by Nadav Shragai
Today, some 2,150 years
after the Maccabees victoriously returned to the Temple Mount to resume
divine service in the Jewish Temple and light the menorah, the
commemoration of the Hanukkah miracle could serve as an opportunity to
revisit historical, Jewish roots in Jerusalem and at the Temple Mount.
But Israel has long since given up on that battle.
For more than a
generation, the Palestinians have been systematically working to deny
the existence of the Jewish Temple. Their stubborn refusal to recognize
Israel as the Jewish state is not unrelated to that denial. At Camp
David in 2000, then-President Bill Clinton was shocked to hear such
claims straight from the mouth of Palestine Liberation Organization
leader Yasser Arafat. At first, Arafat insisted that the Jewish Temple
existed in Nablus. Two years later, he "reformed" his opinion, stating
that Temple never existed in Palestine at all. Senior PLO official Nabil
Shaath, chief Palestinian negotiator Saeb Erekat, senior PLO official
Yasser Abed Rabbo and PA President Mahmoud Abbas all question the very
existence of the Jewish Temple at the Temple Mount, called Haram
al-Sharif in Arabic. The denial is common in Islamic circles, the
academic world, and, of course, in the Arabic media -- it is a
preponderant belief in Saudi Arabia, Jordan, Egypt and other Gulf
countries.
The prevalent theory
has been documented by authors such as Yitzhak Reiter, Shmuel Berkowitz,
Dore Gold and others. From the Palestinians and Arab perspective, the
Temple is simply a figment of the Jewish imagination. They call it
"Al-Mazoum," meaning the miniscule thing, attempting to paint Jewish
claims as imaginary, mendacious, not based in reality. At the same time,
such individuals have been busy for years trying to hide the truth,
destroying archeological evidence of the Jewish Temple that threatened
to invalidate their lies.
Such colossal fraud
would not be very hard to settle but Israel, whether out of indolence or
the desire to avoid "holy wars" that could invariably push the conflict
toward religious lines, has opted out. That's a big mistake. We are
already fighting religious wars; the root of the conflict is religious.
Trying to isolate the national-territorial elements of the conflict is
totally naive. Also, denying the Jewish Temple's existence is a
phenomenon that has already begun to penetrate certain circles in
Europe.
The time has come to
fight back. The mission at hand is not so complex. To support our
argument, the fact remains that up until 1967, we constantly told the
story of the Jewish Temple and shared details about the structure. The
destruction of the First Temple by Nebuchadnezzar is a firmly
established, undeniable motif prevalent throughout Islamic literature.
Take, for example, Jerusalemite Arab geographer and historian
Al-Muqaddasi from the 10th century. Take 14th-century Iranian legal
scholar Al-Mastufi, the poetry of Jalal ad-Din Muhammad Rumi from the
13th century, or even books and travel guides from the time of Grand
Mufti Haj Amin al-Husseini, the Jerusalem religious leader who struck an
alliance with the Nazis.
In the mid-20th
century, Palestinian journalist, historian and East Jerusalem Mayor Aref
al-Aref wrote that the Temple Mount is located at Mount Moriah, where
the Biblical Jebusite Araunah owned his threshing floors and which King
David purchased for building the Temple, eventually built by Solomon in
1,007 B.C.E. (for more information, see Retiner's book "From Jerusalem
to Mecca and Back").
Joining the Muslim
writers is a plethora of facts, discoveries and sources, reinforcing the
Jewish bond to Jerusalem and the existence of the Temple, such as the
Bible, Mishnah, Gemara, several midrashim and myriad Jewish
commentaries. These sources provide evidence for the divine service and
for the Temple's existence over many years. First century Roman Jewish
scholar Josephus saw the Temple with his own eyes and documented its
destruction. And, of course, there are the multiple archeological finds.
To name a few:
The remains of
engravings barring access to the Temple for non-Jews past a barrier
surrounding the Temple, also mentioned by Josephus; the southwestern
cornerstone of the Temple Mount from the Second Temple period with the
inscription describing how a priest would be present during the sounding
of the horns when Shabbat began and ended, as described in the Mishnah
as well; the remains of a corpse identified by the British during the
Mandate Period, on the Temple Mount, belonging to a Jew who had
undergone ritual ablutions; over the past few years archeologists made
First Temple discoveries on the Temple Mount, but quickly covered them
up to avoid conflict.
But such findings and many more
have only sped up the process of amplifying Jerusalem's holiness to
Islam and the sweeping denial of any Jewish bond to the city and its
sanctity. Hanukkah is our time to respond.
Nadav Shragai
Source: http://www.israelhayom.com/site/newsletter_opinion.php?id=6469
Copyright - Original materials copyright (c) by the authors.
No comments:
Post a Comment