Holy City, Silenced

Normally a bustling center of religion, tourism and commerce, Jerusalem's Old City feels more like a ghost town since October 7

- JASON FIELDS

FOR AS LONG AS THE HOLY LAND HAS BEEN HOLY, pilgrims have made their way to Jerusalem. They have come to offer sacrifices to God, or to bear witness to his suffering. They have come to pray and to contemplate their place in God's creationand to buy cheap souvenirs, including T-shirts freshly made with the emblem of their colleges back home.

The point is, they have always come.

But since October 7, they haven't.

"Work stopped instantly," after October 7, said guide Dvir Hollander of Just Jerusalem Tours, sitting in his kitchen at Kibbutz Ramat Rahel, just outside Jerusalem. A fixture leading tours of the Old City for many years, Hollander has spent the last months largely at home, picking cherries and teaching tennis.

The Hamas militants from Gaza who killed nearly 1,200 people in Israel-and kidnapped 251, including Ofir Engel, Hollander's teenage nephew-were accompanied by rocket attacks that reached far into the country, with some aimed at Jerusalem. Rocket attacks on other parts of Israel have long been common, but because Jerusalem is holy ground for Muslims, too, relatively few missiles are aimed there.

Major airlines don't fly in war zones, so flights were canceled by the thousand, and for many weeks. Even now, 10 months after the attacks, commercial flights are relatively few and very expensive.

For people like Hollander, who count on a slice of the $6 billion Israeli annual tourism pie to provide for their families, it has been devastating.

Shuttered Stores

In Jerusalem's Old City, a strange new sound has emerged instead of the usual cacophony: quiet. In place of the typical din of tourists and religious pilgrims, the listener can hear shoes on stone in the middle of the day.