LETTER TO THE WORLD from Stanley Goldfoot "Eliezer ben Yisrael"

Stanley  Goldfoot                                     

               Stanley with his family at an Israeli beach  I first met my cousin Stanley at the King David Hotel in Jerusalem.  After that, we met at his home in Jerusalem. This was after September 1980.  This picture is earlier.  By Eliezer Ben Yisrael- aka Stanley Goldfoot  Monday, May 12 2008 @ 12:54 CDTContributed by: JDLViews: 397

The following was written by Stanley Goldfoot,my 3rd cousin,  using the pseudonym Eliezer Ben Yisrael. Goldfoot, a Jew from South Africa who emigrated to Eretz Yisrael after hearing a speech by Ze'ev Jabotinsky, published this poem in the first issue of his English language newspaper, The Times of Israel, in June 1967. Goldfoot passed away in 2006, at the age of 92. His words live on today, and they will live on forever and ever. . . .                                                

Stanley and his wife of Jerusalem:  Born in South Africa, Stanley graduated high school and then made aliyah to Israel. He became Chief of Intelligence for the Stern Group in Israel's first days. In his years before 1980, he spoke in many places; football field-sized stadiums.               

                  Letter to the World from Jerusalem                                  I am not a creature from another planet, as you seem to believe. I am a Jerusalemite -- like yourselves, a man of flesh and blood.  I am a citizen of my city, an integral part of my people.  I have a few things to get off my chest. Because I am not a diplomat, I do not have to mince words. I do not have to please you, or even persuade you. I owe you nothing. You did not build this city; you did not live in it; you did not defend it when they came to destroy it. And we will be damned if we will let you take it away.                                   

 There was a Jerusalem before there was a New York. When Berlin, Moscow, London, and Paris were miasmal forest and swamp, there was a thriving Jewish community here. It gave something to the world which you nations have rejected ever since you established yourselves -- a humane moral code.  Here the prophets walked, their words flashing like forked lightning.                       

 Here a people who wanted nothing more than to be left alone, fought off waves of heathen would-be conquerors, bled and died on the battlements, hurled themselves into the flames of their burning Temple rather than surrender, and when finally overwhelmed by sheer numbers and led away into captivity, swore that before they forgot Jerusalem, they would see their tongues cleave to their palates, their right arms wither.                                     

For two pain-filled millennia, while we were your unwelcome guests, we prayed daily to return to this city. Three times a day we petitioned the Almighty: "Gather us from the four corners of the world, bring us upright to our land; return in mercy to Jerusalem, Thy city, and dwell in it as Thou promised. "On every Yom Kippur and Passover, we fervently voiced the hope that next year would find us in Jerusalem. 

                                                   

Your inquisitions, pogroms, expulsions, the ghettos into which you jammed us, your forced baptisms, your quota systems, your genteel anti-Semitism, and the final unspeakable horror, the Holocaust (and worse, your terrifying disinterest in it) -- all these have not broken us. They may have sapped what little moral strength you still possessed, but they forged us into steel. Do you think that you can break us now after all we have been through? Do you really believe that after Dachau and Auschwitz we are frightened by your threats of blockades and sanctions? We have been to Hell and back -- a Hell of your making. What more could you possibly have in your arsenal that could scare us? 

                                             

I have watched this city bombarded twice by nations calling themselves civilized. In 1948, while you looked on apathetically, I saw women and children blown to smithereens, after we agreed to your request to inter-nationalize the city. It was a deadly combination that did the job: British officers, Arab gunners, and American-made cannons. 

                                              

      Jews fleeing from Old City of Jerusalem

And then the savage sacking of the Old City, the willful slaughter, the wanton destruction of every synagogue and religious school; the desecration of Jewish cemeteries; the sale by a ghoulish government of tombstones for building materials, for poultry runs, army camps -- even latrines. And you never said a word. You never breathed the slightest protest when the Jordanians shut off the holiest of our places, the Western Wall, in violation of the pledges they had made after the war -- a war they waged, incidentally, against the decision of the UN. 

