WFRL: Babylon

An article in today’s Haaretz reports that the Netanyahu government is now struggling to deal with the possibility that the Palestinians may unilaterally declare statehood. In and of itself, this is not necessarily shocking. Yasser Arafat used much the same threat to pressure Netanyahu during his previous term as prime minister in the late 1990s. A new twist has been added, however, by the apparently very real possibility of US recognition of a unilaterally declared Palestinian state. In fact, Haaretz claims that such recognition is already a done deal.

The reports indicated that Palestinian Prime Minister Salam Fayyad has reached a secret understanding with the Obama administration over U.S. recognition of an independent Palestinian state. Such recognition would likely transform any Israeli presence across the Green Line, even in Jerusalem, into an illegal incursion to which the Palestinians would be entitled to engage in measures of self-defense.

SNIP

By the rivers of Babylon
we sat and wept
when we remembered Zion.
There on the poplars
we hung our harps,
for there our captors asked us for songs,
our tormentors demanded songs of joy;
they said, "Sing us one of the songs of Zion!"
How can we sing the songs of the LORD
while in a foreign land?
If I forget you, O Jerusalem,
may my right hand forget its skill .
May my tongue cling to the roof of my mouth
if I do not remember you,
if I do not consider Jerusalem my highest joy.
Remember, O LORD,
what the Edomites did
on the day Jerusalem fell.
"Tear it down," they cried,
"tear it down to its foundations!"
O Daughter of Babylon,
doomed to destruction,
happy is he who repays you
for what you have done to us
he who seizes your infants
and dashes them against the rocks.
~ Psalm 137

And it shall come to pass in that day,
that I will seek to destroy all the nations
that come against Jerusalem.
And I will pour upon the house of David,
and upon the inhabitants of Jerusalem,
the spirit of grace and of supplications:
and they shall look upon me
whom they have pierced ...
~ Zechariah 12