The historical connection between the Jewish people and Jerusalem is a well-established fact. Jews have lived in that small area for thousands of years. It is the site of the ancient Jewish Temples as well as dozens of more modern places of worship. For most of recorded history, Jews have lived inside its walls.
But in 1948, that connection was disrupted. The city fell during Israel’s War of Independence to the Jordanian Legion. All the Jewish homes were destroyed, the synagogues burned down, and the surviving Jews were exiled. Watch our video where eyewitnesses tell what it was like for the Jewish refugees of Jerusalem to have to flee their homes. The military attack was an unprovoked assault, part of a wider campaign to destroy the nascent Jewish State.
Only after the city was liberated by the Israeli Defense Forces 19 years later was the Jewish quarter rebuilt, and Jews allowed to once again live in their historical and spiritual capital.
This is history. It is the key context, without which there can be no understanding of the “issue” of Jerusalem. Yet in almost every case when the media report on events in Jerusalem, this context is left out. Instead, one finds a short background sentence, such as the one below appearing in a recent New York Times article:
Israel captured the compound — along with the rest of the Old City from Jordan in the 1967 war
If that is all the contextual information a reader is given about Jerusalem, then it is reasonable to assume that Israeli claims to the area lack legitimacy. Since it was “captured” from the Arabs, why shouldn’t peace require it to be given back?
But you can’t really “capture” something that already belongs to you, can you?
