Culture and Sports Minister Miri Regev on Sunday presented at the start of the cabinet meeting a coin discovered by a team of her office about a month ago, as part of the preparation for the public revelation of the Pilgrims’ Road which was recently unearthed at the City of David. The presentation and the planned public event mark the coming jubilee of the liberation and unification of Jerusalem.
The coin bears on one side a vine leaf and the statement “Freedom of Zion.” On the opposite side it bears a standing cup and the statement “Second year of the great rebellion” – the year 67 CE.
“Precisely 1,900 years later, in 1967, the paratroopers entered the Old City of Jerusalem and renewed her and our freedom, returning Jewish sovereignty to Jerusalem,” Minister Regev said. “We dumped in history’s trash bin the coins minted by [General and later Roman emperor ] Titus following his victory over the rebels [with the statement] ‘Judaea Capta’ (Captive Judea),” she added, “and we returned to liberated Judea, to free and unified Jerusalem, and this is how it will remain for eternity.”
Regev mocked the infamous UNESCO resolution this fall that the Jewish people have no historic connection to the Temple Mount and even the Western Wall, saying Israel’s return to the Biblical sites of Judea and Samaria, which are drenched in Jewish history, repudiate that grotesque resolution.
During Hanukkah, the Ministry of Culture and the Israel Antiquities Authority will hold an event revealing the streets of ancient Jerusalem, where the Maccabees once strolled, and celebrating 50 years since the liberation of the city. The event will open to the public ancient Jerusalem’s main street and its commercial hub, which was used by the pilgrims on the holidays to come up from the Pool of Siloam on the southern slope of the City of David, up to the courtyard of the Temple Mount.