![\"Six](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/il\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/ShowImage.ashx.jpeg\"\/)
Six Day War page 4 (credit: JPOST ARCHIVE)<\/p>\n
And then came Jerusalem.<\/p>\n
For the first time in over 2,500 years, since the destruction of the First Temple, the Jewish people once again held sovereignty over the Old City of Jerusalem and the Temple Mount<\/a>.<\/p>\n The words of General Mordechai \u201cMotta\u201d Gur electrified the Jewish world: \u201cHar Habayit beyadeinu.\u201d The Temple Mount is in our hands.<\/p>\n Those words were not political. They were civilizational.<\/p>\n To understand the emotional force of that moment, younger Jews need to remember what came before it.<\/p>\n Between 1948 and 1967, when the Old City was under Jordanian control, Jews were forbidden to visit the Western Wall. Jewish cemeteries on the Mount of Olives were desecrated. Synagogues in the Jewish Quarter were destroyed. The holiest sites of Judaism were closed to Jews altogether.<\/p>\n Even before 1948, under the British Mandate, Jewish access to the Western Wall came with humiliation and restrictions. Jews were forbidden from bringing chairs or mechitzot (partitions). Blowing the shofar at the Western Wall became an act of defiance for which Jews could be arrested. We were tolerated at our holiest sites, but never sovereign there.<\/p>\n And then suddenly, in June 1967, Jewish soldiers stood weeping at the Wall.<\/p>\n The entire Jewish world stood with them.<\/p>\n Right-wing, left-wing, secular, religious \u2013 it did not matter.<\/p>\n There was pride. There was awe. There was unity.<\/p>\n I remember it personally.<\/p>\n I was eight years old at the end of June 1967, attending the end-of-year garden party at my Jewish school in Britain. This was not a particularly Zionist institution. At best, it was neutral on Israel. Yet suddenly, spontaneously, people began singing \u201cHatikvah.\u201d<\/p>\n No one organized it. No one planned it. It simply burst forth.<\/p>\n The adults sang. The children sang. People cried.<\/p>\n Something profound had happened to the Jewish people. We no longer felt powerless. We no longer felt like guests in history.<\/p>\n Yet even in the moment of triumph, the seeds of hesitation were already visible. Almost immediately after the liberation of Jerusalem, Israel\u2019s leadership shrank back from the full implications of what had occurred. Despite the electrifying declaration of \u201cHar Habayit beyadeinu,\u201d the Temple Mount was effectively handed back to the Waqf administration.<\/p>\n Some will say the decision was politically prudent at the time. Perhaps it avoided an immediate religious war. Historians will continue to debate it, but I deplore it.<\/p>\n In any event, symbolically, it revealed something profound: even at the very height of Jewish confidence and military victory, we were already uncomfortable with fully embracing the meaning of our return home. Even in our greatest hour, there lingered a hesitation to assert, unapologetically and unequivocally, that this was ours.<\/p>\n And now?<\/p>\n The Reality Today<\/p>\n Fast forward 59 years.<\/p>\n