Jerusalén, historia de conflicto y esperanza: El reino
En este primer capítulo de Jerusalén historia de conflicto y esperanza, nos trasladamos a los tiempos en que los judíos se asentaron en los territorios que hoy pertenecen a Israel, conocida por aquel entonces como Canaán y poblada por los cananitas. Para tomar posesión de estas tierras, los israelitas libran una guerra que termina en la batalla de David contra Goliat. David es nombrado gobernante y nombra a Jerusalén como la nueva capital. Tras su muerte, el hijo de David asciende al trono, pero resulta ser un gobernante diferente.
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00:00Jerusalem is the universal city, the chosen city, the holy city.
00:19That's its blessing, but it also is its danger.
00:27Because it means that people believe that they must possess it, conquer it.
00:37The Palestinian-Israeli conflict that we live in today has been living in Jerusalem for thousands of years.
00:46For the Jews, Jerusalem is the place where Solomon built the Holy Temple.
00:51For the Christians, it is the place where Jesus was crucified.
00:55For the Muslims, Jerusalem is where the prophet Muhammad made his night journey.
01:01People we call conquerors have passed through this city.
01:06No one has changed the city's physiognomy as much as Herod the Great.
01:12Saladin was determined to confront the Christians and throw them out of Jerusalem.
01:18In a time of Ottoman-Islamic domination, the British desperately wanted to control the Holy Land.
01:25This case of the Arabs is against the British government's policy in Palestine.
01:32We are the only people in the world homeless and lifeless.
01:38For the Israelis, the creation of the State of Israel is almost a miracle.
01:42But for the Palestinians, it is an absolute disaster.
01:47The history of Jerusalem is very complicated.
01:50And if you don't know it in depth, it is difficult to understand what is happening there today.
01:58The past never dies.
02:00And if there is a city in the world where we can apply this, that is Jerusalem.
02:09Three thousand years.
02:16Six conflicts.
02:20One city.
02:24Jerusalem, city of fury and hope.
02:39When you walk in Jerusalem today, it does not seem that you are in a place where history has happened.
02:47And you see it.
02:49You see it in the dome of the rock, in the mosque of Al-Aqsa, in the Wall of Sorrows.
02:55There is such remarkable history that we have only just read about.
03:00You've got people living on top of each other,
03:02buildings built on top of each other, and religions that have come from other religions.
03:08The first time I went to Jerusalem, I thought it was one of the most beautiful places I had ever been to.
03:14But when I went around, I started to see the tension that was between everyone.
03:18And I thought it was a city of contradictions.
03:22A city that had a lot of history, but that also had a lot of problems and a lot of pain.
03:34But Jerusalem, apart from its religious value,
03:36is the national interest that two communities aspire to,
03:39the Israeli community and the Palestinian community.
03:43That adds a little bit of complexity.
03:47It's impossible to solve the current situation and build a better future for Jerusalem
03:53without understanding the great conflicts of its past.
04:01For the earliest times, our greatest source of knowledge is the Hebrew Bible, the Old Testament.
04:09Some of the stories that appear in the Bible have been proven archaeologically,
04:14but there are other stories in which the narrative changes
04:17depending on what you believe and what your religion is.
04:25I think we have to remember that religious beliefs are what has made Jerusalem what it is.
04:33For centuries, people who lived in Jerusalem and around it
04:36have accepted religion as their truth.
04:39So when we read biblical stories, we actually read the story of Jerusalem.
04:44And the story of the Holy City begins approximately in 1000 B.C.
04:51In the land of Canaan.
04:54In 1000 B.C., the major empires were Egypt in the south and the Hittites in the north.
05:02This land of Canaan was nothing more than the middle ground,
05:05a battlefield where the great came to fight.
05:09Canaan is the territory that the Israelites believe God gave to them
05:14as the land they were to inherit.
05:18The problem is that there was already a civilization in Canaan, the Canaanites.
05:23According to the Bible, God commanded the Israelites
05:27to kill all the men, women, and children there.
