What I would like to focus on today is a related and highly pertinent issue. I wrote, in my post on the Levy Committee, that:
“…As a nation, we must be firm in our sense of our rights…
“…It is time for our government…to give ambiguous-free messages regarding our rights in the land. And to set in place policies that firmly reflect that message.”
And there is one place where the government — this government and previous governments — has fallen down so badly with regard to our rights that it can only be called shameful.
I refer to our rights on Har Habayit — the Temple Mount.
Credit: Jewish Virtual Library
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The Mount is the single holiest place in Judaism. It is not only where the two Temples stood, it is considered by tradition to be Mount Moriah, the site of the Akeida, the binding of Isaac. (The original Moriah was extended with retaining walls by King Herod, with his expansion of the Second Temple over 2,000 years ago.)
After the War of Independence, eastern Jerusalem and with it the Temple Mount and the Kotel (the Western Wall, a retaining wall of the Mount) were in Jordanian hands, forbidden to Jews for 19 years. With the Six Day War in 1967, Israel liberated eastern Jerusalem. There was great celebration that the Mount was now in Jewish hands. Blowing of shofars. Prayers of gratitude. Dancing.
And then we blew it…
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Predominant on the Mount in 1967, as is the case now, was the Dome of the Rock (left), which is a shrine and not a mosque, and the Al Aqsa Mosque:
Credit: witcombe Credit: IsraelJerusalem.com
From a Jewish perspective, the Dome of the Rock is more significant, as it was built over the site where the Temple had stood. This is not an accident.
For many centuries the area was controlled by a succession of Muslim regimes. These two structures were built on the Mount at the end of the 7th century and the beginning of the 8th century of the Common Era by the Umayyads — some 700 years after the Roman destruction of the Second Temple.
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Within days of the Israeli liberation of the Temple Mount, Moshe Dayan, who was then Defense Minister, visited Muslim authorities, and turned over to the Muslims administration of their holy places on the Mount. He wrote in his memoirs (seehttp://www.imra.org.il/story.php3?id=4154) :
“…we would not interfere in the private affairs of the Muslims responsible for their own sanctuaries.
These were two Moslem places of worship, and they had the right to operate them themselves.”
Two matters he insisted upon:
“The Israeli authorities were responsible for overall security,” and “we would introduce…freedom of Jewish access to the compound…without limitation or payment. This compound…was our Temple Mount. Here stood our Temple during ancient times, andit would be inconceivable for Jews not to be able freely to visit this holy place now that Jerusalem was under our rule.” (Emphasis added)
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But there was yet something else:
After Rabbi Shlomo Goren, chief IDF chaplain, brought a group to pray on the Mount on Tisha B’Av, the day of mourning for the destruction of the Temples:
“The matter came up for consideration by the government. Although, understandably, no minister wished to take a formal position stating baldly that Jews were forbidden to pray on the Temple Mount, it was decided to ‘maintain the current policy,’ which in fact banned them from doing so. It was evident that if we did not prevent Jews from praying in what was now a mosque compound, matters would get out of hand and lead to a religious clash.” (Emphasis added)
How painful it is to write this. The precedent, which exists to this day, was set. A Jewish government preventing Jews from praying on the site of the holiest place to Jews so that Muslims would not riot. The High Court of Israel has said that Jews have a right to pray on the Mount, but Israeli security personnel forbid this to avoid “a religious clash.”
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I believe that Dayan was shockingly naive. He wrote:
“I was convinced that precisely because control was now in our hands it was up to us to show broad tolerance.”
Broad tolerance my foot. We caved with regard to asserting our own rights. Perhaps he thought “tolerance” would beget good will and moderation on the part of the Muslims, sort of a cooperative spirit. But it doesn’t work that way — give them an inch and they grab for a mile.
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I have written the above as a necessary historical background. I cannot here give all the details of happenings with regard to the Mount in the years since 1967. The Muslim Wakf (trust) that manages the Mount has been under different authorities, Jordanian and Palestinian Arab, at different times, for example.
What we need to know is that the situation is growing worse. It is certainly not the case that Jews are able to visit freely on the Mount today: there are multiple restrictions.
