HaRav Yehuda Amital on Yom Yerushalayim: Rav Amital writes in "Burst Forth and Sing Together, Ruins of Jerusalem"

...The transition from weeping to joy usually takes a certain amount of time; in this case God's salvation came in the blink of an eye. During those days of waiting, after Nasser expelled the U.N. forces from the Sinai and announced that he was going to push Israel into the sea, there wasn't a nation in the world that was ready to help us.

Our Foreign Minister, in a desperate attempt to request assistance, shuttled back and forth between Paris and London, asking, "What about our guarantees? You promised!" No one would answer, and newspapers around the world were already carrying obituary notices for the young State of Israel.

It is difficult to describe in words and to properly convey the depression which pervaded. Jews of the diaspora sensed that another holocaust was about to take place, and they sent telegrams to Israel imploring: "Send the children, at the very least save them, so that some remnant of Israel will be left!" Even those who firmly believed that Israel would be victorious envisioned a scenario of thousands of military and civilian casualties. Tel-Aviv and Jerusalem had almost no bomb shelters and lay exposed to the enemy's aerial bombings.

Read the entire shiur.

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