Well, that may be the linguistic history of that word, but it was hardly the first time in Jewish history Jews were told where in a town or city they could and could not live. In Marrakesh, Morocco decades earlier, the Jews were confined to what in Moroccan Arabic is called a mellah, from the word for “salt” (melakh in Hebrew and Arabic) and it referred to, I believe, salty ground not good for planting, bad land where the Jews had to live.

Next door in what became Algeria and Tunisia the Jewish ghetto – before the word ghetto appeared in Christian Europe – was called “hara”. In Yemenite Arabic it was “qaa”. Qaa-al-Yahud, the Jewish area.

And in 20th century America Jews were not allowed to buy homes in such places as Greenwich or Wilton, Connecticut, or Grosse Pointe, Michigan. And in the wealthy buildings of Manhattan’s Upper East Side there are co-ops and condos that are Judenrein, no Jews allowed.

In the tony town outside of New York where yours truly grew up, Jews were denied residence in certain areas. The one country club in the incorporated village would not admit Jews as members.

And now we are in the 21st century after the Jewish people have resurrected Jerusalem, with their money, their efforts, their sacrifice, pain and blood being told there are also areas in Jerusalem that must be Judenrein. No Jews allowed, for the land is rightfully the property of the Ancient Palestinians, and Jews have no right either to build homes there for themselves or destroy standing Ancient Palestinian buildings built without Israeli building permits. “Who is Israel to be handing out or not handing out licenses to the Ancient Ones in “their” ancient city?”

Bibi acquitted himself well yesterday in a special Knesset session commemorating the reunification of Jerusalem and expulsion of the Jordanian aggressor-occupiers of two decades. He gracefully dismissed those Israelis who “lament the day that Jerusalem was liberated and freed from its stranglehold.” He likely had Yossi Sarid in mind whose opinion piece yesterday morning in Haaretz did just that.

Could there be a more antiJew, antiZionist sentiment than Yossi Sarid’s? Regretting the return to the real Zion, meeting the Temple Mount? Yossi Sarid & Co., the Israeli and Jewish left, are nothing but the Neturei Karta without the beards…