The Battle For Jerusalem

Lt. General Mordechai Gur, who played a major role in Israel's military operations since statehood, has vividly written an unforgettable account of the events surrounding the critical Battle for Jerusalem during the 1967 Mideast War. The goal in the battle was the Temple Mount, possession of which was a 2,000 year-old dream for Jews everywhere. General Gur's fast-paced narrative brings alive all the tension, terror, uncertainty, hope and desperation of the conflict. The moment when General Gur signals headquarters, The Temple Mount is in our hands. Repeat. The Temple Mount is ours, is a breath-taking emotional capstone during a week of conflict that riveted the world.

Newly updated and revised with the most current information about the events in the Middle East, Pastor John Hagee explains how the Israeli and Palestinian conflict will affect global politics, America's energy supply, and the world economy. The Battle for Jerusalem explores the heart of Israel's current struggle, the history behind the antagonism between Arabs and Jews, and the powerful significance of the Temple Mount, a thirty-five acre parcel that is the most fiercely contested real estate on the planet. Hagee explains how this conflict is not merely political or economic, but is also spiritual, with the repercussions of their actions continuing to echo across the world. Most importantly, Hagee illustrates how all the players in this tortuous conflict fit into God's plan for the ages. Previous editions: 0-7852-6788-3, 0-7852-6588-0, and 0-7852-6542-2

The Siege of Jerusalem (c. 1370-90 CE) is a difficult text. By twenty-first-century standards, it is gruesomely violent and offensive. It tells the story of the Roman destruction of the Second Temple in Jerusalem in 70 CE, an event viewed by its author (as by many in the Middle Ages) as divine retribution against Jews for the killing of Christ. It anachronistically turns first-century Roman emperors Titus and Vespasian into Christian converts who battle like medieval crusaders to avenge their savior and cleanse the Holy Land of enemies of the faith. It makes little sense without frank understanding of medieval Christian anti-Semitism. There is, nevertheless, some consensus that Siege is a finely crafted piece of poetry, and that its combination of horror, beauty, and learnedness makes it an effective work of art. As literary scholar A.C. Spearing has put it, “We may not like what the poet does, but it is done with skillful craftsmanship and sometimes with brilliant virtuosity.” The tale that the anonymous Siege poet tells, moreover, is an important and still reverberating part of the history of Western thinking about the East. It is, in Yehuda Amichai’s phrase, a “currency of the past” that continues to be negotiated. The first-century destruction of Jerusalem has been understood in both Christian and Jewish traditions as the beginning of the Jewish Diaspora; for medieval Christians it was also a model of successful Christian leadership and justified warfare, an allegory of political and personal spiritual battle. As part of the story of the historical rift between Christianity and Judaism—and of the inevitable victory of Christianity—the destroyed Second Temple was taken as symbolic of the fall of Judaism and the rise of the new Christian era in which anyone who rejected Christ would suffer. Written in alliterative verse in the late fourteenth century, The Siege of Jerusalem seems to have been popular in its day; at least nine fourteenth- and fifteen-century manuscripts containing the poem have come down to us. Yet this is the first volume to offer a full Modern English translation. In addition, appendices provide extensive samples of the alliterative original, a wide-ranging compendium of materials documenting anti-Semitism in the Middle Ages, comparative biblical passages, and much else.

The story of the final battle of the First Crusade The most extraordinary siege in medieval history began with the arrival of a Christian army at Jerusalem on the dawn of Tuesday, 6 June, 1099. Other sieges may have lasted longer, involved greater numbers of troops, and deployed more siege engines but nothing else in the entire medieval period compares to the extraordinary journey that the besiegers had made to get to their goal and the heady religious enthusiasm among the troops. This was the culmination of the First crusade, a military pilgrimage that had seen hundreds of thousands of men, women, and children leave their homes in Western Europe, march for three years over thousands of miles, and undergo tremendous hardship to reach their longed-for goal: Jerusalem. No other medieval army had made such a journey and no other army had such a peculiar makeup. There were hundreds of unattached poor women, gathered from the margins of Northern French towns by the charity of the charismatic preacher, Peter the hermit, and given a new direction in their lives through the expedition to Jerusalem. There were farmers who had sold their land and homes, put all their belongings in two-wheeled carts, and marched alongside their oxen. Bards came and earned their keep by composing songs about the events they were witnessing, from songs about the heroic charges of the nobles to bawdy satires on the lax behavior of some of the senior clergy. Naturally, knights and foot soldiers were at the heart of the fighting forces, but even here there was a strange fluidity to the army, with the status of a warrior rising or falling depending on his ability to keep his horse alive and his armor in good order. The Siege of Jerusalem offers a vivid and engaging account of the events of that siege; the key figures, the turning points, the spiritual beliefs of the participants, the deep political rivalries, and the massacre of the inhabitants, which left such a deep scar in the horrified imagination of those who learned about it, that it still evokes passionate feelings nearly a thousand years later.

