500 bicycle enthusiasts are making currently making their way from Hebron to Jerusalem to celebrate Jerusalem Day. The bike trek, held in honour of terror victim Yitzhak Boanish HY”D, has become an annual feature of the holiday celebration.

Malachi Levinger, head of the Hebron-Kiryat Arba city council, said “this is the 11th time that young people from Kiryat Arba/Hebron have undertaken this challenge, both to honor our beloved security chief Yitzhak Boanish, as well as to forge a special connection between Hebron, the city of our forefathers, and Jerusalem in a special, exciting way.”

Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu vowed Tuesday evening in a passionate address marking the start of Jerusalem Day “never” to divide Jerusalem.

The day marks the 47th anniversary of the liberation of the Old City of Jerusalem from Jordanian occupation during the 1967 Six Day War, and the capital’s unification since. Jordanian forces expelled the Jews from their 3,000-year-old ancient capital in 1948 during Israel’s War of Independence.

The venue for Netanyahu’s speech – at Yeshivat Mercaz HaRav Kook — was anything but accidental: In 2008, an Arab terrorist murdered eight boys and men and wounded 18 others in a shooting spree that left the learning hall and holy books covered in blood.

Netanyahu was blunt in his vows not to allow talks with the Palestinian Authority to get in the way of keeping Jerusalem united, despite diplomatic commitments to the “two-state solution” being forced on Israel by the U.S. and international community.

“Forty-seven years ago Jerusalem was reunited – that was the way it used to be and that is the way it will always be,” the prime minister stated.

Jerusalem is Yad Vashem (the Holocaust Memorial Center), [Theodore] Herzl’s grave (the founder of Zionism – in the military cemetery at Mt. Herzl), and the Mount of Olives, where both my grandmother and grandfather are buried, as well as [former Prime Minister] Menachem Begin and our forefathers,” Netanyahu said.

“Jerusalem is also Har Tzion (Mt. Zion) and Har (Mount) Moria (the Temple Mount) and Jerusalem is the Western Wall – Israel eternal!”

Netanyahu vowed to keep Jerusalem united, saying, “Jerusalem is our heart, and we preserve our heart – the heart of the nation – and we will never divide our heart. Never!”

Arab rioters succeeded in violently shutting down the Temple Mount this Jerusalem Day to everyone except Muslims.

One police officer has been injured so far by a rock hurled by a rioter as security personnel battle Palestinian Authority Arabs on the Temple Mount in the first hours of the morning on Wednesday.

Masked Arab youths have been hurling stones and firebombs (Molotov cocktails) since the start of the morning, once again effectively preventing Jews and anyone other than Muslims from reaching the site. Their handy weapons are stored in piled caches in and around the Al Aqsa mosque, one of two Muslim houses of worship located on the Temple Mount.

The Arab rioters are taken to calling themselves “Almoravids”, which were an early version of Muslim knights.

While only 250 Israelis managed to ascend to the Mount prior to the attack, four times that many — 1,000 foreign tourists — succeeded in reaching the site before police closed it down to everyone except Muslim ‘worshipers.’

Jews are routinely arrested on the site simply for moving their lips, in what might be construed as a prayer. The Waqf Islamic Religious Authority, which rules the site, forbids Jewish religious activity on the Temple Mount. It is part of the Western Wall complex and believed to be the location of the “holy of holies” in the ancient Jewish Holy Temple of Jerusalem, Judaism’s most sacred site.

Once safely shut down, police moved forward to take control the Temple Mount plaza area, according to Walla! The rioters have since retreated and are currently within the mosque, according to a local source, who said they are continuing to hurl rocks and firebombs at security personnel.

Police officers are using riot control methods in an attempt to disperse the mob.

Today marks the 47th anniversary of the liberation of the 3,000-year-old Jewish capital of Israel, the Old City of Jerusalem, from Jordanian occupation in the 1967 Six Day War. Jerusalem Day celebrates the unification of the holy city and its restoration as the healed capital of the Jewish State.

Arabs carrying Hamas flags on the Temple Mount chanting “With blood we will free Palestine.”

Have you ever met anyone embracing seventy names? Have you ever tried searching for an item that has seventy names?

