WarSclerotic

The loss of Jewish rights on the Temple Mount – cause and effect | Anne’s Opinions, 18th April 2016

(“Appeasing the crocodile, hoping to be eaten last” is the truest description of the weak-willed appeasement by the Israeli government of Muslim intimidation in Jerusalem, and on the Temple Mount in particular. How can we in Israel expect the world to stand up for us when we ourselves do not stand up for our own rights? And how can we expect the West to contend with radical supremacist Islam when our own, ostensibly right-wing Israeli government is so eager to appease the Muslims at the expense of the Jews? –anneinpt).

I know that I go on a bit (OK, a lot) about Israeli sovereignty in Israel, including Judea and Samaria, and Jewish rights on the Temple Mount in particular, but this week the cause and effect of not enforcing our own sovereignty was highlighted in startling clarity.

It started with Joint Arab List MK Jamal Zahalka who warned Israel against allowing Jews to visit the Temple Mount on their holy festival of Pesach (Passover), sinisterly reminding Israel of the death toll of the Second Intifada – although of course the racist MK only mentioned Arab deaths and not the 1,000 Israeli victims:

A day after he returned from a two-month suspension from the Knesset, Israeli Arab MK Jamal Zahalka (Joint List) made a call to the Palestinians to prevent Jews from visiting the Temple Mount complex “in any way possible.”

“In light of the daily increase of (Jewish) ascent to the Aksa Mosque, it is up to us to stop it in any way possible,” he told the Palestinian site Dunya al-Watan on Wednesday, ahead of next week’s Passover holiday in which Jews flock to Jerusalem’s holy sites.

How Palestinians protect Al Aqsa – with stones to throw at the Jewish worshippers at the Kotel

In his remarks, Zahalka, who leads the Balad party in the four-party Joint List alliance, said “the Palestinian people paid the price of 4,000 deaths in the second intifada in the year 2000.”

He lied brazenly with the following outrageous claim:

“Our people have the right to the mosque, and we must protect it with all of our power. The Palestinian nation is the guardian of the mosque,” he said in the interview published Thursday.

Of course the Palestinians (not a nation in any event) are nothing of the sort. If anyone is the official guardian it is Jordan.

Zahalka charged that the continuation of the alleged uptick of Jewish visits to the site would ignite the next collective Palestinian uprising against Israel.

He added that “the increase in Jews who go up will cause the third intifada to break out and continue throughout the West Bank and Jerusalem depending on which Palestinian organizations join in the fighting.”

It is quite obvious that Zahalka is itching to be suspended yet again, and is probably also angling to be the next Palestinian inciter-in-chief, I mean President for Life. The man is beyond a disgrace, and it is an outrage that he is permitted to sit in the (Zionist) Knesset while at the same time undermining his own country’s very existence and raison d’etre.

PM Binyamin Netanyahu’s pathetic response was to ask the Attorney General to investigate if Zahalka’s statement was incitement. What is to consider? Have we no brains to think for ourselves?

Zahalka only plays into the reigning conspiracy theories of “Israeli settler storming invasions” of the Al Aqsa and inflames matters even more. Elder of Ziyon has the story of what would be a hilariously misunderstood event if it weren’t so deadly dangerous. The site QPress ominously warned of “settlers in white uniforms storming Al Aqsa“. Look for yourselves at the absurdity of it all, and then let it sink in how pathetically gullible and willing to be enraged are the Muslims:

White shirts are apparently a “settler uniform” now, according to QPress, which puts up regular videos of Jews “storming Al Aqsa Mosque” and “attempting to perform Talmudic rituals.”

Here was the white uniform scene:

I can hardly bear to watch. I feel my blood pressure rising dangerously as I hear those taunting cries of “Allahu Akhbar” and wonder who is the invader and imperialist colonialist and who is really oppressed.

Our further capitulation in the face of Arab intimidation continued with the arrest – by Israeli police! – of an American tourist who was explaining a Hebrew verse of Psalms to his tour group on the Temple Mount:

If we were to describe the following scene as having taken place anywhere else on the planet, the report would have been followed by several news cycles involving angry Jewish organizations, rabbis, Israeli rightwing politicians and, undoubtedly, Prime Minister Netanyahu, condemning the blatant act of anti-Semitic repression on the part of police, carrying out the anti-Semitic policies of the national government. (See American Jew Arrested for Murmuring Prayers, 2nd Warned to Close Prayer App)

American Jew arrested by the Israeli “prayer police.”

On Sunday morning, a Jewish American tourist wearing a yarmulke stood with a group of fellow Jewish tourists and spoke about the meaning of a biblical verse. A group of black-uniformed police converged on him and accused him of engaging in Jewish prayer, which is against the law in that country. The Jewish man tried to defend himself, arguing that he was merely explaining a biblical verse, “Please, God, save [us], Please God, give [us] success” (Psalms 118:25).