Providing an unforgettable account of the events surrounding the critical Battle for Jerusalem during the 1967 Six-Day War, this fast-paced narrative by Israeli chief of staff and field commander Gur brings alive all the tension, terror, uncertainty, hope and desperation of the conflict.

Including a chapter on post-war Jerusalem "Prose that is as graphic as it is lucid. The Battle for Jerusalem is deservedly acclaimed as a classic of its genre." Prof. Howard M. Sachar, author of A History of Israel. "Extraordinarily dramatic". Prof. Edward N. Luttwak, author of Stategy: The Logic of War and Peace Abraham Rabinovich arrived in Jerusalem five days before the Six Day War as a reporter for an American newspaper. He covered the battle for the city and was on the Temple Mount a few hours after its capture. To understand the momentous events he had witnessed, he subsequently interviewed 300 soldiers, officials and civilians. The conquest of the Old City, a major event in modern Middle East history, was something that Israel's leaders had not planned and that some of them did not want. The book was written soon after the war, when memories were fresh. The current revised edition expands the context, political and military, and offers new perspective from both sides of the battlefield. With the outbreak of war with Egypt, Israel sought to avoid a second front. Hours after Jordan opened artillery fire, Israel refrained from substantive retaliation as it sought a cease-fire. Only after Jordanian troops penetrated the Jewish city did Israel respond on the ground, and even then in measured stages. The Israeli cabinet was divided over capture of the Old City. It was, surprisingly, the religious ministers who argued against it most vigorously. They feared that Israel could not stand up to international pressure if it annexed an entity that was not just the cradle of Jewish history but also sacred to Christianity and Islam. However, events created a vacuum on the West Bank into which Israel was inexorably pulled, step by step. We witness the heated debate in Jordanian military headquarters where King Hussein had handed over command of his army to an Egyptian general. The latter's strategy was designed to meet Egypt's needs, not Jordan's. It would cost Jordan the West Bank. The book begins with a description of Jerusalem as a divided city, split between Israel and Jordan since Israel's War of Independence. With the onset of the crisis in 1967, anxiety grips Israeli Jerusalem which had been besieged for months in the earlier war and elaborate emergency measures are set into motion. On the Arab side of the city, by contrast, there is euphoria and anticipation of an easy victory. Virtually nothing is done to prepare the civilian sector. The Israeli general staff pushes for a pre-emptive air strike against Egypt but the government resists. Tensions reach a point where at least one general, Ariel Sharon, considers the possibility of a putsch. The appointment of Moshe Dayan as defense minister opens the way to war. Defense of Israeli Jerusalem is entrusted to the Jerusalem Brigade, made up of local reservists. The greatest concern is Mount Scopus, an Israeli enclave behind Jordanian lines. An Israeli armored brigade is dispatched from the coastal plain with orders to reach Scopus by flanking the Jordanian line. It would have to breach thick minefields and scale difficult terrain as it races a brigade of Jordanian tanks coming up from Jericho. With time pressing, a paratroop brigade is ordered to relieve Scopus by driving through the center of the Jordanian defenses. The reader follows the grueling battles in the trenches of Ammunition Hill and the streets of east Jerusalem through the eyes of the men who fought there. We see the growing isolation of the Jordanian garrison in the Old City, their last bastion. In a room lit only by distant flares, the Jordanian commander informs the local governor that he is pulling his troops out. A number of soldiers choose to remain and engage the Israeli troops from the alleys and ramparts of the walled city. A classic tale.