(From Arutz 7 radio)
Last Monday, Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement, Jews all over the world fasted and prayed for forgiveness. The special prayer book for Yom Kippur repeatedly makes reference to our longing to rebuild the Holy Temple on the Mountain of G-d.
What happened since the glorious days of the Six-Day War in 1967, is indeed a tragic story. According to the Head of the Temple Mount Faithful, Gershon Solomon, who was one of the soldiers who liberated the Mount, one of the happiest moments of his whole life was when he heard his division commander, Motta Gur, shout: "The Temple Mount is in our hands!" And on the fourth day of the war, for twelve glorious hours, the Israeli flag waved proudly over the Temple Mount as confirmation of the miracle just experienced by the Jewish People.
But Defense Minister Moshe Dayan ordered the Israeli flag taken down. He handed over the administration of the Temple Mount to the Arabs, with the Jews retaining only nominal sovereignty over the site. Extraordinary! In victory, we left our holiest place in the hands of our enemies. Moshe Dayan's motivation is thought to have been that to do otherwise would lead to unending strife with the entire, enormous Muslim world.
Did Israel's generosity earn it goodwill from the Muslims? In no way! Whereas in the beginning, the Arabs may not have fully comprehended the generosity and/or stupidity of their Jewish conquerors, they soon realized that the nominal Jewish sovereignty over the Temple Mount could be abrogated by continual threats of violence. These threats have increased during the last thirty-five years. Who says that terror doesn't pay, or even just threats of violence? And slowly we lost control even of the nominal sovereignty over the Temple Mount.
I feel a great sadness when I reread a very optimistic article in the Jerusalem Post of June 28, 1967, entitled "Eshkol Tells Religious Leaders of Free Access to Holy Places". (I hope you paid attention to the date: June 28, 1967). I still have a crumbling copy of that newspaper issue which I have managed to save for 35 years.
Prime Minister Eshkol spoke to the religious leaders assembled in his office and told them that all Holy Places and places of worship in Jerusalem would now be freely accessible to members of all faiths without discrimination. The Mufti of the Arab Muslim community of Jerusalem entreated Prime Minister Levi Eshkol to grant the Muslims some favors; that they should have access to the Al Aksa Mosque all week and at all hours.
He said that when a Muslim dies, he must be brought to a Mosque for prayers. The Mufti also asked that only police be permitted at Mosque courtyards, and not Israeli soldiers. And, of course, Prime Minister Eshkol granted all of the Mufti's requests.
Finally the Prime Minister spoke. He said, that out of the horrors of war, declared to destroy Israel, had emerged hope and almost unlimited possibilities for the development of the peoples of the region. Mr. Eshkol spoke of the spirit of harmony and brotherhood "so necessary for a peaceful settlement of Israel-Arab differences".
How naive these Jewish conquerors were! Did they not even have an inkling of the depths of the Arab-Muslim hatred toward all infidels? The irony is that when Eshkol promised the religious leaders free access to Holy Places, he could not have envisioned that in the year 2002--only 35 years later--neither Jews nor Christians would be allowed to set foot on the Temple Mount.
The situation has worsened year by year. The Muslims, in order to achieve their goals, either threatened to riot, or actually engaged in violence, such as throwing stones on the Jews praying below at the Western Wall. The situation deteriorated even more when Ehud Barak became Prime Minister. He permitted the Muslims to build an additional Mosque in the so-called Solomon's Stables. (By the way, I want to point out that Solomon's Stables is a misnomer. This was actually a prayer hall at the time of the Second Temple.)
Ehud Barak completely ignored that the Muslims illegally brought in bulldozers and heavy equipment on the Temple Mount. In the past, I have interviewed prominent archeologists in this regard who have tried to alert the public to Barak's complete irresponsibility in ignoring the desecration and destruction by the Arabs of all evidence of Jewish history.
As these archeologists predicted, we are now experiencing the consequences of faulty political decisions. Many of us believe that these are the consequences, as well, of our allowing the desecration of G-d's Holy Mountain.
