Israel’s letter to the world

Adam Levick
CiF Watch
14 August '10

In 2006, at the age of 92, Stanley Goldfoot passed away. Stanley Goldfoot was born in Johannesburg, South Africa. In 1932, at the age of 18, he headed for Palestine where he joined a HaShomer HaTzair kibbutz. After the rebirth of the Jewish State of Israel his main goal, which he eventually realized, was to establish a Zionist English newspaper, “The Times of Israel.” In the first issue of “The Times of Israel”, in 1969, Goldfoot wrote his famous “Letter to the World from Jerusalem.” The article is still remarkably relevant, so I thought I’d share it with you. It’s the thoughts of only one man but, as I read it, it occurred to me that, in many ways, it represents the pleas of an entire nation – a people with one small desire: “to be a free people in our land”.

A Letter to the World from Jerusalem by Eliezer ben Yisrael ( Stanley Goldfoot)

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.

(Read full letter)

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