Even the most secular Israeli could not fail to be moved by the thought that the war was divine providence. Within hours of the army’s taking of the Temple, bulldozers began destroying Palestinian homes in front of the Wailing Wall, making it accessible to the Jews for the first time in centuries. Within months, the first settlers, mostly Religious Zionists from Goren’s own village, Kfar Hasidim, and its sister village, Kfar Etzion, began settling the West Bank. With the victory of 1967 and the occupation of Palestinian lands, Secular Zionism, once anathema to many Orthodox Jews, was gradually
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