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There is greater religious emphasis placed on the Al Aqsa Mosque by Muslims today. Jerusalem, the holiest of cities for Jews, is, after all, the third holiest city for Muslims after Mecca and Medina. I have written about this before: that greater emphasis is political, not truly religious.
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There was a time when Muslims readily conceded that once a Jewish Temple stood where their shrine now stands. Today they deny this — deny that there is any evidence that there was a Temple.
And with this we get to the heart of the matter: The Muslims are working to destroy evidence of Jewish presence on the Mount.
In 1996, the Muslim authorities did extensive excavation in the corner of the Mount known as Solomon’s Stables, in order to build a huge new mosque. They carelessly (or deliberately) excavated enormous quantities of priceless archeological artifacts, tossing them all into the garbage.
This was able to happen because there was insufficient Israeli attention paid to what the Muslims were doing. Or let me put it another way: the Israeli government may have known and chosen to turn a blind eye so as to avoid a fight with the Muslims.
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The entire argument about rebuilding the Mughrabi Bridge, which runs adjacent to the women’s section of the Kotel and is the only entry way to the Mount for non-Muslims, is also about control. The Wakf is claiming that Israel has no jurisdiction to rebuild, and Jordan, whose cooperation on the matter was sought by Israel, has turned belligerent. And the Netanyahu government caved, declining to build the new permanent bridge that was supposed to replace the temporary one put up when the previous one collapsed after an earthquake.
All about control. And this isn’t even on the Mount, it is clearly and unambiguously on Israeli territory in a place where no Muslim Wakf authority exists.
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In February, YNet ran a piece by Amir Shoan, entitled, “Is Israel losing the Temple Mount war?”
He describes the ongoing desecration of Jewish archeological material on the Mount and the way in which Muslims have ignored Israeli Antiquities Authority guidelines regarding no use of heavy equipment, no depth to be dug greater than 60 centimeters, etc.
In 2007, Ira Pasternack was sent as an inspector on behalf of the Antiquities Authority to supervise excavations. What he saw — including work deliberately carried on in secret at night — scandalized him. The Authority’s stipulations were ignored; he issued a report.
Archeology expert Dr. Gabai Barkai, a world-renowned expert on Temple era excavations, called what was going on “First rate barbarity.”
Mideastern affairs expert Dr. Mordechai Kedar described what was taking place as part of an Arab practice known as “erasing the signs” — eliminating the remnants of any civilization that preceded Islam.
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In 2008, the State Comptroller’s office launched an investigation of what was happening on the Mount and then issued its own report. But a gag order was placed on the report “for security reasons” by the Knesset State Control Committee.
Intelligence officials cited in this article maintain that there is no security issue. A senior Shin Bet (security service) official is quoted as saying, “I’m ashamed. This is akin to cheapening national security to the lowest point possible.”
According to Shoan:
“Conversations and interviews held with dozens of officials involved in drafting the State Comptroller’s secret report indicate that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is among the senior officials interested in shelving the document. Attorney Yisrael Caspi, who represents a group fighting the destruction on Temple Mount, says the PM is unequivocally responsible for the ongoing failure.
“‘One cannot underestimate the prime minister’s responsibility for the state of affairs on Temple Mount; one can only refer to it as absolute responsibility,” [Caspi] said.”
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The Prime Minister’s office responded to the charges by Caspi, saying that it was the Knesset committee and not the government that was responsible. And that there were relevant reasons for keeping the report under taps.
But Shoan says:
“After the opening of the Western Wall Tunnels in 1996 and the subsequent riots at the site, then-PM Netanyahu (this was his first term) agreed to unilateral Wakf steps in the area. The Wakf almost immediately embarked on excavation work…”
Better keep the Muslims happy, it would seem, than risk more riots. A very very bad policy.
http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-4194585,00.html
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I will not quibble here regarding which official is responsible for precisely what — although the “prime” minister’s office is where the buck does stop and committees of the Knesset do take instruction from him. All I know is that someone had better take a stand on Jewish rights, and quickly. For we may have hit bottom now:
It was recently revealed that the Wakf has erected scaffolding on the Foundation Stone that is inside the Dome of Rock in order to do renovation work. This stone — Even HaShtiah — is believed to be the place where the high priest entered into the Holy of Holies on Yom Kippur. It is the very core, the very heart of traditional Jewish sanctity. And apparently the Muslims, in doing the renovation, chose deliberately to place the scaffold on the Stone.
