A Letter to the World from Jerusalem 
  by Eliezer ben Yisrael 
   
(This was originally an editorial published in the Jerusalem Times in 
1969. It is still highly relevant considering the current political 
situation and the upcoming celebration of Yom Yerushalayim. The letter 
was reprinted by the Israel Center of the Orthodox Union in Torah 
Tidbits #211) 
   
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 of 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 swell 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 wanto 
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. fro 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"!