Clouds over Jerusalem

By Tuvia Brodie

It’s November, 2012. Clouds hover over Jerusalem. Some say these are rain clouds--because our rainy season has begun. These clouds are good. They carry rain. Others say these are fire-clouds. They say local Arabs burn garbage in open pits.  These clouds are bad. They carry pollution.

Others disagree. They say these clouds do not bring rain or pollution. These clouds are different. They are not natural. They are political.

They are clouds of war.

Are they?

Israel, they say, is at war. She was born in war. She grew up at war. She lives at war.

The clouds simply remind us: Jerusalem is under attack.

Is that true?

Modern Israel has never been without war. She is at war because she is called ugly. This ugliness has a name: ‘Jew’. Her ugliness is a scar. It makes her repugnant. That scar is so hateful to certain Jews they would do anything to erase it.

Anything.

The war against Israel began before the announcement (in 1947) of her impending birth. That war has never ended. It will go on, our enemies claim, until the entire Zionist entity is erased.

Read the Hamas Charter. Read the Fatah-PLO Charter. Zion is the Jew. Zion scars the land. The land can be healed only when the scar has been removed.

If Hamas and Fatah win this war, everything Jewish will be removed. Everyone who remains a Jew will be removed. The land will be cleansed. The scar will be gone.

Our pioneer fathers came to Israel because they loved the land. They came. They fought. They died—all, for the land.

Our pioneer fathers had a passion for the land. They didn’t care if they were hated. They loved the land. Wasn’t that enough?

No, it wasn’t.

The pioneers are gone. They have mostly all died. Their passion for the land has died with them.

Yes, we once loved this land. But land is too tangible—and love of a tangible can carry you only so far, one generation, it turns out, maybe two. Today, for some, land means only security; for others, it’s a burden; for still others, it is passionless, inert.

For too many, this land no longer excites. Now, the only thing that excites is that scar. It’s so visible. It’s so ugly. It must be removed. Otherwise, how can we be accepted among the nations?

Haven’t you noticed? No other nation is Jewish—no one else has this scar. Why must we?

Can’t we just be like everyone else?

Jews forget. We forget what the Arab remembers: G-d rewards those who have a passion for the land of Israel. Look at how the passion of the pioneers has been rewarded; we live today because of that passion.

The Arab understands this.

We are also rebellious. We refuse to see that the point of the passion is not the land or the struggle for the land. The point of the passion is to feel the presence of G-d—because nothing happens in Israel without G-d.

The Arab understands this, too. That’s why he calls to his god; it’s why he wars against the Jew.

This was the pioneer’s mistake. They felt the passion. But they rejected G-d. So their passion has died with them. Read your Tanach (Jewish Bible). G-d did not give Israel to the Jewish people because they had a passion for it. He gave it because that land was linked to Him.

Accept that link and you secure the land. Reject that link and you lose the land.

The Arab understands this.

Does it make you uncomfortable to think that this land could be linked to G-d—that anything real could be connected to G-d?  Wake up. Read your Tanach:  the prophesies of Judaism are not stories. They are fact.

G-d is real—and He is in this land. 

This war is about G-d. It is about land.  But most fundamentally, it is about belief.  Belief is the key. It allows man—any man--to stay on the land. It is the catalyst that activates the passion needed to own the land.

He who believes, wins.

We are at war. It is a religious war. Whose god will win? Ask Hamas. Ask Islamic clerics who regularly call for holy war against the Jew. The land of Israel is holy. The Arab understands this. He wants that holiness.  

It’s why he calls upon his god. He wants what is holy.

Can you blame him?

Go outdoors. Look at the clouds over Jerusalem. Those are not just any clouds. They suggest more than rain or pollution—or war.

Study your Tanach.  Go to classes. Learn how this war started. Learn how it will end. Ask yourself, how can Tanach so accurately predict Jewish history?

Then, think about the clouds that hover over Jerusalem.