har habayit

… or, why the Europeans cannot be honest brokers
Rather than make you read a tedious analysis by yours truly, I suggest you first read about the “draft” report of an analysis on east Jerusalem, which is being proposed for policy adoption by the EU’s External Relations Council. Then read this accurate analysis in a Jerusalem Post editorial of how one-sided and unfortunate this “draft” is.

Very simply, the European nations do not seem to get it. Until they do, they cannot be trusted to have a say in the Israeli-Arab conflict, regardless of how hard they try to insert themselves.

Oh, and if you’re wondering how things like this happen, take a look at just one small facet of the onslaught of propaganda from the Arab and Muslim side that has washed over our world. This is the lie that denies any Jewish connection to the Temple Mount. The article covers a recent book by historian Dr. Yitzhak Reiter, who has just published “From Jerusalem to Mecca and Back – the Muslim Rallying Around Jerusalem.” It is the sordid story of denying the collective history and memory of the Jewish people in order to achieve modern political gains.

At least the Europeans, we now know, have been listening and learning.

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themiddle

12 Comments

  • I just read that editorial too. As was astutely noted:

    Now along comes this EU report to remind us that even integral Jerusalem neighborhoods such as East Talpiot, Gilo, Pisgat Ze’ev, Ramot and French Hill are deemed “illegal settlements.”

    Beyond bad timing, the report is substantively wrongheaded. Where is an EU report urging Palestinian recognition of the Jewish people’s ancient connection to Jerusalem? Why does this report ignore not only the past five years of violent Palestinian intransigence, but also Palestinian rejection of Ehud Barak’s intended concessions on Jerusalem in 2000?

    Any fair-minded analysis would have recognized that it is not “Israeli policies [that] are reducing the possibility of reaching a final status agreement on Jerusalem,” but, in large part, Palestinian rejectionism.

    Hear hear. They really don’t get it at all. No one’s ever goin to leave East Talpiot, Gilo, Pisgat Ze’ev, Ramot and French Hill. Those are not settlements. Those are integral parts of Israel. The leaked report is a no show – totally useless at best and in all likelihood representative of a political agenda that will embolden rejectionist elements amongst the Palestinians thus adding nothing to the peace process at all. Yeah, they can keep Madonna.

  • That is a heartbreaking photograph. I hate to see that monstrosity built on the Temple Mount. It’s like a huge wart on the face of a beautiful woman. Can’t we just blow the f*cker up?

    It makes me sick that Israel has turned into such a bunch of p*ssies, that would trade away our birthright in exchange for higher ratings in the polls. Land for peace is a fallacy, and anyone with half a brain knows it.

    Pardon my language, but my patience is rather thin at the moment.

  • It’s generally accepted by most people with “half a brain” that the Dome of the Rock, no matter where it’s built, is one of the great masterpieces of human architecture. Blowing it up would be sort of like blowing up St. Peter’s Basilica. Sure, it would make a lot of narrow-minded reactionaries feel good, but the world would lose something beautiful.

    Just because Islam is possessed of anti-Jewish sentiment doesn’t detract that they built a really fuckin’ nice dome that would be a shame to destroy.

    Besides, why would it need to be exploded? You believe that the Messiah will come and the Temple will fall fully built right from the sky anyway, right?

    Yeesh.

  • Grace, Israel should show this anger more directed towards terrorists and their supporters. The mosque per se, is not the problem. I know many people like to consider Islam as the villain, but imo it is the radical imams, and the terrorists who pervert and distort their religion that is the problem.

    I know there are some passages in the Koran that can be interpreted as offensive to others but overall, I cannot see this as a justification to destroy their houses of worship.

    Just as we don’t want others to destroy our synagouges, even ones that are used by say Kahane suporters, even in their Yeshiva that they have.

  • Islam will one day cleanse itself of anti-Semitism. Sometime during this process, Muslims will recognize that this mosque was probably built where the temple used to be precisely to suppress Judaism. They will then agree to dismantle it and built a replica somewhere else. Some kind of messiah or messianic age might be necessary to bring this about. But one can hope.

