FAST DAYS, FASTER DAYS.

Last Friday was the 10th of Tevet, Asarah Be'tevet, a minor fast day which, along with the 17th of Tammuz and the 9th of Av, commemorates a stage in the destruction of Jerusalem by hostile forces. On Tevet 10, the Babylonians under Nebuchadnezzer, began the siege of Jerusalem. I've talked about Tisha B'Av before, where the First and Second temples were destroyed, and which also is a day where many other tragedies befell the Jewish people, and this is the saddest day of the Jewish calendar and a major fast from sunset to sunset. Tisha B'Av alone, I believe, cements the truth of the relationship between the Jewish People and Jerusalem; for why else would we be fasting and mourning, sitting on the floor, not wearing leather shoes, not even using a chapstick or any form of 'anointing' the skin, or bathing, or having any form of pleasure, including sexual, in other words, as deep mourning as in sitting Shiva, if not for the fact that Jerusalem and Eretz Yisrael are our heritage and birthright as Jews? I believe that this practice alone justifies our presence in Israel and certainly our right to an undivided Jerusalem as our capital.
But there's more: 3 other fasts, minor ones, i.e. sunrise to sunset, with fewer restrictions, all associate with the fall of Jerusalem. Tevet 10, Tammuz 17 and The Fast of Gedaliah.
(To get you up to speed on Jewish fast days, there are 6. A handy mnemonic is:
Man-Woman
Short-Long (or Winter-Summer)
Black-White.
Man = Tzom Gedaliah
Woman= Ta'anis Esther
Short or Winter = 10th Tevet in the northern hemisphere and 17th Tammuz in the southern
Long or Summer= vice versa
Black = Tisha B'Av
White= Yom Kippur.
I hope that clarifies things.)

So we don't just mourn the actual destruction of the Temples and subsequent exiles, we mourn and commemorate the events that led up to the Main Event; the setting of the siege, the breaching of the walls, the assassination of a Jewish governor; the Babylonian attack under Nebuchadnezzer, the Roman under Titus and Vespasian, the Diaspora.

So we had this land; and we were kicked out of it, and stomped on (Babylonian exile); and we came back and rebuilt and then we were kicked out again and stomped on a lot harder (Roman exile and Diaspora); and we were scattered and settled and were kicked out and settled again and were kicked out again etc etc, (England 1290, Spain 1492 yada yada), but note well that during all this time there was a presence of Jews in Israel and Jerusalem, unless it was decreed to cleanse all Jews out of Jerusalem as during the Byzantine period.

And after 2000 years of exile, we are still Jews, and, remarkably, after centuries of separation, Ashkenazim and Sephardim have the same religion, the same Torah, despite differing customs. But you just have to love it when the Arabs and fellow travellers have the gall to criticise us as some sort of multi-ethnic rabble who are neither a nation nor a culture and therefore do not deserve a country or a state of our own. And who then go to great pains destroying and disputing any archeological link between Jews and the Land of Israel, and Jerusalem in particular, and any anthropological link between the Jews of old and those of today. And of course, Hanan Ashrawi, that Oracle of Truth, jumps on this bandwagon repeatedly.

Yet the Palestinian People, who never had a sovereign state, nor a capital, who never had a king or leader before Yasser Arafat (who was himself born in Egypt), who never minted a coin, who never were known of or mentioned as a separate nation until the Jews laid claim to their own heritage, they want East Jerusalem as their capital; 'Arab' East Jerusalem, as if this nomenclature dates back to time immemorial and not just to the British Mandate with their policy of 'divide and rule' which stood them in such good stead during their colonial years. As if the Arabs were anything but tribes and families before the idea of nationalism was given to them by the likes of T E Lawrence, 'Lawrence of Arabia', in the early 20th Century. And it is still about tribes and families, if not religion, with the Arabs and their social strata. But the manufactured Palestinian people have served their purpose well, as a thorn in the side of Al Yahud, the Jew, who dares to claim heritage of Eretz Yisrael, to be a Jewish State amongst the ocean of Islamic states, thwarting the overreaching ideal of the Caliphate which will ultimately rule the world.

They will never tolerate a Jewish state or a Jewish presence, so they make up whatever they want and the West, which is also targeted for conquest,  and in fact is in the process of being conquered demographically in Europe, listens with earnest tolerance to the lies and bullshit; and the anti-Semites, who never need a reason to hate Jews, then slightly shift their stance to include anti-Zionism (which is really just anti-Semitism with a college degree). 

Meanwhile, John Kerry just keeps hammering away with his version of a peace process, clocking up those frequent flier miles to Israel, searching for a 2 state solution; but the Palestinians themselves are already in 2 states and in bitter internal conflict while sucking up billions of dollars of 'refugee aid'. And Abbas has already made it quite clear that, even if they get Yehudah-Shomron, and even though not a single Jew will be tolerated there, the 'Palestinian right of return' will still be enforced and the remaining vestigial Jewish state would be flooded by 'refugees' returning to homes that their great-grandparents left, or actually never lived in in the first place.

So there's no '2 state solution'; there's only the destruction of Israel. And it starts with the division of Jerusalem and withdrawal from Yehudah-Shomron (I refuse to use the term 'West Bank' as it denies the link of the Jewish people to our heartland of Judea.)

We have mourned the loss of Jerusalem quite enough, thank you very much. What we have today isn't a patch on what we had, but Jerusalem is unified and it's a hell of a lot better than when the Jordanians had it from 1948, when they kicked out the Jews who had been there for generations, till 1967, when Israel reclaimed and united Jerusalem after the 6 Day War. Oh yes, not forgetting how the Jordanians trashed the Jewish and Christian holy sites, subsequently opened and restored by Israel. 

I fear that there are too many Jews who, in the ignorance of our own history, are too ready to give up what is ours. 2,000 years of mourning the loss of Jerusalem and Eretz Yisrael is not a manufactured piece of propaganda; it is deep and true and real. Daily prayers, grace after meals, holy day liturgy, wedding day customs, all reflect the yearning for Jerusalem for hundreds and hundreds of years. All these things, even the breaking of the glass under the chuppah which symbolises the  Churban, the Destruction, are not generally understood by uneducated Jews. Otherwise, how could a Jew countenance the loss of Jerusalem?

No division of Jerusalem; no Jewish withdrawal from Yehudah-Shomron. I don't expect the Arabs that live there to leave, nobody in their right mind seriously wants ethnic cleansing. We just want to live in peace.

Am Yisrael Chai.