The cops rushed to the man and his group as soon as they heard the words “Please, God” pronounced in Hebrew. The rest of the lecture was in English. The man insisted, in English, that he was merely explaining the verse and not praying. The cops had no patience for lengthy arguments with a Jew and arrested him.

Several other Jewish tourists tried to intervene, explaining that it was a misunderstanding, they wouldn’t have even dreamed of praying there, in a country that punishes Jews who engage in public prayer, it was merely a mention of a verse in the context of a talk. At which point the arresting officer declared:

“On the Temple Mount I decide what’s prayer.”

The Jewish legal aid organization Honenu had it exactly right:

The legal aid society Honenu said in a statement: “The conduct of the State of Israel and Police regarding the suspicion of Jewish prayer on the Temple Mount is, first of all, ridiculous, and in addition it is discriminatory and predatory. It is inconceivable that a law-abiding man would be arrested like the lowest criminal for explaining a verse from Psalms. In any other country such an arrest would have been called anti-Semitic.”

The very fact that Jewish prayer is forbidden on the Temple Mount is outrageous in its overt antisemitism, and is a bigotry and racism that would not be permitted anywhere else in the world against the host country’s own people.

If we do not stand up for our rights, who will? Certainly not the UN, as once again UNESCO lived down to all our expectations.

This miserable episode of denial of Jewish rights in Jerusalem and at our holiest site finished ingloriously but unsurprisingly with UNESCO’s deletion of any Jewish connection to the Temple Mount at all:

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu harshly criticized a United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) resolution from last week in which Jewish ties to the Temple Mount and the Western Wall area in Jerusalem’s Old City are wholly ignored.

The resolution refers to Israel as the “occupying power” at every mention and uses the Arabic al-Aqsa Mosque/Al-Haram al-Sharif without ever calling it the Temple Mount, as it is known to Jews. The text does refer to the Western Wall Plaza but places it in quotation marks, after using the Arabic Al-Buraq Plaza.

Birkat Cohanim – the Priestly Blessing – at the Kotel (because of course there is no Jewish connection to the Kotel at all says UNESCO)

“This is yet another absurd UN decision,” Netanyahu said Saturday. “UNESCO ignores the unique historic connection of Judaism to the Temple Mount, where the two temples stood for a thousand years and to which every Jew in the world has prayed for thousands of years. The UN is rewriting a basic part of human history and has again proven that there is no low to which it will not stoop.”

The resolution accuses Israel of “planting Jewish fake graves in other spaces of the Muslim cemeteries” and of “the continued conversion of many Islamic and Byzantine remains into the so-called Jewish ritual baths or into Jewish prayer places.”

This is such a sick inversion of reality that my jaw literally dropped. One wonders how those who voted in favour kept a straight face while voting. I hate to keep using the word “outraged” over and over but I can’t find a stronger word to describe what I feel.

Desecrated Jewish graves on the Mt. of Olives

As we all know and as has been thoroughly documented, Muslims regularly desecrate, vandalise and violate Jewish graves on the Mount of Olives – ancient Jewish graves dating back sometimes thousands of years, even before the invention of Islam (which is most likely what bothers them the most), Jews are not allowed full prayer rights on the Temple, and Muslims regularly desecrate and destroy priceless Jewish relics on the Temple Mount in an ongoing destruction.

How UNESCO managed to condemn Israel for the Muslims’ crimes is something for psychologists and psychiatrists, rather than diplomats and politicians, to figure out.

Who were the countries who voted in favour of this disgusting resolution?

The resolution was approved by 33 states, including France, Russia, Spain and Sweden. Seventeen countries abstained while six voted against including the United States, Estonia, Germany, Lithuania, the Netherlands and the United Kingdom.

How could France, of all countries, vote in favour after suffering such huge losses at the hands of Muslim terrorists? Or are they simply staying in character and preferring to surrender to the evil in order that the “crocodile eats them last” to mix a metaphor?

But what can we expect from the Muslims and from biased international organizations when we ourselves, or at least our pathetic weak-willed leaders, do not strongly stand up for our rights and enforce our sovereignty over own holiest sites?

If we hoped that by giving in to their antisemitic demands we could appease the Muslims, reality has hit us in the face and shown us the opposite: the more we give in, the more violence we receive.

It is beyond high time that we revoked the entire ridiculous edifice of denial of Jewish rights, whether for prayer or religious ceremonies or even building of synagogues, on the Temple Mount, and put the Muslims on the defensive. In any event they riot, commit violence and murder. We might as well derive some benefit in the process.

I’m pretty sure that the Muslim world is watch closely for our reaction to these disgraceful maneuvers, whether at the Knesset, at the UN, or on the Temple Mount itself. It is no use for Binyamin Netanyahu to hold a cabinet meeting on the Golan Heights and declare that the area “is ours forever” when he himself is not allowed to pray on his own holiest site in our own capital city.

If we don’t assert our rights in our capital, we will lose our rights everywhere in our country.