If you haven’t located that elusive city connected to seventy identities, a plane, bus or the light rail can transport you to it: a holy spiritual center, an ancient modern city – combinations that evoke weird and wonderful reactions from devotees and detesters, the sane and insane.

There is no other location with seventy exquisite names – Ohaliba, Gila, Yedidut, Shalem, etc. – names that express sentiments of love and joy, of friendship and peace; seventy choice callings found in Tanach and Talmudic texts, known foremost as Jerusalem.

Jerusalem is not my birth city. Jerusalem is my home. Sacred and ancestral, it is the city of kings and prophets, a city that has known countless wars and total destruction. Yet our generation has merited a revitalized Jerusalem, a thriving city atop layers of antiquity, Israel’s captivating capital.

Modern-day Jerusalem is nothing short of a miracle and one of the days for celebration is the 28^th of Iyar, Yom Yerushalayim – Jerusalem Day. Not everyone revels on that joyous occasion; the defeated abhor Jewish expansion, Jewish presence, and Israeli success. Some prefer life as it was pre-1967; a city of barbed wire, sporting a belted waistline, mapped in green.

But I, who have lived here for fifty-four years, and nearly everyone else who experienced a Jerusalem divided by ugly concrete walls and twisted piercing wire, where Jordanian Legionnaires on Mamilla rooftops shelled and fired at Jews below, cannot ignore the miraculous fulfillment of prophecies worthy of celebration.

* * * * * Malls are not my favorite shopping habitat. Some are so overwhelming in size and sound, so excessively commercial, so physically exhausting. Still, there is one mall, only one, that touches a chord in my heart; not because of fashionable shops, cafés, or the artwork displayed, although admittedly they enhance the atmosphere. My affection stems from historical significance, a sense of triumph when reflecting, when sitting on a bench or walking along the stony paths surrounding the mall.

It is on Jerusalem Day, when I visit Mamilla, built above ruins of a shopping street opposite the Old City walls, that I reminisce.

Mamilla is an elongated stretch, a street that includes upscale housing, hotels, plus a mall – and Jerusalem Day is when I recall that 66 years earlier Jewish shops were looted and destroyed and shopkeepers were chased and slain by Arab marauders who thirsted for the area to be rid of Jews forever.

In their lust for blood, they turned the street into ruins. Few aspired to live or pursue business ventures in bombed-out buildings on the Jordan-Israel armistice line, on land that no one ever imagined would one day become coveted, exclusive property. Ironically, the word Mamilla, which may be Arabic, is strongly rooted in Hebrew: maleh, mimale, i.e., full, and fulfilling.

* * * * *

The Six-Day war was fought fiercely and swiftly. Israel did not expect to fight on three fronts. King Hussein’s decision to join the Egyptians and Syrians and declare war, forced Israel to defend Jerusalem by opening a third front.

On June 5, 1967, Jerusalemites sat in bomb shelters. I was among them, a 26-year-old mother of two young children, an American who had never experienced war and was traumatized by events surrounding the seemingly peaceful Rechavia neighborhood where we lived.

Mamilla, an ugly border street, was only a few blocks away. An army platoon was stationed in our backyard, situated in the Rechavia Valley. Three weeks before the war kindergarten children started filling protective sandbags while the Chevra Kadisha dug graves for the anticipated mass fatalities.

A group of some 30 rabbis has called for sovereignty over the Temple Mount in advance of celebrating the liberation of the remainder of the city of Jerusalem during the 1967 Six Day War.

Tuesday evening marks the start of Jerusalem Day, the 47th anniversary of the reunification of the holy city.

The group, which went up to the holy site on Tuesday morning, included members of various streams in the religious Zionist movement. In its statement is “expressed the eternal and renewed bond of the Jewish people to the holy place of the Temple Mount and the public claim to start Jewish sovereignty, Jewish law in practice” on the site.

The rabbis underlined, however, that those who ascend to the Mount must do so in accordance with the restrictions set forth in Torah law.

Have you ever met anyone embracing seventy names? Have you ever tried searching for an item that has seventy names?

If you haven’t located that elusive city connected to seventy identities, a plane, bus or the light rail can transport you to it: a holy spiritual center, an ancient modern city – combinations that evoke weird and wonderful reactions from devotees and detesters, the sane and insane.

