by Eli E. Hertz
Denial, disregard - and destruction of evidence of Jewish presence on the Temple Mount has become the Arab way to claim Jerusalem.
Arabs deny the bond between Jews and Jerusalem; they sabotage and destroy archaeological evidence, even at the holiest place of Judaism – the Temple Mount.
Arabs continue to deny the legitimacy of the Jewish people’s connection to Jerusalem.
Arab leaders insist that there never was a Jewish temple on the Temple Mount.
They also claim that the Western Wall is really an Islamic holy site to which Muslims have historical rights.
Putting rhetoric into action, Islamic clerics who manage the Temple Mount have demonstrated flagrant disrespect and contempt for the archaeological evidence of a Jewish presence.
Between 1999 and 2001, the Muslim Waqf removed and dumped more than 13,000 tons of what it termed rubble from the Mount and its substructure, including archaeological remains from the First and Second Temple periods, which Israelis found at dumping sites.
During construction of a new underground mosque in a subterranean hall believed to date back to the time of Herod, and the paving of an “open air” mosque elsewhere on the Temple Mount, the Waqf barred the Israel Antiquities Authority from supervising or even observing work.
When archaeological finds from any period – Jewish or otherwise – are uncovered in the course of construction work, the Authority is mandated by law to supervise and observe everywhere in Israel – legislation that dates back to 1922 and documented in the international accord of the League of Nations – the “Mandate for Palestine.”
Such gross disregard for the pre-Islamic Jewish heritage of Jerusalem – particularly on Judaism’s holiest historic site – is a far more insidious form of the same Islamic intolerance that motivated the Taliban to demolish two gigantic pre-Islamic statues of Buddha carved into a cliff in Afghanistan.
Eli E. Hertz
Source: http://www.israelnationalnews.com/Articles/Article.aspx/15964#.VGS4r8l6h-g
Copyright - Original materials copyright (c) by the authors.
No comments:
Post a Comment