D-Day and Yom Yerushalayim
D-Day and Yom Yerushalayim
Sermon, Shabbat Bamidbar 5784, Rabbi Samuel M. Cohon
Congregation Beit Simcha, Tucson, AZ
Yesterday, and really all this last week, there were extensive celebrations and commemorations of the 80th anniversary of D-Day, the beginning of the Allied invasion of occupied France in World War II. It is quite fascinating that this is one of two days of the year, along with Pearl Harbor Day on December 7th, when we remember the enormous struggle against Fascism and the fight to triumph over brutal, criminal authoritarianism that was the essence of the most terrible war in human history. As important as D-Day was, as many fine films and documentaries have been made about it and as touching as the commemorations and speeches have been this week, it is strange that we focus on it so much.
D-Day was not the end of World War II; in fact, it marked the beginning of a hard campaign that took another eleven months, many more casualties and much destruction to finally defeat and destroy Nazi Germany, ending with V-E Day in May of 1945. In fact, D-Day wasn’t even the first invasion of German-held mainland Europe; that was the invasion of Italy that began nine months earlier. It wasn’t the turning point in the war; arguably, the defeats of the Nazis at the hands of the Soviet Union’s Red Army in the east at Stalingrad and Kursk had reversed the long course of Axis advances and begun the long push back against their evil regimes.
But it is D-Day that has captured the imagination of America, Britain and France, perhaps because we have remained fairly close allies over the eight decades that succeeded that traumatic day in June 1944. V-E Day we would have to share with Russia, an uneasy alliance during World War II—they were allies of Nazi Germany the first two years of the war, if you remember—which was soon to be a dedicated enemy during the long Cold War that followed almost immediately. And so, instead of the ultimate victory over the Nazi evil, we remember the heroism of the Allied soldiers, sailors and airmen, the trauma of attacking those beaches and the bluff beyond, and the sacrifice that so many made that day and in the subsequent battles.
As Anshel Pfeffer wrote in the Israeli newspaper Ha’aretz, “The way in which a war is remembered and commemorated often tells us more about the present day than about the war itself. The Western governments have their D-Day anniversary this year, clinging to the idea of an alliance… at the same time, at the other end of the continent, Putin's Russia had its show of nationalistic strength, vowing to continue the "special military operation" against the "Nazis" in Ukraine.”
Now the day before the 80th Anniversary of D-Day, in Israel they celebrated Yom Yerushalayim, the holiday that commemorates the reunification of the city of Jerusalem in the miraculous Six Day War of 1967. Similarly, only this victory in Israel’s history is commemorated with its own national day of celebration. The Six-Day War is Israel’s version of WWII, the last “good war,” a victory so total that it can be nearly mythologized as a “perfect war,” the kind of war Israel and Jews can idealize. It was not tainted by failure or inconclusive endings like the other wars, such as the Yom Kippur War or Lebanon Wars or the Sinai Campaign or the serial struggles in Gaza. And of the multiple fronts in that war, the reunification of Jerusalem used to be a symbol that the overwhelming majority of Israelis could gather around.
Putting aside for the moment some of the triumphalism and bullying that accompanied this year’s processions and parades, it is worth revisiting the experience of those 6 days of war, and in particular the recapture of Jerusalem.
It has been 57 years since we Jews were finally able to return to the Kotel, the Western Wall, the holiest place on earth for Jews; 57 years since the commander of the troops who captured the Old City from Jordanian forces, Motta Gur, announced, Har HaBayit B’yadeinu—the Temple Mount is in our hands.
On the third day of the war, Israeli paratroopers captured the Western Wall and the Temple Mount without using air power or artillery, lest they damage the many sacred sites. They restored Jewish presence to the Old City of Jerusalem that Arabs had forcibly denied us after capturing the city from the Jews in the War of Independence in 1948. That same day in 1967, Defense Minister Moshe Dayan declared, famously,
“This morning, the Israel Defense Forces liberated Jerusalem. We have united Jerusalem, the divided capital of Israel. We have returned to the holiest of our holy places, never to part from it again. To our Arab neighbors we extend, also at this hour—and with added emphasis at this hour—our hand in peace. And to our Christian and Muslim fellow citizens, we solemnly promise full religious freedom and rights. We did not come to Jerusalem for the sake of other peoples' holy places, and not to interfere with the adherents of other faiths, but in order to safeguard its entirety, and to live there together with others, in unity.”
Jerusalem, Yerushalayim, in Hebrew is based on Ir Shalom, which means the City of Peace. Jerusalem has not often been that, a city of peace; it has been captured militarily some 18 times in its long history, going back to King David’s troops taking it from the Jebusites around 1000 BCE. But for all of it’s unpeaceful past, Jerusalem has been the most sacred place in the entire world for Jews for three thousand years, and wherever we were scattered throughout the world we longed to return to her.