There is no other location with seventy exquisite names – Ohaliba, Gila, Yedidut, Shalem, etc. – names that express sentiments of love and joy, of friendship and peace; seventy choice callings found in Tanach and Talmudic texts, known foremost as Jerusalem.

Jerusalem is not my birth city. Jerusalem is my home. Sacred and ancestral, it is the city of kings and prophets, a city that has known countless wars and total destruction. Yet our generation has merited a revitalized Jerusalem, a thriving city atop layers of antiquity, Israel’s captivating capital.

Modern-day Jerusalem is nothing short of a miracle and one of the days for celebration is the 28^th of Iyar, Yom Yerushalayim – Jerusalem Day. Not everyone revels on that joyous occasion; the defeated abhor Jewish expansion, Jewish presence, and Israeli success. Some prefer life as it was pre-1967; a city of barbed wire, sporting a belted waistline, mapped in green.

But I, who have lived here for fifty-four years, and nearly everyone else who experienced a Jerusalem divided by ugly concrete walls and twisted piercing wire, where Jordanian Legionnaires on Mamilla rooftops shelled and fired at Jews below, cannot ignore the miraculous fulfillment of prophecies worthy of celebration.

* * * * * Malls are not my favorite shopping habitat. Some are so overwhelming in size and sound, so excessively commercial, so physically exhausting. Still, there is one mall, only one, that touches a chord in my heart; not because of fashionable shops, cafés, or the artwork displayed, although admittedly they enhance the atmosphere. My affection stems from historical significance, a sense of triumph when reflecting, when sitting on a bench or walking along the stony paths surrounding the mall.

It is on Jerusalem Day, when I visit Mamilla, built above ruins of a shopping street opposite the Old City walls, that I reminisce.

Mamilla is an elongated stretch, a street that includes upscale housing, hotels, plus a mall – and Jerusalem Day is when I recall that 66 years earlier Jewish shops were looted and destroyed and shopkeepers were chased and slain by Arab marauders who thirsted for the area to be rid of Jews forever.

In their lust for blood, they turned the street into ruins. Few aspired to live or pursue business ventures in bombed-out buildings on the Jordan-Israel armistice line, on land that no one ever imagined would one day become coveted, exclusive property. Ironically, the word Mamilla, which may be Arabic, is strongly rooted in Hebrew: maleh, mimale, i.e., full, and fulfilling.

* * * * *

The Six-Day war was fought fiercely and swiftly. Israel did not expect to fight on three fronts. King Hussein’s decision to join the Egyptians and Syrians and declare war, forced Israel to defend Jerusalem by opening a third front.

On June 5, 1967, Jerusalemites sat in bomb shelters. I was among them, a 26-year-old mother of two young children, an American who had never experienced war and was traumatized by events surrounding the seemingly peaceful Rechavia neighborhood where we lived.

Mamilla, an ugly border street, was only a few blocks away. An army platoon was stationed in our backyard, situated in the Rechavia Valley. Three weeks before the war kindergarten children started filling protective sandbags while the Chevra Kadisha dug graves for the anticipated mass fatalities.

Senior IDF officers visited the Western Wall today to prepare for next week’s Jerusalem Day celebrations in the capital.

Members of the IDF Joint Chiefs of General Staff held prayer services led by Rabbi Shmuel Rabinovitch, Rabbi of the Western Wall and the Holy Sites, including special prayers for the State of Israel and the welfare of IDF soldiers.

Following the service members of the General Staff participated in a guided tour of the Western Wall plaza and observed archeological digs nearby.

Rabbi Rabinovitch said the IDF is a link in the chain of Jewish tradition. “Without a past, we have no future,” the rabbi said, adding that the study of history has a tremendous value for the Jewish People. “It is particularly moving to see this esteemed group, people that understand the significance of Jewish tradition,” he said.

Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Benny Gantz said the visit reflected the values on which the IDF is built.

“We know there is a foundation to our existence, a strong base for layer upon layer of the Jewish People in history, with a special task on this earth.

The visit ended with a closed session, held in a room that was recently revealed inside the Kotel Tunnel excavation site. The generals said the site for their weekly meeting emphasised the importance of unified Jerusalem as the capital of Israel.