I CONSIDER myself a Yerushalmit, a citizen of Jerusalem. Jerusalem is the city that raised me. For any Jew, when terror lives on and Jerusalem is under attack, it is painful, for the city is a symbol of our one and only home as a people. Even more so, when its literally been ones home.
The boiling kettle that is the possibility of an intifada brewing in Jerusalem more than brewing at this point has just sparked twice more. It is scary to think of where this is all leading.
We have not recovered from the horrible murder, via an Arab-driven rammed car, of baby Chaya Zissel, may her memory be a blessing; and this Wednesday, again, another Arab terrorist murdered at least one at another light rail station.
This time, the victim is from one of our Druze brothers, Jaddan Assad, a 38-year old officer from Beit Jann. He is survived by his pregnant wife and three-year-old son.
The Jewish people grieves this cold-blooded murder together with the Druze. They are our brothers in blood.
As of now, insufficient information is available about the three IDF soldiers who were hurt in an apparent copycat terror car ramming south of the Gush Etzion bloc.
In between the initial vehicular wave of terror and today, Yehudah Glick, a Temple Mount activist, was shot at close range last week in an assassination attempt.
I have never been much of a Temple Mount person. I dont know that much about this type of activism, and have certainly never been up the Temple Mount, feeling that with all the contention among our people, now is not the time to focus on that. But there is nothing like shooting a Jew for wanting to pray there to convert me overnight.
LETS be honest. The struggle to ascend the Temple Mount is no longer only about prayer and what some might term a right-wing religious fanaticism issue. This has now become an issue of living in Jewish freedom in the land of our heritage of Israel, safely.
The more the extremist Muslims neuter the Temple Mount of its Jewishness, thereby distancing the ties that bind Jews to the land the more they impose a recent Islamic narrative upon that mountain top that negates the preceding Jewish one then the more the Temple Mount becomes all of our concern, regardless of a desire to pray there or of political views.
Once our story as a people is under attack, it might no longer be enough simply pour out an emotionally musical Im Eshkachech (If I forget thee, O Jerusalem) at a chuppah as a sign of our link and longing to the Temple Mount, the crown of Jerusalem.
Human Rights groups around the world incessantly decry violence. Curiously, again, the thundering silence in the face of last Wednesdays vehicular terrorist attack upon Israelis was all too loud.
From bombs that turn into rockets, that turn into terror tunnels, that now have turned into car rammings, terror by the PA and Hamas has only grown.
I was alarmed when a non-military (professor, actually), middle-aged Israeli fb friends status read: Cant believe it has come to this. Time to take the gun out of the safe.
This is what it is coming to in Jerusalem?
Again?
I hope my Yerushalmi friends can find it within themselves to remain as calm as possible. What is unfolding is undoubtedly scary. And who am I, all the way from my American perch, to comment?
I just hope that all efforts to try to keep the calm and holiness of our beloved Yerushalayim, and to try to honor all those within the diverse Jerusalem population, are attainable.
Make no mistake about it, though, G-d forbid if need be, this generation will fight for Jerusalem.
THE violence in Jerusalem is beyond a Palestinian protest against Netanyahus policies. This is a result of the recent fanning of flames by Mahmoud Abbas calling on Palestinians to defend Jerusalem.
The attempted assassination of Yehudah Glick did not come out of nowhere. Two days prior, the PA Prime Minister Rami Hamdallah rose to the Dome of The Rock, as the Arabs call it, and one day prior, the mayor of Jerusalem Nir Barkat had ascended.
There is a war going on.
A war over Jerusalem.
For our people, the struggle for Jerusalem is a battle for our existence.
As people talk of sharing Jerusalem as part of a two-state solution, somewhere deep inside there is this understanding: It may very well mean the beginning of the end. It means clearing all the land, not just a part of Jerusalem, of Jews.
In a sense, it is Jerusalem that is the stronghold of Israel. And perhaps the Temple Mount is becoming the stronghold of Jerusalem.
For the battle over Jerusalem is the battle over our land.
We all remember the emotional cry of 1967: The Temple Mount is in our hands, Ha-Kotel be-yadeinu.
It seems those two pithy words were just the beginning of the battle, one that has gone on and continues until this very day.
Pray for the peace of Jerusalem,, for all of Jerusalem, which both Jews and non-Jews that call that magical place home.
So that each of may not lose our Jerusalem.
For each of us, it is a personal and intimate, eternal place.
Copyright © 2014 by the Intermountain Jewish News
