Jerusalem Day

Jerusalem - A place worth dying for

Sorry it's been a while. We all got sick for a few weeks and had been living off of chicken nuggets. Then I was out of town visiting Lebanon, but now it seems like we're in position to get back into the swing of things. So I took a look at the calender to see what days were left in the week and noticed that Israelis would be commemorating when they were able to retake the divided city of Jerusalem on June 7, 1967. In a sense it's pretty noteworthy, since only a few days earlier I had been touring around Hezbollah-controlled southern Lebanon, and was definitely thinking about Israel's military might from when they bombed the whole country in 2006. I don't want to get political or take sides in the whole mess, but needless to say I can't condone the actions of either side. It's reached a point where I see all the belligerents as the bad guys, regardless of which flag they're fighting under. It also doesn't help my image of Israel when they continue to build settlements in occupied territories, shooting a "what are you going to do about it?" attitude at the international community.

But back in 1967, it seemed things were different. Up to that point Jordan had been occupying the Eastern half of Jerusalem, and had made a point of desecrating Jewish synagogues and sites. Jerusalem was supposed to be an international city where Muslims, Jews, and Christians enjoyed equal rights. Then the neighboring Arab nations invaded. It's much easier for me to see Israel as victims at this time (certainly much more so than when they're shooting cluster bombs into urban areas). Finally in 1967, the Israeli Defense Forces were able to retake the city. Defense Minister Moshe Dayan said the following:

This morning, the Israel Defense Forces liberated Jerusalem. We have united Jerusalem, the divided capital of Israel. We have returned to the holiest of our holy places, never to part from it again. To our Arab neighbors we extend, also at this hour—and with added emphasis at this hour—our hand in peace. And to our Christian and Muslim fellow citizens, we solemnly promise full religious freedom and rights. We did not come to Jerusalem for the sake of other peoples' holy places, and not to interfere with the adherents of other faiths, but in order to safeguard its entirety, and to live there together with others, in unity.

That's something I can get behind. That's the Jerusalem I hope to visit some day--one without the security checkpoints and armed soldiers, one where respect for the rights of others is the rule.

Israeli Salad

So on the topic of food, it's tricky to make distinctly Israeli food, since the country's only existed for about 60 years and is comprised largely of immigrants. So we bought some pita bread, hummus, tabbouleh, an assortment of vegetables, and some chicken kofta at the store and ate it with some homemade Israeli salad (which is, to be pedantic, Palestinian in origin). It's simply finely chopped tomatoes and cucumbers, with a dressing made of olive oil, salt and pepper, and lemon juice. It can be eaten on the side, or put into the pita as a dressing for the sandwich.

After blessing the food in Hebrew with one of the prayers I remembered from taking 3 years of the language in college, we enjoyed our bountiful feast. I got on grooveshark and put on the song "Yerushalayim Shel Zahav" (Jerusalem of Gold), which is a song I had learned before while studying Hebrew, and which was written on the occasion of the 1967 war. You can see the English lyrics to it at this website, along with a catchy MIDI version of the song.

מזל טוב, ירושלים