Jerusalem Quotes

“Oh Jerusalem, the city of sorrow
A big tear wandering in the eye
Who will halt the aggression?
On you, the pearl of religions?
Who will wash your bloody walls?
Who will safeguard the Bible?
Who will rescue the Quran?
Who will save Christ,
From those who have killed Christ?
Who will save man?

يا قدسُ، يا مدينةَ الأحزان
يا دمعةً كبيرةً تجولُ في الأجفان
من يوقفُ العدوان؟
عليكِ، يا لؤلؤةَ الأديان
من يغسل الدماءَ عن حجارةِ الجدران؟
من ينقذُ الإنجيل؟
من ينقذُ القرآن؟
من ينقذُ المسيحَ ممن قتلوا المسيح؟
من ينقذُ الإنسان؟”
― Nizar Qabbani

“Jerusalem! My Love,My Town

I wept until my tears were dry
I prayed until the candles flickered
I knelt until the floor creaked
I asked about Mohammed and Christ
Oh Jerusalem, the fragrance of prophets
The shortest path between earth and sky
Oh Jerusalem, the citadel of laws
A beautiful child with fingers charred
and downcast eyes
You are the shady oasis passed by the Prophet
Your streets are melancholy
Your minarets are mourning
You, the young maiden dressed in black
Who rings the bells at the Nativity Church,
On sunday morning?
Who brings toys for the children
On Christmas eve?
Oh Jerusalem, the city of sorrow
A big tear wandering in the eye
Who will halt the aggression
On you, the pearl of religions?
Who will wash your bloody walls?
Who will safeguard the Bible?
Who will rescue the Quran?
Who will save Christ, From those who have killed Christ?
Who will save man?
Oh Jerusalem my town
Oh Jerusalem my love
Tomorrow the lemon trees will blossom
And the olive trees will rejoice
Your eyes will dance
The migrant pigeons will return
To your sacred roofs
And your children will play again
And fathers and sons will meet
On your rosy hills
My town
The town of peace and olives”
― Nizar Qabbani

“Long before it was known to me as a place where my ancestry was even remotely involved, the idea of a state for Jews (or a Jewish state; not quite the same thing, as I failed at first to see) had been 'sold' to me as an essentially secular and democratic one. The idea was a haven for the persecuted and the survivors, a democracy in a region where the idea was poorly understood, and a place where—as Philip Roth had put it in a one-handed novel that I read when I was about nineteen—even the traffic cops and soldiers were Jews. This, like the other emphases of that novel, I could grasp. Indeed, my first visit was sponsored by a group in London called the Friends of Israel. They offered to pay my expenses, that is, if on my return I would come and speak to one of their meetings.

I still haven't submitted that expenses claim. The misgivings I had were of two types, both of them ineradicable. The first and the simplest was the encounter with everyday injustice: by all means the traffic cops were Jews but so, it turned out, were the colonists and ethnic cleansers and even the torturers. It was Jewish leftist friends who insisted that I go and see towns and villages under occupation, and sit down with Palestinian Arabs who were living under house arrest—if they were lucky—or who were squatting in the ruins of their demolished homes if they were less fortunate. In Ramallah I spent the day with the beguiling Raimonda Tawil, confined to her home for committing no known crime save that of expressing her opinions. (For some reason, what I most remember is a sudden exclamation from her very restrained and respectable husband, a manager of the local bank: 'I would prefer living under a Bedouinmuktarto another day of Israeli rule!' He had obviously spent some time thinking about the most revolting possible Arab alternative.) In Jerusalem I visited the Tutungi family, who could produce title deeds going back generations but who were being evicted from their apartment in the old city to make way for an expansion of the Jewish quarter. Jerusalem: that place of blood since remote antiquity. Jerusalem, over which the British and French and Russians had fought a foul war in the Crimea,and in the mid-nineteenth century,on the matter of which Christian Church could command the keys to some 'holy sepulcher.' Jerusalem, where the anti-Semite Balfour had tried to bribe the Jews with the territory of another people in order to seduce them from Bolshevism and continue the diplomacy of the Great War. Jerusalem: that pest-house in whose environs all zealots hope that an even greater and final war can be provoked. It certainly made a warped appeal to my sense of history.”
― Christopher Hitchens, Hitch 22: A Memoir

“And did those feet in ancient time
Walk upon England's mountains green?
And was the holy Lamb of God
On England's pleasant pastures seen?

