கார்த்திக் நீலகிரி
People often ask me, “Why is there always violence in Jerusalem?” and I always say the same thing: that as crazy as it sounds, it’s really about love. I’m not being glib. Jews, Muslims, and Christians love this city so deeply that they are willing to die for it.
Indeed, to understand the deep-seated protectiveness Christians, Muslims, and Jews feel for Jerusalem, you need look no further than the ladder that stands beneath a window in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. It was left there in the eighteenth century by a mason who was doing restoration work on the church. It is now called “immovable” because no single cleric of the six Christian orders that pray there is permitted to alter any part of church property without the permission of the other five. No surprise, that ladder has never budged.
And these are just Christians fighting among themselves. Throw Jews and Muslims into the mix, and you’ve got a city that is always teetering on the razor’s edge of calamity. And from calamity comes violence. And from violence comes death.
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