(JNS) The importance of the City of David, the capital of ancient Israel, and specifically its Pilgrimage Road, was the topic of discussion at an event featuring US Ambassador to Israel Mike Huckabee and former IDF Spokesman Maj. (res.) Doron Spielman at the National Library of Israel in Jerusalem on Dec. 9.

The ancient site’s excavation has aroused worldwide opposition.

The Pilgrimage Road, a Second Temple-era route, connects the Pool of Siloam to the Temple Mount. It is located just south of the Old City of Jerusalem and was used by Jewish pilgrims ascending to the Temple on the three major festivals of Passover, Shavuot and Sukkot. It is viewed as one of the most significant archaeological discoveries in recent times.

The road opened to visitors on Sept. 15. Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and US Secretary of State Marco Rubio were in attendance, along with other luminaries, including Huckabee.

“It was here that the lessons that formed the bedrock and the foundations of our laws, of the principles upon which we decide what is right and what is wrong, were built upon,” Rubio said at the September ceremony marking the opening.

Former Israeli government spokesman Eylon Levy, who served as M.C. at Tuesday’s event, explained the importance of the find: “[T]his place is not just an archaeological curiosity. It is the physical proof of the Jewish people’s origin story. It is the anchor of our indigeneity in the land of Israel, and is the foundation on which both Israel and, in a very real sense, America have both built their modern identity.”

It is because of its importance not just to Jews, but to Western civilization, that excavating the site has engendered so much hostility, Spielman and Huckabee agreed.

Former Israeli government spokesperson Eylon Levy speaks at an event on the City of David at the National Library of Israel in Jerusalem on Dec. 9, 2025. Photo by Matt Kaminsky/JNS.

“I can’t think of another archaeological site in the world that has faced as much violence, so much discreditation,” said Spielman, who has spent more than two decades helping to turn the City of David into a major archaeological site.

He was one of the first, along with four others, to discover the road.

He described how he was “scared out of my mind” as he crawled along an ancient water tunnel in search of the Pilgrimage Road.

“Over our heads, we saw the stairs of the pool, the stairs of the road. It was unbelievable,” said Spielman, who is vice president of the City of David Foundation.

The next day, as word spread, Arab employees in the City of David didn’t show up for work. “We were not sure why, but we quickly found out. On the telephone poles of the City of David there were names written in Arabic. They were the names of every [Arab] worker in the City of David,” he said, explaining that it was a message to those workers, a threat to stop digging at the site.

The Arabs understood faster than the Jews that the Pilgrimage Road would become competition to the hajj, the Muslim pilgrimage to Mecca. They realized millions of Jews and Christians would flock to the site and walk the road, a constant living reminder of an ancient route that proved Jews are indigenous to the Land of Israel.

“We need look no further than what our enemies attack to know what is most important for us,” Spielman said. “They did everything they could to throw arrows and bullets and words at that target.”

Spielman said the battle to force Israel to give up the excavations at the City of David began locally with NGOs, fueled by European funding, protesting and petitioning Israel’s High Court. The Northern Branch of the Islamic Movement in Israel, a Muslim Brotherhood group, also opposed the excavations.

Doron Spielman, vice president of the City of David Foundation and author of “When the Stones Speak,” addresses attendees at the National Library of Israel in Jerusalem on Dec. 9, 2025. Photo by Matt Kaminsky/JNS.

Accusations varied from displacing Arab residents to more conspiratorial claims that the excavations were intended to undermine the Al-Aksa mosque on the Temple Mount.

When local efforts failed, opponents turned to the United Nations agency UNESCO (United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization), which condemned Israel’s archaeological activities. The then-Obama administration was also enlisted. It issued a condemnation when Jews moved into 25 apartments in the City of David, falsely accusing them of forcing Arabs out, Spielman said.

Levy noted that proving Jewish “indigeneity” to the Land is a relatively new phenomenon because in the past the Jewish connection to the Land of Israel was a fact beyond dispute. It was the rise of ahistorical Palestinian claims asserting that Jews were foreign to the region, that have turned “indigeneity” into an important talking point.

Spielman said that telling the story of Israeli indigeneity is crucial to countering the Palestinian claim that “we stole their land.” He lamented that the Jewish people, normally excellent storytellers, have failed to tell the “greatest story on earth,” that of their return to their ancient homeland.

Levy asked whether a durable regional peace is possible if Israel’s neighbors do not accept the Jewish people’s native status in their ancestral homeland.

Huckabee agreed that recognition of Jewish indigeneity by Israel’s neighbors would advance peace. He said the greatest proof of Israel’s claim is the Bible, the original “title deed” to the land, an unbreakable covenant beginning with Abraham.

When people ask him why as a Christian he should care, Huckabee answers that the Bible shows that God keeps his promises, and in turn confirms the foundations of his own faith, which are rooted in the Bible.

“Without that Jewish faith, I don’t have a faith. You can have a Jewish faith without a Christian connection. You cannot have a Christian faith without the Jewish connection,” Huckabee said.

He stressed that God made his promise in a historical and geographical context. There is a Mount Moriah where King David stood, a Pilgrimage Road where people walked 2,000 years ago, he said. The existence of these places is “then, now and forever … irrefutable, indisputable validation of this being the Jewish homeland.

“Whether we’re Jewish or not, it’s a matter of accepting the reality and embracing it,” Huckabee said.

US Ambassador Mike Huckabee speaks at the National Library of Israel in Jerusalem during an event on the City of David’s biblical and historical significance, Dec. 9, 2025. Photo by Matt Kaminsky/JNS.

The participants also touched on the public relations war, one that Israel struggles to wage effectively.

Spielman said that Jews must actively assert and defend their claim to their ancestral land. He said their opponents have spent decades shaping a misleading narrative that has become widely accepted, while the Jewish side has been “asleep at the wheel.” He urged Jews to speak confidently and fearlessly about their history to counter those long‑standing narratives.

Huckabee said defending Israel begins by letting people know “that there is something to believe in. I’m convinced that many young people want to believe in something that gives their life a sense of meaning and purpose.”

His second piece of advice was to go where the battle is being fought, which in today’s world is on social media. “Social media is destroying the minds of many young people because they’re being TikTok’d into an ignorance that is very dangerous,” Huckabee said. “I find way too many people who say, ‘I don’t want to get into social media. It’s a nasty sewer.’ Yes, it is, but that’s where the game is being played.”

The key is to project confidence in our beliefs, he said. “That’s how I believe we win the next generation …, [by telling them] there is a valid truth. And it says that if we follow the law, the light of God, then our lives will take on a level of meaning, and our culture, our civilization, will, in fact, be defensible.

“Let’s be the people who express with our lives that we are going somewhere because we know where we come from. That really is the biblical message. That’s the biblical story, and it’s one that we should never be ashamed of,” Huckabee said.

Want more news from Israel?
Click Here to sign up for our FREE daily email updates