Jerusalem: City of Faith and Fury

After taking the lands of Canaan, the Israelites wage war against the Philistines under their leader, King Saul. This culminates in the battle of David and Goliath, where the simple shepherd, David, proves so extraordinary he's made ruler of the first United Kingdom of Israel after Saul's death. David captures the city of Jerusalem from the Jebusites, naming the city as his people's new capital. Upon his death, David's son Solomon ascends to the throne, but proves to be a very different ruler than his father. While he achieves immortality by constructing the first Temple, he angers the people of his kingdom in the process and threatens to fracture everything his father built.

When King Herod claims Jerusalem from the Hasmoneans, he angers Cleopatra in Egypt, who wants to reclaim Judea as part of the Egyptian Kingdom. The two are drawn into a complex series of political maneuvers, as the co-ruler of Rome, Mark Antony, tries to control them. Despite this conflict, Herod the Great manages to modernize the ancient city and build the Second Temple, revolutionizing the city of God forever, before the arrival of two new religions that will change everything.

Jerusalem has become a holy city for three of the major faiths of the world, and this brings them into conflict. The tension reaches a climax during the epic battle between Saladin and Richard the Lionheart during the Third Crusade, as Islamic jihad and Christian crusade crash together. The two leaders inspire their armies to fight battle after battle, each determined to claim Jerusalem in the name of their God. As these two prominent military strategists go to war, the fate of the holy city hangs in the balance.

The beginning of World War I finds Jerusalem under Ottoman rule, and the brutal governance of Djemal Pasha. Prince Faisal leads an Arab revolt, aided and encouraged by Britain in the form of its great Middle East adventurer TE Lawrence. The war ends with the British in control, declaring the Crusades finally over and setting in train the city's next great conflict.

While World War II rages, in the Middle East, Palestinian Arabs feel trapped between competing forces. Jewish refugees, fleeing persecution and genocide in Europe, are arriving in increasing numbers, ably led by David Ben-Gurion and Golda Meir, while King Abdullah has his eye on the Holy Land for himself and Transjordan. When the British Mandate ends and the state of Israel is declared, war breaks out immediately. At its end almost a year later, Israel's independence is secured, while Transjordan too has made gains. But the Holy City lies divided, with a no-man's land of barbed wire separating East from West.

Miscalculation and misadventure see Israel and its Arab neighbors at war again in the summer of 1967. But the militaries of Egypt's Gamal Abdel Nasser and Jordan's King Hussein, prove no match for Israeli forces under Defense Minister Moshe Dayan. War comes directly to Jerusalem, with fighting taking place in the narrow streets of the Old City itself. But while Israel emerges victorious, its control of Palestinian Arab communities, on territory ear-marked for a Palestinian state, creates the dilemma still plaguing the Holy Land to this day.