Last week, members of the Italian parliament and heads of its most important parties convened at the Senate in Rome for an important event in honor of Jerusalem, under the banner "Jerusalem Prayer Breakfast," an event founded by former MK Robert Ilatov and Albert Veksler. The participants sought to strengthen the status of Jerusalem as the capital of Israel and called for the Italian embassy in Israel to be moved to Jerusalem. Israel's embassy in Rome, together with the Israeli Foreign Ministry, helped promote the event.
Senator Matteo Salvini, the head of the Lega Party (a senior coalition member), said at the event that "the Jewish people and Jerusalem are one, and therefore moving Italy's embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem is the right thing to do morally, culturally and religiously, and is a move that should be taken politically. The statements made by Salvini and other senators resonated throughout Italy and beyond.
The following is my speech before the Senate:
At night, we went to sleep with Jerusalem on our tongues, and during the days we blessed our bread and asked of the Lord in the heavens not to forget to build Jerusalem. When lovers took their vows and married, they broke a glass under their canopy, as a sign that their love was not whole as long as Jerusalem has yet to be rebuilt. And on the eve of the Sabbath as the holy day began, we encouraged her from every place on earth where we had stopped for a generation or two: "Oh sanctuary of the King, royal city. Arise and depart from amid the upheaval. Too long have you dwelled in the valley of weeping. He will shower compassion upon you."
And when our captors asked us for words of song in our various exiles, we repeated the eternal oath that the first exiles of Zion swore by the rivers of Babylon in the sixth century BCE: "If I forget thee O Jerusalem, let my right hand forget her cunning. Let my tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth, if I remember thee not, if I set not Jerusalem above my highest joy."
This oath accompanied us as we walked through the valley of the shadow of death of the nations, and through the terrible actions in the death camps we whispered, "We shall not forget thee our love" and we knew, we always knew, that we would return to her, and if not us, then our descendants, and if not today then the next day, or the day after, or in 1,000 years or 2,000 years. But at the end of the long journey, we would return to her and she waited for us like a mother waiting for her son, like a lover waiting for her chosen one, like a crown for a King's head.
Ladies and gentlemen, if you wish to know from whence our forefathers drew the strength to hold on during the long, historic journey that we have gone through since the destruction of our land – the answer is: Jerusalem.
It is true that in the thousands of years that have passed since then, Jerusalem was the political capital of one people, the Jewish people. But this city has become over the years a spiritual center for a large part of humanity and for the major religions. Our prophets prophesied that Jerusalem would become such a magnet for the nations of the world and said that ultimately this would lead to the world peace that we so desire. In the eighth century BCE, the prophet of Jerusalem said the following:
"The word that Isaiah the son of Amos saw concerning Judah and Jerusalem. And it shall come to pass in the end of days, that the mountain of the Lord's house shall be established as the top of the mountains, and shall be exalted above the hills; and all nations shall flow unto it. And many peoples shall go and say: 'Come ye, and let us go up to the mountain of the Lord, to the house of the God of Jacob; and He will teach us of His ways, and we will walk in His paths.' For out of Zion shall go forth the law, and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem. And He shall judge between the nations, and shall decide for many peoples; and they shall beat their swords into plowshares, and their spears into pruning hooks; nation shall not lift up sword against nation, neither shall they learn war any more." (Isaiah, 2:1-4)
That last verse is engraved at the entrance to the United Nations building in New York and the previous verse states that the place where the nations shall beat their swords into plowshares and their spears into pruning hooks will not be New York or any other similar city in the world, but Jerusalem.
Those words were uttered by a prophet who lived in the capital city of an independent Jewish kingdom, during the time of King Hezekiah, whose seal was found recently in the city of David. On it, engraved in ancient Hebrew were the words "Hezekiah, son of Ahaz, King of Judah."
Do you understand? It was about that city that he saw in his lifetime that he prophesied. The Prophet Isaiah teaches us from the perspective of time that world peace will begin when Jerusalem is once again the independent capital of the Kingdom of Israel. The political dimension is reflected in the national body that has been resurrected and its strength can allow the spirit and soul, and the religious and intellectual dimensions to flourish.
For that to happen, we need you good people of the nations of the world, our friends, to participate in the building of Jerusalem; in other words, to strengthen its status as the eternal capital of the people of Israel. The building of the walls of Jerusalem by the nations of the world is the preface and the opening to world peace.
This move, the building of Zion by the nations of the world began 100 years ago, here on Italian soil. At the end of the First World War four empires collapsed: the German Empire, the Austro-Hungarian Empire, the Russian Empire (the Czar) and the Ottoman Empire. And here, out of the smoke and dust of that terrible war, out of the rubble of the end of the age of empire, the question arose of the independence of the Middle East, the cradle of world culture, and within that, the question of the Jewish people and its national home.
A primordial political creature that had disappeared from the world stage for 19 centuries now wished to be resurrected.
And who hosted this drama? Italy. It was at San Remo that the winning powers, who received the territories of the Ottoman Empire first recognized the rights of the Jewish nation to its ancient land. And of all the nations, Italy was chosen to host that conference that would bring true the biblical prophecy of a return to Zion. The Land of Israel was almost empty of Jews, and like Cyrus in the sixth century BCE, the nations of the world – Italy among them – called on the Jewish people to return home.
But this historic mission regarding the Jewish people and their state has not been completed. The Italian embassy in Israel is not in our capital city, in its natural location. I have a dream – to see the Italian flag fly over the eternal city of Jerusalem. Moving the Italian embassy to Jerusalem will make two historical events come full circle: One, it was modern Italy that began the return to Zion 100 years ago at San Remo; and the other, the closure of a trans-historical circle.
We are here in Rome and it was from here in the first century of the Common Era that the legions of the Roman Empire left to put down the revolt by the Jewish nation and its aspirations of freedom, by destroying Jerusalem and the Temple. And it is from that the message of the representatives of the Italian people recognizing as Jerusalem as the capital of the State of Israel shall come forth and thus Italy shall take part in the building of Jerusalem and the realization of the biblical prophecy of the return of the Jewish People to Zion and Jerusalem.
Thus, we shall realize as well, the words of Moses Hess, a Jewish intellectual who was inspired by the birth of modern Italy, and who, in 1861, before Rome became its capital, prophesied in his book Rome and Jerusalem: "With the liberation of the eternal city on the banks of the Tiber shall commence the liberation of the eternal city on Mount Moriah."
It is in your hands.
