Judith W. is again reminding bloggers of an onging atrocity that tends to get lost amid the life-and-death issues currently facing the State of Israel. For years now, the Muslim religious trust ("Waqf") that contols the Temple Mount has been systematically destroying invaluable archeological artifacts in an attempt to obliterate all physical trace of Jewish history on that site. Judith points to a compehensive article by Hershel Shanks in Moment (on line only), in which the entire history of this crime is set forth in excruciating detail. Some sticky questions arise here.
Why did the government of Israel cede control of the Temple Mount to the Waqf in the aftermath of the Six Day War? Throughout the period of Muslim sovereignty over the Jewish holy sites -- the very holiest Jewish sites -- their sanctity was repeatedly violated and the rights of Jews to visit them or pray at them was curtailed, if not prohibited. Yet Moshe Dayan, upon Israel's triumphant return to Har HaBayt, felt obligated to turn over exclusive control of the Al-Aqsa Mosque and the Dome of the Rock to the Muslim authorities. In his biography, Dayan recalls this discussion with Arab officials:
I said that Israeli troops would be removed from the site and stationed outside the compound. The Israeli authorities were responsible for overall security, but we would not interfere in the private affairs of the Moslems responsible for their own sanctuaries. These were two Moslem places of worship, and they had the right to operate them themselves. My hosts no doubt knew that on the day we had captured this site, I had given orders that the Israeli flag be removed from the Mosque of the Dome, where it had been hoisted. We had no intention of controlling Moslem holy places or of interfering in their religious life. The one thing we would introduce was freedom of Jewish access to the compound of Haram esh-Sharif without limitation or payment. This compound, as my hosts well knew, was our Temple Mount. Here stood our Temple during ancient times, and it would be inconceivable for Jews not to be able freely to visit this holy place now that Jerusalem was under our rule.
But, of course, things didn't turn out quite that way. A few weeks later, on Tisha B'av (the day on which the destruction of the Temple is mourned), a group of Jews prayed on the Temple Mount, over the strenuous objections of Arab leaders. To avoid "a religious clash," the Israeli government decided to "maintain" the Arab ban on Jewish prayer at the site. And things have only deteriorated from there.
Why has the government of Israel repeatedly refused to raise a finger to stop the destruction of Judaism's archeological heritage? No one seems to know. While bulldozers plow up and discard ancient artifacts in a city dump and while hisstorical ruins are smashed to smithereens and paved over, successive governments, including Sharon's, have sat quietly by and watched.
And, finally, where is the world's outrage? When the Taliban blew up the ancient giant Buddahs in Afghanistan, people all over the globe justifiably erupted in protest and anger. That atrocity couldn't be prevented because the Taliban ruled the land in which those antiquities resided. But the Waqf doesn't rule the land of Israel. The Waqf doesn't rule Jerusalem and, but for the grace of the Israeli government, the Waqf doesn't even rule the Temple Mount. An outpouring of world support for the protection of Judaism's holiest site would surely alert the Waqf that its actions are unacceptable. The world's silence goes a long way toward confirming the opposite. Which, I suppose, is at least part of the answer to the previous question.
Read the Moment article.
