initial focus of the battle with Jordan wasn’t Jerusalem. In fact the Israeli soldiers were ordered to stay away from the ancient city. Rather, the fighting centered on a mountain overlooking Jerusalem, Mount Scopus. It was Israel’s sole enclave east of the city. On Mount Scopus were Israeli army personnel, an Israeli university, and an Israeli hospital. The soldiers were ordered to rescue the enclave. But even that was part of the mystery.”
“How so?”
“The destruction of Jerusalem in AD 70 was connected to one place above all others: Mount Scopus. Mount Scopus was the headquarters of the Roman General Titus. It was from Mount Scopus that the siege of Jerusalem was commanded and from Mount Scopus that Jerusalem was destroyed. It was the base of the Roman legions that destroyed Jerusalem. And as Mount Scopus played a central part in Jerusalem’s destruction, so now it would play a central part in Jerusalem’s restoration. And as the leaders of the Roman army stood on that mountain, planning the city’s destruction, so in the Six-Day War the leaders of the Israeli army, Moshe Dayan, its minister of defense, and other high Israeli officials, now stood on that same mountain after it was secured to speak of the city’s liberation.
“Finally the word was given to Colonel Motta Gur, commander of the 55th Paratroopers Brigade, to take the Old City. He led his men to the sealed-up gate on Jerusalem’s eastern wall. Gur broke through the gate and entered the Old City. For the first time in two thousand years Israeli soldiers were standing on the streets of Jerusalem.”
“The Israeli soldiers left Jerusalem in AD 70,” I said. “So now they returned . . . each to his own possession.”
“Yes, and just as Jerusalem was lost when Roman soldiers swept down from the North into the Temple Mount, so now the soldiers of Israel swept down from the North into the Temple Mount. It was at that moment Gur radioed the words that would be heard all over the nation: ‘The Temple Mount is in our hands.’ 5
“The soldiers then made their way down to the Western Wall, where some wept, some prayed, some cheered, and some just stood in silent awe, too overcome to speak. And as the Roman soldiers of Titus had sealed the destruction of Jerusalem with the display of the Roman standard, so now Jewish soldiers sealed the city’s restoration with the display of the Israeli flag hung by the stones of the Western Wall.
“It was June 7, 1967, the day that the nation’s two-thousand-year-old exile from its Holy City came to an end . . . in the year of Jubilee. And as the Jubilee is the year appointed for return, so the proclamations of Israel’s leader would echo that word. Gur would tell his men, ‘You have been given the great privilege . . . of returning to the nation its capital and its holy center . . . ’ 6 Moshe Dayan would declare, ‘We have returned to all that is holy in our land. We have returned, never to be parted from it again.’ 7 And the rabbi who accompanied the soldiers to the Temple Mount and the Western Wall would pray, ‘ . . . We have not forgotten you, Jerusalem, our Holy City, home of our glory. . . . To Zion and the remnant of our Holy Temple we declare: “Your sons have returned to their borders.”’” 8
“What about the song?” I asked. “It was the song of two thousand years of lamentation, but three weeks after it was first sung, everything changed.”
“When the soldiers that liberated Jerusalem found themselves on the Temple Mount, they spontaneously began singing the song they had just learned weeks before. And when Naomi Shemer heard of Jerusalem’s liberation, she knew she had to add to the song another set of verses. So she wrote of the children of Israel returning to their ancient city. They had returned, she wrote, to the water cisterns and the market squares. They had returned to the Temple Mount. And the sound of the shofar, she wrote, the ram’s horn, could now be heard from the holy place. And all around the city, in the caves she had just described as howling with the wind of desolation, now a thousand suns were shining.” 9
“So it turned into a song of rejoicing.”
“In the prophets,” said the Oracle, “it was written that in the days of destruction the nation’s songs would be turned into