farmdoc's blog post number 396

Today is Jerusalem Day (Yom Yerushalayim, יום ירושלים). In Israel, it’s a national holiday commemorating, and celebrating, the reunification of Jerusalem in the 1967 Six Day War. Yom Yerushalayim is on the 28th of Iyar – the 1967 Hebrew date when the city was reunified. The first Yom Yerushalayim was in 1968, so today’s the 42nd. Yet Naomi Shemer’s iconic song Jerusalem of Gold haunts me as much today as it did decades ago. And David Rubinger’s photo (left) is still among the most famous in Israel’s history. Under the 1947 UN Partition Plan, Jerusalem was to be an international city. The Jewish leadership accepted this, but the Arabs didn’t. After the 1948 war, Israel governed West Jerusalem; and Jordan ruled East Jerusalem and the Old City to which Israelis had no access. Under Jordanian rule, half the Old City’s 58 synagogues were demolished, tombstones from the Mount of Olives Jewish cemetery were used as paving stones and building materials, and the Western Wall area became a public dump. Thankfully that all ended in 1967. In 1980, the Israeli Knesset passed a law declaring reunified Jerusalem the eternal capital of Israel. But 29 years later, the future of unified Jerusalem remains uncertain. Despite Israeli governance of unified Jerusalem since 1967, UNESCO has provocatively designated Jerusalem the 2009 Arab Capital of Culture. Ho hum.