    There are moderate, tolerant Muslims out there, and Jobber’s right that the true enemy is the radicals. But anti-Semitism has been there since the begininng: Mohammed himself had lots of Jews killed, sometimes forcibly marrying their widows afterward.

    http://www.jewishencyclopedia.com/view.jsp?artid=699&letter=M

    This doesn’t mean Islam can’t shed anti-Semitism. Christianity has gone a long way, and their record was arguably worse than Islam’s.

  • whoops, sorry about the repost. siteadmins: feel free to delete one of them.

  • Moshiach is definitely coming (please soon), but it would be nice if we could show that we prepared the way, instead of sitting on our butts waiting to be rescued.

    So the Arabs can build nice buildings. So what? They can build them somewhere else. They control, what, 90% of the Middle East? They have Mecca, Medina, and a ton of other places they could put their buildings.

    Anything else on the Temple Mount, except the 3rd Temple, is an eyesore of the worst kind, no matter how fancy it is. It’s a knife in the heart of every Torah Jew, and they know it.

  • Maybe it would be better to prepare the way by being a good person and doing acts of kindness, rather than advocating senseless acts of destruction that would no doubt result in catastrophic war.

    Or, to put it another way, should the Messiah come, and should he ask what you did to prepare for his coming, what do you think would be better to say? “I spread ahavat chinam and sanctified God’s name by being a righteous person” or “Me and my extremist buddies packed the Dome of the Rock and el-Aqsa with C4 then went and shot some Arabs. I mean, they’re, like, Amalek anyway, right?”

  • Just a few questions- So you blow up the mosque? How different is that from the burning of the synagogues when the settlers were removed? What would make you any different from the people you seem to despise so much? And then what? After you blow up the mosque, what happens then? Has the problem been addressed?
    And i beg to differ with you, Grace, land for peace is not a fallacy. I think it can be done, but it assumes that both parties are working for the same objective- Peace. Unfortunately at this point in time Israelis seem to be travelling down the road alone on that one.

  • This is preposterous; you can say whatever you want about Palestinian rejectionism, and perhaps it is true that the Palestinians are making no moves toward peace. But this does not negate the fact that Israeli actions in and around Jerusalem do violate the road map and international law, just as the EU report alleges. East Jerusalem was captured in 1967, and later annexed—again, in violation of international law. You can stand up and say that might makes right, and that Israel has a divine right to this land, and won it fair and square, and can do what it will with its “undivided capital.” Who cares about international law? And you would be right. But you can’t also pretend that these moves, while within Israel’s power, advance the cause of peace or move toward a final settlement. Because they don’t. How many Palestinians who lived in bulldozed East Jerusalem houses do you think want peace now?

    To blame the Europeans for being “dishonest brokers” merely because they have the audacity to point out what is abundantly clear–that Israel is working to seize Palestinian land in East Jerusalem, because it thinks it can–is ridiculous.

  • Interestingly, 3 of the 7 publicly-identified members of the newly-constituted “Sanhedrin” (which is headed by Adin Steinsaltz) are members of the Temple Mount Movement, which advocates moving the Al-Asqua Mosque and Dome of the Rock to Mecca, so that the third temple can be built.
    (See the wikipedia entries on Sandhedrin and Dome of the Rock.) Moving them, if that can even be done, sounds much better than blowing them up. Don’t you think, Grace?

  • Asher, I didn’t see your comment.

    Preposterous? Why is it preposterous to point out a clear bias in EU politics with respect to the Arab-Israeli conflict?

    But let’s do an exercise, okay? You go and find me all of the UN resolutions and any other pieces of international law that were directed at the Jordanians during their 17 years of occupying Jerusalem, having cleansed it of all Jews and having destroyed any physical links to Jews. Then, why don’t you look at the UN and its resolutions with respect to Israel and particularly Jerusalem during its first 17 years of control over what the Jordanians lost. Note that during those years, the Arabs were not evicted and their buildings were not destroyed.

    After you are done with this comparison – and recognizing that the UN and its predecessor organization are the sources for the international law regarding Jerusalem – please let us know whether the laws have been applied fairly and whether Israel should consider itself to have been justly treated in this respect. Then let us know whether there is a bias in a document that alleges that Israeli neighborhoods that were built after ’67 constitute a violation of international law while the permit-less growth of Arab villages receives no mention.