Some background: As a student during the 1973 Yom Kippur War and as a tourist, I’ve been in Israel for four years over the course of six decades.
I made Aliya (migrated back to my ancestral homeland) a week ago. Aliya is the Hebrew word for “To go up.” I arrived just as missiles were fired towards Jerusalem.
Israel’s two international airports subsequently closed (entirely or partially) due to incoming missiles and unpredictability of future missile attacks. As I’m writing this, I can hear sirens coming from the direction of the eastern part of the city. It has been that way for 60 out of the last 90 minutes. I’ve been avoiding that part of the city. The main market complex, Machane Yehuda, has been quiet. As the late great Ol’ Remus preached, “Avoid crowds.” As soon as I got my Covid antibodies verified as positive in Israel and could end quarantine, I stocked up on bottled water, emergency lighting, food, toilet paper, and a stronger door lock.
I am witnessing a religious, moral, and spiritual conflict that includes nationalistic, geographic, demographic, legal, cultural, military, terroristic, and political components. In the historic eastern part of Jerusalem, King David built the capital of the Kingdom of Israel (City of David complex) and his son Solomon, built the First Temple, as described in the Bible, a few hundred yards away. The Old City troubles began yet another new round of kinetic activity.
It was from the archaeologically beautiful Islamic shrine (Al Aqsa) with a new gold-colored roof, built where the Temples once stood, that several days ago, Islamiststic Arabs emerged throwing rocks and bottles and shooting Roman candle type fireworks and pointing green lasers at the eyes of Jewish worshippers on the other side of the Western Wall and walking in the alleys. Police responded by chasing them back to the Islamic Shrine where some assumed the positions of peaceful worshippers for propaganda purposes who were tear-gassed and rubber bulleted and stun-grenaded “by Israeli aggression” for no apparent reason (roll cameras on) while shooting fireworks and throwing stones at the police from that area.
A tree set afire by either fireworks or a flash bang was called Al Aqsa is burning. Every year at the same time, Jerusalem Day, marking the liberation of the eastern city in 1967, is celebrated by dancing and a Blue and White Star of David flag parade. No celebration of a fire. But the liars claimed otherwise. As of yesterday, there are police armed with rifles on the street corner near my house, a few hundred yards from the old American Consulate (now Embassy). They appear calm.
In my opinion, the Arab Legion-led destruction of the historic Jewish presence in eastern Jerusalem in 1948, the first time any part of Jerusalem let alone Judea and Samaria, were ever under Arab rule, and the incomplete liberation in June 1967, is being revisited in the Heavenly and Earthly Jerusalem. Heavy and unknown consequences for the city, region, and the world. Do you understand the implications?
The Islamic and most western media are parroting the Hamas narrative, as typical. How can the eternal Jewish homeland be “occupied”? Who verifies the number of child casualties? Are some figures made up, inflated, or deliberately caused for false flag propaganda purposes? Take a crying baby, add some goat blood to the clothing, film on a stretcher, and blame Israel? How many were next to Hamas missile launchers and weapons workshops? The media loves to show dead Arab children, better yet if blood can be seen but is silent on the number of Hamas and Islamic Jihad combatant casualties and the proximity of the two. Most media have guidelines to always refer to “Illegally Occupied territories.” Similar to most US media rebranding an unarmed relatively spontaneous trespassing with a little vandalism as an insurrection for which all Trump supporters are deemed responsible for.
I ask you, dear reader, if the invading Arab armies, who rejected the UN partition plan to have a Jewish state and a second Arab state in 1947 had defeated the nascent Jewish state in 1948 — a continuing of their pogroms (violent riots and massacres) of the 1920s and 1930s, would the Palestinian People have been invented in the late 1960s by the KGB and eventually gone mainstream? Thus, I prefer the terms Fraudistinians or Sunni Muslim Arabs as more honest and historically correct.
The worst part for many, besides the onslaught of 2000 missiles so far in this round at civilians in Israel, is the Arab attacks on Jewish neighbors, which are about 100:1 of the reverse. All rioters and vigilantes against neighbors should be condemned. Neighbors should be neighborly.
In my opinion, the Gaza round could be designed to draw down the Iron Dome interceptor missiles and divert the IDF in preparation for an attack by Hezbollah, which has over 100,000 missiles. If that happens or the Biden Administration turns on Israel, then I think Israel might decide to stop further Iranian uranium enrichment. (Wink).
On a more personal level, I had plans to have an Arab handyman, who seems like a nice guy, continue some cash-based electrical work in my new home. Even had he called me today I would have said no. I don’t want to take a chance on having my throat slit for the jihad.
About The Author: Yorrie in Jerusalem, (formerly Yorrie in Pennsylvania) is a retired doctor whose father was a Holocaust survivor and mother a toddler age refugee from the Civil War in Russia following the Russian Revolution. He made aliya to Israel because the America that his parents fled to for freedom is no longer the same place.