05:31And so, you can see how, in a modern setting,
05:35that might cause discord between people,
05:39and there were people who would say,
05:42this was not their territory to begin with.
05:47After conquering the land of Canaan,
05:49the Israelites were established into twelve different tribes,
05:53united by their faith in a religion prior to Judaism.
05:57The twelve tribes were at war.
06:00There was a great rivalry and enmity between them.
06:03And it was in this period that the Israelites began to have conflicts
06:07with the Philistines, who were their neighbors.
06:12The Philistines were the arch enemies of Israel,
06:15and we must value that all the history we know of the Philistines
06:19was written by those against whom they fought.
06:23So, the reason why they have become a synonym of ill-mannered and uncivilized
06:28is that their history was written by their enemies.
06:32But in fact, they were very sophisticated people.
06:35They were experts in weapons and shields, in technology and war.
06:41And these individuals began to conquer every city they passed through.
06:45They were marching to the northeast, towards the highlands of Judea,
06:49and the Israelites were advancing to the coast.
07:06After several wars with the Philistines, and among them a catastrophic defeat,
07:11the Israelites decided that they wanted to have a king to govern them.
07:16People are stronger when we are united than when we are divided.
07:20And the ancient Israelites realized that if all cities were still tribes,
07:25they would never prosper.
07:31And that is why they decided to elect a king.
07:36And the king they elected was Saul.
07:41Saul had the advantage of being a military man.
07:44He also had a lot of charisma,
07:47but he became insanely crazy for the throne.
07:51They had never had a king before.
07:53There was no line of succession with which to reason his legitimacy.
07:57And so, from the moment he became king,
07:59he was always afraid of being overthrown.
08:04Shortly after they named Saul king,
08:07the Israeli and Philistine armies met in the valley of Elah.
08:12The Philistines proposed,
08:14elect a paladin, we elect another paladin,
08:16and the two paladins will face each other.
08:20The idea was that the winner of the one-on-one battle
08:24would be made with the army of the one who had lost.
08:28And that way they would avoid massive losses on both sides.
08:36What the Israelites did not know beforehand
08:40is that the Philistines had Goliath.
08:46And they said that Goliath was almost three meters tall.
08:51He was almost a mythological hero.
08:53He had supernatural strength.
09:09If we were the Israelites, and we went out into battle,
09:12and we saw Goliath,
09:14I don't think we would trust our chances.
09:21What they thought was that Saul, the king,
09:24was the one who was going to fight.
09:26But Saul had no intention of doing it.
09:28He was not going to fight.
09:33But there was an Israelite who had the courage.
09:37A simple shepherd, who was about to fight
09:40one of the most legendary battles in history.
10:00The twelve Israelite tribes had united under the reign of Saul.
10:04And they faced the Philistines.
10:09The Philistines had sent a man to the battlefield, Goliath,
10:13who would invite any of the Israelites into battle.
10:17And because of his size,
10:19none of the Israelites wanted to accept his invitation.
10:23So at this point, David enters the story.
10:28David was the youngest of eight sons.
10:31And the funny thing is that David was basically a shepherd
10:34who took care of his father's herds.
10:38Even so, he was one of the most fascinating characters in history.
10:42He was a poet. He was a singer.
10:45He was a boy. He was not a great politician.
10:48He was not a conspirator or a strategist.
10:50He was the opposite of that.
10:52He acted on impulse.
10:57David faced Goliath, according to the story,
10:59because Goliath was defying God.
11:04He was defying the Jewish God of Israel.
11:06He was making fun of his army.
11:11So for David, it was more than just a battle.
11:13It was also symbolizing the power of the God of Israel.
11:20David was not even in the army.
11:22His father would take lunch to his brothers
11:25who were fighting in Saul's army.
11:30And this is the image we have of the boy David.
11:33He was a boy, a determined boy,
11:36who thought, nobody's going to talk like that to my God.