Credit: Makor Rishon
A group of activists, represented by attorney Aviad Visoly, issued an “urgent plea” over the weekend to Israeli Police Commissioner Yohanan Danino to stop what was going on. According to Visoly, photos in Makor Rishon showed the Stone covered by “building material, rubble, and tools.” This, he said, constituted desecration of a holy place, specifically forbidden in the Protection of Holy Places Law.
Wrote Visoly:
“To the best of my knowledge, the Jerusalem District Police commander and his officers…know about this, and are doing nothing to stop the crime.”
He alluded to “indifference, contempt, and even hostility” on the part of the police with regard to the Jewish holy status of the Temple Mount.
http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-4250300,00.html
No one, it seems, wants to rock the Muslim boat.
Just yesterday, the Temple Mount Faithful appealed to the High Court to call a halt to this work.
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You don’t have to be a religious Jew who mourns the destruction of the First and Second Temples and longs for a Third Temple to be constructed on the Mount to get it. You don’t have to be Jewish at all to get it:
The Temple Mount was the site of the two Temples that were at the very center of Jewish peoplehood. This site represents the most sacred part of ancient Jewish heritage in the land. Muslim attempts to erase archeological evidence of Jewish presence on the Mount are part and parcel of the attempt to delegitimize Israel and to claim that the Palestinian Arabs are the true indigenous people of the land.
Any Jew in a position of leadership here in Israel who treats the desecration of Judaism and Jewish artifacts on the Temple Mount as if it is an inconsequential matter — or not worth risking Arab violence for — is squandering our heritage and weakening our claims to this land.
How do we demand the right to build in Judea and Samaria (which is where I began this posting) if our rights on the Mount are blithely surrendered?
And don’t imagine that the Muslims don’t understand this.
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We must not permit this situation to sustain itself. Voices must be raised. So-called leaders must be held accountable. And Jews in large numbers, both Israelis and visitors, must visit the Mount.
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Whatever was originally intended, when the muslims were given the temple mount, it is no longer relevant. The “gesture” offered to them has been abused and should now be reversed. The muslims have repeatedly spit in the face of the Jews rather than being grateful for being allowed to operate their mosque. It is time they were ejected and the mosque closed with no one allowed inside. Any obstruction of the exercise of Jewish religious rights in the land of Israel by the government of Israel is a scandalous crime reminiscent of Nazi and Muslim behavior. That one Jew should do this to another in the name of facilitating they who spit in Jewish faces is despicable. Any Jewish government that colludes in such criminality is illegitimate.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D2Hbw7FdxnU&feature=colike
This is my daughter Tzipporah, who lives within sight of the Temple Mount, in an interview.
@ terence:
Both edifices are early 20th century reconstructions as both were nearly destroyed by previous earthquakes and Muslim neglect throughout the centuries. Before the Jews started populating Palestine Muslims couldn’t care less about either structure.
Islam/Palis Arabs along with some Jews = Amalek, Christianity = Edom.
In the end it will be Islam fighting Christendom to the death.
You sound like a Jewish Amalikite.
Note: My definition of Amalek is as a moral or metaphysical enemy of the Jewish people.–
Besides myself there must be at least 100 million Christian religious fanatics who believe just like me. So you perception is a bit lame and quite a bit off the truth of the matter.
I have been moderated out of existence, for an extended period of time. Check back in a day or so, to see what I said. FYI, Yamit, it was much in line with your posting.
@ terence:
Terrence, I wasn’t speaking about narrow minded so-called believers, nor proposing a theocracy. I don’t think, for example, that Ed Katz is especially narrow-minded: He calls a spade a spade, because he has a faith, or “belief”, in the obvious. You do not have such a faith; instead, you believe in phantoms and bogeymen controlling the fate of the Jewish people. The reality is that the Jews can do what they damned well please in Israel, and need be afraid of nobody. They have even proved this, time after time, until they started becoming so afraid of ghosts that they started giving away land and rights for nothing.
