When the Israel Defense Forces gained control of the Temple Mount in the Six-Day War of June 1967, the commander Moshe Dayan not only ordered the removal of Israel’s flag from the Temple Mount. He also returned control of this holiest of Jewish sites to the Muslim authorities, the Wakf.
By so doing, Dayan signaled to the Arab-Islamic world the spiritual decline of the Jewish State at the very height of its greatest military victory. Indeed, by affirming Dayan’s mindless orders, Israel’s government of national unity took the first step toward undoing the miracle of the Six-Day War. We see the consequences: Israel’s on-going retreat to her indefensible pre-1967 borders.
Is it any wonder that Israel’s government does nothing while the Wakf desecrates the Temple Mount, destroys every vestige of a Jewish presence on this holiest of Jewish sites? Let us understand what is happening here and why.
First, quintessential ideas from an essay “A Third Jewish Temple” (May 18, 2000) by Rabbi Chaim Richman, International Director of the Temple Institute.
Referring to the era of King Solomon, Rabbi Richman points out that the Temple Mount is or was “the hallmark of the greatest era known to man…. This place has been sanctified by God from the beginning of time…. The foundation stone underneath the Dome of the Rock was the center of the universe. Here Jacob laid his head. Here Abraham tried to sacrifice Isaac. The heart of the Garden of Eden is here. Adam’s altar was located here…. Of the 613 commandments in the Torah, 113 of them depend on the existence of a Jewish Temple.”
It should also be stressed that Jewish control of the Temple Mount—on which stood the Beit HaMikdash and the Great Sanhedrin—is the key to uncontested Jewish control of Jerusalem and the preservation of the Jewish people’s collective memory.
According to Rabbi Richman, the Wakf is intentionally digging in areas where “undoubtedly the Temple once stood.” “For the first time since the Temple’s destruction, a section of the Temple Wall itself has been exposed,” Richman said. “And the Wakf under the guise of laying down electrical pipes has dug a trench, destroying the most important holy artifact ever found to date.”
By permitting this desecration, the Olmert government (like its predecessors) reveals its true character and intentions. The government’s distaste for the spiritual dimensions of Judaism is symptomatic of its indifference even to Jewish life, else it would not allow Arabs to bomb Jewish towns like Sderot with impunity. Indeed, what has long been called a policy of self-restraint vis-à-vis Arab terrorism is in truth a policy of Jewish self-effacement which precisely parallels the government’s indifference toward the Wakf effacement of the Temple Mount.
Clearly, the government’s indifference toward Arab desecration of the Temple Mount corresponds exactly to its indifference toward Jewish retention of Judea and Samaria. But this means that the government is not seriously concerned about preserving the historical memory of the Jewish people; not seriously concerned about preserving Israel as a Jewish state; hence not seriously concerned about our children and posterity.
It follows that the government—in its acts of omission and commission—has in effect become the ally of Israel’s implacable Arab enemies and must therefore be deemed the most insidious enemy of Judaism and the God of Israel.
To repeat, I am speaking of the government’s ACTS of omission and commission. I am not in the least impressed by the government’s speeches to the contrary.
I see that despite 10,000 Jewish casualties since Oslo 1993, the government continues to tolerate more and more Jewish casualties. I am not impressed by “targeted assassinations” of Arab terrorists, or by limited reactions into terrorist strongholds.
I see that Israeli governments, past and present, have released some 7,000 Arab terrorists, have armed them, paid them, and given them control of Jewish land. That’s more than enough to charge such governments as guilty of treason as defined by Sections 97(a), 97(b), 99, and 100 of the Penal Law.
I am not in the least impressed by any so-called opposition leaders, who once led those governments, and who, therefore, are nothing more than perfidious hypocrites who deafen us by their silence about the treachery and spineless character of the present government.
What kind of politicians would return control of the Temple Mount to Arabs after the miracle of the Six-Day War? What kind of politicians would give our holiest site to Arabs who despise us? What kind of politicians would tolerate this humiliation of the Jewish people, once the God-bearing educators of mankind?
Let us erase this infamy!
