Jerusalem 1967

This picture was the first published at the liberation of the Temple mount and the first picture allowed into the world press. The original caption read: "Foreign correspondents on the background of El Aktza." From left to right: Professor Shmuel Almog, an IDF officer, Dr. Binyamin Eliav, a sound technician, and Dr. Zvi Almog (author of this blog).

On the bright morning of Wednesday the 7th of June 1967, Dr. Binyamin Eliav, adviser to Prime Minister Eshkol, my brother, Shmuel Almog, who directed Israel’s public radio operations during the Six-Day War, and I, approached the Old City of Jerusalem from the east.

The Lions Gate was blocked by an Israeli half-track stalled in the entrance. A burning tank was situated before the entrance jamming the narrow road so no vehicle could pass. I left my car down the road and we entered the gate by foot. Snipers were still hidden in the buildings of the Old City and from time to time we could hear shooting in the distance.

Passing the Al-Aqsa mosque, we made our way down to the Western Wall of the ancient temple. Israeli paratroopers, mostly reservists, were resting in the shade after the bloody fighting. At the time there were only a few soldiers in front of the wall, praying with devotion, overcome by the solemn occasion, touching the enormous stones in disbelief.

It didn’t take long before Rabbi Goren, the Chief Rabbi of the Israeli armed forces, arrived and began blowing the shofar (a ram’s horn used for the rituals of the Jewish high holidays). Soldiers congregated around the rabbi, praying aloud, eyes glistening with tears. This was an event in world history that would never be forgotten.

Israel, for security reasons, was maintaining communications silence. We thought the first announcement to the Nation and the world about liberating the Old City should come from the Prime Minister himself, from the Kotel, the holiest place of historic Judaism.

My brother rushed to make a call to the PM’s office (using the military communication center), advising of the plan to broadcast the news directly from the scene. The Prime Minister was in no hurry, but in less then 20 minutes a helicopter bringing the Generals Moshe Dayan, Yitzhak Rabin and Uzi Narkis, all in uniform, marched to the Kotel, accompanied by photographers, foreign correspondents, radio and news reporters.

It was my opinion that an effort should be made to make the PM aware of the opportunity to depict Israel as a peace loving democratic nation and not as a country taken over by the military. I drove back with Binyamin Eliav to the Mandelbaum gate where thousands of Hasidim attempted to break through the barriers in a wild run for the Kotel. At the Gate, I found a civilian telephone and placed a call to my friend Aviad Yaffe, the director of the PM’s office. “Adi,” I said, “tell the PM that we are missing an historic opportunity to send to the world a most important message, namely, that Israel is a state of law and is not run by Generals.” Adi said, “The PM is busy receiving many delegations of well wishers, Druze, Maronites, Christians…” I interrupted, “Tell him to come right away. The delegations will have to wait, they have nowhere else to go”.

It took a while before the PM arrived. We mounted an army halftrack and began traveling to the Old City. The streets were strewn with bodies and the driver was maneuvering the vehicle in order to avoid the corpses.

While standing up on the half-track, Binyamin said, “Mr. Prime Minister, would it not be wise to seize the opportunity and create a Federation with the Arabs?” The PM chuckled and said in Yiddish “Binyumin, don’t be a fool, is that what we need, another Arab State to vote against us in the UN?”

The saga ended well: the news edition at 7:00 p.m. opened with the Prime Minister’s moving declaration of the liberation of Jerusalem and Israel’s triumph in the battle field. Only in the second item did the Generals’ voices chime in.