Temple Mount again

[localbrew]

Is this not like rubbing salt into an open wound?

Jerusalem Mayor Uri Lupolianski (email address: "mayor@jerusalem.muni.il") has condemned the recent decision to reopen the Temple Mount to Jewish and Christian visitors - and, in a startling statement, likened the idea of Jewish prayer there at these times to one who urinates in public.

News article (http://www.arutzsheva.com/news.php3?id=46929)

[Mediocrates]

Lupolianski's party colleague MK Rabbi Moshe Gafni (United Torah Judaism) explained to Arutz-7's Yosef Zalmanson today that he also objects to the government decision: "The Temple Mount is the holiest place on earth for Jews, and by allowing entry to anyone who wants, the government is detracting from its holiness and abusing it. From a halakhic [Jewish legal] point of view, it is forbidden - and even those who claim to know the permitted places are risking an 'issur karet' [a grave Biblical prohibition]."


Would Catholics make the Vatican a public park?

[localbrew]

Would Catholics make the Vatican a public park?

The Vatican is really a Public Park. People by the thousands go there all the time and they don't need a Catholic Identity Card either. (There is no such thing)

The object of my post was of course why now? It is not part of the 'road map' after all.

[Mediocrates]

So what's not to understand? It's not a tourist attraction. You can't simply wave a magic wand and say "Jews pray there, now." It's not kosher, literally. Otherwise you're just making the site a museum and therefore useless to any religious purpose. Look I've been to scores of French cathedrals and while the throngs of tourists march in during services it has got to be upsetting for the people who are there. It's really beyond comprehension why anyone would allow that.

[victot]

A couple days ago, me and a few of my classmates from hebrew U organized and went on a guarded stroll through the temple mount area... cool stuff i guess, but i would have preferred an actual guided tour... still though, it felt like if there is a center of the universe, i was there. i wore my magan david necklace the whole time, it was ll good... (i hope going up there wasn't too blasphemous...)

peace

[Mediocrates]

http://www.aish.com/jewishissues/jerusalem/Fighting_for_the_Jewish_Quarter.asp

Fighting for the Jewish Quarter
by Dr. Aaron Lerner, Director, IMRA
Talk about dividing up the Old City stirs memories of the Jewish Quarter which was destroyed by Arabs in 1948.


There's a small museum in the middle of the Cardo in the Jewish Quarter of the Old City which puts the current struggle over Jerusalem in context. "The Last Day" is a display of a series of photographs taken in 1948 as the Jews were assembled and expelled from Jerusalem. Among the smiling Arab faces are the relatives of some of today's leaders including Faisal Husseini. The museum also prominently displays some "before" and "after" shots so the visitor can get an impression of the bustling Jewish Quarter with its many impressive synagogues and public buildings -- all destroyed after the Jews were driven out.

The Arab destruction of the Jewish Quarter of Jerusalem and use of Jewish tombstones from the Mount of Olives as building material [for roads and latrines] was just another chapter in their ongoing struggle against Jewish people for the same piece of real estate, a struggle which started well before 1948. As part of it, the Arabs did everything they could to block Jews from reaching the Promised Land or gaining a foothold there.

Before 1948 Arabs fought fiercely to deny Jews everything but a minimal presence at the "Wailing Wall." They did not even allow Jews to blow the shofar there at the end of Yom Kippur -- a ban which Palestinian Authority Minister of Wakf and Religious Affairs Hassan Tahboob wants to reinstate so the Jews won't "disturb" Moslem services.

During the period of Jordanian occupation from 1948 to 1967, all Jews were barred entry into the entire Old City.

When the Arabs failed to destroy of Jewish state in 1967 and instead found themselves facing an Israel with lines extending to the Jordan River, the representatives of the Wakf on the Temple Mount prepared for the worst. But Israel didn't pay the Arabs in kind. The city was not cleared of Arabs, and Mordechai Gur's memorable "The Temple Mount is in our hands" notwithstanding, Moshe Dayan made it clear to the Wakf that the mount remained firmly in Arab hands.

Today Arafat's appointees incite the masses against Israel in their Friday sermons broadcast by the Palestinian media from the Temple Mount, in gross violation of the Oslo Accords.

The struggle is not over. And it is a struggle expressed in demographics as much as in land. The Arabs and Jews both encourage high fertility rates ("internal migration") and Jews promote aliyah. Yet, despite the high stakes, Israel's commitment to the asymmetrical treatment of the Arabs in this conflict continues.

When Israel liberated east Jerusalem it did not drive the Arabs across the Jordan River. Instead it offered them full Israeli citizenship, with the right to vote and be elected to the Knesset. The offer still stands today to the Arab residents of Jerusalem. Those who take Israeli citizenship retain that status for the rest of their lives, regardless of where they live. Israel went a step further, allowing Arab Jerusalemites to vote in municipal elections even if they refuse Israeli citizenship.

When one considers the many divergent groups that make up the ruling coalition in City Hall, one can only imagine the associated political power and benefits Arab Jerusalemites might have enjoyed all these years if had they opted to participate in the process. But they have preferred to wait for the Jews to leave -- or be driven out...

But when I recall the photographs in that small museum in the Cardo and try to imagine what would have happened had we lost the war in 1967, I must say, quite frankly, that I sleep well at night.

This article originally appeared in the Jerusalem Post. Reprinted with permission of the author.

[CrypticalPuzzle]

Jerusalem touted
as world's capital
Israel's Peres wants shrines under stewardship of U.N., Annan as mayor

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Posted: July 23, 2003
10:00 a.m. Eastern


© 2003 WorldNetDaily.com

Israeli opposition leader Shimon Peres, a former Israeli prime minister, is proposing Jerusalem be declared the capital of the world as a way of getting around competing Israeli and Arab claims to the city.

