Some reminders about Jerusalem
President Obumbler's efforts to stop Israeli construction at the Shepherd Hotel in Jerusalem's Sheikh Jarrah section has prompted David Hazony to send the Annointed One some reminders of why Jerusalem belongs to the Jewish people and is not up for negotiations. Here's his bottom line. Jerusalem is not just a consensus issue in Israel but also a deeply personal one. There is no erasing the thousands of years of yearning for Jerusalem in Jewish texts, nor the heart-wrenching failure of Jewish forces to capture East Jerusalem in 1948, nor the national catharsis of its reunification in the Six Day War, nor over four decades of astonishing development and construction and tourism and flourishing of religious life for all faiths since then. The idea that now, suddenly, a new American president, speaking of “settlements,” will change this reality is not simply offensive and alienating to Israelis only but also to Jews the world over. Rather than recognize his failure in the Middle East so far, Obama is exacerbating it. Israelis do not like to be bullied, and this is far more likely to steel the Israeli public’s resolve against American pressure than weaken it.Read it all. He's got it right.
I still remember vividly the night I watched the IDF entering Jerusalem's Old City on American television. I have some of that footage for you below. While I was preparing this post and watching the video I'm about to show you, my son (son # 3, child # 6), who is almost exactly the same age now that I was when the 1967 War took place, walked in and insisted that I start the video over again. He then started quizzing me about why they took down the Israeli flag from the Temple Mount (another sad story)....
I still get goose bumps watching this video.
Let's go to the videotape and I'll be back with more after it.
Does Obama not understand what Jerusalem means to Israelis and to committed Jews around the world? No, he doesn't. And that's why he's so tactlessly arrogant.
But on a policy level, even if he did understand, it wouldn't change anything. In Victor Davis Hanson's words, Obama has
a genuine feeling that Israel is an aggressive, Western imperialist power exploiting indigenous people of color who simply wish to be free--in other words, the Rev. Wright-Bill Ayers-Rashid Khalidi view of the Middle East.Obama will never empathize with Israelis. We have no common language with him. And for now, at least, we have no common language with those in power in America.
posted by Carl in Jerusalem @ 5:06 PM
3 Comments:
Its not necessary for Israel to remind the world what Jerusalem means to Jews. No one can take that away from the Jewish people. The Hebrew Bible and Jewish prayers always keep Jerusalem in their hearts and memories.
As long as Jews remember, it doesn't matter what the One thinks.
Daniel Pipes describes the American assault upon Israel's national consensus on Jerusalem as Obama's doing damage to America's relations with Israel and to the prospects for peace.
As he writes, the fight is not over some remote outpost but to a Jerusalem neighborhood whose Zionist pedigree goes back to 1891.
There's more to last weekend's story. Read it all
Dear Obama...
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