Not a murmur came from you whenever the legionnaires in their spiked helmets casually opened fire upon our citizens from behind the walls. Your hearts bled when Berlin came under siege. You rushed your airlift "to save the gallant Berliners." But you did not send one ounce of food when Jews starved in besieged Jerusalem. You thundered against the wall which the East Germans ran through the middle of the German capital -- but not one peep out of you about that other wall, the one that tore through the heart of Jerusalem. 

       Arabs attacking synagogue

And when that same thing happened 20 years later, and the Arabs unleashed a savage, unprovoked bombardment of the Holy City again, did any of you do anything? The only time you came to life was when the city was at last reunited. Then you wrung your hands and spoke loftily of "justice" and need for the "Christian" quality of turning the other cheek. The truth is -- and you know it deep inside your gut -- you would prefer the city to be destroyed rather than have it governed by Jews. No matter how diplomatically you phrase it, the age-old prejudices seep out of every word. If our return to the city has tied your theology in knots, perhaps you had better reexamine your catechisms. After what we have been through, we are not passively going to accommodate ourselves to the twisted idea that we are to suffer eternal homelessness until we accept your savior.                          

For the first time since the year 70 there is now complete religious freedom for all in Jerusalem. For the first time since the Romans put a torch to the Temple everyone has equal rights. (You prefer to have some more equal than others.)We loathe the sword -- but it was you who forced us to take it up. We crave peace -- but we are not going back to the peace of 1948 as you would like us to. 

                                                

We are home. It has a lovely sound for a nation you have willed to wander over the face of the globe. We are not leaving. We are redeeming the pledge made by our forefathers: Jerusalem is being rebuilt. "Next year" and the year after, and after, and after, until the end of time -- "in Jerusalem!"

Reference: Jewish Defense League

Jerusalem Day and Marching Parade Through Jerusalem and Its Consequences

 Nadene Goldfoot                                               

Today, Friday-Shabbat.  Sunday is Jerusalem Day.  There is likely to be rioting in Jerusalem. 

US Ambassador Tom Nides is interviewed by The Times of Israel at the US embassy in Jerusalem, on January 7, 2022. (David Azagury/ US embassy)

Israeli officials have rejected a request by U.S. 

Ambassador Thomas Nides to Israel, to amend the route of 

the Jerusalem Day Flag March, to be held on Sunday, so that 

it avoids the Muslim Quarter in the Old City of Jerusalem. 

    Above is the US Embassy in Jerusalem.                                    

I believe this is former president Trump's daughter showing the placket on the wall of the embassy, which recognizes Jerusalem as Israel's capital once again.  Jerusalem had become Israel's capital with King David's recognition of it in 1010 BCE, over 3,000 years ago which lasted until 70 CE when Jerusalem was burnt down by the Romans.  Jerusalem had been the capital of the Jewish kingdom for 1,080 years!  

   Ambassador Tom Nides entered his Jerusalem  home on capital’s Emek Refaim Street, after old official residence in Herzliya was sold by Trump administration in 2020. Nides will be living in the German section of Jerusalem.  This is a street in the neighborhood. 

Jerusalem Day marks the annual anniversary of the liberation and unification of Jerusalem during the 1967 Six Day War. Right Wing young people tend to demonstrate Israeli sovereignty over the entirety of Jerusalem by marching through the city, including the Muslim Quarter of the Old City, carrying flags and chanting nationalistic slogans. 

Israel's security agencies and the IDF recommended that the traditional route not be changed in order not to display a show of weakness. PM Bennett also said the route must remain unchanged. Hamas has warned violence if the route is not changed.                            

Jews were expelled and banned from the Old City and prohibited from visiting the Western Wall by Jordan, from 1948 until 1967.

 For almost 2000 years prior to 1917 (when the British ruled Palestine), Jews could only live in the Old City and worship at the Western Wall under the mostly oppressive and persecutory rule of, first the Christian and then the Muslim rulers of the city. The last Muslim rulers before 1948 was the Ottoman Empire of Turkey who held the land but did not live on it for 400 years.  The Crusaders failed to retake Palestine despite further attempts. The Egyptian Mamluks took Palestine from the Mongols (who had conquered the Ayyubid Sultanate) in 1260. The Ottoman Empire captured the region in 1516 and ruled it until Egypt took it in 1832.