According to his spokesman, Yoram Dori, the dovish leader of Israel's opposition Labor Party suggested putting the important religious shrines in Jerusalem under United Nations stewardship. He said the holy sites in Jerusalem's walled Old City could be declared a "world capital."

The Maariv daily said Peres raised the idea Monday with visiting Russian officials.

The "world capital" idea appeared to be largely symbolic. According to Maariv, Peres proposed that the U.N. secretary-general be declared mayor, in which capacity he would appoint Jewish and Arab deputy mayors to administer the two sides' intertwined neighborhoods. Kofi Annan is the current secretary-general of the U.N.

The United Nations has in the past taken a position on Jerusalem, one of the most intractable issues in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict: Under a 1947 General Assembly resolution partitioning British mandatory Palestine into Jewish and Arab states, the city was to be internationalized, belonging to neither side.

During the 1948-49 war that followed Israel's creation, Israel seized the western part of the city and Jordan the eastern side, including the walled Old City with its Christian, Jewish and Muslim holy sites. In the 1967 Mideast war, Israel recaptured east Jerusalem – along with the West Bank and Gaza.

Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's predecessor, Ehud Barak, offered the Palestinians limited sovereignty in Arab parts of Jerusalem and in most of the Old City – but the plan was rejected by Yasser Arafat, who launched an uprising that has claimed the lives of hundreds of Arabs and Jews. Barak lost a bid for re-election to Sharon.

Among the ideas reportedly considered during those talks were divine sovereignty or no sovereignty over the chief point of contention in the city – a holy site known by Jews as the Temple Mount and Muslims as Haram as-Sharif, where the Al Aqsa Mosque was built on the site of the biblical Jewish Temples.

Peres' 1996 election loss to Benjamin Netanyahu is partly attributed to Netanyahu's politically effective charge that Peres would divide Jerusalem. Peres was chosen to reassume the leadership of the opposition Labor Party after it again lost elections earlier this year.

[MichaelC]

Originally posted by Mediocrates
http://www.aish.com/jewishissues/jerusalem/Fighting_for_the_Jewish_Quarter.asp

Fighting for the Jewish Quarter
by Dr. Aaron Lerner, Director, IMRA
Talk about dividing up the Old City stirs memories of the Jewish Quarter which was destroyed by Arabs in 1948.


There's a small museum in the middle of the Cardo in the Jewish Quarter of the Old City which puts the current struggle over Jerusalem in context. "The Last Day" is a display of a series of photographs taken in 1948 as the Jews were assembled and expelled from Jerusalem. Among the smiling Arab faces are the relatives of some of today's leaders including Faisal Husseini. The museum also prominently displays some "before" and "after" shots so the visitor can get an impression of the bustling Jewish Quarter with its many impressive synagogues and public buildings -- all destroyed after the Jews were driven out.

The Arab destruction of the Jewish Quarter of Jerusalem and use of Jewish tombstones from the Mount of Olives as building material [for roads and latrines] was just another chapter in their ongoing struggle against Jewish people for the same piece of real estate, a struggle which started well before 1948. As part of it, the Arabs did everything they could to block Jews from reaching the Promised Land or gaining a foothold there.

Before 1948 Arabs fought fiercely to deny Jews everything but a minimal presence at the "Wailing Wall." They did not even allow Jews to blow the shofar there at the end of Yom Kippur -- a ban which Palestinian Authority Minister of Wakf and Religious Affairs Hassan Tahboob wants to reinstate so the Jews won't "disturb" Moslem services.

During the period of Jordanian occupation from 1948 to 1967, all Jews were barred entry into the entire Old City.

When the Arabs failed to destroy of Jewish state in 1967 and instead found themselves facing an Israel with lines extending to the Jordan River, the representatives of the Wakf on the Temple Mount prepared for the worst. But Israel didn't pay the Arabs in kind. The city was not cleared of Arabs, and Mordechai Gur's memorable "The Temple Mount is in our hands" notwithstanding, Moshe Dayan made it clear to the Wakf that the mount remained firmly in Arab hands.

Today Arafat's appointees incite the masses against Israel in their Friday sermons broadcast by the Palestinian media from the Temple Mount, in gross violation of the Oslo Accords.

The struggle is not over. And it is a struggle expressed in demographics as much as in land. The Arabs and Jews both encourage high fertility rates ("internal migration") and Jews promote aliyah. Yet, despite the high stakes, Israel's commitment to the asymmetrical treatment of the Arabs in this conflict continues.

When Israel liberated east Jerusalem it did not drive the Arabs across the Jordan River. Instead it offered them full Israeli citizenship, with the right to vote and be elected to the Knesset. The offer still stands today to the Arab residents of Jerusalem. Those who take Israeli citizenship retain that status for the rest of their lives, regardless of where they live. Israel went a step further, allowing Arab Jerusalemites to vote in municipal elections even if they refuse Israeli citizenship.

When one considers the many divergent groups that make up the ruling coalition in City Hall, one can only imagine the associated political power and benefits Arab Jerusalemites might have enjoyed all these years if had they opted to participate in the process. But they have preferred to wait for the Jews to leave -- or be driven out...

But when I recall the photographs in that small museum in the Cardo and try to imagine what would have happened had we lost the war in 1967, I must say, quite frankly, that I sleep well at night.

This article originally appeared in the Jerusalem Post. Reprinted with permission of the author.
This article reminded me of the many, many reasons why, when I consider the nations of the earth that I admire, Israel is the first, and pretty much the only, nation that comes to mind.