Fifty years after the Six-Day War and the liberation of the Old City of Jerusalem, the IDF Archive in the Defense Ministry has released the investigations of the battles for the city’s liberation and photos taken after the battles, as well as aerial shots of the battle zones before the war broke out.
The photos show excited soldiers at the Old City, with then-Chief Military Rabbi Shlomo Goren walking among them with tefillin his hand and head and with a shofar. Defense Minister Moshe Dayan, Chief of Staff Yitzhak Rabin and other senior officials from the period were also documented in the photos. The great excitement was evident on their faces. In one of the pictures, the fighters are seen resting near the Western Wall stones.
The released documents include segments from the journal of Uzi Narkiss, who served as Central Command chief during the war. On the first day of the war, shortly before 9 am, Narkiss said to Jerusalem Mayor Teddy Kollek: “This is a war. Everything is in order. You will be the mayor of united Jerusalem. We are experiencing immense success.”
At the end of the first day of battle, Narkiss told Rabbi Goren: “Prepare a shofar. You are about to make history. What is happening in the south is nothing. The most important thing is the Old City and the Temple Mount.” He asked one of the officers to “inform the General Staff that if the Western Wall isn’t conquered, it will be my fault.”
On the morning of the third day of the war, Narkiss spoke to Deputy Chief of Staff Haim Bar-Lev, who said: “We must enter the Old City, but sensibly. There is already pressure for a ceasefire. We are already in the canal. The Egyptians are disconnected. We don’t want to create a situation of the Old City as an enclave, like Mount Scopus. Motta Gur’s operation is vital. The question is how and when you will take the Old City. With the least amount of fire, not through bombings.”
In the meantime, news arrived that the Jordanian army had collapsed and that “Victoria Augusta is in our hands.” At 9:10 am, forces left the Efraim Post and headed towards the Old City. At 10 am, according to Narkiss’ diary, a green smoke grenade was thrown to ease the soldiers’ passage down to Lions’ Gate. Shortly afterwards, Gur announced: “The Temple Mount is in our hands.”
About an hour later, an order was received to let the Old City’s Arabs leave the city through Lions’ Gate. Chief of Staff Rabin issued a simultaneous order to open all the Old City gates, and Defense Minister Dayan placed a note in the Western Wall, in which he wrote: “May peace descend upon all of Israel.”
It was already then that Rabin asked, “How will we hold onto a million Arabs?” Major-General Rehavam Ze’evi (Gandhi) corrected him: “1.25 million.”
Hours after the Old City’s liberation, Prime Minister Levi Eshkol began discussing the Temple Mount control issue. “Order will be kept by Muslims, according to the qadis.”
The documents further include comments by Mordechai (Motta Gur), who served as commander of the Paratroopers’ 55th Brigade during the war, about two months after the end of the battles on the front in Jerusalem. He said that on the night before the Old City’s liberation, the forces were forbidden to enter the area. At 4:30 am, he received a call from Narkiss, who ordered him to move up the operation and gave him permission to enter the Old City. Narkiss went on to say in the same conversation, which included other officers who participated in the city’s liberation, that “there was a General Staff order on the first day not to dare enter the Old City. That doesn’t mean it wasn’t planned.”
Another released testimony was from the Mount Scopus commander—or as he was known, “King of the Mountain.” During the war, the “king of the mountain” was Menachem Sharfman, the legendary commander of the Matzof 247 covert unit. He spoke about the waiting period: “I remember one episode, when Moshe Dayan was appointed defense minister. It uplifted the spirits in an unbelievable way, and one of the squad commanders ran over to me and said, ‘We won the war.’”
Sharfman, who commanded the Mount Scopus enclave in the heart of the Jordanian territory, said that on the morning of June 5, after he had sprained his ankle in the night, the intelligence commander came running and informed him that the Jordanians were firing. “We went into the posts,” the commander of the mount recounted. “It was at 7:55 am. We saw that the Jordanians entered posts which had not been occupied before. Everyone was wearing steel helmets.”
But according to the criminally insane Satmar barbarians this is all the work of the SITRA ACHRA (the DEVIL),and has nothing to do with HAKADOSH BARUCH HU,because HASHEM absolutely does not want Jews to have their own country and would rather have the murderous Arab swines rule over the MAKOM HAMIKDASH and the rest of our holy places.
ReplyDeletethis is the obscene insanity that tens of thousands young Jews are brainwashed with