After years of completely ignoring the Muslim Wakf's illegal and unsupervised construction on the Jewish People's holiest site, the Israeli government now finds itself in a quandary. A ten-meter-wide bulge in the southern wall has emerged, and archeologists are warning that it could disintegrate into a heap of rubble at any moment. Archeologist Dr. Eilat Mazar says that the question now is not if the wall will cave in, but "whether the wall will collapse on thousands of Arab worshippers, or if it will happen in a controlled manner."
Jerusalem Mayor Ehud Olmert said: "There are serious grounds for the concern that it could collapse."
To quote the Jerusalem Post editorial of August 28, 2002, entitled "Mounting Irresponsibility":
"It is therefore nothing less than scandalous that Sharon and Internal Security Minister Uzi Landau, who oversees the police, would allow the Wakf to continue to thumb its nose at the law in open defiance of the state and its institutions. Though this studied indifference has typified successive Israeli governments of both the Left and the Right, that is hardly a convincing excuse to permit such lawlessness to continue.
The Wakf needs to be held accountable for its actions on the Temple Mount, and it is time for Israel to finally assert its full sovereignty over the area. It can start doing so by putting an immediate end to all Wakf construction on the site. Teams of engineers and archeologists should be dispatched immediately to determine how best to prevent a catastrophic total collapse of the southern wall of the Mount, and all measures necessary to repair and refurbish it should be undertaken forthwith.
Failure to do so will not only send a message of Israeli weakness to the Palestinian Authority, which controls the Muslim Wakf, but could very well imperil the structural integrity of the site itself. Israel has thus far refrained from taking action for fear of how the Muslim world would react. But should the southern wall indeed collapse, it is not too difficult to imagine just who the Arab states would decide to blame. The time to act, therefore, is now, before it is too late."
Our guest tonight is journalist and commentator, Evelyn Gordon. She also writes articles for the Jerusalem Post.
The complete interview with Evelyn Gordon can be accessed at:
www.IsraelNationalNews.com/metafiles/asx/wig.asx
Last Monday, Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement, Jews all over the world fasted and prayed for forgiveness. The special prayer book for Yom Kippur repeatedly makes reference to our longing to rebuild the Holy Temple on the Mountain of G-d.
What happened since the glorious days of the Six-Day War in 1967, is indeed a tragic story. According to the Head of the Temple Mount Faithful, Gershon Solomon, who was one of the soldiers who liberated the Mount, one of the happiest moments of his whole life was when he heard his division commander, Motta Gur, shout: "The Temple Mount is in our hands!" And on the fourth day of the war, for twelve glorious hours, the Israeli flag waved proudly over the Temple Mount as confirmation of the miracle just experienced by the Jewish People.
But Defense Minister Moshe Dayan ordered the Israeli flag taken down. He handed over the administration of the Temple Mount to the Arabs, with the Jews retaining only nominal sovereignty over the site. Extraordinary! In victory, we left our holiest place in the hands of our enemies. Moshe Dayan's motivation is thought to have been that to do otherwise would lead to unending strife with the entire, enormous Muslim world.
Did Israel's generosity earn it goodwill from the Muslims? In no way! Whereas in the beginning, the Arabs may not have fully comprehended the generosity and/or stupidity of their Jewish conquerors, they soon realized that the nominal Jewish sovereignty over the Temple Mount could be abrogated by continual threats of violence. These threats have increased during the last thirty-five years. Who says that terror doesn't pay, or even just threats of violence? And slowly we lost control even of the nominal sovereignty over the Temple Mount.
I feel a great sadness when I reread a very optimistic article in the Jerusalem Post of June 28, 1967, entitled "Eshkol Tells Religious Leaders of Free Access to Holy Places". (I hope you paid attention to the date: June 28, 1967). I still have a crumbling copy of that newspaper issue which I have managed to save for 35 years.
