Dear Friends,
Today we celebrate "Jerusalem Day".
Anyone who googles Jerusalem Day will get the following: "Jerusalem Day is "a Israeli national holiday, held on the 28th day of Iyar, marking the Israeli liberation of East Jerusalem in 1967 and the subsequent reunification of the city. " (Wikipedia Encyclopedia.)
And indeed, anyone listening to the Israeli media only hears about celebrations in Jerusalem. But this is not correct. For on this day not only East Jerusalem was freed from Arab occupation, but also Judea, Samaria, Gaza and the Golan!! In fact, tonight begin the Hebron Day celebrations, on the 29th of Iyar. Hebron, holy to the Jewish people as much as Jerusalem, was liberated from Arab occupation.
The name "Jerusalem Day" is therefore a political name trying to make us all forget that on this day the Jewish People liberated and returned to large parts of our biblical Homeland, which had been under Arab occupation for 19 years, from 1948 till 1967.
Therefore, Women in Green really believe that the name "Jerusalem Day" should be changed into "Land of Israel Day", with the clear message that the entire Biblical Land of Israel was given by G-d to the People of Israel. The day will come, please G-d, when we will celebrate the return of the Jewish people to all the different parts of that Land, from the Euphrates until the Nile.
In honor of "Jerusalem Day – Land of Israel Day" Women in Green would like to share with you once again the famous letter written by Stanley Goldfoot in August 1969: "LETTER TO THE WORLD".
Stanley and Helen Goldfoot have been fighting for the Land of Israel since before the creation of the State of Israel. Stanley passed away in 2006 at the age of 92. Helen, may she be blessed till 120 with good health, lives in Herzliya. Both were dear friends and active members of Women in Green.
A four minute video-clip based on Stanley’s letter was made. It is very powerful
Click on: http://www.aish.com/movies/jerusalem.asp
Happy Land of Israel Day,
Ruth and Nadia Matar
Women in Green
——————–
Some more background on Stanley Goldfoot:
On November 24, 2006, at the age of 92, a man named Stanley Goldfoot passed away. He is remembered by family and friends for his love for and devotion to Israel and the Jewish people.
Stanley Goldfoot was born in Johannesburg, South Africa. Subsequent to his hearing a speech about the Zionist vision by Ze’ev Jabotinsky, he headed for Palestine where, at the age of 18, he joined a HaShomer HaTzair kibbutz.
After the rebirth of the Jewish State of Israel his main goal, which he eventually realized, was to establish a Zionist English newspaper, "The Times of Israel."
In the first issue of "The Times of Israel", Stanley Goldfoot wrote his famous controversial "Letter to the World from Jerusalem", which caused quite a stir. The article is still relevant .
__________________________________________________
A LETTER TO THE WORLD FROM JERUSALEM
by Eliezer ben Yisrael (Stanley Goldfoot)
from The Times of Israel
I am not a creature from another planet, as you seem to
believe. I am a Jerusalemite-like yourselves, a man of flesh and
blood. I am a citizen of my city, an integral part of my people.
I have a few things to get off my chest. Because I am not a
diplomat, I do not have to mince words. I do not have to please you
or even persuade you. I owe you nothing. You did not build this city,
you did not live in it, you did not defend it when they came to destroy
it.
And we will be damned if we will let you take it away.
There was a Jerusalem before there was a New York. When Berlin,
Moscow, London, and Paris were miasmal forest and swamp, there was a
thriving Jewish community here. It gave something to the world which
you nations have rejected ever since you established yourselves- a
humane moral code.
Here the prophets walked, their words flashing like forked lightning.
Here a people who wanted nothing more than to be left
alone, fought off waves of heathen would-be conquerors, bled and died
on the battlements, hurled themselves into the flames of their
burning Temple rather than surrender, and when finally overwhelmed by
sheer numbers and led away into captivity, swore that before they
forgot Jerusalem, they would see their tongues cleave to their palates,
their right arms wither.
For two pain-filled millennia, while we were your unwelcome
guests, we prayed daily to return to this city. Three times a day we
petitioned the Almighty: "Gather us from the four corners of the
world, bring us upright to our land, return in mercy to Jerusalem,
Thy city, and swell in it as Thou promised." On every Yom Kippur and
Passover, we fervently voiced the hope that next year would find us in
Jerusalem.
Your inquisitions, pogroms, expulsions, the ghettos into which
you jammed us, your forced baptisms, your quota systems, your genteel
anti-Semitism, and the final unspeakable horror, the holocaust (and
worse, your terrifying disinterest in it)- all these have not broken us.
They may have sapped what little moral strength you still possessed,
but they forged us into steel. Do you think that you can break us now
after all we have been through? Do you really believe that after
Dachau and Auschwitz we are frightened by your threats of blockades and
sanctions?
We have been to Hell and back- a Hell of your making. What more could
you possibly have in your arsenal that could scare us?
I have watched this city bombarded twice by nations calling
themselves civilized. In 1948, while you looked on apathetically, I
saw women and children blown to smithereens, after we agreed to your
request to internationalize the city. It was a deadly combination
that did the job- British officers, Arab gunners, and American-made cannon. And
then the savage sacking of the Old City-the willful slaughter, the
wanton destruction of every synagogue and religious school, the
desecration of Jewish cemeteries, the sale by a ghoulish government
of tombstones for building materials, for poultry runs, army camps, even
latrines.
And you never said a word.
You never breathed the slightest protest when the Jordanians
shut off the holiest of our places, the Western Wall, in violation of
the pledges they had made after the war- a war they waged,
incidentally, against the decision of the UN. Not a murmur came from
you whenever the legionnaires in their spiked helmets casually opened
fire upon our citizens from behind the walls.
Your hearts bled when Berlin came under siege. You rushed your
airlift "to save the gallant Berliners". But you did not send one
ounce of food when Jews starved in besieged Jerusalem. You thundered
against the wall which the East Germans ran through the middle of the
German capital- but not one peep out of you about that other wall, the one
that tore through the heart of Jerusalem.
And when that same thing happened 20 years later, and the Arabs
unleashed a savage, unprovoked bombardment of the Holy City again,
did any of you do anything?
The only time you came to life was when the city was at last
reunited. Then you wrung your hands and spoke loftily of "justice"
and need for the "Christian" quality of turning the other cheek.
The truth- and you know it deep inside your gut – you would
prefer the city to be destroyed rather than have it governed by Jews.
No matter how diplomatically you phrase it, the age old prejudices
seep out of every word.
If our return to the city has tied your theology in knots,
perhaps you had better reexamine your catechisms. After what we have
been through, we are not passively going to accommodate ourselves to
the twisted idea that we are to suffer eternal homelessness until we
accept your savior.
For the first time since the year 70, there is now complete
religious freedom for all in Jerusalem. For the first time since the
Romans put a torch to the Temple, everyone has equal rights (You
prefer to have some more equal than others.) We loathe the sword- but
it was you who forced us to take it up. We crave peace, but we are
not going back to the peace of 1948 as you would like us to.
We are home. It has a lovely sound for a nation you have willed
to wander over the face of the globe. We are not leaving. We are
redeeming the pledge made by our forefathers: Jerusalem is being
rebuilt. "Next year" and the year after, and after, and after, until
the end of time- "in Jerusalem"!
Stanley Goldfoot
Founder Editor
The Times of Israel
August 1969
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