Who were the first soldiers to reach the Temple Mount in the battle to liberate Jerusalem?

According to a veteran of that war, it wasn’t the paratroopers. Contrary to the accepted historical account, the IDF paratroopers were the first to reach the Temple Mount during the Six-day War of 1967; Shimon Yitzchak, a soldier in the Jerusalem Brigade Forces, reveals that he was indeed the first soldier to reach the Temple Mount.

Yitzchak recalls a battle in the Abu Tor area of Jerusalem where 16 of his fellow soldiers were killed. Following that battle, Yitzchak ran towards his original destination – Western Wall. But he missed the entrance to the Western Wall and instead continued to the Temple Mount.

Once on the Mount, Yitchak recalls that when he entered the Temple Mount, “there was no living soul.”

“Wrongfully, I entered both into the Dome and the cave underneath the Foundation Stone, and I was all alone.”

For 50 years, Yitzchak was convinced that he entered the Temple Mount after the paratroopers did. But only later did he realize that a photograph taken at the time revealed that he was indeed the first soldier to enter the Temple Mount when Jerusalem was liberated in 1967.

Ironically, this information was revealed to him by the paratroopers who credited with being the first on the Temple Mount.