Published: 8 October 2019
Last updated: 4 March 2024
MICHAEL KIMMELMAN CAME and went almost unnoticed: the local media took no interest in the visit to Jerusalem of the New York Times’ architecture critic. However, it’s to be hoped that his front-page article in the paper, published in mid-September, will yet make waves – not only internationally but also in Israel, which is hard-pressed to preserve its cultural assets.
Kimmelman came to Israel in mid-July in the wake of an international petition against a plan to build a cable car that’s intended to pass directly from the First Station, in the western part of the city, to the Western Wall in the Old City.
Indeed, as his article indicates, the cable car in Jerusalem is not the functional transportation solution its advocates claim it will be, but a clear-cut product of the political reality in early 21st-century Israel.
Kimmelman grasped that the idea behind the cable car is above all political in nature, with the purpose of hiding the city’s universal character, so that it “curates a specifically Jewish narrative of Jerusalem, furthering Israeli claims over Arab parts of the city.”
FULL STORY Jerusalem is becoming a Jewish Disneyland, NYT's architecture critic warns (Haaretz)
Photo: A visualisation of the cable car over Silwan, in East Jerusalem (Haaretz)
