted in the Golan Heights, at the north end of Israel, and in the Gaza Strip to the south, but things were quiet around Jerusalem, as they have generally been for the last few years, according to the locals.

One’s explanation for the contrast between Israeli and Palestinian territory depends on one’s view of the region’s history and politics. Our presidential candidates illustrate this. In what most of the American media called a gaffe, Governor Romney identified a cultural problem as the root of Palestinian poverty. He tends to view Palestinian attacks as terrorism, and the Israelis as victims. President Obama tends to view the Palestinians as victims of their Israeli oppressors, which at least partially excuses everything from comparative poverty to occasional shelling, rocket fire, and suicide bombing. As far as I could tell in my brief exposure to people on both sides of the wall, it is with most typical Palestinians and Israelis as it was with most Americans and most Soviets during the Cold War: While their leaders rattle sabers, sometimes necessarily, most of the people just want to live in peace and get on with their lives.

Graffiti on the Palestinian side of the wall around Jerusalem.

For now, at least on the surface, all is quiet. I don’t see the Israeli/Palestinian situation as stable in the long term, but in my mind’s eye I imagine that it could be, if one side were not bent on destroying the other and propagandizing its children and youth for that battle, and if both sides earnestly resolved to live in peace and prosper together.

Old Jerusalem, the City of Peace, could lead the way. It is a special case, a holy place to three major world religions. The Old City itself is relatively small, geographically. It is roughly square, and about half a mile on each side. It is divided into four quarters: Christian, Jewish, Muslim, and Armenian (also Christian). I saw no wall defining the quarters, but the change in look and feel is immediate, when one passes from one quarter into another. All four quarters bubble with ordinary life, apart from the many tourists. They seem to coexist — if not always amicably, at least tolerantly and even respectfully.

It’s easy for me to say, but, if the various religions’ adherents were determined to live in peace with each other, rather than assert or even enforce their supposed superiority, the City of Peace could really be a city of peace and a catalyst for broader peace in the region.

I’m not sure that any viable solution would be completely fair to all parties. Nor would it need to be; the current situation isn’t. For example, it’s probably not fair that there is a huge, beautiful mosque on the site of the ancient Jewish temple, and all the Jews get there is the outside face of an old temple wall. But the Jews worship at that ancient wall with great passion, and I didn’t see any of them shaking their fists at the mosque above them. It’s probably not fair that some Christian denominations have built vast cathedrals over virtually every site of Christian significance, real or imagined, crowding out the traditions, practices, and sensibilities of other Christians. But pilgrims and tourists come and go peacefully.

One such place is the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, which is said to encompass not only Golgotha and the empty tomb, but also the grave of Adam. It is much as Mark Twain described it a century and a half ago: It is divided. Several Christian sects have their own chapels inside it, because, he wrote in The Innocents Abroad, “It has been proven conclusively that they can not worship together around the grave of the Saviour of the World in peace.” (The Innocents Abroad, chapter 53) 

It is not just Muslims and Jews who must learn to live together in peace and mutual respect, before Jerusalem can fully live up to its name.

When Twain visited Jerusalem, with its population of about 14,000 souls, he wrote, “Jerusalem is mournful, and dreary, and lifeless. I would not desire to live there.” Now, a century and a half later, it teems with life. The Old City is home to about 33,000 people, and the larger city’s population is about 800,000. Israel is justly proud to be a world leader in high-tech business start-ups, and Jerusalem is part of that. But this is not Silicon Valley; this is the Holy City, with a higher calling not yet completely fulfilled.

Now I’m home, and today is Election Day. There is a widespread sense here at home that this election is the most consequential in our lifetimes. There is a similar sense among the Israelis with whom I spoke. Our election is very much on their minds, and they have their own opinions. Recent polls say that the people of Russia, China, and France overwhelmingly favor the incumbent in our presidential election, but Israelis prefer Romney by a very large margin, as do Americans voting from Israel with absentee ballots.

Support whichever candidate you will, for whatever reasons you choose. In any case, it is likely that Americans’ votes may have a dramatic effect on the future of Jerusalem, Israel, and the rest of the Middle East.

David Rodeback blogs at localcommentary.com. He’s also a Republican state delegate for the American Fork precinct 9.