And now, of course, we have returned, and on the ruins of the Jewish Quarter destroyed by the Jordanians of the Arab Legion in 1948, the Israelis have built a magnificent new Jewish Quarter of Jerusalem out of stone and passion and love. It is beautiful, unique, vital.
By the way, it was not initially a military objective of Israel’s in 1967 to capture the Old City of Jerusalem, or the West Bank or Jericho or Masada—or the Golan Heights, for that matter. In fact, Israel tried very hard to keep Jordan out of the war altogether—Syria, too—and focus solely on Egypt, which had the largest military and the most militant leader, Nasser. Only when Nasser strong-armed his ally Jordan into attacking Israel—partially by lying to King Hussein and pretending Egypt was winning and had destroyed most of the Israeli military when the opposite was already true one day into the war—only after Jordan attacked did Israel seek to capture the Old City. And the Israelis only captured Jericho and Masada and most of the West Bank after they realized that the Jordanian army had abandoned them.
And so 57 years ago last week Israel captured Jerusalem, and ended up with the West Bank, which has been, at the very best, a mixed blessing.
In Israel today, Yom Yerushalayim is celebrated with military parades and ceremonies throughout the country, and especially, of course, in Jerusalem. It is far less observed by Jewish communities outside of Israel, including ours, but it is historically a remarkable and very important day. This Jerusalem Day is also a time to wonder about where we have come, these 57 years later. This year we are in the midst of an eight month long war against Hamas Palestinian terrorists in Gaza, and today marks the 8th month that Israeli hostages have been brutally held in the tunnels and houses and hospitals of Gaza. We don’t know how many of the 130 hostages remain alive; Israel believes that at least 30 have died. All were kidnapped from their lives and none can ever be the same again.
Many offers of cease fires and exchanges that would free the remaining hostages have been rejected; the latest have been rejected yet again by Hamas, whose leaders are finally being threatened by their patron Qatar with expulsion from Doha if they do not agree. We will see. The ongoing destruction and death in Gaza does no one any good, and while the IDF has eliminated many of the remaining terrorist soldiers they have neither liberated any more hostages nor killed the highest Hamas’ leaders who planned the brutalities of October 7th. Prime Minister Netanyahu, whose war cabinet is about to fall apart, has refused to take responsibility for the disasters of October 7th. There appears to be no postwar plan for Gaza among Israel’s leadership.
It is a disturbing situation, and one that bears very little promise of peace with the Palestinians in the near or foreseeable future.
Of course, Dayan’s olive branch offering to the Arabs in 1967 was categorically rejected, and it is not clear that any course of action Israel could have taken then would have resulted in a lasting peace. In fact, just one week after the end of the 6-Day War, on June 19, 1967, the Israeli cabinet voted to offer to return the territories captured from Egypt and Syria in exchange for a peace treaty. That offer was categorically rejected two months later at the Khartoum Conference, in which the Arab League Summit declared a famous three “no’s”: “no peace with Israel, no recognition of Israel, no negotiations with Israel.”
Progress was made, eventually, with Egypt and Jordan, of course. And in recent years with the UAE and Morocco and even Saudi Arabia. But crucially, in those days more than half a century ago, Israel’s leaders, including the Minister of Defense, Moshe Dayan, tried very hard to seek peace as the ultimate goal and made serious, concrete offers of captured territory for peace.
History isn’t always a good teacher: sometimes we see opportunities lost and assume that we can never again achieve something we missed earlier. The Middle East today is a very different place than it was then, both better and worse. Then, Arab military dictators, kings, and sheikhs publicly rejected Israel’s right to exist and sought to drive the Jews into the sea, while Palestinians tried to kill Jews in order to draw attention to their stateless situation. Today, Arab military dictators and kings have accommodated themselves to Israel’s existence, and sometimes even seek its assistance; and Islamic fundamentalists try to destroy the dictators, kings, and sheikhs along with Israel.
But Israel has come a very long way from the nation that in 1967 teetered on the brink of destruction, and that did so again in 1973. It is now a strong country militarily and economically, and a rich country in creativity and innovation.
The city of Jerusalem is proof of that incredible growth. It is not only the Jewish Quarter that has been rebuilt: the whole city is filled with new structures built of ancient-looking Jerusalem stone, with a highly functional newish light rail line and an incredible diversity of peoples, cultures, food, and life. We should celebrate its vitality, beauty, and place at the heart of Jewish life, incredibly so two thousand years after its destruction, 57 years after its recovery for the Jewish people.
And on this Shabbat after Yom Yerushalayim, we can also pray that Jerusalem may someday truly be the City of Peace that is its name, and that its holiness for Jews, Christians, Muslims and so many others will allow it to become what we have always said: an or lagoyim, a light to the nations for hope and for peace.