And did the Countenance Divine
Shine forth upon our clouded hills?
And was Jerusalem builded here,
Among these dark Satanic Mills?

Bring me my Bow of burning gold:
Bring me my Arrows of desire:
Bring me my Spear: O clouds unfold!
Bring me my Chariot of fire!

I will not cease from Mental Fight,
Nor shall my Sword sleep in my hand,
Till we have built Jerusalem
In England's green & pleasant Land.”
― William Blake, Milton: A Poem

“All questions of right to one side, I have never been able to banish the queasy inner suspicion that Israel just did not look, or feel, either permanent or sustainable. I felt this when sitting in the old Ottoman courtyards of Jerusalem, and I felt it even more when I saw the hideous 'Fort Condo' settlements that had been thrown up around the city in order to give the opposite impression. If the statelet was only based on a narrow strip of the Mediterranean littoral (god having apparently ordered Moses to lead the Jews to one of the very few parts of the region with absolutely no oil at all), that would be bad enough. But in addition, it involved roosting on top of an ever-growing population that did not welcome the newcomers.”
― Christopher Hitchens, Hitch 22: A Memoir

“One of the questions asked by al-Balkhi, and often repeated to this day, is this: Why do the children of Israel continue to suffer? My grandmother Dodo thought it was because thegoyimwere jealous. The seder for Passover (which is a shame-faced simulacrum of a Hellenic question-and-answer session, even including the wine) tells the children that it's one of those things that happens to every Jewish generation. After theShoahorEndlösungor Holocaust, many rabbis tried to tell the survivors that the immolation had been a punishment for 'exile,' or for insufficient attention to the Covenant. This explanation was something of a flop with those whose parents or children had been the raw material for the 'proof,' so for a time the professional interpreters of god's will went decently quiet. This interval of ambivalence lasted until the war of 1967, when it was announced that the divine purpose could be discerned after all. How wrong, how foolish, to have announced its discovery prematurely! The exile and the Shoah could now both be understood, as part of a heavenly if somewhat roundabout scheme to recover the Western Wall in Jerusalem and other pieces of biblically mandated real estate.

I regard it as a matter of self-respect to spit in public on rationalizations of this kind. (They are almost as repellent, in their combination of arrogance, masochism, and affected false modesty, as Edith Stein's 'offer' of her life to expiate the regrettable unbelief in Jesus of her former fellow Jews.) The sage Jews are those who have put religion behind them and become in so many societies the leaven of the secular and the atheist.”
― Christopher Hitchens, Hitch 22: A Memoir

“There's a certain amount of ambiguity in my background, what with intermarriages and conversions, but under various readings of three codes which I don’t much respect (Mosaic Law, the Nuremberg Laws, and the Israeli Law of Return) I do qualify as a member of the tribe, and any denial of that in my family has ceased with me. But I would not remove myself to Israel if it meant the continuing expropriation of another people, and if anti-Jewish fascism comes again to the Christian world—or more probably comes at us via the Muslim world—I already consider it an obligation to resist it wherever I live. I would detest myself if I fled from it in any direction. Leo Strauss was right. The Jews will not be 'saved' or 'redeemed.' (Cheer up: neither will anyone else.) They/we will always be in exile whether they are in the greater Jerusalem area or not, and this in some ways is as it should be. They are, or we are, as a friend of Victor Klemperer's once put it to him in a very dark time, condemned and privileged to be 'a seismic people.' A critical register of the general health of civilization is the status of 'the Jewish question.' No insurance policy has ever been devised that can or will cover this risk.”
― Christopher Hitchens, Hitch 22: A Memoir

“If God had not permitted the people of Jerusalem to be torn asunder and driven them from the land, but had let them keep it after before, no one could convince them that they are not God`s chosen people.”
― Martin Luther, The Jews and Their Lies

“Jerusalem was capital of southern Israel, known then as Judah. Isn't it true that there's always a rivalry between north and south? North and South Korea, North and South Vietnam, Northern and Southern Ireland, Yankees and Rebels, uptown and downtown. Somebody please tell me why that is? Maybe southerners get too much sun, like Mr. Sock over there, frying his threads, and northerners don't get enough (although I hardly think northern Israel a cool spot in the shade), but southern peoples--tropical and downtown types--always seem to lean toward decadence, whereas uptown, in the north, progress is favored. Decadence and progress obviously are at odds.”
― Tom Robbins, Skinny Legs and All