• 1832 May 10 – Mohammed Ali, leading Egyptian forces, and aided by local Maronites, seizes Acre from the Ottoman Empire after a 7-month siege.
• 1840 July 15 – The Austrian Empire, the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, the Kingdom of Prussia, and the Russian Empire sign the Convention of London with the ruler of the Ottoman Empire. The signatories offered to Muhammad Ali and his heirs permanent control over Egypt and the Acre Sanjak (roughly what is now Israel), provided that these territories remain part of the Ottoman Empire and that Ali agreed within ten days to withdraw from the rest of Syria and return to Sultan Abdülmecid I the Ottoman fleet which had defected to Alexandria. Muhammad Ali was also to immediately withdraw his forces from Arabia, the Holy Cities, Crete, the district of Adana, and all of the Ottoman Empire.
• 
  
• 1874 – Jerusalem becomes a Mutesarrifiyyet gaining a special administrative status.
• 1882–1903 – The First Aliyah took place: 25,000–35,000 Jews immigrate to Ottoman Syria.
• 1887–1888 – Ottoman Syria is divided into Jerusalem Sanjak, Nablus Sanjak, and Acre Sanjak
•                                                           
  
  
  

Christians in Jerusalem also faced persecutory restrictions and discrimination under Muslim rule. So let's all give thanks for the ability to live and visit Jerusalem and worship freely according to our own religious beliefs under the security and protection of the Israeli government, IDF and Israel Police. 

What do you think?  Would it be better to follow the US ambassador's advice  so that it avoids the Muslim Quarter in the Old City of Jerusalem?  Or is Israel acting correctly under the circumstances of showing that all of Jerusalem belongs to Israel.

I don't believe there are any other circumstances in the world like this.  I do remember in 1977, the Nazis wanting to march through parts of our own city, Skokie, Chicago, Illinois in the USA  where Jewish refugees lived and how upset they were, but of course those American Nazis had rights and that was recognized first and foremost.  

{48 years ago, in the Chicago suburb of Skokie, a planned Nazi march through a town full of Holocaust survivors led to a years-long legal battle over religious liberties and the strength of the constitution. While hate groups were ultimately not allowed to march on Skokie, their message still resonates with white supremacists and members of the far-right today, according to Heidi Beirich, the director of the Intelligence Project at the Southern Poverty Law Center.}

Once the courts finally ruled in all of the cases that the Nazis 

had a right to peaceful assembly, it became clear that they were going to have their assembly.  They announced that they would hold it in Skokie on June 24, 1978.  from this point on, I repeatedly warned Frnk Collin, the Nazi leader, that violent counter demonstrations were planned--and that I doubted that the Skokie police and allied police departments were up to the job. 

Nonetheless, he told me that the demonstration was on and as far as I could tell, his plans for it continued apace.   

The only other example I remember would be New York City which once held people on the British side and people on the rebellious American side when we broke away from Great Britain's hold on this USA and had our own Revolutionary War.  Once the war was over showing that the Americans won, that was it.  The British here either left for England or became Americans.  Have there been parades of Americans going through the British-held side?  There would be no point since all are now Americans.  1776 was the year that all was decided.                              

Israeli police carrying shields on Temple Mount to stop rock-throwing, attacks of Arabs on Jews.  

By marching through Arab neighborhoods, 

there will be fighting.  You can bet on it.  It will 

be the Arab who will show a resistance and 

attack the marchers.  Some may die.  

Nides told US senators at his confirmation hearing 

that he would be living in Jerusalem and respects 

the decision by the previous administration to 

recognize Jerusalem as Israel’s capital.

    Dancing at the Wall in 1967 with the right to see the wall once again.  

Israel captured East Jerusalem in the 1967 Six Day War and later annexed it in a move not recognized internationally. The Palestinians want East Jerusalem to be the capital of a future Palestinian state. 

                       Great Britain's embassy in Tel Aviv

Nearly all countries maintain their embassies in Tel Aviv because of the dispute over East Jerusalem.