11:40And everybody would say, calm down, you don't know where you're going.
11:44But he didn't care to die if it was to protect the honor of God.
11:48Goliath did not believe what he saw.
11:50He would think, are you laughing at me?
11:52What is this? Why not a battle?
12:19Goliath
12:21Goliath
12:23Goliath
12:25Goliath
12:27Goliath
12:29Goliath
12:31Goliath
12:33Goliath
12:35Goliath
12:37Goliath
12:39Goliath
12:41Goliath
12:43Goliath
12:45Goliath
12:47Goliath
12:49Goliath
12:51Throughout the history of Israel,
12:53the theme of minorities is recurrent.
12:56God chooses the minorities,
12:58the disadvantaged, to do His great deeds.
13:02And David's defeat against Goliath was proof of that.
13:05It was a desperate boy who believed in God
13:08and was rewarded for it.
13:11That allowed them to grow as a nation,
13:14to be proud of who they were as a people.
13:21This young David was rewarded when he killed Goliath.
13:25King Saul appointed him general of the army.
13:28King Saul also offered David his daughter to marry.
13:34So he kept him close to the throne.
13:37But then King Saul realized that David was too popular
13:41and he was making him competitive.
13:45He's the equivalent of an icon of today's social media.
13:48David was the guy that everybody tweeted about
13:51and sang songs about.
13:57People were going around singing,
13:59Saul has killed a thousand,
14:01but David has killed ten thousand.
14:03So even though David's victory against Goliath was incredible
14:06and people were celebrating it,
14:08on the other hand, it made Saul feel insecure.
14:12Saul began to think that David was a nightmare
14:15that had infiltrated the family to take control.
14:18And we have to remember that Saul was just appointed king.
14:22And when you have a free choice,
14:24the people can always choose someone else.
14:26And that was his fear.
14:28So what Saul did was act out of his paranoia,
14:31out of his jealousy, and out of his fear.
14:38Saul became so jealous of David that he wanted him dead.
14:42He tried to kill him.
14:45David managed to escape Saul's attacks,
14:48but he was forced to spend the next two years in exile.
14:55With David's absence,
14:57the war between Israel and the Philistines broke out again.
15:02Saul was only accumulating defeats
15:04and in the end he organized one last desperate battle
15:07against the Philistines.
15:09It was so bad that Saul's men began to retreat.
15:12They killed three of his sons in front of him
15:15and the Philistines kept advancing.
15:17That's when he knew it was over.
15:19It was the end.
15:20And so he turned to his squire
15:22and begged him to let one of his own kill him.
15:26And so the squire himself was in charge of doing it.
15:29And then one of his slavers came running
15:32and told David that Saul had died.
15:42Instead of celebrating that Saul had died,
15:45that Saul had been trying to kill him for so long,
15:50David publicly mourns Saul's death.
16:00He even had the squire killed
16:03for killing the king.
16:09David knew that mourning the death of the king of Israel
16:13was politically correct.
16:17Now the whole kingdom agreed
16:19that there was only one man capable of governing them.
16:46They named David king of the Israelites.
16:49And although the twelve tribes had been united
16:52to fight in the war,
16:54they were still confronted in practice.
16:57David realized that with his charisma
17:00he could really unite them
17:02because united they were a force in power.
17:05At a time in the Middle Ages
17:07when all the great powers like Egypt were in decline,
17:10David realized that he could unite them
17:13because united they were a force in power.
17:16And that's why a relatively small power
17:19could achieve great conquests.
17:24So how did he maintain the peace?
17:27What could David do to prove to the twelve tribes
17:30that he wasn't just going to favor the tribe he belonged to?
17:36He's elected a capital that will be very controversial.
17:44He settled in an enclave on a small mountain
17:47built by the Canaanites 2,000 years ago,
17:50Jerusalem.
17:55Jerusalem was a promising place
17:58to become what it is now.
18:01It doesn't have a strategic location,
18:04it doesn't have canals or rivers nearby,
18:07none of that.