If you are an Israeli (something you haven’t let on yet), you are in that land for one reason only: God gave that land to you. That is the reality of the matter, and hundreds of millions of non-Jews are convinced of it. If it weren’t for the land grant given you in the Bible, you would have no more right there than the Italians, the Iranians, the Kurds, the Turks, the British, the Greeks, the Arabs or the French, or, for that matter, than the Brazilians and Chinese. It’s about time that you, as a rightful owner and inhabitant of the land, come to realize the reality that so many of us non-Jews take for granted.
@ terence:
CAPTCHA
TO: HWHNN
Last night I saw upon the stair
A little man who wasn’t there
He wasn’t there again today
Oh, how I wish he’d go away
When I came home last night at three
The man was waiting there for me
But when I looked around the hall
I couldn’t see him there at all
Go away, go away
Don’t you come back any more
Go away, go away
And please don’t slam the door…..(SLAM!)
@ BlandOatmeal:
Sorry Blind Oats- Israel was created as a secular Jewish state, not a theological narrow minded one,fort believing and non believing ones.. Israel has been at war with the Arab states, not with the Muslim world community at large.Israel needs more enemies like you need herpes. Why create more enemies by not respecting Muslim sensibilities.
@ terence:
Terrence, are you a quadriplegic? You seem to think like one. Ed Katz, on the other hand, is remarkably sane. Jews like you, who imagine themselves constrained by straitjackets of political correctness, don’t actually belong in Israel, and I hope you don’t live there. The Land of Israel was created to accomodate able-bodied, sane, BELIEVING Jews, who see simple instructions in Torah and act upon them. All others are a burden upon the Land.
@ Laura:
and how would you go about doing that? Have you not heard, many thousands of Our troops have given up their lives and have received grevious wounds attempting to do just that- with little success.
@ Ed Katz:
Given the political climate today, there is as much of a chance as a snow ball in hell that any one of your proposals would ever be enacted.
What would be an architectural and archeological atrocity- the demolition of the Dome of the Rock and the Al Aqsa Mosque. other than some blind religious fanatics , I know of no one is in favor of such a hare brained act.
I sit among all of the readers of this blog and all of the Jews in Israel and around the world, amazed at all of the stupidity oozing from their mouths, repeating the same old cliche’s about what to do when all they have to do is read the Torah. It is spelled out in an a way that easy to understand. I’ll explain:
1.All the land west of the Jordan belongs to Israel.
2.Annex all of Judea, Samaria and Gaza.
3.Have allegiance sworn by the Arabs who wish to live in Israel and deport all others.
4.Place the IDF, in strength on all borders.
5.Pass the death law for all criminal actions that result in murder.
6.Stand strong against all enemies within and without.
Now that’s not so hard to understand.
@ Yidvocate:
It is the atheist orthodox rabbanim who are mostly to blame especially the Chief Rabbinate.
Moshe Dyan is given credit or blame for handing the Tempple Mount to the Wakf. The truth is the religious orthodoxy didn’t want it.
THE POLITICAL ROLE OF THE ISRAELI CHIEF RABBINATE IN THE TEMPLE MOUNT QUESTION1
Yoel Cohen
@ Per:
Arlene Kushner replied to my query as follows:
An Abysmal situation to be sure but just ask yourself what would the Muslims due in the face of the slightest most trivial perceived violation or disrespect to Islam compared to the Jewish reaction to a litany of dire desecrations perpetrated by the Muslims?
I say the Jews deserve the humiliation they harvest as they permit it to happen and the Muslims deserve the status they have asserted through their resolve.
As much as it pains me to write this, the Jews, to their everlasting shame have no one to blame but themselves.
