The Arabs Will Lose Jerusalem Too
The Arabs Will Lose Jerusalem Too

Historical legend tells the story that Napoleon visited a synagogue in Russia on the eve of the Fast of Tisha B'Av. Noticing the lamentations and expressions of mourning of the Jews, who sat on the floor with minimum candlelight, Napoleon asked his advisors: "Why are the Jews weeping and mourning?" It was explained to Napoleon that they are mourning for the destruction of their Temple. Napoleon asked when this Temple was destroyed. Informed that it had occurred 1700 years earlier, Napoleon said that if these people are still mourning their Temple so deeply after 1700 years, they will be restored to their land and their Temple rebuilt.

What Napoleon understood at a glance about the Jewish nation, the Palestinian Arabs will never be willing or able to comprehend. For the past three quarters of a century since the Peel Commission which recommended the partition of the land between the Jews and the Arabs, the Arabs have consistently rejected any possibility of compromise or willingness to live alongside a nascent Jewish state.

At the conclusion of Israel’s War of Independence, instigated by a coordinated and massive four front attack on Israel, the Arabs lost the Negev and the Galilee regions.

The 1967 Six Day War also instigated by a coordinated Arab declaration of war ended with the Arabs losing all of Judea and Samaria, the Golan Heights (Ramat Hagolan), and East Jerusalem.

The 1st and 2nd Intifada instigated by Arafat and the Palestinian Authority after the Oslo Agreement concluded with Israel retaking control of most of the land it had given over to Palestinian Arab sovereignty.

During the past months Jerusalem has been at the center of a renewed Palestinian Arab terror campaign against Jews, by stone throwing, Molotov cocktails, stabbings, and recently a series of hit and run terror attacks on pedestrians.  Learning nothing from their own historical experience, and repeating the same destructive expression of hatred and rejection of anything Jewish,  the Palestinian Arabs will lose all Arab rights to Jerusalem just as they lost control of lands designated for them in the past.

Despite the horrors of radical Islam, it is Israel exclusively that lives under a microscope with the events in Jerusalem scrutinized by the nations of the world. Russia invades Crimea, Nigeria enslaves, China oppresses, Pakistan rapes, Iraq slaughters, North Korea starves, Iran nuclearizes, Syria massacres, Afghanistan tortures. Sudan annihilates. ISIS beheads, and yet Israel remains the sole pariah state, put under the magnifyng glass by the morally bankrupt world.

What the nations of the world fail to note is that the Palestinian Authority and the rival Hamas terror organization are actively supporting a third  terror campaign starting in Jerusalem, for the same reason thousands of missiles rained down on Israeli cities this past summer - even though it created more destruction for Palestinian Arabs in Gaza. Their goal is keep the Palestinian Arabs focused on “resistance” - a synonym for endless war that won’t be solved by Israeli territorial concessions or greater sensitivity for the Muslim desire to deny Jewish rights in Jerusalem.

The point about the current violence in Jerusalem is that nothing we Israelis are doing - whether it is Jews moving into parts of Jerusalem where Arabs want no part of us or walking around the Temple Mount -  has altered by one iota the current status quo between Jews and Arabs. What we do simply does not matter to them and it will never sink in that they are facing a country that is here to stay.

For countless centuries, our ancestors have been praying to return home to Zion. For those of us born in the generation that did in fact return home to Israel, we can only cherish and uphold the immense blessing that we feel for being part of this amazing historical and almost biblical period.

In 1947, Israel accepted the "two-state solution" declared by the United Nations, focusing her efforts on moving ahead, never looking back. Since then, Israel has made a desert bloom. We have built roads, schools, hospitals, universities and great cities. Despite the many wars Israel has had to fight,  the people of Israel have never stopped looking forward. 

Israel has shown time and time again its willingness to make painful sacrifices for the sake of a genuine and enduring peace with its Arab neighbors. Israeli Arabs have infinitely more human rights in Israel than Jews ever had in any Arab nation, or that Arabs have in any Muslim nation in the Middle East. Not surprisingly these fundamental freedoms seem to be always overlooked by the very Arabs that enjoy and benefit from democratic rights in Israel.  The hearts and minds of the Palestinian Arabs continue to be overwhelmingly "occupied" with Jew-hatred. This is the true narrative about the so-called “occupation”.

Once again a new generation of Arabs, including Israeli Arabs, are taking up gasoline bombs and even using cars as weapons in order to kill or injure Jews to further that same futile aim and in the name of this ancient hatred. Though many of Israel’s enemies promote the notion that the violence is caused by Jewish actions, the latest terror campaign, if it continues, will be very much like every other episode in the Palestinian Arab’s hundred-year war against Zionism.

Those that wish the Palestinian Arabs well should urge them to try to shake off this rejectionist mindset, lest they waste another century in pointless conflict. Should they continue ramming the shore, like the great whales do until they die, they will in the very soon future lose it all.