Abraham Rabinovich

Abraham Rabinovich covered the war as an American reporter and then remained in Israel, joining The Jerusalem Post. After the war he interviewed close to 300 soldiers and civilians to write “The Battle For Jerusalem,” from which this article is excerpted. The book came to be recognized as a classic account of the Six-Day War.

Op-Eds / From the Paper

Preparing For War: Jerusalem, 1967

By Abraham Rabinovich

After Egypt closed the Tiran Straits passageway to Eilat, the situation was so dire in Jerusalem that the Rabbis permitted Yeshiva students to violate Shabbat in order to prepare for the inevitable war

Front Page

An Unintended Conquest

By Abraham Rabinovich

Israel had no intention of capturing Jerusalem’s Old City when the Six-Day War began 45 years ago. Many of its government ministers, especially the religious ones, opposed the idea, warning that the world would never accept Jewish rule over Christianity’s holiest places. Although the army had numerous contingency plans regarding targets in the region, a plan for taking the Old City was not among them.