Firstly, the Israel Festival on Wednesday night provided plenty of free concert entertainment, including Shlomo Artzi, Hadaq Nahash and other Israeli singers giving free performances in Gan Sachar and Gan Ha'Atzmaut here in Jerusalem. The real excitement took place yesterday - Yom Yerushalaim, or Jerusalem Day. This day celebrates the wresting of all of Jerusalem from Jordanian rule in 1967. I started the day off be meeting up with the rabbi of a yeshiva I am considering and his students in a synagogue in the Moslem quarter. There are dozens of buildings in the Moslem quarter owned by Jews, most of them are yeshivot. It may seem crazy to the left-wingers that Jews would be living and studying in an area where they are faced with a hostile population. But what left-wingers don't understand is that from the right-wing point of view, there's nothing forbidden or scary about the Moslem quarter. In fact, the Arabs leave the Jews who live and study there alone, most of the time. Not because they are so tolerant, but because they are scared. Right-wingers are not afraid of Arabs and will defend themselves violently without hesitation. This knowledge on the part of the Arabs creates a tense, but livable status quo. We had several shiurim, lessons, including one by the head rabbi of this synagogue we visited. This man is of the hard core. There are groups of Jews who are continually attempting to buy property from Moslems in the Moslem quarter. It's not easy, but it does get done. It's probably the best way to strengthen Jewish presence in Jerusalem, without employing violent means.

After learning, we had some shawarma in the Jewish quarter, then walked over to Kikar Zion, where tens of thousands of dati-leumi youth were gathering for the march. There were various bands and music, and people were singing and dancing from about 5pm to about 6:30. It was quite a sight. Left-wing youth movements or schools haven't been able to get this many people out with a common ideological set of values since the 1960's. The right, however, can create enormous demonstrations, and does so periodically. Around 6:30, the masses of young Jews, along with their rabbis, started the march, down Ben-Yehuda to the Old City. We were then channelled by the police into two streams. One went into the Damascus Gate, the other continued around the western edge of the Old City and entered through the Lions' Gate. Both gates lead into the Moslem quarter. The quarter is almost completely empty, with all the homes and business shuttered and locked down. There were a few Arabs giving us the evil stare from behind the police. But there were more Israeli police and Border Guards than Arabs, hands down. It's amazing how dead the quarter was relative to how busy and loud and crowded it is on any other day. I guess the general idea is to avoid confrontation, which is probably not a bad move. The yeshivot were singing and were pretty riled up. Add that to the fact that there were tens of thousands of people crowded into the narrow streets, and you have a situation where any small confrontation would've turned out badly for the Arabs. Aside from yeshivot, there were also random families with kids, and lots of soldiers, in and out of uniform, with guns. Clearly, the Moslem quarter is ours, the Arabs are just temporarily residing on properties that they will one day relinquish peacefully or otherwise.

The marching then brought the throngs to the Kotel Plaza in the Jewish quarter. The plaza was very crowded, there was a band, and the crowds spilled over into the surrounding streets of the Jewish quarter. There was, again, singing and dancing, and tremendous praying. There are few things as powerful for a Jew than to pray in Jerusalem, just a couple of dozen meters from the Temple Mount. But when you have tens of thousands of young people praying for several hours, it's a whole other experience. I guess to a non-Jew, it would look bizarre and somewhat crazy. But to a Jew, it was a display of belief and emotion than cannot be re-created anywhere else in the world.