I found a website that should answer nearly all the questions posed here. The Dome was built on the site whereupon Pontius Pilate supposedly set up his judgment seat. The “footprints of J__” were thought to have been impressed into the rock there, and a church was erected there in the fourth century. That church was destroyed by the Jews and Persians; and the Muslims built the current structure (which has been embellished over the years) as a place of apostasy for CHRISTIANS (not Jews, who were not interested in the site). The required form of devotion at the site bears this out:
And also, when will we finally come to the realization that compromise and good will gestures toward muslims are an exercise in futility? They never ever ever reciprocate. They never compromise. Theirs is an absolutist ideology with the goal of total victory. So total victory should be our goal.
When will Jews and Christians learn that giving in to muslim threats of violence only makes the situation worse? They must be made to know that their threats are futile. Jews need to take back what rightfully belongs to us. Moshe Dayan squandered a great victor. It is criminal that Jews are forbidden to pray at Judaism’s holiest site.
I don’t know how many here realize the Muslim doctrine about J__. They do not consider him fully human, believing that he was miraculously conceived in Mary as some sort of glorified genie; who never actually died, but only appeared to do so. It’s curious that they use the former place of worship of Hashem, to display their disdain for the Christian Messiah. The mosque is intentionally built as a SMALLER duplicate of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, in full Christian style. That is most curious, as it elevates the Christian church, in all matters except its location, to a higher status than the Muslim shrine. The Muslims seem to have intentionally elevated the Christians over the Jews, then used the place to write scriptures mocking the Christians. Ground up, it would make good paving material.
Ah, the Golden Dome! It’s the main landmark of Jerusalem, the subject of so amny “Israel” postcards, and the inspiration of the Israeli Jewish patriotic song, “Yerushalayim shel zahav”. It’s a Muslim “shrine”, but little used by the Muslims. Its primary function is as a placemaker: The Temple of the Jews — called “A House of Prayer for all goyim” in the Bible, it has become the house of prayer for none, an edict enforced jointly by the Wakf and by the Israeli Jewish government. The Jews lost it in 70 AD; because they presumed a relationship with God that they no longer had, a relationship that was cut off by their self-pride and false piety. The Pagan Romans left the place desolate; but the Christians remembered it and built a church there, displaying their roots in that place. Like the Muslims, the Christians used it mainly as a placemaker; for their real holy sites, even in Jerusalem, were elsewhere. The Muslim attachment to it was not to show any roots in the place, but simply to spite the Jews and mock them, as they supported the Muslims for centuries against the Christians. The Frankish Crusaders re-took the place in passing, and re-converted it into its original church; though their objective in taking that city was not Har HaBait; it was the Church of the Holy Sepulchre. Then the Franks got distracted, being more interested in burning Christian “heretics” at the stake than in fighting the Muslims, and they abandoned the Holy City to the Egyptians and Kurds. The last restored the place-marker to “holy” status — “holy”, only in the sense that it was in the district of the so-called “Al Aksa” mosque, named after a place near Mecca where Muhammed died. Since then, they have prayed five times a day, with their heads bowed to Mecca and their assholes pointed at the Holy of Holies. Since 1967, they have done so with the blessing of the Israeli Jewish government.
It’s an Abomination that makes Desolate.
I said it here many times, I can’t understand why the Israeli government ever agreed to not permitting Jews to pray at their Temple.
Jerusalem, the Holiest City, the capital of the Sovereign Jewish Nation where others are permitted to pray at the Jewish Temple except Jews.
Strange, Islam threatens the world at large especially the Jews while on the other hand Jews do not wish harm to anyone and live by this example and yet are not able to practice their faith at their own Temple.
This picture is upsetting.
@ Per:
I thought that was odd too. I think the answer is that they built a structure but not the present one. I think that a few centuries later it was rebuilt. I’ll ask Arlene.
Some people still seem to believe that this gang of Arab Bedouins built a Roman octogone and a Byzantine basilica in Jerusalem only a few years after they left the Arabian desert.
I watched a segment on Tuesday night live in Jerusalem a few years ago. I couldn’t believe the process that Jews go through to ascend the Temple Mount. Security checking everything that they had with them. Jeremy Gimpel did it for laughs, showing that he couldn’t even bring a Barbara Streisand record with him. It was funny, but shocking at the same time.