Next Year In Jerusalem

If I forget thee, O Jerusalem, let my right hand forget [her cunning]. 6. If I do not remember thee, let my tongue cleave to the roof of my mouth; if I prefer not Jerusalem above my chief joy.

Psalm 137

By the rivers of Babylon, there we sat down,
and there we wept when we remembered Zion.
[2] On the willows there we hung up our harps.
[3] For there our captors asked us for words of song,
and our tormentors, for mirth:
"Sing to us from the songs of Zion!"
[4] How could we sing the song of the LORD on an alien land?
[5] If I forget thee, O Jerusalem, may my right hand forget its skill,
[6] May my tongue cling to the roof of my mouth
if I do not remember you,
if I do not set Jerusalem above my highest joy.

"Despite the threats, and I will tell you, because of the threats, I instructed to hold the flag march with the participation of thousands on its [traditional] route, as usual and according to procedure."

"We dealt heavy blows to our aggressors in the Gaza Strip, and I believe that the message was received not only by them, [but] also in other places in our region, who witnessed the impressive operational capabilities of the State of Israel."

"If another reminder is required to renew the deterrence - it will also come. We changed the equation."

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu 

Israelis sing and dance with flags by Damascus gate to Jerusalem's Old city as they mark Jerusalem Day.  Ronen Zvulun/Reuters

How is it that the world looks on and sneers at the Jewish Israeli celebrations of Flag Day, a national holiday a national memorial to the resumption of Jewish life in Judea/Israel and its ancient City of David, Jerusalem? Other countries are permitted to celebrate their national days without attracting the kind of criticism that Israel does. Reports of 'ultra-nationalists' waving Israeli flags portray them as being infected with a type of dangerous nationalist sentiment posing as a threat to others.

 

In fact, threats came their way through the usual Islamist-terrorist channels messaged by Hamas and Palestinian Islamic Jihad, warning that should the festival mood of celebrating the reborn nation and its flag be pursued, violence would result once again, yet again, forever again, against Israel and its people. Conversely, the world's legacy news media fail to see anything remarkable in those threats; as long as it happens in Israel, to Jews, that violence can be tolerated. After all, they shrug, Israel is an occupying power.

 

Israeli police stand guard as visitors tour Al-Aqsa compound, known to Jews as Temple Mount, amid tensions ahead of the annual flag march which marks Jerusalem Day, in Jerusalem May 18, 2023. REUTERS/Sinan Abu Mayzer

 

An 'occupying power' in its very own ancestral land, where Jews from antiquity to the present lived their lives, yearning for the day to arrive when their extended family in a diaspora would finally return to claim their Biblical-era patrimony, the geography where Judaism was born and set the world alight with the messages of godliness and tolerance and respect and the Ten Commandments that set out in pithy form what civilization required of humanity.

Jews have dreamt for millennia of a return to their Holy Land, wrested from its indigenous Jews by conquest-seeking, territorial occupiers. Nowhere on Earth were Jews able to find peace and security living in nations of the world that invariably found fault with this tiny ethnic-social-cultural-religious group of survivors. Until the time when their very survival was placed in dire jeopardy and half the world's population of Jews was annihilated.

 

Israelis wave national flags during a march marking Jerusalem Day, just outside Jerusalem's Old City.   Maya Alleruzzo/AP

Now, at a time when Jews have been reunited with their history, their heritage, their memory-sacred places of their very existence, constant threats of genocidal intention continue. Jews live in hope never-ending, their critics for whom  antisemitism represents a visceral reaction to the very idea of Judaism, much less a return to Zion so passionately held by a people taught through adversity that it has no friends and supporters and must be self-reliant, understand that they are their own friendly support.

So once a year they celebrate themselves, their heritage, their culture, religion, and very existence, symbolized by an identifying flag, flown high and proud in their ancient capital, Jerusalem. The world doesn't have to approve, or to like it as it continues to denigrate the passion of Jews for their homeland. But it really should stop commenting on the Temple Mount as representing a place sacred to Palestinian Arabs who feel they have a right to claim Jerusalem as their own.

 

Palestinians take part in a protest against the holding of the annual flag march in Jerusalem which marks Jerusalem Day, at the Israel-Gaza border fence east of Gaza City May 18, 2023. REUTERS/Mohammed Salem

 

And writing of Israeli Jews 'touring' the Al-Aqsa mosque compound in the Old City, Islamic places of reverence that supplanted the ancient Temples of Solomon, the most sacred of symbols for Jews. In a Jewish country, where Arabs are permitted to live in peace among Jews, along with other ethnic and religious groups in a generous democracy, forgiving of the hostility directed at Jews and Judaism, non-Jews may not, cannot, should not, will not dictate to Jews whether they may or may not celebrate the unity of Jerusalem as Judean.

The rage and anger of Muslims over Jewish feet on the Temple Mount, where Islam denies Jews the right to pray on their own sacred soil in their own country is intolerable, a reflection of the rank intolerance of Israel's neighbours and some of its own citizens.

 

Israelis sing and dance with flags by Damascus gate to Jerusalem's Old city as they mark Jerusalem Day, in Jerusalem May 18, 2023. REUTERS/Ronen Zvulun