An Open Letter About Jerusalem to an Orthodox Rabbi

This letter is being written with shivering hands and chattering teeth from a cold, wet tent on the border between Israel and Gaza. We have read and re-read your article published in the Jewish Journal, "An Orthodox Rabbi's Plea: Consider a Divided Jerusalem." As it is Jewish behavioral ethic to judge one's fellow with the benefit of the doubt, we are trying to stifle our initial feelings of perfidious betrayal and thoughts that you are merely capitalizing on your status as an Orthodox rabbi for opportunistic self-aggrandizement. We are trying to understand how you, an honest and sincere, G-d-fearing, Torah-observant rabbi, could possibly advocate for the division of Jerusalem, the capital of the Jewish People.

In Israel today, there are hundreds of thousands of Arab Muslim citizens who proactively advocate for the destruction of Israel. Their elected Muslim Knesset members meet with terrorist leaders to conspire against us and consistently endorse policies that would lead to the eventual annulment of our Jewish State. We are surrounded by countries who have historically sought to destroy the State of Israel since before she was even created. Egypt, Syria, Iran, Jordan, Saudi Arabia and all the other countries in the Arab League have not given up the dream to put an end, once and for all, to the "Zionist entity." Honestly, these threats are nothing new and have simply become expected, but it is appalling for a self-described Orthodox rabbi to advocate for the division of our sacred capital, and the undeniable moral and strategic weakening of the State of Israel that would follow.

Perhaps, seeing the Middle East through the prism of CNN or the occasional solidarity mission to a five-star hotel would lead one to believe that simply relinquishing the lands liberated in 1967 would lead to peace. Please allow us to share a little bit of a different perspective.

We are reservist soldiers who have left our lives and our families for up to a month every year to protect Israel and the Jewish People. For the past few years, we have been stationed in the Gaza region, where we are located now. In 2005, the unilateral Disengagement from Gaza evicted 8,000 Jews from their homes and Gaza was ceded to the Palestinian Authority. Today, in place of the promised peace and calm that was to result from the Disengagement, Gaza is now a war-torn territory controlled by the Hamas, and there are more guns, missiles and artillery than ever before in history.

Multiple rockets and missiles fall daily onto the helpless citizens of Sderot, within the 1948 borders of Israel. We recently visited with the people of Sderot to show our support. A local teacher informed us that her young students, when asked why they thought snails had shells, unanimously replied, "To hide from the Kassam rockets." Is this the fate you wish upon the Jewish children of Jerusalem, Rabbi Kanefsky?

While we could continue expending energy and focus on exposing the moral ambivalence, erroneous and specious historical assertions in your article, that would not be an honest depiction of our true difficulty with your proposals. If you were a politician or a journalist, perhaps such a discussion would be in order, but you, Rabbi Kanefsky, purport to be an Orthodox rabbi.

You know that Jerusalem is mentioned over 700 times in the Bible, while the Koran has not one reference to our holy city. You know that for more than 2,000 years our people have been praying daily for Jerusalem, solemnly breaking a glass in memorial of her Temple's destruction, and leaving a portion of the walls in our homes unfinished because our cherished city lies in ruins. You know the words of the Psalmist who told us of the tears we shed "by the Rivers of Babylon... when we remembered Zion," and both promised and warned of what would happen if we should ever forget our beloved Jerusalem. You know of our murdered ancestors who whispered "Jerusalem" with their last breath.

Rabbi Kanefsky, you call for honesty. You claim to believe in the Torah as the word of G-d, yet when composing an argument as critical as the division of our national and spiritual capital, you do not even quote one Jewish source. Rather than determining your stance based on Torah, Jewish Law, the word of G-d, you quote "International law" (composed by many of the same nations who assisted or looked away as six million members of our family were slaughtered).

Intellectual honesty, Rabbi Kanefsky. G-d demands it and your congregants, students and followers deserve it. Please retract your article and stand with Jerusalem and the Nation of Israel. If you do not, accept our challenge to a debate and we will let the truth speak for itself. In these times of isolation and unparalleled danger, it is vital for us as a nation to unite with courage, clarity and faith in G-d. www.IsraelNationalNews.com© Copyright IsraelNationalNews.com Subscribe to the free Daily Israel Report - sub.israelnn.com

Some present day Jews seem to be busy trying to deny that the history of their nation is intertwined with God. They act like they want assimilate into being Gentiles, which is the exact effect of their drive to impose multiculturalism in the nation of Israel. They act like they wish they could relocated the Temple Mount to a far away island, out of their hair and out of their minds. They act like the last thing on Earth they would welcome would be for God to use them to bring mankind into closer relationship with Him.

Jews who know God had better seize control of Israel before there is a second holocaust or a third captivity.

As a spiritual inheritor of the promises of Abraham, I would gladly stand with these reservists in the defense of Israel and a unified Jerusalem.

The sham of "Palestine" and "the Palestinian people" must not stand. None of the surrounding Arab countries want them, even though the vast majority of the indigenous "Palestinians" have more ties to those countries than they do to the geographic region the Romans named Palestine. Are they a separate people? Do they have a separate and unique language? How about music, food, or any other traditional indicator of a unique ethnicity or race. Nope, sorry, there are none. They could live in Egypt, Jordan, Syria, or Lebanon and be indistinguishable from the locals. No wait, most of their parents and grandparents WERE considered part of those countries, or Transjordan before the lines were redrawn. If, as a people, they did have any unique ethnic characteristics, they should probably call themselves "Philistines" rather than "Palestinians." No wait, that won't do. Those pesky Jews, lead by King David kicked the crap out of the Philistines a long time ago. In fact, everyone and their uncle did, so there are no more ethnic or cultural traces of the Philistines who once occupied the cities of Gaza, Ashkelon, Ashdod, Ekron, and Gath.

No, the only reason why the rest of the Arab world gives a hoot about "Palestinians" is because they hate Jews and want to use the Arabs who reside in the region as canon fodder. Isn't it telling that there are many Arabs/Muslims that reside within the borders of Israel and that many are citizens. They are not persecuted and are not treated as second class citizens by the Israeli government. Can the same be said for Jews if they lived under the Palestinian authority?

Please, this appeasement of "Palestinians" who will never be satisfied until Israel no longer exists has got to stop.

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