George Weigel on the passing of Jerusalem's Mayor,
Teddy Kollek.
He was a proud Israeli, who in his youth had run guns and done intelligence work for David Ben-Gurion; as Mayor of Jerusalem, he conducted himself as a servant of people of all faiths, determined to maintain free access to the city's holy places for all who wished to worship there.
Contrasting him with Saddam Hussein, he writes:
Jerusalem is hardly an oasis of tranquillity today. But it is a far more tranquil place — and a far more beautiful place, and a far more open place — than it would have been absent the tough love lavished on it for decades by Teddy Kollek. This great and good man, who was the human antithesis of the brute who died seventy-two hours before him, embodied the promise that Jerusalem might one day be in reality what it has long been in inspiration: the city of peace.
