From left, Israeli paratroopers Tzion Karasenti, Yitzhak Yifat and Chaim Oshri standing at the Western Wall after Israel captured the Temple Mount in Jerusalem, June 7, 1967. (David Rubinger\/GPO)<\/p>\n<\/div>\n
“It was amazing to see how everyone embraced us,” Karasenti told JTA. “All the sectors of Israeli society came together, it didn’t matter if you were Ashkenazi, Sephardi, religious, haredi, a kibbutznik, whatever.”<\/p>\n
Following some hurried planning, the paratroopers crossed into no-man’s land after midnight. Dozens were wounded by Jordanian fire before they even entered eastern Jerusalem. Through the night and the next day, the paratroopers\u00a0fought their way toward Mount Scopus, the only Jewish enclave in eastern Jerusalem, and to the outskirts of the Old City.<\/p>\n
The 66th division — to which Karasenti, Yifat and Oshri were assigned \u2013 faced the hardest fighting, hand-to-hand combat against elite Jordanian troops in the trenches at\u00a0Ammunition Hill, which overlooked the road to Mount Scopus.\u00a0Yifat narrowly avoided being impaled by a Jordanian bayonet \u2013 and still has a scar on his face to show for it.<\/p>\n
“It was like a hell. The trenches were filled with bodies, and you couldn’t tell if they were friends or enemies,” Yifat said. “At one point, I jumped on an Arab\u00a0and shot him dead. As I was reloading my magazine, another Arab attacked me with a bayonet, and got me right here. I kicked him between the legs and shot him dead, too.”<\/p>\n
Nearly 100 of the paratroopers were killed and\u00a0400 wounded before they paused for the night.<\/p>\n
The next morning, June 7, the paratroopers found that\u00a0most of the Jordanian troops had retreated from Jerusalem. Israel’s Cabinet, long divided about whether to capture the Old City, finally gave the go-ahead. Motta Gur, the paratroopers’ famed commander, delivered the news over the radio, saying: “Fifty-fifth paratroopers brigade, we are sitting on the ride overlooking the Old City, and we shall soon enter it — the Old City of Jerusalem, which generations have dreamed of and longed for. We will be the first to enter.”<\/p>\n
The paratroopers rushed forward amid sniper fire from remaining Jordanian soldiers and rammed their way through the Lions’ Gate of the Old City. From there they made their way through narrow stone alleys and up to the Temple Mount and the Western Wall.<\/p>\n
“The Temple Mount is in our hands,” Gur reported.<\/p>\n
Religious and secular paratroopers alike were awed by their return to the heart of the ancient Jewish homeland.<\/p>\n
“I didn’t realize where I was until I saw the Israeli flag flying above the stones, said\u00a0Karasenti, an observant Jew. “I started to cry. Everyone was emotional. The whole nation of Israel was in ecstasy, euphoria. You can’t even imagine what it was like.”<\/p>\n
While Yifat, Karasenti and Chaim Oshri were walking along the wall, Rubinger, who died<\/a>\u00a0in March at 92,\u00a0lay on the ground and snapped the photo that would make them — and him — famous. Within days, the image had appeared in newspapers around the world.<\/p>\nAfter the war, Oshri became a chemist whose research was key in dairy production. In 1996 he worked for the minister of religious affairs. Karasenti, a director and choreographer, went on to a found a dance troupe and performed all over Israel. Itzhak earned his medical degree from the Technion in Haifa in 1974 and specialized in gynecology.<\/p>\n
Soon after the war — which saw Israel capture the West Bank, the Gaza Strip, the Golan Heights and the Sinai —\u00a0the survivors of the 66th division returned to Ammunition Hill, where they stacked stones into a memorial for the paratroopers who died there. Atop of the pile, they placed a helmet. On the other side of the hill, they erected\u00a0a smaller memorial for the Jordanian soldiers.<\/p>\n
“We thought they fought very bravely, and many of them died,” Yifat said. “Somebody has since removed that memorial. I’m very angry about it.”<\/p>\n
While Yifat has publicly expressed<\/a> some ambivalence about Israel’s rule over Palestinians who live in the territories it took in 1967, he said he had no doubt\u00a0that\u00a0Israel must retain all of Jerusalem.<\/p>\n“We fought and lost so many friends to unite Jerusalem for the Jewish world,” he said. “There’s no going backwards.”<\/p>\n
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