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We Forget Ee, Jerusalem

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We Forget Ee, Jerusalem eiews We Forget ee, Jerusalem Shmuel Berkovits recovered their property, and a key- “How Dreadful Is is Place!” stone of the Jewish faith. For Dayan, Holiness, Politics, and Justice Israel was now burdened with a for- in Jerusalem and eign religious artifact; the best it the Holy Places in Israel could do was to try not to upset Carta Jerusalem, 2006, Muslim sensitivities. ese contrast- ing attitudes reflect two opposite ap- 576 pages Hebrew. proaches to Zionism: One that sees in it the partial fulfillment of the biblical Reviewed by Emmanuel Navon vision of Jewish redemption, and one that sees in it a strictly practical an- his past May, Israel celebrated swer to the problem of anti-Semitism Tthe fortieth anniversary of Je- and Jewish defenselessness. rusalem’s re-unification, marking the As Shmuel Berkovits demonstrates return of Jerusalem to Jewish control in How Dreadful Is is Place!, a book for the first time in 2,000 years. In on the political, legal, and religious truth, however, Israel never really took significance of holy sites in Israel, the control of Jerusalem’s holiest site, the Israeli government has consistently Temple Mount. Even as Chief Rabbi adopted the second approach in its of the Israel Defense Forces (IDF) treatment of the Temple Mount since Shlomo Goren famously stood at the 1967. Focusing mainly on post-state newly liberated Western Wall and policies toward holy sites, but draw- blew the shofar, Minister of Defense ing on a wealth of primary and sec- Moshe Dayan, contemplating his ondary Jewish, Muslim, and Chris- victory from nearby Mount Scopus, tian historical sources, Berkovits’ is said to have wondered, “What do comprehensive work reveals a trou- we need all this Vatican for?” For bling state of affairs: While its Mus- Rabbi Goren, the Jews had rightfully lim neighbors have been calculating, / • even shrewd, in their attempts to guns attacking the Dome of the Rock. claim the Temple Mount as their Husseini was likely also the inspiration own—and, concomitantly, to deny for Yasser Arafat’s incitement to terror any Jewish link to the site at all— against Israeli civilians in September Israel has shown an astonishing lack of 2000 (aptly named the “Al Aksa Inti- determination in defending it. us is fada”), in which he called upon both Israeli control over the Temple Mount the Palestinians and the entire Mus- more precarious today than ever, and, lim world to “defend” the Al Aksa absent a concerted effort on the part mosque from the Jews. No doubt, of Jews both in Israel and abroad, li- threats to the sanctity of the Temple able to disappear altogether. Mount serve as effective incitement to violence in the Arab street. Yet as n February 2007, Arab leaders Berkovits’ history of both Jewish and I threatened to unleash a wave of Arab treatment of the Temple Mount violence against Israel in order to makes clear, it is hardly the Arabs who stop its government from re-building have cause for complaint. a bridge at the Temple Mount’s When Israel liberated the Old Mughrabi Gate. e construction, it City in June 1967, it immediately was claimed, would cause the Temple passed—and enforced—a law guar- Mount to collapse, thus destroying anteeing freedom of worship for the the Dome of the Rock and the adja- three monotheistic religions and the cent Al Aksa mosque. Such ludicrous preservation of their holy places. accusations regarding the Temple However, as Berkovits explains, “e Mount have a long and fruitful tradi- Israeli government, the Jerusalem tion in the Muslim world. As Martin Municipality, and the Antiquities Au- Gilbert shows in Jerusalem in the thority have been hesitant to enforce Twentieth Century (1996), Haj Amin Israeli law on the Temple Mount.” al-Husseini, the former mufti of Je- Over the years, Israel’s High Court of rusalem, claimed the Jews threatened Justice has rejected repeated petitions the security of mosques and other to enjoin the government to let Jews Islamic holy sites in 1929, leading to pray on the Temple Mount—even the Hebron massacre of that year; he individual prayers, conducted silently then hoped to repeat the bloodbath and without ritual objects—for fear on a larger scale in 1931, when he of upsetting Muslim worshippers convened a pan-Islamic conference and triggering Muslim violence. As of in Jerusalem at which he disseminated today, the Israeli police prevent Jews photomontages of Jews with machine from praying on the Temple Mount, • A / • and only in June 2003—three years Jerusalem with a future Palestinian after the PA-controlled Waqf closed state. e United States even went all entrances to the Temple Mount so far, Berkovits writes, as to suggest to Jews—did the Israeli government Palestinian custodianship over the order the police to allow Jews, under Temple Mount and full Palestinian extremely