Battle Continues for Holy City
By Chris Mitchell
CBN News - Jerusalem Bureau
June 7, 2007
CBNNews.com - Jews have controlled Jerusalem for the past 40 years - a Biblical generation. But the battle over the future of the holy city is far from over. In fact, it may have just begun.
In Hebrew, the city is called "Yerushalayim." For more than 3,000 years it has stood as the centerpiece of Jewish hopes and dreams.
"The memory of Jerusalem comes up in the wedding ceremony, in the circumcision, virtually in all the rites of passing of the Jewish faith so that when Jews heard on June 7, 1967, that Jerusalem had been recaptured and now was being reunited, it unleashed an enormous sense of historical longing among the Jewish people worldwide," Dore Gold, best-selling author of the book The Fight for Jerusalem, said.
"And I cannot forget the feeling in my fingers, straight to my heart, when I touched the stones of the wall of the Old City of Jerusalem," Katcha Kahaner said. "And I kept that with me from then until today."
Kahaner was a deputy battalion commander and one of the first soldiers to reach the Lion's Gate of the old city.
"It's very emotional. All of my friends-almost every year I got to a memorial of my friends who fell," said veteran Eli Adid. He was 24-years-old when he fought to take back the city. "And every time we're meeting, we're excited and emotional once again."
Lion's Gate is where 40 years ago the Israeli soldiers broke through to recapture the city. Today, there is a new battle raging for Jerusalem. But it's not being fought with soldiers and tanks.
For most Arab Muslims, the loss of Jerusalem was a tragedy. And when they lost on the battlefield, they turned to a diplomatic and media war -- one in which they were more successful.
Forty years after the war, not one nation has its embassy in Jerusalem, Israel's capital.
Current peace plans, like the Saudi plan advanced this year, call for the re-dividing of Jerusalem along the lines before 1967. The Saudi plan has support in Washington, D.C., and in Europe.
But Gold warns that re-dividing the city would fuel jihadist flames in Israel and around the world.
"When people come to Jerusalem today from the U.S. Department of State, from the British Foreign Office and say, 'Accept the Saudi plan,' they think that they are stabilizing the Middle East," Gold said. "But they are actually unleashing new forces that they have no idea of."
The current contention for Jerusalem is not just between Jews and Muslims. Jews themselves are divided about the decision by Moshe Dayan in 1967 to leave the Temple Mount in Muslim hands.
Shlomo Gazit was director of military intelligence during the war. He says Dayan was wary of taking charge of a Muslim holy site.
"He wanted to minimize the implication of our military provocation unless totally necessary; and to have a military, an Israeli flag on the Temple Mount is a provocation," Gazit said.
But for others like Chaim Richman, it was a betrayal for Israeli leaders to leave the Temple Mount in the possession of their sworn enemies.
"It's basically high treason in my mind to take that which is the holiest to the Jewish people and allow it to be overrun by those who embark upon a campaign to destroy the vestige of Jewish presence from that people and steal the legacy of the Jewish people from the world and say that the whole thing never happened," Richman said. "It's a serious situation and it shows a profound spiritual bankruptcy."
Today, some Israeli Arabs such as sheik Raed Salah demand that Muslims take back Jerusalem, by force if necessary.
But most Israeli leaders promise to keep Jerusalem undivided and under the flag of Israel.
"I think the vast majority of Israelis want to keep Jerusalem united under the rule of Israel because they understand that running over the Old City of Jerusalem to the Palestinian Hamas is virtually the same as turning it over to the Taliban," Gold said.
Since 1967, the secular West has grown more hostile to the idea of Jerusalem as a united city under Israel's control, as it was in Bible times. Gold warns there is danger in dismissing the biblical roots of Judeo-Christian culture.
"If the West says 'Jerusalem? Unimportant-just a bunch of stones,' they are giving up something which has been at the center of the belief system of their fathers and grandfathers for decades and centuries. And that is a horrible mistake," Gold said.
Bible scholar Lance Lambert agrees.
"In my estimation, the seventh of June 1967 was one of the greatest turning points in divine history," he said.
Lambert believes that in light of prophecy, Israel's retaking of Jerusalem was a major event.
"Forty years is generally accepted as a biblical generation. We have had 40 years and Jerusalem is still in the hands of the Jewish people," Lambert said. "Now there's going to be an enormous battle and conflict and strife over this and the prophet Zechariah says it. He says all nations will come against Jerusalem. We shall see what that means."
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