Yesterday marked the 54th anniversary of the reunification of Jerusalem. The holiday inspired singing and dancing and heartfelt prayers in the streets of Zion. People came from all over the country, wearing the blue and white colors of the nation, to celebrate this auspicious occasion. Israeli flags were donned, waved by, and even painted onto the faces of thousands of children who flocked to Jerusalem’s Old City to celebrate its return to the Jewish People.
Unfortunately, there are many who wish to destroy Israel and the peaceful, deeply religious Judeo-Christian values for which it stands. Peace, shalom in Hebrew, has been synonymous with the city of Jerusalem since biblical times. As King David himself wrote in Psalms 122:6:
“Pray for the well-being and peace of Jerusalem; May those who love you be at peace”
These terrorists set fire to the Temple Mount in a failed attempt to shoot incendiaries at worshipers who had come to pray at the Western Wall. Such a blaze has never before ignited on Mount Moriah since the year 70 CE, when the Second Temple was destroyed by the Romans. In their immoral struggle to thwart the nation of Israel, these Palestinian terrorists destroyed much of the Temple Mount’s once-beautiful cypress trees and endangered both their own lives and the lives of the Jewish pilgrims in vicinity.