limited conditions, to once sovereignty in the Muslim and Chris- again enter the Temple Mount. tian quarters of the Old City; the deal is approach stands in stark faltered only when the Palestinians re- contrast to the treatment Jewish holy jected the American proposal in favor sites have received at Arab hands. Jor- of full Palestinian sovereignty over all dan, for instance, violated the 1949 parts of Jerusalem conquered by Israel armistice agreement with Israel by in June 1967, including the Temple preventing Jews from praying at the Mount itself. To this, Prime Minister Western Wall; destroying the Old Ehud Barak replied that Israel’s sov- City’s fifty-eight synagogues and ereignty over the Temple Mount was Jewish schools; and desecrating the “the Archimedes point of our exis- Mount of Olives Jewish cemetery by tence.” In response, the Palestinians using gravestones for the construc- claimed that no Jewish Temple had tion of roads, military camps, and ever existed in Jerusalem and denied latrines. e Palestinian Authority any connection between Israel and (PA) also violated its commitment the Temple Mount altogether. under the Oslo accords to protect Considering the position of the Jewish holy sites when, in 2000, it Palestinian side, further negotiation destroyed Joseph’s Tomb in Shechem on the matter of the Temple Mount (Nablus) and an ancient synagogue in might have seemed pointless. Nev- Jericho, and called for the “liberation” ertheless, even after the failed sum- of Rachel’s Tomb in Bethlehem by mit, Israel suggested a division of claiming that the building was actu- sovereignty over the Temple Mount ally an ancient mosque. Finally, the whereby a future Palestinian state Waqf’s massive digging and building would control the upper level, and activities on and under the Temple Israel the lower one. Berkovits reveals Mount have destroyed countless Jew- that then–foreign minister Shlomo ish relics from the First and Second Ben-Ami told him that, in December Temple periods. 2000, he had offered the Palestinians Nonetheless, at Camp David in full and exclusive sovereignty over 2000, the Israeli delegation agreed the Temple Mount (including the to share Israel’s sovereignty over lower level), provided merely that the • A / • Palestinians recognize the site’s holi- Islam declared it sacred. Moreover, ness to the Jewish people and prevent Jerusalem is not mentioned once the destruction of Jewish remnants in the Koran, and, unlike the Jews, on the Mount. Yet even that proposal who pray facing Jerusalem’s Temple was rejected by the Palestinians, who Mount, Muslims pray with their have, to this day, refused to concede backs to it, facing Mecca instead. the Jewish connection to the Temple Nonetheless, Islam considers Jeru- Mount, and are reluctant even to al- salem a holy Muslim city because low Jews to pray in front of a small of Muhammad’s journey there, and section of the Western Wall. Why are the Temple Mount a holy Muslim the Palestinians so determined not to site because it is allegedly the place share sovereignty over the site with from which Muhammad ascended Israel? According to Berkovits, one to heaven (although this idea, too, of the main reasons is that “nothing is not mentioned anywhere in the scares [the Palestinians] more than Koran). As with Judaism, however, the discovery of remnants of the Jeru- Islam views abandoning the Temple salem Temple underneath the Temple Mount to another faith or turning it Mount.” over to alien rule as inconceivable. In- As Berkovits shows, then, the real deed, just as Israel’s Chief Rabbinate issue surrounding the Temple Mount warned Israeli diplomats who partici- is not one of sovereignty so much as pated in the Camp David and Taba it is of the recognition, demanded by summits that abandoning the Temple Jews, of their historical, religious, and Mount was forbidden by Jewish law, national connection to the site—and so, too, did the mufti of Jerusalem the Palestinians’ fervent refusal to state that the entire Temple Mount, grant it. What this refusal reveals including the Western Wall, belongs about the paucity of their own histori- to Islam, and Muslims are forbidden cal claims is exposed by the fascinating to relinquish it to “infidels.” But how wealth of facts and sources Berkovits holy, exactly, does Islamic tradition has so painstakingly amassed. hold the Temple Mount to be? According to Berkovits, contempo- erusalem, which is mentioned 656 rary Palestinian claims to the Temple J times in the Hebrew Bible, was Mount and the Western Wall are the capital of Israel and the holiest site quite new to Islam. Muhammad, he of the Jewish people one thousand points out, made a point of elimi- years before it was considered holy by nating pagan sites of worship, and Christianity, and 1,700 years before sanctifying only one place—the Kaaba • A / • in Mecca—to signify the unity of Mount, were recognized as the site God.
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