Resosurce:

https://mail.google.com/mail/u/0/?tab=wm#inbox/FMfcgzGpGBGPrjpfrMFxMLRrGqFQZVCW

https://www.timesofisrael.com/us-ambassador-nides-moves-into-new-residence-in-jerusalem/

https://abcnews.go.com/US/skokie-legacy-nazi-march-town-holocaust-survivors/story?id=56026742

https://www.aclu.org/issues/free-speech/rights-protesters/skokie-case-how-i-came-represent-free-speech-rights-nazis

https://jewishbubba.blogspot.com/2021/12/stanley-goldfoots-letter-to-world.html

Jerusalem Day-May 8th and Why It is Important To Us

Nadene Goldfoot                                                                     

The song, "Jerusalem of Gold" pulls at my heart.  My eyes well up with tears.  I learned this song in my ulpan in Haifa with teacher Sarah, the one that also wrote letters to Natan Sharansky keeping his Hebrew lessons going.   The drumbeat with Ofra Haza singing is lifting me up to this wall above and over all of Jerusalem.  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JH8gtdDA5x0.  I am back in Jerusalem.

"Tomorrow is Yom Yerushalayim, Jerusalem Day.  It is the day we commemorate and express thanks for the liberation of the Old City and the reunification of Yerushalayim. As we remember the dear price we Israelis, had to pay for it, we rejoice in the fulfillment of the ancient prophecies and express thanks to G-d, to the brave soldiers of the IDF and those who died for it. I would also like to express special thanks to our enemies for their help in making that dream a reality by imposing a war on us, a war we did not want and never wished for. That war, our enemies, that Six day war that you waged upon us, resulted in the greatest miracle of them all. Yerushalayim, our Eternal Capital is UNITED forever!" (quote from Bat Zion Sacks) She stated this so eloquently.  I cannot do better.  

Since Muslim leaders such as Mahmoud Ahmadinejad  have been busy trying to erase the Jewish presence and history of Israel,  Many want to take Jerusalem as theirs, but it was and is again the capital of Israel.  For starters, it is situated in the center of the  Judean Mountains.  The Torah holds much of our history and geography facts.  King David took the beginnings of a city in 1010 BCE and Jerusalem  became his capital of his united Israel.  He added the fortress of Zion and the "house of Heroes" for his guard.  There he constructed a tomb right inside the city for himself and his dynasty and transferred the Ark of the Covenant there as well.  David made Jerusalem the religious center of Israel.  It has remained so.  David was a conquerer and made it also the capital of an empire reaching from the Red Sea to the Euphrates, such as G-d had told Abraham that his seed would do.  At the beginning of the 1st century when Jesus was born, it is figured that about 80,000 people lived in Jerusalem.  Today there are over 800,000.

Skipping ahead in time to our near-present to May 14, 1948 when Israel was reestablished as a state through the British mandate and the League of Nations and the United Nations,  Jews had to fight for their lives after this pronouncement as Arabs attacked viciously.  Jerusalem was divided into 2 parts.  The Israel section included the whole of the west and south parts of the New City, including "Mount Zion" and an enclave on Mt. Scopus.  Herzl and other Zionist leaders were re-interred on the mountain, Mt. Herzl,  west of the city.  The city was the administrative center of the country.

On June 5, 1967, Jordanian troops in the Old City and the Jordanian sections of the city bombarded the New City.  Israel's army reacted and 2 days later the entire city came under Israel control.  This was the beginning of the Six Day War.

The first thing Israeli soldiers did was to go in mass visits to the Western (Wailing) Wall, something prohibited to Jews for about 20 years.  They cried, sang, danced and said plenty of prayers for Israel.  Tourists head for this site first, cry, sometimes kiss the ground, and leave their prayers between the rocks of the wall.

On June 29, 1967, the Israeli government formally united the 2 sections of the city and the barriers that had divided them were removed.  The population of the eastern part of the city, including 139,600 Muslims and Christians, are now part of the total population which was 493,500 in 1990.   By 2011 Jerusalem had 801,000 people.  64% were Jews and 36% Arabs.  The breakdown was:  497,000 Jews, 281,000 Muslims, 14,000 Christians and 9,000 undefined.  The growth to 2013 is at 2.5%.  Half of the Jewish people live in either Tel Aviv or Jerusalem.   The proportion of ultra-Orthodox Jews has grown rapidly as has the immigrants.

