Today, on May 15, 2026, is Jerusalem Day and thousands of Israelis from all over the country have come to Jerusalem to celebrate. The atmosphere was charged with the excitement, the joy, and the tremendous energy of thousands of young people dancing and waving the Israeli national flag.

In 1948 the soldiers of Jordan defeated the Jewish people in the ancient walled part of Jerusalem and burned their homes, destroyed their synagogues, and forced all Jews to leave that part of Jerusalem. This ended thousands of years of Jewish people living within the old walled city of Jerusalem.

Shlomo Hizak, the founder of AMI Jerusalem Center, told me as a child living in the part of Jerusalem outside the walls, he could not walk close to the old walled city as there were Jordanian soldiers on the walls to shoot and kill the Jewish people. Of course, the Jewish people had no access to the old city, the Western Wall, or to the temple mount.

In 1967 Israel again freed the walled part of Jerusalem and gave the Jewish people access to again live within and visit all their beloved city and ancient capital, Jerusalem (Ps. 122:3, Zech. 8:1-8).