Eliezer ben Yisrael (Stanley Goldfoot)
I am not a creature from another planet, as you seem to believe.
I am a Jerusalemite - like yourselves, a man of flesh and blood.
I am a citizen of my city, an integral part of my people.
I have a few things to get off my chest. Because I am not a diplomat, I do not have to mince words. I do not have to please you or even persuade you. I owe you nothing.
You did not build this city, you did not live in it, you did not defend it when they came to destroy it. And we will be damned if we will let you take it away.There was a
Jerusalem before there was a New York.
When Berlin, Moscow, London, and Paris were miasmal forest and swamp, there
was a thriving Jewish community here. It gave something to the world which
you
nations have rejected ever since you
established yourselves - a humane moral
code.
Here the prophets walked, their words flashing like forked lightning.
Here a people who wanted nothing more than to be left alone, fought off
waves of heathen would-be conquerors, bled and
died on the battlements,
hurled themselves into the flames of their burning Temple rather than
surrender, and when
finally overwhelmed by sheer numbers and led away
into captivity, swore that before they forgot Jerusalem, they would
see
their tongues cleave to their palates, their right arms wither.
For two pain-filled millennia, while we were your
unwelcome guests, we
prayed daily to return to this city. Three times a day we petitioned the
Almighty: "Gather us from
the four corners of the world, bring us upright to
our land, return in mercy to Jerusalem, Thy city, and dwell in it as
Thou
promised." On every Yom Kippur and Passover, we fervently voiced the hope
that next year would find us in
Jerusalem.
Your inquisitions, pogroms, expulsions, the ghettos into which you jammed
us, your forced baptisms, your
quota systems, your genteel anti-Semitism,
and the final unspeakable horror, the holocaust (and worse, your terrifying
disinterest in it)- all these have not broken us. They may have sapped what
little moral strength you still possessed,
but they forged us into steel. Do you think that you can break us now after all we have been through? Do you really believe that after Dachau and Auschwitz we are frightened by your
threats of blockades and sanctions?
We have been to Hell and back- a Hell of your making. What more could you
possibly have in your arsenal that could scare us?
I have watched this city bombarded twice by nations calling themselves civilized.
In 1948, while you looked on apathetically, I saw women and children blown
to smithereens, after we agreed to your request to internationalize the
city. It was a deadly combination that did the job - British officers, Arab
gunners, and American-made cannon.
And then the savage sacking of the Old City-the willful slaughter, the
wanton destruction of every synagogue and religious school, the desecration
of Jewish cemeteries, the sale by a ghoulish government of tombstones for
building materials, for poultry runs, army camps, even latrines.
And you never said a word.
You never breathed the slightest protest when the Jordanians shut off the
holiest of our places, the Western Wall, in violation of the pledges they
had made after the war- a war they waged, incidentally, against the decision
of the UN. Not a murmur came from you whenever the
legionnaires in their spiked helmets casually opened fire upon our citizens from behind the walls.
Your hearts bled when Berlin came under siege. You rushed your airlift "to
save the gallant Berliners". But you did not send one ounce
of food when Jews starved in besieged Jerusalem. You thundered against the wall which the
East Germans ran through the middle of the German capital- but not one peep
out of you about that other wall, the one that tore through the heart of
Jerusalem.
And when that same thing happened 20 years later, and the Arabs unleashed a
savage, unprovoked bombardment of the Holy City again, did any of you do anything?
The only time you came to life was when the city was at last
reunited. Then you wrung your hands and spoke loftily of "justice" and need for the
"Christian" quality of turning the other cheek.The truth - and you know it
deep inside your gut - you would prefer the city to be destroyed rather than
have it governed by Jews.
No matter how diplomatically you phrase it, the age old prejudices seep out
of every word.
If our return to the city has tied your theology in knots, perhaps you had
better reexamine your catechisms. After what
we have been through, we are
not passively going to accommodate ourselves to the twisted idea that we are
to suffer eternal homelessness until we accept your savior.
For the first time since the year 70, there is now complete religious
freedom for all in Jerusalem. For the first time since the Romans put a
torch to the Temple, everyone has
equal rights (You prefer to have some more
equal than others.) We loathe the sword- but it was you who forced us to
take it up. We crave peace, but we are not going back to the peace of 1948
as you would like us to.
We are home. It has a lovely sound for a nation you have willed to wander
over the face of the globe. We are not leaving. We are redeeming the pledge made by our forefathers: Jerusalem is being rebuilt. "Next year" and the year after, and after, and after, until the end of time- "in Jerusalem"!
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