This past Sunday was Yom Yerushalayim, Jerusalem day, commemorating the day in 1967 that Israeli forces took east Jerusalem and the old city back from Jordanian control.

On that day Defense Minister Moshe Dayan declared:

”This morning, the Israel Defense Forces liberated Jerusalem. We have united Jerusalem, the divided capital of Israel. We have returned to the holiest of our holy places, never to part from it again. To our Arab neighbors we extend, also at this hour—and with added emphasis at this hour—our hand in peace. And to our Christian and Muslim fellow citizens, we solemnly promise full religious freedom and rights. We did not come to Jerusalem for the sake of other peoples’ holy places, and not to interfere with the adherents of other faiths, but in order to safeguard its entirety, and to live there together with others, in unity.”

I am grateful Israel did not lose that defensive war and that the Jewish people were able to go once again to our holy sites and rebuild the many destroyed synagogues and defiled cemeteries.    But each year that Jerusalem Day features Jewish youth marching through the Arab quarter of the old city, gloating and yelling degrading epithets, my heart drops.

God told Abraham go to the “land that I will show you” so you can be a blessing to all the nations.   To be a blessing one must look and sound like a blessing.   Good character is vital in Judaism-so much so that the commentaries say one must learn Pirkey Avot, The Ethics of our Fathers, before studying the Torah because Avot, “Fathers”, is precisely that, the parent of the Torah.    In order to be a Jew and study torah one must first hone their character traits (Nitivot Shalom, introduction to Pirkey Avot).

Yes, we must defend ourselves; yes, we have offered peace many times but to no avail; yes, we have a 5000 year history in the land of Israel and we are the only democracy in the Middle East for many miles; but no, we may not gloat.

When the angels desired to sing praise to God for drowning the Egyptians in the sea the Midrash tells us that God refused them saying, “the work of my hands is drowning in the sea and you want to sing songs?” The Jewish people were allowed to praise God for the salvation, but this is very different than spitting in the face of the vanquished. Such attitudes and actions are forbidden.

In fact the non-Jews who live among us in Israel and are monotheists have a special status which demands that we be concerned about their welfare, return their lost objects and pay them on time.   In regard to their mosques, not only do they deserve respect as monotheistic houses of worship, but according to Rabbi Ovadia Yosef, a Jew may even pray in them.

While we must support the State of Israel and it is our homeland, we must take care to retain our nobility, our respect for our monotheistic cousins, and make the Kiddush Hashem, the sanctification of God’s name, for which Avrohom was given the land.