It is our Jerusalem

Why do we have to give up even a single centimeter of our land?

That question has been ringing in my ears since I saw the movie “IN OUR HANDS: Battle for Jerusalem” last Tuesday. As the actor playing a Rabbi, who actually did ask that question to the young tzaddikim around him in 1967, cited verses from our sacred text about Israel with tears down his face, it made me think like never before.

We talk each and every day about a two-state solution or a so-called “occupation in the west bank,” but rarely this. This is not anyone’s land but ours. This is the land of the Jewish people.

The fact that we have to give up Hebron, where our fathers and mothers are buried, or negotiate the status of Jerusalem, the holiest city in Judaism, is absolutely disgusting as it is.

Hebron is ours. Jerusalem is ours. Israel is ours.

It has been fifty years since 1967. Fifty years since we liberated our home.

How many times do I have to repeat all of the sentences and phrases above? How many times will I need to shout this from the rooftops? When will people get this through their heads?

We should not have to give up a single centimeter, let alone inch, of our land. Of God’s land.

To think that we live in a world where embassies are still not in the true and eternal capital of Israel, Jerusalem, horrifies me. To think that we live in a world where my father’s passport doesn’t say Israel following his city of birth, Jerusalem, horrifies me.

Israel does not belong to the Palestinians, or the Jordanians, or the Egyptians, or the Syrians, or anyone else for that matter. Israel belongs to the Jews, to the Jewish people. It belongs to me. It belongs to my father. It belongs to my brother. It belongs to God.

“הר הבית בידינו”

“Har Habayit Beyadeinu”

“The Temple Mount is in our hands”

Motta Gur did not say those words without meaning. Motta Gur did not say Jerusalem or the Western Wall, but he said the Temple Mount. Our Temple Mount. When we took down the flag from the Dome of the Rock, we relinquished the Temple Mount, but it should be ours. It is ours. It is not Al-Aqsa or the Haram Al-Sharif. It is the Temple Mount.

It is Israel.

It is Jerusalem.

It is our Israel.

It is our Jerusalem.