“For 1,000 years, Jerusalem was exclusively Jewish; for about 400 years, Christian; for 1,300 years, Islamic; and not one of the three faiths ever gained Jerusalem without the sword, the mangonel or the howitzer.”
― Simon Sebag Montefiore, Jerusalem: The Biography

“I have always found it difficult not to be moved by Jerusalem, even when I hated it—and God knows I have hated it for the sheer human cost of it. But the sight of it, from afar or inside the labyrinth of its walls, softens me. Every inch of it holds the confidence of ancient civilizations, their deaths and their birthmarks pressed deep into the city's viscera and onto the rubble of its edges. The deified and the condemned have set their footprints in its sand. It has been conqured, razed and, rebuilt so many times that its stones seem to possess life, bestowed by the audit trail of prayer and blood. Yet somehow, it exhales humility. It sparks an inherent sense of familiary in me—that doubtless, irrefutable Palestinian certainty that I belong to this land. It possesses me, no matter who conquers it, because its soil is the keeper of my roots, of the bones of my ancestors. Because it knows the private lust that flamed the beds of all my foremothers. Because I am the natural seed of its passionate, tempestuous past. I am a daughter of the land, and Jerusalem reassures me of this inalienable right, far more than the yellowed property deeds, the Ottoman land registries, the iron keys to our stolen homes, or UN resolutions and decrees of superpowers could ever do.”
― Susan Abulhawa, Mornings in Jenin

“Only God can change a season of war into a season of peace. Would you agree with me in prayer for peace?”
― Mike Evans

“And burdened Gentile o’er the main,
Must bear the weight of Israel’s hate
Because he is not brought again
In triumph to Jerusalem.”
― Rudyard Kipling, Baa Baa, Black Sheep and The Gardener

“In Jerusalem, people are very cautious in the morning, out of superstition: The first words and deeds at dawn, it's said, usually shape the rest of the day.”
― Yasmina Khadra, The Attack

“The sun thought that Jerusalem was a sea
and set in her: a terrible mistake.”
― Yehuda Amichai, The Selected Poetry of Yehuda Amichai

“Jerusalem, the only city in the world
where the right to vote is granted even to the dead.”
― Yehuda Amichai, The Selected Poetry of Yehuda Amichai

“To claim Palestine after two thousand years made no more sense to him than the Italians claiming Germany because it was once occupied by the Romans.”
― Fred Uhlman, Reunion

“Names were changed, traditions muddled, but all that matters in Jerusalem is what is believed to be true.”
― Simon Sebag Montefiore, Jerusalem: The Biography

“Jerusalem was never a part of Islam or Islam’s dominion. Jerusalem is never mentioned by name in the Qur’an. In contrast, it is mentioned 669 times in the Bible.”
― Ze'Ev Shemer, Israel and the Palestinian Nightmare

“I moved from one part of the city to another as though turning from an Ashkenazi fable to a Bedouin tale, with equal delight, and I didn't need to be a conscientious objector to distrust policies requiring armed struggle and sermons based on hatred. Gazing upon Jerusalem's sacred structures was enough to persuade me to oppose everything that might injure their enduring grandeur. And still today, beneath its surface holiness, the city is like an odalisque longing for her lover, ready to burst into sensuous joy. It frowns unhappily upon the uproar of its citizens, hoping against hope that enlightenment may come and deliver their minds from their dark torment. By turns Olympus and ghetto, muse and concubine, temple and arena, Jerusalem suffers from an inability to inspire poems without inflaming passions. It's crumbing, heavyhearted, breaking up like its prayers amid the blasphemy of guns....”
― Yasmina Khadra, The Attack

“Jerusalem – Urusalim to the Canaanites – City of Shalem, god of the Evening Star. In Hebrew, Yerushalayim – the City of Peace. In Arabic, al-Quds – simply The Holy. So many names, so much unresolved. Jerusalem has serious issues.”
― Cliff James, Life As A Kite

