Marco Rubio in the City of David

In September, Secretary of State Marco Rubio delivered one of the most meaningful American speeches in recent memory. Rubio was in Jerusalem, and the setting was dramatic. In the wake of all that has transpired since—the assault on Gaza City, the negotiations to end the war, the arrangement for the return of the hostages—Rubio’s remarks have been overlooked, and perhaps understandably so. Nevertheless, it is vital that his speech not be forgotten by Americans, because though it was delivered in Jerusalem, it was really about America—about the uniqueness of our founding and history and what the 250th anniversary of the United States should mean to all of us.

The speech was framed around Zionism in its most literal sense, given that it was delivered inside Zion itself. “Zion” is the name that King David assigned to the mountain where his capital Jerusalem was founded, where his psalms were written, and where his dream of a Temple was given expression—a site known, then as now, as the “City of David.”

Rubio had come with Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to attend the inauguration of the opening of the “Pilgrimage Road”—a path by which hundreds of thousands of pilgrims, millennia ago, ascended to the Temple from the pool of Siloam within David’s city to Judaism’s holiest site. Its discovery and excavation are among the triumphs of archaeology in our time. The road is, one might say, the ultimate reminder of who the “indigenous people” of Zion really are, demonstrating as it does continuity between their presence there at least 3,000 years ago and the presence of 7 million Jews in the Jewish state today.