18:09Jerusalem was chosen as a capital
18:12because it was right in the middle,
18:15like Washington D.C. in the United States.
18:21The great thing about Jerusalem
18:24was that it was a fortified place,
18:27which made it very attractive.
18:30Walled cities weren't so common in the Old Near East,
18:33so conquering a city that was already walled
18:36made a lot more sense than walling another city.
18:40When the Israelites settled in the area,
18:43a couple of centuries ago,
18:46they hadn't taken Jerusalem.
18:49Jerusalem remained in the hands of the native population,
18:53which the Bible calls the Jebusites.
18:56And the Jebusites were the resistance,
18:59they were still settled in the last part of Canaan.
19:03The Jebusites today evoke us
19:06essentially political discourses,
19:09since some modern Palestinians
19:12defend that they were their ancestors.
19:17It's so important to understand the history of Jerusalem
19:20because many of the modern conflicts
19:23started in the past.
19:26So if you can prove that you are descended from the Jebusites,
19:30then you can say,
19:32we have more right to claim the city than the Israelites.
19:40So if David wanted the city of Jebusites,
19:43he would have to take it by force.
19:48David said to his troops,
19:50if anyone of you is capable of infiltrating and penetrating the defenses,
19:54then I will name you captain of the army.
20:03They knew about this water well
20:05that came up to the city of Jerusalem.
20:10And his general, Joab,
20:12sneaked up to the water shaft
20:14and then opened the gates
20:16for them to come in and conquer the city.
20:22Now, at that moment,
20:24David wanted to make sure
20:26that everyone who entered the city
20:29understood that Jerusalem
20:31was not only the political capital of Israel,
20:34but it was also the religious capital of his kingdom.
20:42And so what David does is,
20:44he brings the Ark of the Covenant to Jerusalem.
20:49The Ark of the Covenant
20:51is a splendid gold receptacle
20:53that contains parchment,
20:55which in turn contains the laws of Moses.
20:59And it was carried by the Israelites
21:01throughout their wanderings in the desert.
21:07It had two cherubim,
21:09which were thought to protect the presence of God.
21:12But between the two cherubim,
21:14there was an empty space,
21:16and that empty space symbolized the presence of God.
21:20David has this great ceremony
21:22and he took the Ark of the Covenant
21:24through the mountains to Jerusalem.
21:28David wants this big show
21:30to show the people
21:32that they were no longer a nomadic people.
21:37The problem with that
21:39was that before he would take the Ark of the Covenant to Jerusalem,
21:43they would say that God lived in his town.
21:46After he took it there,
21:48they would say that he lived in Jerusalem.
21:51And that just unleashed centuries of wars
21:54for this physical place.
21:57But for now, the Unified Kingdom was thriving.
22:00The 12 rival tribes had found peace
22:02under the command of King David.
22:08David has worked all his life.
22:11He has always believed in God.
22:13He has worked hard.
22:15He started off as a simple pastor.
22:17He's fought all these battles
22:19and now he's the king of Israel.
22:23What a time to put the guard down.
22:27In the dawn of his power,
22:29David made a decision
22:31that put in danger everything he had built.
22:46King David achieved peace
22:48between the 12 tribes of Israel
22:50and established a new capital
22:52known as Jerusalem.
22:55The Bible says that when the kings were going to war,
22:58David stayed behind.
23:02It's almost like now,
23:04when David finally achieves the position of king,
23:07he decides that he can't put the guard down anymore
23:10and he lets the guard down.
23:13And that's how Beth-Shavah comes into his life.
23:17David was on the terrace of the palace
23:19looking at the scenery
23:21and he saw a beautiful woman taking a bath.
23:24And his great beauty caught him.
23:26Of course, he was looking at her in secret.
23:29And she was beautiful.
23:31She was beautiful.
23:33She was beautiful.
23:35She was beautiful.
23:37She was beautiful.
23:39She was beautiful.
23:41She was beautiful.
