I never created a professional work about Jerusalem. I didn’t write about Jerusalem in the days I worked as a journalist; nor, did I, as a producer, make any films about the city. Nevertheless, Jerusalem is an integral part of all of my creations. Such is the power of Jerusalem that it gives every Jew an energizing flow of Jewish spirituality that inspires all his creative works, consciously and subconsciously.
Jerusalem, it seems to me, symbolizes three basic elements in our collective consciousness: 1. identification with the Jewish tradition; 2. yearning for the Land of Israel; and 3. a desire for a divinely inspired, just society.
Recent years have witnessed an alarming explosion of sophisticated Arab propaganda that has been delegitimizing the Jewish presence in the Land of Israel. This attitude can be summarized by the phrase in a Palestinian schoolbook for the sixth grade, which says explicitly: “The argument that Jews have historic rights in Palestine is the greatest lie in human history.”
According to a study by Dr. Yitzhak Reiter, conducted for the Jerusalem Institute for Israel Studies, even the history of Jerusalem has gradually been rewritten. The claim that Jews have no real connection to Jerusalem and its holy sites has been adopted by the Palestinian leadership and has become entrenched in Arab and Muslim communities.
At the heart of this new version is the argument that Arabs ruled Jerusalem thousands of years before the Children of Israel. The most amazing element of the new history is the claim that the First and Second Temples are lies, fabricated by the Jews. This view was even adopted by the website of the Egyptian Embassy in Washington which declared that there has never been any archaeological evidence of Jewish life in the Jerusalem of ancient times. No wonder, then, that the Palestinians seize every opportunity to destroy in the most uncivilized way all the precious archaeological findings beneath the surface of the Temple Mount.
What an irony: No other people except the Jews has ever made Jerusalem its capital, despite its conquest by many imperial powers, but now clear facts are denied and history is rewritten. While history is being rewritten, old myths and libels against Israel and the Jews are being revived – and new ones created. Examples of modern “blood libels” are the poisoning of Arab women and children, the use of the blood of Arab children to bake matzot, the dissemination
of The Protocols of the Elders of Zion and the denial of the Holocaust.
By denying the historic/religious bond between the Jewish people and its land, the Arabs portray the Jewish settlement enterprise in the entire State of Israel as theft of their lands. This includes even those lands on which Jews have lived for generations, and those acquired at great cost and sacrifice. Just as the blood libels encouraged the murder of Jews, the contemporary libel that speaks about the theft of the Holy Land by the Zionists and Israel legitimizes acts of terror against the Jews.
The most problematic word, “occupation,” with all its negative connotations, is added to the accusation of “theft” when referring to the lands that came into Israeli hands as a result of the Six-Day War, including even the old City of Jerusalem. Although the so-called “occupied territories” were not taken from legal owners, but from Egypt and Jordan – whose claims to the West Bank were never recognized internationally (and who themselves later relinquished
their claims to these areas); despite the fact that they were taken in a defensive war; and even though these territories were given in a League of Nations decision (1922) to the Jewish people for habitation and residence.
Notwithstanding the fact that the Palestinians, who are demanding these lands, only in recent years discovered their existence as a national entity, they are trying, by the use of the term “occupation”, to further delegitimize our right to the Land of Israel. However, the accusation of “theft” in the Arab textbooks and communications media – or, as the Palestinians call it, “The Rape of Palestine” – is applied to the entire State of Israel, with no distinction made between
Shechem and Tel Aviv, between Jericho and Haifa.
The influence of this revisionism, together with the vilification of Israel and Jews, on Arab youth — particularly Palestinian youth – must be of major concern to us. The media, the textbooks, and the sermons in the mosques are fraught with perverse libels and lies that distort both the past and the present. They prevent any possibility of coexistence and peace in the foreseeable future and poison the minds of future generations.
Whoever wants to defend Zion and whoever holds Jerusalem dear must take an active role in the struggle against this ideological terror. He must utterly repudiate the false and libelous accusations, and tell the true facts about both historical and contemporary events. Movies can play a tremendous role — a recent pseudo-historical film has demonstrated just how strong their negative influence can be – but each person, in his or her own way and according to the
means at his disposal, must expose these horrendous lies and slanders against the Jewish people.
It is crucial that all those who are faithful to Jerusalem join in the struggle against the anti-Semitic slander that denies the Jewish people’s rights to its land and to its spiritual heart. Jerusalem nourishes the Jewish people wherever they may be. If we have no historic-national rights over Jerusalem, then “for thousands of generations, we have dreamt of you” in vain. If Jerusalem does not belong to us, our entire connection with this land is in question.
Every person needs both roots and wings. Only he who is nourished by the firm ground of his past can give creative expression to his personal dreams. Nations, too, can only soar to new horizons if they are established on sound foundations. The roots that have bound us to this land for thousands of years are strong and deep. They allow us to survive the strongest tempests and to persist in our unique way of life. Therefore, we must protect, with vigor and devotion, the deep roots of our tradition in Zion and Jerusalem.
We all must be defenders of Jerusalem. We all are Guardians of Zion.
Advertisement