“Enter Jerusalem with joy.”
― Lailah Gifty Akita

“I have always found it difficult not to be moved by Jerusalem, even when I hated it—and God knows I have hated it for the sheer human cost of it. But the sight of it, from afar or inside the labyrinth of its walls, softens me. Every inch of it holds the confidence of ancient civilizations, their deaths and their birthmarks pressed deep into the city's viscera and onto the rubble of its edges. The deified and the condemned have set their footprints in its sand. It has been conquered, razed and, rebuilt so many times that its stones seem to possess life, bestowed by the audit trail of prayer and blood. Yet somehow, it exhales humility. It sparks an inherent sense of familiarity in me—that doubtless, irrefutable Palestinian certainty that I belong to this land. It possesses me, no matter who conquers it, because its soil is the keeper of my roots, of the bones of my ancestors. Because it knows the private lust that flamed the beds of all my foremothers. Because I am the natural seed of its passionate, tempestuous past. I am a daughter of the land, and Jerusalem reassures me of this inalienable right, far more than the yellowed property deeds, the Ottoman land registries, the iron keys to our stolen homes, or UN resolutions and decrees of superpowers could ever do.”
― Susan Abulhawa, Mornings in Jenin

“After seizing the West Bank in 1967, Israel unilaterally annexed 72 square kilometers, including the eastern part of Jerusalem and land that belonged to 28 surrounding West Bank villages, to the Jerusalem municipality. Human Rights Watch is not aware of any other country, with the recent exception of the United States under President Donald Trump, that recognizes Israel’s annexation of East Jerusalem, which remains occupied territory under international law.”
― Human Rights Watch, A Threshold Crossed: Israeli Authorities and the Crimes of Apartheid and Persecution

“The discriminatory allocation of resources contributes to the starkly different realities faced by Palestinians and Jewish Israelis in Jerusalem. Seventy-two percent of Palestinian families live below the poverty line, as compared to 26 percent of Jewish families. Despite this, the Israeli government maintains 6 welfare offices, or offices that provide information to residents looking to receive government aid or other services, in Palestinian neighborhoods, but 19 in predominantly Jewish neighborhoods. 32% of Palestinian students in East Jerusalem do not complete 12 years of education, as compared to 1.5% of Jewish students in Jerusalem.”
― Human Rights Watch, A Threshold Crossed: Israeli Authorities and the Crimes of Apartheid and Persecution

“Muslims took Jerusalem from Christians in 637 C.E., Crusaders took it back in 1099, Saladin seized it on behalf of Islam in 1187, and the British recaptured it on behalf of Christianity in 1917.”
― Stephen Prothero, God Is Not One: The Eight Rival Religions That Run the World--and Why Their Differences Matter

“We had to maintain a good relationship with Nico because he would bring tourists from his grow shop on Ample Street to our club, Adam said. At the same time, I noticed that Nico had too many friends around town in too many coffeeshops for us to meddle with him in any way, so I had to bow to him being the local; however, it never really happened. I was just respectful to Nico as I was to anyone. Although I didn't tell Adam, I thought he knew that Nico had too many connections for us to try to take away from his store in an underhanded way. Adam had apparently been trying to do this not only recently, as if he wanted to buy Nico's grow shop by the time we opened the coffeeshop near it. At least, that was my thought, or what Adam attempted to make me believe.
I knew that Adam would eventually have problems with Nico, or by trusting Nico, and I didn't want to have anything to do with it.
I have thought to myself,
“Okay, boss buddy, The Prince of Israel, let's see how you're going to burn yourself again with Nico Preson. Let's see how much money you're going to lose this time around trusting this Spaniard or Mallorcan crook again.”
― Tomas Adam Nyapi, BARCELONA MARIJUANA MAFIA

“Jerusalem is a city of unfinished projects.”
― Anthony Bale, A Travel Guide to the Middle Ages

“Since 1967, Israel has claimed that Jerusalem is the eternal, united, undivided capital of the State of Israel and the Jewish people. But Jerusalem is very divided, definitely not united, and is not recognized by any government in the world as the capital of Israel.”
― Gershon Baskin, In Pursuit of Peace in Israel and Palestine

“Holy ground can look startlingly ordinary, especially when one’s standing on it.”
― Anthony Bale, A Travel Guide to the Middle Ages