Tonight, beginning at sunset (Jewish days begin at sunset since the beginning of time), is the Hebrew date of 28 Iyar.  Fifty-seven years ago on this Hebrew date (June 7, 1967 according to the Gregorian calendar used by most of the world today), at the climax of the Six-Day War started by Israel’s Muslim neighbors to wipe Israel off the map (déjà vu all over again), an Israeli lieutenant general triumphantly announced (English translation from the original Hebrew), ”The Temple Mount is in our hands! I repeat, the Temple Mount is in our hands!”

In their own land and refusing to be slaughtered after 2,000-plus years of exile in Christian- and Muslim-dominated countries, Jews survived — as Jews.  Israeli Jews defied history, emerging victorious and very, very viable.

Just 19 years earlier, in 1948, the surrounding Muslim countries viciously attempted to prevent the formation of a Jewish homeland on the historic Jewish land of Israel but failed (déjà vu all over again).  However, after Israel’s 1948 War of Liberation, the Jewish people’s eternal capital, Jerusalem, was divided between Muslim Jordan and Jewish Israel, with protections for maintenance and guaranteed access to all religious sites.

Israel has always maintained its end of the bargain; Jordan did not (déjà vu all over again).

But

[o]n 7 June 1967, the Israel Defence Forces liberated the Old City of Jerusalem and nineteen years of Jordanian rule came to an end. The Defence Minister, accompanied by the Chief of Staff and senior officers, arrived at the Western Wall at noon on that day. The Minister made the following statement:

This morning, the Israel Defence 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 neighbours 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.

Presently, the barbaric war of Muslim Gaza’s Hamas against the very existence of Israel, which began on the Jewish holiday of Succoth, with an attack on Jews and other guests at an Israeli music festival plus the surrounding areas, brutally continues with the enthusiastic support of the 99-plus-percent Muslim population of Gaza (no Jews allowed to live there, and only a small Christian population, which supports the Muslims).

In the USA, the Muslim protests against Israel refusing to commit suicide continue daily, especially on college and university campuses across the country.  A few Muslims attempted to interrupt the subdued annual Jerusalem Day parade in New York last Sunday but failed.  In Chicago, “vandals” broke the windows and left signs decrying the “Gaza War” (sic) at the neighborhood office of the city’s only Jewish alderperson.  Etc. and etc. of Muslims blaming the victim for fighting back, refusing to submit to Muslim depravity (déjà vu all over again).

And in Israel in general and in Jerusalem in particular, Jerusalem Day continues, with painful acknowledgments of the current situation. 

As the increasingly popular Jewish saying affirm, “am Yisroel chai” — the Jewish people live!

Image: Neukoln via Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 3.0.