We should thank Hamas for choosing to launch rockets at Israel's capital at the height of Jerusalem Day. Maybe this will wake Israel from its yearslong national slumber and restore its passion for the redemption of Zion and Jerusalem.
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Palestinian spokesmen in recent days have blamed the escalation in Jerusalem on Jewish settlers. They were assisted in their efforts by interviews with Israeli proponents of Jerusalem's division, among them former Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and IDF Maj. Gen. (res.) Gadi Shamni, who emphasized that the neighborhoods of "Issawiyya and Shuafat are not Jerusalem." They speak as if the fervor for a unified Jerusalem is the interest of a contentious nationalist minority, but what is Jerusalem without its surrounding areas, without an eastward exit to the desert landscape? It would be like Tel Aviv not having access to the seashore.
At this time, it would be appropriate to return to what was once, before the late Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin entered office, something of a given. Presenting the follow-up to the 1993 Oslo Accords in what would be his last speech to the Knesset, Rabin said that "a unified Jerusalem, which includes both Maaleh Adumin and Givat Ze'ev, will remain the Israeli capital under Israeli sovereignty."
At the height of the siege on Jerusalem in 1948, before Israel declared independence, the man who would become Israel's first prime minister, David Ben-Gurion, demanded a concentrated effort toward the battle for Jerusalem. Explaining the reasoning behind this decision, he said, "If the land has a soul, then Jerusalem is its soul, and the battle for Jerusalem is crucial, and not just militarily … That oath on the rivers of Babylon ["If I forget thee, O Jerusalem, let my right hand forget her cunning …" (Psalms 137)] obligates us now as it did in those days, otherwise, we will not be worthy of the name people of Israel."
Quite a few of the paratroopers who liberated Jerusalem now have doubts as to the yearning for a Jewish presence in all areas of the city.
We should return to the victory speech delivered by Mordechai "Motta" Gur, who at the time commanded the 55th Reserve Paratroopers Brigade, on the Temple Mount in Jerusalem's Old City.
"Paratrooper conquerors of Jerusalem, when the Temple Mount was conquered by the Greeks, it was liberated by the Maccabees … For some two thousand years, the Temple Mount was forbidden to the Jews. Until you came – you, the paratroopers – and returned it to the bosom of the nation... You have been given the great privilege of completing the circle, of returning to the nation its capital and its holy center ... "
For generations, this was the premise that united the people of Israel and was the focus of their yearning. Through the power of this eternal vow, we will return and reunite in this renewed struggle for the eternal city.
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