23:43She was beautiful.
23:45And he was looking at her in secret.
23:48He knew she was the wife of one of his commanders,
23:52but he loves her so much
23:54that he decides he has to possess her.
23:58I wonder if David could have changed
24:01at some point in his life,
24:03maybe it would have been that day
24:05when he saw Beth-Shavah
24:07taking a bath from the terrace.
24:11We talk a lot about Helen of Troy,
24:13but we don't talk about Beth-Shavah
24:15in the same way that we should,
24:17because her beauty triggers a series of events
24:20that will cause great problems for David's reign
24:23and all of this is his fault.
24:27He showed no knowledge of her as a person.
24:31He showed what was typical at the time,
24:34a way of looking at women as objects.
24:37If you want it, you want it.
24:40Today we see empowered and strong women,
24:43but it didn't work like that in the ancient world.
24:46Before, they were dependent.
24:50Beth-Shavah had no right to say no to the king
24:53if he asked her to.
24:58She had to go because she was the king of Israel
25:01and so we don't know what she was feeling
25:03or what she was thinking.
25:09In the course of what happened to Beth-Shavah,
25:12the rape that she was subjected to,
25:15she became pregnant.
25:19David realized that this was a problem
25:24because his husband, Urias, was at war
25:27and so he would have been clear
25:29that he was going to be pregnant
25:31and he was going to have a child
25:33and he was going to have a child
25:35and he was going to have a child
25:37and so it was going to be clear
25:39that Beth-Shavah had had an affair with someone
25:42and that someone was David.
25:47So what does he do?
25:49He calls Joab, the captain of his army,
25:51and he orders him to send Urias
25:53to the front line of the battlefield
25:55so that the army would be further away from him
25:58and he would be more vulnerable.
26:02And then all the enemy fire goes to Urias
26:05and he gets killed in battle.
26:09And then David gets to show himself
26:14as consoling the mourning widow, Beth-Shavah.
26:18So David was in charge
26:20of having his husband killed in battle.
26:26It's this immense lack of morale
26:29that is the heart of the story of David.
26:36And it will be the beginning
26:38of his decline as king of Israel.
26:48Although he tried to avoid it,
26:50the rumors about what he had done
26:52did not take long to spread throughout the kingdom.
26:56The prophet of Israel went to David and said to him,
26:59If I tell you a story about a rich man
27:01who went to steal sheep from a poor shepherd,
27:04and David said, I will kill that man.
27:07And the prophet said, Your Majesty,
27:09I am talking about you.
27:14You had all the power
27:16and you went to steal something from someone
27:19who had no power.
27:21And you treated both the woman and her husband
27:24with disdain and disrespect.
27:27And David was terrified
27:29because he knew everything.
27:31God had not only been adulterous
27:33but had also committed murder.
27:42He ignored the public opinion
27:44and forced her to marry him.
27:47It was not something that affected many people,
27:50especially in David's court,
27:52because by marrying,
27:54he created an enmity
27:56among the other wives of David.
28:00If we go back and read all the biblical stories,
28:03we will see that all these kings
28:05had many wives and many children.
28:08But ultimately, what changes in David's story
28:11is his family, his house,
28:13because from now on there will be no peace in it.
28:18David will be engulfed in a war of family relations
28:21for which there was never peace.
28:29Chapter 2 The Battle of Bethsabeth
28:35When he married Bethsabeth,
28:37King David caused confusion in the royal family.
28:43Several decades passed
28:45and the last years of his reign
28:47became a chaos.
28:54As David was about to die,
28:56the citizens of Israel began to ask themselves,
29:01What's next?
29:03What's going to happen to our kingdom, to Israel?
29:06What's going to come after this golden age?
29:11David had to choose a new heir
29:13and it's important to remember
29:15that at this time,
29:17the succession tradition of the father to the eldest son
29:20was not yet the norm.
29:22We're talking about a world
29:24where the strongest man was the one who got the crown.
