Letter to my Fellow Jews in the Diaspora After Visiting Kedumim

The following letter is based on a poem by famous medieval Spanish-Jewish physician, poet and philosopher Judah Halevi.

Dear Fellow Jews,

Three days ago, I stood in Shomrom (Samaria) with Daniella Weiss, former mayor of Kedumim and current general secretary of the Nachala Settlement Movement.

My heart is still in Shomron, but – I am now with my family in the great country of Canada.

It would be glorious for you to hear the birds singing in the trees, crowding the little streets of Kedumim, where 40 years ago, Daniella and her small group of settlers met only sand and silence.

I wish you could touch the water dancing down a little canal in the magical children’s park perched atop a hill and built by Christian Zionists.

How can I be free while these hills are crying like a mother whose children have become lost, while wealthy Arab homes grab our land, while Jewish settlers are not strengthened by our numbers?

If we cannot be home, then do our sweet songs of praise in our Hallel prayers and our kind Jewish hearts include Chanukah light for the brave Jews who guard our inheritance from our Father, the Creator of the Universe?

Do we speak enough about our homeland of over 3000 years?

Of the recognition under international law by the League of Nations that Jews are the rightful owners of the land, including Judea and Samaria?

Do we speak about the facts that the Arabs were given 96% of the Ottoman Empire in the Middle East, and that huge numbers of Arabs were allowed to enter Palestine illegally under the British Mandate and then claim they were the native inhabitants,

That the world allowed the British  to betray their legal obligation to help the Jews return home, while  the Mufti and the Germans prevented the Jews from returning to Palestine (the Roman name for the Jewish homeland)?

And that this treachery led to the murder of millions of our brethren?

Can we now straighten our backs and realize that we have come home?  Can we in the West realize that it is not a burden to love our land, but a privilege and a duty?