This year marks the 50th anniversary of Jerusalem’s unification in the Six-Day War. It also marks the 100th anniversary of a fierce World War I battle that saved the city from destruction.

On Yom Yerushalayim, which this year fell on May 24, Israel celebrated the fiftieth anniversary of Jerusalem’s unification in June 1967. Marking the climax of a swift defensive victory over the armies of Egypt, Syria, and Jordan, the battle for the Holy City dramatically altered its political, religious, and geographic status.

But this year also marks another anniversary: the centenary of a fierce World War I battle that not only saved Jerusalem from physical destruction but rescued its entire Jewish population from squalor, starvation, plague, exile, and death. In the scope of Jewish history, the liberation of Jerusalem in December 1917 ranks with the salvation holidays of Hanukkah and Purim.

 We wish to thank Neal Kozodoy, Editor of Mosaic Magazine, for granting the Jewish Political Studies Review permission to make this article available to its readers. To read this article, kindly follow this link: https://mosaicmagazine.com/observation/2017/05/in-photos-the-story-of-the-liberation-of-jerusalem-a-century-ago/

Lenny Ben-David is the director of publications at the Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs and the author of American Interests in the Holy Land Revealed in Early Photographs (Urim). He is at work on the book World War I in the Holy Land Revealed in Early Photographs.

Lenny Ben-David, “In Photos: The Story of the Liberation of Jerusalem a Century Ago,” Mosaic Magazine, May 22, 2017, https://mosaicmagazine.com/observation/2017/05/in-photos-the-story-of-the-liberation-of-jerusalem-a-century-ago/