'Har Habayit Beyadenu' - The Temple Mount is in our hands!
In March 1968, J. B. Priestley, an English novelist, playwright and broadcaster, asked Weisgal the same question. Weisgal told Priestley about a cartoon in the Israeli press by the cartoonist Dosh showing Yisrolik, a little guy with a cap, who had become a symbol of the young state, explaining to King Hussein of Jordan how he might get back parts of Jerusalem. “Do what we did,” he told the king. “Say over and over again for two thousand years’ Next year in Jerusalem.’”The Holy Six Day War
The phrase Next Year in Jerusalem “has been the umbilical cord which has tied the Jews of the world to the land of Israel for two thousand years,” Weisgal explained. “Jewish religious ritual and liturgy and biblical, medieval and modern literature is pervaded with longing for Zion. Agricultural and meteorological conditions in Israel are also a fundamental part of this identification."
-During January, when the cities in the Northeast might be covered with snow, Jewish children plant saplings because in Israel, it is the New Year of the Trees, when the almonds blossom for the first time. Even though the streets might be soaked from torrential rains in October, Jews pray that it should rain in Israel. The harvest has ended and the fields are parched. No other space on earth arouses such fervor and passion among the Jews, and infinite sacrifice to bring back the land to life. [1]
-When the Jews began to rebuild the land, they found the Valley of Jezreel infested with malaria. Today it is the agricultural heartland of the country. Reclamation cost the lives of hundreds of Jewish pioneers. No one forced them to engage in this dangerous work, yet they did so because it was their land. (Ibid)
-Observant Jews believed that simply by inhabiting the land, they were guaranteed a place in the world to come, while anyone who permanently left “is like a man who has no G-d.” [2[
On the 28th day of the Hebrew month of Iyar ( June 7 in 1967) Israeli paratroopers captured the Western Wall in the Old City of Jerusalem, the portion of the Western supporting wall of the Temple Mount that remained since the destruction of the Second Temple (70 C.E.) When they reached the Wall, many of the secular soldiers who were not observant were overcome with emotion. One soldier remembered looking around at the officers and the other soldiers:
“I saw their tears, their wordless prayers, and I knew they felt as I did: a deep feeling for the Temple Mount… a love for the Wall on whose stones so many generations have wept. I understood that it wasn’t only I and my religious friends who sensed its greatness and sanctity; others felt it too, no less deeply and strongly.”
During the annual Yom HaAzmaut celebration at Yeshivat Mercaz HaRav in Jerusalem, some three weeks before the Six Day War, the Rosh Yeshiva, HaRav Tzvi Yehuda HaKohen Kook, gave a powerful and prophetic speech to the students and gathered guests, describing his initial anguished reaction when he had heard the news, some twenty years previously, that the United Nations had voted to partition the Land of Israel in approving the creation of a truncating Jewish State. While joyous Israelis danced outside on the streets, he sat at home, stunned by the announcement that the Inheritance of Hashem and Jerusalem had been cut into pieces and divided. Raising his voice, he shouted, “THEY DIVIDED OUR LAND!” Everyone in the hall was silent. “AND WHERE IS OUR HEVRON? AND OUR SHECHEM? WHERE IS EVERY METER OF THE LAND WHICH HASHEM BEQUEATHED TO US ALONE?! HAVE WE FORGOTTEN THAT ALL OF THE LAND IS OURS?!”Remembering the "Road of Heroism"
One of the yeshiva’s students, that late HaRav Yehuda Hazani wrote down his teacher’s words. “Yehuda had a phenomenal memory,” his wife, Hannah, told the Jewish Press. “After he made a neat copy of his scribbled writing, he showed it to HaRav Tzvi Yehuda for final editing, and then arranged for its publication in the HaTzofet newspaper. At the time, no one in the country spoke about our returning to Judea and Samaria, nor about capturing the Temple Mount. The idea was like a science fiction. Then, three weeks later, it came true.”
At the same time, in the late spring of 1967, Rabbi Shlomo Goren, Chief Rabbi of Tzahal, was in Australia, raising money for Israel Bonds, when he read in a local newspaper that Egypt’s President Nasser had closed down the Straits of Tiran leading to Eilat. At Nasser’s request, United Nations Peace Keeping Forces abandoned the Sinai Peninsula, and vast numbers of Egyptian tanks and infantry units were stationed along the Israeli border. Certain that the belligerent actions would lead to war, Rabbi Goren decided to fly back home to Israel. “In a matter of weeks, I will pray at the Kotel and on Mount Sinai as well,” he prophesied to the large crowd at his farewell appearance in Australia.
In Israel, the population was seized with worry and despair. Nasser’s promises to drive the Jewish State into the sea had unnerved the country. The armies of Syria and Jordan were mobilized to join Egypt in a devastating attack. Israel’s top military echelon advised Prime Minister Levi Eshkol, the acting Defense Minister, to strike first before Israel’s forces received a deadly blow, but the cautious and aging politician wanted to give the Administration in Washington time to convince Nasser to withdraw his forces and allow the UN troops to return to their positions. The IDF brass disagreed, not wanting to put the fate of the country in foreign hands, by counting on America to save it from extinction.
Only one road supplied the people of Jerusalem in 1948 and suddenly they faced a dire situation. In the fourteen day old State of Israel, the future of the New City of Jerusalem hung in the balance. It was a week since vital supplies had arrived. The people of Jerusalem faced starvation. They needed medicine. Weapons were required to repel attacks.
A hastily constructed makeshift bypass road saved the city and perhaps the newly reborn State of Israel.
Following the passage of UN resolution 181, which divided the land into a proposed Jewish and Arab state, irregular Arab forces took control of the hills overlooking the road to Jerusalem from the coast and often attacked the road, firing upon convoys bringing supplies, causing heavy losses. Food shortages in Jerusalem were acute.
From April 4-20, the Haganah launched Operation Nachshon which succeeded in forcing through convoys of supplies. On May 8, for the next week, the Haganah launched Operation Macabi against Arab irregular troops occupying towns along the road threatening convoys.
Following the establishment of Israel on May 14, the situation facing the supply line to the New City of Jerusalem became even more perilous.
Three days after the May 15th exit of British forces from the strategically vital area of Latrun and its fortifications, which overlook the road to Jerusalem, it was seized by the Jordanian Arab Legion which then prevented convoys from reaching the road to the Holy City..
Costly attempts by Jewish forces to regain the strategic site over the next two weeks failed.