29:29This caused confusion
29:31as to who was going to ascend the throne.
29:34All the mothers argued
29:36that their children should be named kings.
29:40Just as the kings,
29:42the women made their alliances
29:44to make sure that they were taken care of.
29:49But Bethsabeth was David's favorite wife
29:52and she used her power
29:54to make sure that David would name his son Solomon
29:57as the next king of Israel.
30:04For David, this was the way
30:06to atone for what he had done.
30:08He took his husband out of the way
30:10but now he was going to make her the mother queen
30:13and his son was going to rule Israel.
30:16After 40 years of government in Israel,
30:19King David died around 970 B.C.
30:24and Solomon took the throne.
30:28If you want to talk about a person who is a calculator,
30:31with a cold heart, manipulative and stubborn,
30:34Solomon is your man.
30:37Solomon didn't have David's charisma.
30:39That was something that was clear from the beginning.
30:42He didn't have his father's ability
30:44to make everyone follow him
30:46for the purity of his personality.
30:48Solomon did have some political wits
30:50but he lacked moral integrity.
30:54King Solomon was a very pampered boy
30:57who grew up in a powerful and wealthy court
31:00where he consumed the aura of his position as king
31:03because he only took advantage of it for his own benefit.
31:09He had to make sure that he kept his power on to power.
31:14Instead of doing what David would have done
31:16and getting people to worship him,
31:18he did what any other dictator in the Middle East would have done
31:22and he carried out a purge in the palace.
31:29He killed all the princes,
31:31the brothers, the generals,
31:33and the faithful to other kings.
31:35He created his own court,
31:37a bit like an American president
31:39but with the extra murder.
31:42Solomon's coldness is captured in the Bible
31:45with the story of the two women
31:47who claimed to have the same baby.
31:52Solomon smiles and says,
31:54okay, we'll cut the baby in two,
31:56and you'll share it.
31:59And this is the way he clearly discovers
32:01his true mother,
32:03who says, no, no, keep the baby.
32:06And that story is the reason why
32:09he was recognized as a wise man
32:12because Solomon knew how his mother would think.
32:15But that's a very sadistic way to do it.
32:20I think it's the proof that he was a ruthless man
32:23that just didn't want to deal with anything,
32:25he just wanted to deal with those things.
32:29That is the portrait of Solomon in history,
32:32but his importance is due to the fact
32:34that he accomplished something incredible in Jerusalem.
32:39As a king, Solomon was always left in the shadow
32:43of his great father.
32:45He didn't have the opportunity to stand out as a warrior,
32:48he didn't have those inclinations,
32:50but he had to be able to stand out in something.
32:54Solomon's greatest achievement
32:56was the construction of the first temple in Jerusalem,
33:00which was the home of the Ark of the Covenant.
33:04The father of Solomon, David,
33:06had brought the Ark of the Covenant to Jerusalem
33:09and had placed it on a rocky ledge
33:11from where the city could be seen.
33:13So, on that rocky ledge,
33:15Solomon decided to build a lasting temple
33:18for the God of Israel.
33:24The Temple Mount, or Haram al-Sharif in Arabic,
33:27is the place where the Ark of the Covenant was placed.
33:31Almost exactly on the rock
33:33on which today stands the foundation stone
33:35of the Rock of the Covenant,
33:37the marvellous Islamic construction that is there,
33:40probably the most sacred place in Western civilization
33:43and in the Middle East.
33:47When he finished his construction,
33:49he represented the progress of Israel
33:51in the construction of the Temple Mount,
33:53which was the place where the Ark of the Covenant was placed.
33:57When he finished his construction,
33:59he represented the progress of Israel
34:01in the establishment of a stable and prosperous nation
34:04with a king whose power everyone knew.
34:07But it's also a distance from the original idea
34:10that God always remained with his people
34:13and that he didn't have to have a physical place as a home.
34:18Solomon did not spend money
34:20to build the Temple of Jerusalem.
34:23He brought cedars from Lebanon
34:25and he brought the best stonecutters.
