Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu spoke at Ammunition Hill in Jerusalem on Remembrance Day and quoted the Biblical prophet Isaiah, “A staff will emerge from the stump of Yishai and a shoot will sprout from his roots.”
The Prime Minister noted that 182 olive trees surround the site of a key battle in the Six-Day War in 1967. “Each one of them commemorates one of the 182 sons, fathers, brothers and husbands who fell in the campaign for Jerusalem,” he said. “Every one of these trees dedicated to one of the fallen symbolizes life out of the grief.”
Ammunition Hill “symbolized a wounded city, a city cut in half, and in its heart--a wall" before the capital was reunited, he added, in an obvious reference to his announced refusal to capitulate to Palestinian Authority and American demands to divide Jerusalem.
He pointed out that the new light railway system under construction connects Jerusalem neighborhoods that were separated during the Jordanian occupation in the city after the re-establishment of Israel in 1948.
“Twice we have paid the heavy cost of liberating the siege on Jerusalem–first, during the War of Independence, and again, when the city was bombed during the Six-Day War,” the Prime Minister said on the day commemorating the loss of fallen soldiers and victims of Arab terror.
“Today, children play in the trenches of Ammunition Hill and in other former battle sites,” he added. “Over the years, we have learned that the olive branches of peace will only be attained if we are strong and are willing to defend our country as did those who have fallen here….
“It is the ancient decree to establish a country here whose magnificence will last for generations, a country that through its very existence and the building of its future justifies the painful sacrifice. Independence Day and Memorial Day are an indelible part of each other. We know that the former is impossible without the latter. If only it were different.”