Jerusalem the Eternal Capital of the Jewish People - YJ Draiman

Jerusalem the Eternal Capital of the Jewish People

The Jews have only Jerusalem, and only the Jews have made it their capital.
That is why it has so much deeper a meaning for them (the Jews) than for anybody else.

Jerusalem throughout its long and turbulent history, Jerusalem, more than any other city, has evoked the emotions, aspirations, yearnings and religious fervor of civilized Jewish mankind. Yet this homage of the world cannot overshadow the consuming and single-minded passion of one particular attachment: that of the Jewish people. For that people, as no other, Jerusalem is not just its one and only religious centre and source of spiritual life; from time immemorial it has been and, still is, the very heart and core of the people – the tangible embodiment of its nationhood, the lodestar in its wanderings, the theme of its prayers each day, the fulfillment of its dreams for the Return unto Zion and indeed the cornerstone of its continuity.

Many thousand of years ago, it was in Jerusalem that the priests would offer up daily sacrifices in the Temple on Mount Moriah. It was there in the Temple that the Sanhedrin, the great court of 71 Jewish sages, would sit in judgment. And three times a year on the harvest holy-days of Passover, Pentecost and Tabernacles, the entire Jewish nation would make a pilgrimage to Jerusalem. It is in the direction of Jerusalem that Jews face when they pray three times daily.

The Jewish prayers themselves contain numerous references to Jerusalem and Zion. In the Amidah, the Silent Devotion, God is praised as the Builder of Jerusalem. In many other places the prayers echo the messianic belief that God will restore the Jewish people to His holy city. On Passover and the Day of Atonement Jews conclude services with the fervent hope: “Next year may we be in Jerusalem!”
The Jewish connection to Jerusalem harks back to Biblical times. Jacob, encountering the site where the Temple would stand centuries later said: “How awe-inspiring is this place! It is the House of God! It is the gate to heaven!” (Gen. 28:17). Jerusalem was “the site that the Lord your God will choose from among all your tribes, as a place established in His name. It is there that you shall go to seek His presence” (Deut. 12:3).

Jerusalem began to fulfill the function of a spiritual and national capital when King David conquered the city in the 10th century BCE. King David made it his seat of judgment and brought the Ark of the Covenant to rest there. It was also David who conceived the idea of building a permanent house of God, a Temple, a plan eventually fulfilled by his son Solomon. DESTRUCTION & REBIRTH The story of the Jewish people and Jerusalem has been one of exile, destruction and rebirth.
Jerusalem in its 3000 years of history the city was destroyed 17 times and 18 times reborn.
There always remained a Jewish presence in the city of Jerusalem, and the Jewish people as a whole always dreamt of returning en mass to Jerusalem and rebuilding their city.
When the Babylonians destroyed the city in 586 BCE, the Jewish exiles pledged that they would never forget their beloved Jerusalem: “By the rivers of Babylon, there we sat down, and we wept, when we remembered Zion. Upon the willows in its midst we hanged up our harps. For there they that led us captive asked of us words of song, and our tormentors asked of us in mirth: ‘Sing us one of the songs of Zion.’ How shall we sing the Lord’s song in a foreign land? If I forget thee, O Jerusalem, let my right hand wither. Let my tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth, if I remember thee not; if I set not Jerusalem above my chiefest joy” (Psalms 137:1-6).
The Jewish exiles did not forget their beloved city of Jerusalem. They were to return there and rebuild the Temple under the guidance of Ezra and Nehemiah. When the Seleucids took control over the Land of Israel and placed Greek idols in the Temple, the Jewish Maccabee’s revolted. They succeeded in recapturing Jerusalem and re-dedicating the Temple in 165 BCE.
The Romans destroyed the Temple in 70 CE. During the time of the Roman occupation of Israel they killed over 4 million Jews. When the Emperor Hadrian began planning to replace it with a shrine to Jupiter, a Jewish revolt known as the Bar Kochba Rebellion broke out.
For the last 2000 years, on the 9th day of the Hebrew month of Av, Jews everywhere have commemorated the destruction of their city and Temple with a 25-hour fast. They sit on low stools in their synagogues and recite Jeremiah’s Lamentations. They recite elegies for the city which is “scorned without her glory”.
During the periods of exile Jews throughout the world would be linked as they prayed together in their Hebrew tongue all facing in the same direction, maintaining their affinity with their eternal Jerusalem. Today Jerusalem flourishes once again as the heart and soul of Judaism. It boasts a full range of rebuilt and new synagogues, Talmudic academies and institutes of Jewish research. It is home to the Chief Rabbinate of Israel which administers the life cycle events of the nation’s Jewish citizens. All varieties of Judaism are represented there. Nowhere else is the spiritual element of the Jewish people so visible as in this “place that the Lord has chosen”.
Jerusalem the Jewish NATIONAL CAPITAL for eternity; Jerusalem was never the capital city of any of its conquerors or occupiers.

