Nadene Goldfoot
It all started with our heroes of Chanukah, Judah, the Maccabee and his descendants. Remember that Mattathias of Modiin Hashmonai (HASMONEAN) and his five sons, Judah, Jonathan, Simon, John, and Eleazar led a revolt against the Greek Syrians and their hellenizing policy of the Syrian king ANTIOCHUS EPIPHANES . The Hasmoneans fought against them in 166-164 BCE who had also occupied Jerusalem and had taken over the Temple and placed their idols in it and tried to rub out Judaism.
Rome had occupied Jerusalem a good 100 years before its destruction in 70 CE by them. It was in 63 BCE that the Roman General Pompey had profited from war between the 2 Hasmonean Jewish half -brothers, went into Jerusalem and occupied it; John Hyrcanus (son and successor of Simon the Hasmonean who ruled from 135 to 104 BCE who had fought against Ptolemy), and Aristobulus II (who reigned from 67 to 63 BCE, King of Judea, younger son of Alexander Yannai and Salome Alexandra, to occupy Jerusalem.
Queen Salome Alexandra was the ruler of Judea from 76 to 67 BCE. She had succeeded her husband, Alexander Yannai, and reversed his policy toward the Pharisees, according to his dying request, she said. Salome handed internal control to the Pharisees while keeping the responsibility for the army and foreign policy. She appointed her eldest son, Hyrcanus, as high priest and heir which was opposed by his brother, Aristobulus II.
As it happened, after Salome's death, her elder son, Hyrcanus II became king, but Aristobulus II usurped the throne. Civil war broke out and in the year 63, the 2 brothers appeared in Damascus to urge their own claims before the Roman Emperor, Pompey who ordered Aristobulus II to surrender all the Judean strongholds, including Jerusalem.
Hyrcanus remained a Roman puppet while Aristobulus II and his sons, kalexander and Antigonus Mattathias tried to regain power in Jerusalem but failed to do so. Hyrcaanus' granddauaghter, MARIAME, married Herod but was put to death by him in 29. Also put to death were the susrviving Hasmoneans, ARISTOBULUS III in 35, Hyrcanaus II in 30, and Mariamne's sons, Alexander and Aristobulus in 7.
Rome occupied Jerusalem and then sieged it during the Roman War in 70 CE. It was one of the most horrid of all wars, as people were starved to death first, becoming terribly desperate. The 2nd Temple had been burned down and looted first. It had served as a center of military activity before it's very end. After its destruction, the Romans built their own Roman temple over the same site. Since the Moslem Period, a mosque has stood there, which is the Mosque of Omar. The area around the western and southern walls of the Herodian Temple (2nd Temple after Herod's updating) was extensively excavated by B. MAZAR from 1968.
The Jewish General, Bar Kochba from 132 to 135 retook Jerusalem with an army he had amassed which shocked the Romans and embarrassed them. They were so furious that they let this happen that they renamed the land Palaestina for the enemy of the Jews, the Phillistines. The General was killed in battle in 135.
The Roman Emperor Hadrian rebuilt it as the roman colony, Aelia Capitolina, forbidding Jews to approach it under pain of death.
Then came the Christianization of the Roman empire under Constantine and his mother, Helena in 325. Jerusalem became a Holy City again, but for Christianity this time. The Church of the Holy Sepulcher was built in 335. Jerusalem became a city of churches and monasteries, pilgrimages and religious disputes. In 363 Emperor Julian made an attempt to restore the Temple. In 614 it was occupied for some years by the Persians, assisted by a Jewish force; but in 628, Byzantine rule was restored by Emperor Heraclius.
By 638, the city fell to the caliph Omar, now a Muslim as Mohammad died in 632, who set up a place of prayer in the Temple esplanade; magnificently rebuilt in 691 as the DOME OF THE ROCK by the Umayyad caliph, Abd-el Malik. Now under Arab rule, the Jews were allowed to return; but the city began to decay after the transfer of the center of Abbasid rule to Baghdad in 750. The Fatimids of the 11th century built their 2nd principal mosque, El-Aksa, on the temple site. Al-Aqsa Mosque, located in the Old City of Jerusalem, is the third holiest site in Islam. The mosque was built on top of the Temple Mount, known as the Al Aqsa Compound or Haram esh-Sharif in Islam. Muslims believe that Muhammad was transported from the Great Mosque of Mecca to al-Aqsa during the Night Journey. ( Unobtainable picture.)
In 1099, Jerusalem was stormed by the Crusaders under Sir Godfrey of Bouillon and it became a capital of the Latin Kingdom. In 1187 the Ayyubid sultan, Saladin, retook the city for Islam and it remained in Moslem hands except for a few years in the middle of the 13th century, despite all the crusades that had followed.
In the Mameluke Period of the 14th -15th centuries, many new buildings were erected and the water supply was improved. Under Ottoman rule that lasted for 400 years, it decayed till in the 18th-19th centuries. The city had reached its nadir; its population sank below 10,000. Part of the city laid in ruins. The Jewish community was destroyed by the Crusaders and almost wiped out in the 13th century. It was then reinforced by pious Jewish immigrants from many lands, especially after the expulsion from Spain in 1492, but its numbers were restricted by the Ottoman government. In 1625, they were brutally despoiled by the local pasha Muhammad ibn Farukh.
WWI lasted from 1914 to 1917 when Jews saw that there was no hope for them living in other people's countries; too much anti-Semitism and killing of them, so they met with the allies and had many meetings about Palestine and what was to happen to is as it was also in the war and Jews were fighting on the ally side from Palestine. It was agreed through the Balfour Doctrine that they would help to create the JEWISH HOMELAND. FINALLY! HOPE!
The UN partition resolution of November 29, 1947, provided for the creation of an independent area of Jerusalem under UN administration. Arab outbreaks reached the dimension of warfare between the Jews' Haganah and the Arabs which soon included the Arab legion of Transjordan who put an end to the internationalization scheme. The struggle lasted from December 1947 to July 1948. In the fight, the Jewish quarter in the Old City of Jerusalem had to be evacuated and was destroyed. All the New City with the exception of the Arab quarter north of the walls fell into Jewish hands. The Arab Legion tried to shell and starve the Jew of Jerusalem into surrender and it was foiled by the fortitude of the population and by the opening of the "Burma road" which restored the connection between Jewish Jerusalem and the coast. In 1949, the government and Knesset were transferred to Jerusalem. Arabs intended to take the whole city, not a section. Already, 80% of the Jewish Homeland went to Jordan to king Abdullah instead of to the Jews as promised.
Resource:
The New Standard Jewish Encyclopedia
Video movie-MGM: Cast a Giant Shadow with Kirk Douglas, Angie Dickinson, Yul Brynner, John Wayne, Frank Sinatra, Senta Berger-the 1947-48 struggle of Jews for Independence
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