City of David proves Jewish history, indigeneity

The importance of the City of David, capital of ancient Israel, and specifically its Pilgrimage Road, was discussed at an event featuring US Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee and former IDF Spokesman Maj. (res.) Doron Spielman at the National Library of Israel in Jerusalem on Dec. 9.

Pilgrimage Road, a Second Temple-era route, connects the Pool of Siloam to the Temple Mount. It is located just south of the Old City of Jerusalem and was used by Jewish pilgrims ascending to the Temple on the three major festivals of Passover, Shavuot and Sukkot. Viewed as one of the most significant archaeological discoveries in recent times, its excavation has aroused worldwide opposition.

The road was inaugurated in September and will be accessible to the public soon.

“This is not just an archaeological curiosity. It is the physical proof of the Jewish people’s origin story,” explained former Israeli government spokesman Eylon Levy, MC at the National Library event. “It is the anchor of our indigeneity in the land of Israel, and is the foundation on which both Israel and … America have both built their modern identity.”

It is because of its importance not just to Jews, but to Western civilization, that excavating the site has engendered so much hostility, Spielman and Huckabee agreed.

“I can’t think of another archaeological site in the world that has faced as much violence, so much discreditation,” said Spielman, who has spent more than two decades helping to turn the City of David into a major archaeological site.

He was one of the first, along with four others, to discover the road.

He described how he was “scared out of my mind” as he crawled along an ancient water tunnel in search of the Pilgrimage Road.

“Over our heads, we saw the stairs of the pool, the stairs of the road. It was unbelievable,” said Spielman, who is vice president of the City of David Foundation.

The next day, as word spread, Arab employees in the City of David didn’t show up for work. “We were not sure why, but we quickly found out. On the telephone poles of the City of David there were names written in Arabic. They were the names of every [Arab] worker in the City of David,” he said, explaining that it was a message to those workers, a threat to stop digging at the site.

The Arabs understood faster than the Jews that the Pilgrimage Road would become something of a competitor to the hajj, the Muslim pilgrimage to Mecca. They realized millions of Jews and Christians would flock to the site and walk the road, a constant living reminder of an ancient route that proved Jews are indigenous to the Land of Israel.

Spielman said the battle to force Israel to give up the excavations began locally with NGOs, fueled by European funding, protesting and petitioning Israel’s High Court. The Northern Branch of the Islamic Movement in Israel, a Muslim Brotherhood group, also opposed the excavations.

Accusations varied from displacing Arab residents to more conspiratorial claims that the excavations were intended to undermine the Al-Aksa mosque on the Temple Mount.

When local efforts failed, opponents turned to the United Nations agency UNESCO, which condemned Israel’s archaeological activities. The then-Obama administration was also enlisted. It issued a condemnation when Jews moved into 25 apartments in the City of David, falsely accusing them of forcing Arabs out, Spielman said.

Levy noted that proving Jewish “indigeneity” to the Land is a relatively new phenomenon because in the past the Jewish connection to the Land of Israel was a fact beyond dispute. It was the rise of ahistorical Palestinian claims, asserting that Jews were foreign to the region, that have turned “indigeneity” into an important talking point.

Spielman said that telling the story of Israeli indigeneity is crucial to countering the Palestinian claim that “we stole their land.” He lamented that the Jewish people, normally excellent storytellers, have failed to tell the “greatest story on earth,” that of their return to their ancient homeland.

Levy asked whether a durable regional peace is possible if Israel’s neighbors do not accept the Jewish people’s native status in their ancestral homeland.

Huckabee agreed that recognition of Jewish indigeneity by Israel’s neighbors would advance peace. He said the greatest proof of Israel’s claim is the Bible, the original “title deed” to the land, an unbreakable covenant beginning with Abraham.

He stressed that G-d made his promise in a historical and geographical context. There is a Mount Moriah where King David stood, a Pilgrimage Road where people walked 2,000 years ago, he said. The existence of these places is “then, now and forever … irrefutable, indisputable validation of this being the Jewish homeland.

“Whether we’re Jewish or not, it’s a matter of accepting the reality and embracing it,” Huckabee said.

The participants also touched on the public relations war, one that Israel struggles to wage effectively.

Spielman said Israel’s opponents have spent decades shaping a misleading narrative that has become widely accepted, while the Jewish side has been “asleep at the wheel.” He urged Jews to speak confidently and fearlessly about their history to counter those longstanding narratives.

Huckabee advised going where the battle is being fought, which in today’s world is on social media.

“Social media is destroying the minds of many young people because they’re being TikTok’d into an ignorance that is very dangerous,” he said. “I find way too many people who say, ‘I don’t want to get into social media. It’s a nasty sewer.’ Yes, it is, but that’s where the game is being played.”

The key is to project confidence in our beliefs, Huckabee added. “If we follow the law, the light of G-d, then our lives will take on a level of meaning, and our culture, our civilization, will, in fact, be defensible.

“Let’s be the people who express with our lives that we are going somewhere because we know where we come from. That really is the biblical message,” he said.