Re: Israel - To whom it may concern in Europe, Asia, Far East, South America, the US and elsewhere:

We are tired of hearing that withdrawal from Judea and Samaria will bring peace. We know and you know that it would bring another Gaza a terrorist entity. So stop saying it and promoting this fallacy. Past experience has proven that concessions, appeasement and land for peace only increased terror, violence and more conflict.

We are tired of hearing that land beyond the Green Line is 'Arab-Palestinian land'. The Green Line is simply an armistice line that has no political significance. You know this too. The San Remo Treaty of April 1920 incorporated the 1917 Balfour Declaration as international law and Granted the Mandate for Palestine to the Jewish people, the same Allied powers also established 21 Arab States on over 6 million sq. mi. with a wealth of oil reserves and one Jewish State in all of Palestine which is about 46,000 sq. mi. - The Arabs are not willing to give up any part of the 21 Arab States and the Jews are not willing to give up any part of the Jewish State. We the Jews are in possession of our land. Possession is nine-tenths of the law.

We are tired of hearing about the "Arab-Palestinian people." They are no different from the Arabs of Syria or Egypt, from which most of their ancestors migrated in the last 150 years or so. There is no Arab-Palestinian language or religion, and until very recently they considered themselves simply 'Arabs'. Their culture is almost entirely defined by their opposition to the Jewish state. There never was an Arab-Palestinian State or people in History. The Arab Palestinians have a State in Jordan (also Jewish territory) which is 80% of the land originally allocated to the Jewish people under the San Remo Treaty of April 1920.

We are tired of hearing that "the Arab-Palestinians deserve a state." We are indigenous here, not them, and their behavior entitles them more to a trial at The Hague than to a state. The Arab Palestinians have a State it is called Jordan which was carved out of Jewish allocated land.

And they certainly don't deserve our state, which is the only state they want. They already took 80% of Jewish allocated land which is Jordan. Israel also gave them the Gaza Strip on condition of peace, and they turned it into a terrorist entity.

We are tired of hearing about 'The Occupation'. As Minister Naftali Bennett said the other day, you can't be an occupier in your own land. The Arabs are the occupiers, Greater Israel has been a Jewish territory for over 3,300 years even if it was temporarily conquered and occupied by various nations over the centuries.

We are tired of hearing that "settlements are illegal under international law." They are not. The San Remo Treaty of April 1920 explicitly stated that Jewish people can reside anywhere in the Mandate for Palestine, those terms are set in perpetuity.

We are tired of hearing that "settlement construction is an obstacle to peace." Arab rejectionism, violence and terrorism is the reason there is no peace. When the Arab-Palestinians teach and preach hate, terror and destruction to their children, this is definitely not a road to peace and coexistence.
By the way, we are pro-peace. We are just not pro-suicide and self destruction.

We are tired of hearing about the 5 million (or whatever ridiculous number there are alleged to be) 'Arab-Palestinian refugees' or the 'Arab-Palestinian Diaspora'. There were about 600,000 Arabs that left their homes in 1948, mostly of their own volition, more or less at the same time as the 990,000 Jewish families refugees from Arab countries, of which the Arabs confiscated their homes and assets. We resettled ours with limited land and resources — resettle yours, the 21 Arab states have more land and resources (13 million sq. km. with a wealth of oil reserves).

We are tired of hearing anything from anyone associated with the U.N. The U.N. is a parasitic and criminal enterprise dominated by our mortal enemies. The U.N. cannot create states, it can only recommend and its resolutions are non-binding with no legal standing, so can other nations only recommend and not create a state that never existed before in history. If they want an Arab-Palestinian state, it already exists; it is Jordan which has taken 80% of Jewish allocated land.

We are tired of stupid post-colonialist rhetoric. We are not 'colonists' and Arabs do not have the right to terrorize and murder us in the name of 'resistance' or beheading Jewish Rabbi's in Jerusalem's Har Nof Synagogue. Talking this way reveals you as moral imbeciles with barbaric behavior. The Arab-Palestinians train their children to commit terror and violence and be suicide bombers.

You can not recognize a state and people that never existed and that has no borders, no single government, and no economy no currency. They are not trusted by Arab states either. The Kuwaiti’s expelled close to a half million Arab-Palestinians for supporting Sadam Hussein when Iraq fought and took over Kuwait.

We know we can not depend on any kind of security guarantee from anyone except the Israel Defense Forces. So stop being insulted because we do not trust you. And do not ask us to give up any nuclear weapons we might or might not have or any other method and technology that could help protect us.

We know that the left-wing parties in Israel are bankrupt of ideas. We are not going to vote for them, no matter how much you would like us to. So do not bother trying to influence our election. We will only vote for a government that protects its people and cares about the Jewish heritage, more than it cares for world opinion.

Don't believe what you read in Ha'aretz newspaper, they represent a minority that has no allegiance to the Jewish heritage.
Jerusalem, undivided, is the capital of the state of Israel. Get used to it, because you can't change it, the Jewish temple will be rebuilt in Jerusalem.
Sincerely,

Ordinary Israelis who care about their heritage.