34:28He wanted it to be the most beautiful temple
34:31in the whole region.
34:34He was determined to surpass his father
34:37and one of the great flaws of Solomon's personality
34:41was that he really thought that the bigger, the better.
34:48To build this great temple,
34:50Solomon forced his faithful to work and did not pay them.
34:55Solomon was a ruthless leader.
34:58He ruled behind his own citizens
35:01and anyone who did not agree with him had a problem.
35:07It was what people normally call a despot.
35:12And so all of this begins to add tensions to the kingdom.
35:17When the situation reaches these limits,
35:20it is not uncommon for there to be riots.
35:24You can see people rising up
35:26and trying to overthrow the king.
35:41King Solomon had built the first Jewish temple in Jerusalem
35:45but at the cost of mistreating the citizens
35:48he swore he would protect.
35:50By the end of Solomon's reign,
35:52the people were very discontent.
35:55You have to do forced labor
35:57and you have to enter the military.
36:00You're also raising taxes.
36:02So this was not a kingdom in peace.
36:08The commanders of Solomon
36:10gathered to plan a revolt.
36:14But the king was one step ahead.
36:21The King of Jerusalem
36:32Solomon suffocated the revolt
36:34but the seeds of the rebellion were already planted.
36:39So his reign essentially ended up being a disaster
36:42with more and more revolts as a response to his policies.
36:47Finally, King Solomon died in the year 931 B.C.
36:58One of the ways to look at it
37:00is that King David was the one who was worth it.
37:03Even with all his mistakes,
37:05he was the king that Israel fell in love with.
37:09And then his son Solomon was an impostor
37:14but he was strong,
37:16at least strong enough
37:18to force the tribes to remain united.
37:22And by the time Solomon died,
37:24everything fell apart.
37:27And from then on,
37:29the unified kingdom was divided into two parts.
37:32A northern kingdom,
37:34which was the kingdom of Israel in the north,
37:37and a southern kingdom, which was called Judah.
37:40Each kingdom had its own succession lines
37:43and its own kings.
37:46Israel and Judah would remain in war for the next centuries.
37:51When this unified kingdom is divided,
37:54it becomes Israel and Judah.
37:57And that would later become Samaria and Judea.
38:01And these are the territories
38:03that would become the West Bank and Israel.
38:10So when you study the history of Jerusalem
38:13and appreciate its religious symbolism,
38:16then you start to think,
38:18when did everything go wrong?
38:20What created this great confrontation
38:23between the two communities?
38:25The clash today
38:27around the narrative of Jerusalem
38:30is largely linked
38:32to the way in which its history was exploited.
38:35There are politicians
38:37who want to go back to the history of King David
38:40and say that what happened in Jewish history
38:43is a kind of writing
38:45that gives Judaism and Jews, in reality,
38:48the perpetual ownership of Jerusalem.
38:51So what we really know is what the Bible says,
38:54not the history, but political propaganda.
38:58Jerusalem was not supposed to be all politics.
39:02But in its history,
39:04we see over and over again
39:06the rise of kings
39:08who, even though supposedly
39:10they defend the ideal
39:12under which the country was founded,
39:15end up succumbing to the temptation
39:18to preserve their own power.
39:21Power corrupts,
39:23and absolute power corrupts in an absolute way.
39:27We've heard this expression,
39:29and nowhere in the world
39:31does it fit better than in Jerusalem.
39:34Jerusalem has been transformed
39:37into the city that it is today
39:40because of stories like David's
39:43and Solomon's.
39:45They have not been natural resources,
39:48nor gold, nor oil,
39:50but the history of Jerusalem
39:53has made it the center of the world.
39:56But what about the rest of the world?
40:02After Solomon's mandate,
40:04Jerusalem remained in permanent chaos for centuries.
40:08But all that will change
40:10when a dominant republic
40:12reaches the coasts of Palestine
40:14with a clear goal.
40:16To conquer the whole world.