Israel’s cabinet, meeting in a location that was forgotten for decades, decided to take the Old City.

On June 5, 1967, Menachem Begin rushed into the Knesset on the way to a cabinet meeting in which he had been declared minister-without-portfolio in the new national unity government.

Begin bumped into then-prime minister Levi Eshkol by the entrance.

“We should discuss liberating the Old City,” Begin suggested.

“Das a gdank,” Eshkol said sardonically in Yiddish, “That’s an idea.”

By 11 a.m. two days later, Paratroop commander Motti Gur announced: “The Temple Mount is in our hands.”

What happened in between is well-documented and the Jerusalem battlegrounds of the Six Day War are well-trod and retraced by thousands each year on Jerusalem Day.

But there’s one stop on the way that’s not on the regular Jerusalem Day tour – a bomb shelter-turned-broom closet in the Knesset, where the cabinet decided to reunify the capital city. Continue reading