 They all felt the Arab-Jewish cooperation, but also the sabotage that exacerbated their relationships, like when the intifada started in 1987.  Arab states and outsiders instigated trouble.  There are those elements pushing Israel to go back to the 1967 borders, including President Obama with his speech on TV.  Not one to be stopped in progress, Israel continued on with life and their plans to develop the sacred city.  The Jerusalem Law of 1980 extended Israel sovereignty over the entire city.  Excavations which had been carried out at the site of the City of David are now supplemented by diggings around the western and southern walls of the Temple enclosure.

My 3rd cousin, Stanley Goldfoot (1914-2006) , was the Chief of Intelligence before 1948 for the Stern Group, young men who were fighting for Israel's creation before 1948.  He was able to live through it all as told in Genesis 1948 - about the first Arab-Israeli War of 1947-48 by Dan Kurzman.  He had come to what was then called "Palestine" at age 18 on a ship that put up the Swastika flag in the middle of the ocean from his port in South Africa.  He immediately was approached by Sternists upon stepping on shore and signed up which he willingly did.  Eventually he married and lived in Jerusalem on Dor v'Dor Avenue; from Generation to Generation.

Yes, Jews have lived in Jerusalem for generations for 3,283 years, which, when you figure 4 generations per 100 years, means about 131 generations consistently.  There never has been a time when Jerusalem was devoid of Jews.  The city was burned by the Romans in 70 CE, which caused many of us to scatter, but not all.

Israel went through many empires that walked through, mostly as nomads on camels. The conquering Romans renamed the land "Palestine."  Why?  It was to erase the Jewishness of the land, something they had a habit of doing to a conquered people.  There never was the state of Palestine, though.  No king, no president, de nada, nothing.   The Ottoman Empire held it lastly for 400 years and lost it by siding with Germany in WWI.  Before them were the Byzantine Empire,  Sasanids,  Umayyad, and Abbasids,  Many trampled through but did not live here nor care about it.  It was just a part of their empire. Through it all, Jews continued to live and love and learn in Jerusalem, their center.

As Stanley wrote in 1969: "I am not a creature from another planet, as you seem to  believe. I am a Jerusalemite-like yourselves, a man of flesh and  blood. I am a citizen of my city, an integral part of my people. I have a few things to get off my chest. Because I am not a  diplomat, I do not have to mince words. I do not have to please you  or even persuade you. I owe you nothing. You did not build this city,  you did not live in it, you did not defend it when they came to destroy it.

And we will be damned if we will let you take it away. There was a Jerusalem before there was a New York. When Berlin,  Moscow, London, and Paris were miasmal forest and swamp, there was a  thriving Jewish community here. It gave something to the world which  you nations have rejected ever since you established yourselves- a  humane moral code.

Here the prophets walked, their words flashing like forked lightning.

Here a people who wanted nothing more than to be left  alone, fought off waves of heathen would-be conquerors, bled and died  on the battlements, hurled themselves into the flames of their  burning Temple rather than surrender, and when finally overwhelmed by  sheer numbers and led away into captivity, swore that before they  forgot Jerusalem, they would see their tongues cleave to their palates, their right arms wither. "

This is but an excerpt of the letter, done in video below.  Hope you listen and watch.  It's how Stanley felt in 1969, shortly after that horrid war.  Yes, Stanley, I'll be thinking of you and all the others tomorrow and all you did to bring about this wonderful day.  

Resource: facebook friend:  Bat Zion Susskind-Sacks, Israel
Letter to the World by Stanley Goldfoot (1969) who lived in Jerusalem  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UTM7EzhaG7I
http://www.icjs-online.org/index.php?eid=3461&ICJS=5849&article=1387 printout of Letter to the World
Song: Jerusalem of Gold http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JH8gtdDA5x0 by Ofra Haza (most beautiful)
http://www.israelnationalnews.com/News/News.aspx/155939
http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/Society_&_Culture/newpop.html