This Kotel has heard many prayers This Kotel has seen many walls fall This Kotel has felt wailing women's hands and notes pressed between its stones This Kotel has seen Rabbi Yehuda HaLevi trampled in front of it This Kotel has seen Caesars rising and falling But this Kotel has never before seen paratroopers cry.

This Kotel has seen them tired and exhausted This Kotel has seen them wounded and scratched-up Running towards it with beating hearts, with cries and with silence Pouncing out like predators from the alleyways of the Old City And they're dust-covered and dry-lipped And they're whispering: if I forget you, if I forget you, O Jerusalem And they are lighter than eagles and more tenacious then lions And their tanks are the fiery chariot of Elijah the Prophet And they pass like lightning And they pass in fury And they remember the thousands of terrible years in which we didn't even have a Kotel in front of which we could cry.

And here they are standing in front of it and breathing deeply And here they are looking at it with the sweet pain And the tears fall and they look awkwardly at each other How is it that paratroopers cry? How is it that they touch the wall with feeling? How is it that from crying they move to singing? Maybe it's because these 19-year-olds were born with the birth of Israel Carrying on their backs - 2000 years.

The following are stories of soldiers who took part in returning the Kotel to Jewish People. They have been translated from the Hebrew in the book Sha'ar Ha'aryot ("Lions' Gate").

Moshe Amirav I can't help from smiling today when I recall how we searched for the Kotel. There we ran, a bunch of panting soldiers, wandering around the Temple Mount, looking for a huge stone wall. We didn't even stop to look at the Mosque of Omar, which we'd never seen from so close up. Kadima - forward! We pass the Mograbim gate, pushing, hurrying, and all of a sudden we are stopped, as if hit by lightning. In front of our eyes stands, grey and large, quiet and sad - the Kotel. I remember feeling only once before such a feeling, when I was a child, and my dad brought me up close to the Aron Hakodesh, the ark, and I was afraid someone would pop out of it.

Little by little I started getting closer to the Kotel. Slowly, as if I was sent to pray in front of an ark. I came closer, an emissary of dad, grandpa, greatgrandpa, and all the generations from all the diasporas that didn't make it here, and so they sent me here. Someone said the Shehechianu prayer, and I couldn't say amen. All I could do was put my hand on the rock, and the tears flowing out of my eyes were not mine...they were the tears of all the People of Israel, tears of hope and prayer, Hasidic niguns, Jewish dances, tears that singed and burned the grey heavy stone.

Avraham Duvdevani Alleyways, trash, the smell of corpses, but we could only focus on the golden dome. There, approximately, it should be. We are waking faster and faster, we're almost running. There it is! I've never seen it before, but to me it's like an old friend that you can't mistake. I walk up to the Kotel, stretch out my hand, but my hand hesitates to touch and comes back to me. I close my eyes, take a step forward, slowly and hesitatingly, and press my lips to the rock. And when my lips touch the stone, it released all my emotions. My eyes flowed with tears. A Jewish soldier in the State of Israel kissing history with his lips. Past, present and future in on kiss. No more destruction, no more desertion. With young Jewish blood it was captured and in exchange for their blood: eternity.

Avraham Schechter Was I dreaming? Was it real? My commander touched me and asked "are you wounded?" I leaned on the side, I couldn't move. I woke up and saw the Kotel. I came close, and starting praying, and the words of the prayer, the words I say each day, were different. I felt as if I added on to them the wish that we will never return this place, it's so dear to us and we've paid for it with so much blood after long years of yearning for it. I said the Amidah prayer and asked that this place always be ours, for eternity ours. I felt someone was listening to my prayer up there, and pleased, and that it was accepted. I felt my body weightless. I was floating. Then I heard the shofar blowing and I got the chills and felt my body burning. Friends told me I cried like a child. I wrote home on a piece of scrap paper that I envied no one - I was in the unit that broke into the Old City and got to the Kotel.

Standing at the Wall, Dr. Uri Parent was called to a nearby house. An Arab lady was about to give birth. One soldier heard her screaming and called him. The family was wary of the doctor - he was in uniform and so young. Uri pulled out his instruments, checked the woman, got the family out of the house, and asked for water and a towel. After a few minutes, the woman had a baby girl. Uri congratulated the happy father, and suggested he call her Jamila - beautiful. 5 years after the war, it was discovered that the woman who gave birth was a Jewish woman who married an Arab man. She returned to Judaism, and renamed her daughter T'chiyah - "rebirth."