For the last few days, I have suffered in silence as I read the words of others, as I heard them express one of several absurd and inaccurate comments. Most prevalent, and most annoying is the one where people suggest that the US should not move the US Embassy from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem because of the threat of violence. This is nothing short of appeasement and will end as badly as it did in the 1930s with Hitler. You cannot appease evil. Not then, not now, not ever.
Suggesting that we live in fear of what the Arabs might do, is nothing less than a formula for disaster. We lived that reality for 2,000 years and with the rebirth of Israel, that time, that mindset was supposed to have faded away. I was once told by a Jewish man, brilliant of mind, kind and generous, that when he walked the streets of the Poland of his youth, he and his friends would step into the gutter if a Christian “neighbor” was walking on the sidewalk. The alternative was to risk a beating. “I would be dead,” I told him without thinking and wished then that I could take those words back. What good would they do, more than 50 years after he was liberated from the hell of Auschwitz? This idea that you must cower in fear of what others might do is the mentality of the ghettos of Poland – and we left them long ago.
We will not live our lives here in Israel out of fear. Jerusalem is ours by right and whether the decision to move the Embassy is smart or not, it should be done. We will not take smart over right.
Years ago, my family was caught in a missile attack on the northern border. Like many others, we rushed to a safe area and waited. When the all-clear sounded and in the hours that followed, thousands of Israelis vacationing in the north headed south, ending their vacations early and leaving the north shockingly uncrowded in the month of August.
My husband and I debated what to do, spoke to people who lived there, and listened to the army’s advice. Stay. Return to normal. We stayed. One of the things that solified that decision was hearing one of our children beg us to go home and we told him that this IS our home. What would you do if they attacked our village, we asked him. We should fight, he told us and it was so easy with a child of about 10 to explain that this too is our home, here close to the border with Lebanon. Here we fight. Today, he is a soldier in the army of Israel; he has fought in two wars. He carries a gun, drives an ambulance, and steps forward without hesitation whenever he is needed.
We have always fought for the right to live in our land – it is likely we always will. What will destroy us is not the Arabs, but the ghetto mentality that comes like a tidal wave from Jews in America and the leftists here in Israel. Jerusalem is our home, our soul, our heart. We will not give up a part to appease the Arabs. THEY are the ones who would occupy it; they are the ones who seek to conquer it and if they can do that with threats and violence, then that will be the path that they take.
Do we need Donald Trump to “recognize” Jerusalem as our capital. Heck no. We all know that Jerusalem has been ours for 3,000 years. How then can a religion that is but 1,400 years think it has more rights than we do. It is their Dome of the Rock that is built on the ruins of OUR Temples. Our relics that the earth surrenders when you dig deep.
If in the end, Donald Trump announces that he recognizes Israel as the rightful capital of the indigenous Jewish people, if he brings to fruition the promise he made last week to move the US Embassy, the proper response is “thank you” and “yes, of course.”
How dare you, who live on distant shores, offer to sacrifice Jerusalem for us. It is MY son on the front line defending this land, defending Jerusalem from the north, as my city defends it from the east. You have no right and more, you have much wrong.