PM Yitchak Rabin: Inauguration Jerusalem 3000 in Washington, 10/25/95

You can listen to Rabin's speech here.

PM Rabin- Inauguration Jerusalem 3000 in Washington
25 Oct 1995

Address by Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin Inaugurating the Jerusalem 3000 Festivities in Washington DC
October 25, 1995

Jerusalem is the heart of the Jewish people and a deep source of our pride. On this festive occasion, thousands of miles from home, here and now, we once again are raising Jerusalem above our highest joy, just like our fathers and our fathers' fathers did.

Jerusalem has a thousand faces -- and each one of us has his own Jerusalem.


My Jerusalem is Dr. Moshe Wallach of Germany, the doctor of the sick of Israel and Jerusalem, who built Sha'arei Zedek hospital and had his home in its courtyard so as to be close to his patients day and night. I was born in his hospital. I am a Jerusalemite.

My Jerusalem is the focus of the Jewish people's yearnings, the city of its visions, the cradle of its prayers. It is the dream of the return to Zion. It is the name millions murmur, even on their death

bed. It is the place where eyes are raised and prayers are uttered.

My Jerusalem is the jerrycan of water measured out to the besieged in 1948, the faces of its anxious citizens quietly waiting in line for bread, the sky whose blackness was torn by flares.

My Jerusalem is Bab el-Wad -- the road to the city -- which cries out "Remember our names forever." It is the ashen faces of dead comrades from the War of Independence, and the searing cold of the rusting armored cars among the pines on the side of the road.

My Jerusalem is the great mountain, the military cemetery on Mount Herzl, the city of silence whose earth holds the treasured thousands of those who went to bitter battle -- and did not return.

My Jerusalem is the tears of the paratroopers at the Western Wall in 1967 and the flag which once more waved above the remnant of the Temple.

My Jerusalem is the changing colors of its walls, the smells of its markets and the faces of the members of every community and every faith, where all have freedom of thought and freedom of worship in the city where holiness envelops every stone, every word, every glance.

And my Jerusalem is the City of Peace, which will bear great tidings to all faiths, to all nations: "For the Torah shall come forth from Zion and the word of the Lord from Jerusalem... Peace be within thy walls and prosperity within thy palaces."

We differ in our opinions, left and right. We disagree on the means and the objective. In Israel, we all agree on one issue: the wholeness of Jerusalem, the continuation of its existence as capital of the State of Israel. There are no two Jerusalems. There is only one Jerusalem. For us, Jerusalem is not subject to compromise, and there is no peace without Jerusalem.

Jerusalem, which was destroyed eight times, where for years we had no access to the remnants of our Temple, was ours, is ours, and will be ours -- forever.

"Here tears do not weaken eyes," wrote the Jerusalem poet Yehuda Amichai. "They only polish and shine the hardness of faces like stone."

Jerusalem is that stone.

From distant Washington, Chag Same'ach and Shalom to you Jerusalem.

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