Ammunition Hill

In the days of the British Mandate (pre-1947), the British Army kept stores of ammunition on a hill on the outskirts of Jerusalem, giving it the name Ammunition Hill. They could never have guessed the foreshadowing of this name, as it later became the site of one of the most important battles in the recapture of Jerusalem in the Six Day war.

We had a fantastic tour there this morning, with a very knowledgeable, if slightly frenetic tour guide, Rafi. We started with a movie which recounted the story of the Six Day war with a focus on the battle for Jerusalem. The movie showed some actual footage taken from news reels of the time. It also included some footage shot a few weeks after the war in a reenactment staged by one of the commanders (I think it was Uzi Narkis) who understood the PR value of that sort of thing. The movie was coupled with a 3D map that lit up to show where various parts of the battle were taking places, etc, so you could really visualize the whole thing.

To sum up very briefly, when Egypt, Jordan, & Syria entered into agreements to attack and destroy Israel in 1967, Israel found themselves on the brink of war on three fronts. They launched a pre-emptive attack against the Egyptian air force and wiped it out on the ground, allowing Israel to take control of the Sinai Dessert. The paratroopers who had been planning to parachute into the Sinai were redeployed instead to Jerusalem where the fighting (mostly with Jordanian soldiers) was very intense. The main goal of the IDF forces in Jerusalem was to reunite Mount Scopus with the rest of Jewish Jerusalem. Mount Scopus (the site of Hebrew University and Hadassah Hospital) was held by Israel, but had been cut off from the rest of Jerusalem in the War of Independence in 1948 and was surrounded by Jordanian territory. In order to do that, the IDF had to take several positions on the way to Mount Scopus, one of which was Ammunition Hill.

Ammunition Hill was fortified with trenches and bunkers. The Israeli army believed it was protected by  50 Jordanian soldiers, but when the small Israeli company of paratroopers along with soldiers from the Jerusalem Brigade and the Harel Bridgade (mostly reservist soliders who had been called up for the war) attacked, they found instead 150 well-trained Jordanian soldiers. I can't possibly recount all of the details of the very hard fought battle, but we were especially moved by the story of Eitan Nave, a soldier who jumped out of the trenches during the fighting to provide cover so his comrades could advance. He was killed after about 4 minutes, leaving behind a wife and baby, but his actions were critical to the Israeli victory in the battle (he is memorialized in the famous patriotic Israeli song "Ammunition Hill" which you can google if you don't know it).  He was awarded the Medal of Valor, which is the highest medal in the IDF (only 40 IDF soldiers have received it in the history of the state). The victory at Ammunition Hill cleared the way to retake the route to Mount Scopus, and helped in the eventual retaking of the Old City of Jerusalem.

During our visit, the kids got to hold model guns (very heavy!), run through the trenches, try to throw genades (rocks) into the bunkers, and generally experience a tiny bit of what the battle entailed. We also visited the small museum to learn more about the battle and to climb on an IDF jeep. It was a very moving and educational visit, but also lots of fun.

We stopped for a quick pizza lunch on our way to meet up with Menashe Weiss (a cousin on the Feingold side - his grandfather was Hy, my grandfather's brother) and his family.We had a nice visit with them. The kids had a lot of fun playing together (Rivka (their youngest) loved having Ella paint her fingernails and Sylvia especially loved playing with Rivka's toys!). A visit to Giraffe Park and popsicles on the way home completed the fun and busy day!