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British General Edmund Allenby enters Jerusalem on December 11, 1917. Only days earlier, the city was still under the administration of the Ottoman empire, a 400-year-long occupation. Library of Congress.
Observation

May 22, 2017

In Photos: The Story of the Liberation of Jerusalem a Century Ago

By Lenny Ben-David

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 falls on May 24, Israel will celebrate the 50th 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 resulted in dramatically altering 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.

Origins

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