Prime Minister Eshkol spoke to the religious leaders assembled in his office and told them that all Holy Places and places of worship in Jerusalem would now be freely accessible to members of all faiths without discrimination. The Mufti of the Arab Muslim community of Jerusalem entreated Prime Minister Levi Eshkol to grant the Muslims some favors; that they should have access to the Al Aksa Mosque all week and at all hours.
He said that when a Muslim dies, he must be brought to a Mosque for prayers. The Mufti also asked that only police be permitted at Mosque courtyards, and not Israeli soldiers. And, of course, Prime Minister Eshkol granted all of the Mufti's requests.
Finally the Prime Minister spoke. He said, that out of the horrors of war, declared to destroy Israel, had emerged hope and almost unlimited possibilities for the development of the peoples of the region. Mr. Eshkol spoke of the spirit of harmony and brotherhood "so necessary for a peaceful settlement of Israel-Arab differences".
How naive these Jewish conquerors were! Did they not even have an inkling of the depths of the Arab-Muslim hatred toward all infidels? The irony is that when Eshkol promised the religious leaders free access to Holy Places, he could not have envisioned that in the year 2002--only 35 years later--neither Jews nor Christians would be allowed to set foot on the Temple Mount.
The situation has worsened year by year. The Muslims, in order to achieve their goals, either threatened to riot, or actually engaged in violence, such as throwing stones on the Jews praying below at the Western Wall. The situation deteriorated even more when Ehud Barak became Prime Minister. He permitted the Muslims to build an additional Mosque in the so-called Solomon's Stables. (By the way, I want to point out that Solomon's Stables is a misnomer. This was actually a prayer hall at the time of the Second Temple.)
Ehud Barak completely ignored that the Muslims illegally brought in bulldozers and heavy equipment on the Temple Mount. In the past, I have interviewed prominent archeologists in this regard who have tried to alert the public to Barak's complete irresponsibility in ignoring the desecration and destruction by the Arabs of all evidence of Jewish history.
As these archeologists predicted, we are now experiencing the consequences of faulty political decisions. Many of us believe that these are the consequences, as well, of our allowing the desecration of G-d's Holy Mountain.
After years of completely ignoring the Muslim Wakf's illegal and unsupervised construction on the Jewish People's holiest site, the Israeli government now finds itself in a quandary. A ten-meter-wide bulge in the southern wall has emerged, and archeologists are warning that it could disintegrate into a heap of rubble at any moment. Archeologist Dr. Eilat Mazar says that the question now is not if the wall will cave in, but "whether the wall will collapse on thousands of Arab worshippers, or if it will happen in a controlled manner."
Jerusalem Mayor Ehud Olmert said: "There are serious grounds for the concern that it could collapse."
To quote the Jerusalem Post editorial of August 28, 2002, entitled "Mounting Irresponsibility":
"It is therefore nothing less than scandalous that Sharon and Internal Security Minister Uzi Landau, who oversees the police, would allow the Wakf to continue to thumb its nose at the law in open defiance of the state and its institutions. Though this studied indifference has typified successive Israeli governments of both the Left and the Right, that is hardly a convincing excuse to permit such lawlessness to continue.
The Wakf needs to be held accountable for its actions on the Temple Mount, and it is time for Israel to finally assert its full sovereignty over the area. It can start doing so by putting an immediate end to all Wakf construction on the site. Teams of engineers and archeologists should be dispatched immediately to determine how best to prevent a catastrophic total collapse of the southern wall of the Mount, and all measures necessary to repair and refurbish it should be undertaken forthwith.
Failure to do so will not only send a message of Israeli weakness to the Palestinian Authority, which controls the Muslim Wakf, but could very well imperil the structural integrity of the site itself. Israel has thus far refrained from taking action for fear of how the Muslim world would react. But should the southern wall indeed collapse, it is not too difficult to imagine just who the Arab states would decide to blame. The time to act, therefore, is now, before it is too late."
Our guest tonight is journalist and commentator, Evelyn Gordon. She also writes articles for the Jerusalem Post.
The complete interview with Evelyn Gordon can be accessed at:
www.IsraelNationalNews.com/metafiles/asx/wig.asx