Among the casualties of the ongoing Arab uprising against
Israel has been something very dear to all cultivated
people, and to cultivated Jews in particular: History.
Whether out of cowardice or something darker, a number of
journalists have lately come to refer to Jerusalem's Temple
Mount by its Islamic name, despite the fact that the site
was where Solomon's temple stood more than a thousand years
before Islam's founder's grandparents were even glints in
their own parents' eyes.
It is not only the antiquity of the Mount's connection to
the Jewish people that is trenchant here, but its intensity
as well. Even after the Temple and its successor had been
destroyed by foreign armies, Jews the world over continued -
and continue - to venerate the significance of the site,
praying in its direction and (at least the Orthodox among
us) for the Temple's restoration by the hand of God.
The Islamic bond to the Mount is of much more recent
appearance and fairly newfound intensity. Over the many
years Jerusalem was in Arab hands, no major Arab leader ever
saw fit to even visit her, much less proclaim her a central
spot in the collective Arab heart.
Yet much of the press feels compelled to treat the Mount's
Jewish roots and Islamic ones as equally deep and equally
real. A recent example was The New York Times' correspondent
Joel Greenberg's characterization of the site as that "of
the First and Second Temples of the ancient Jews, sacred to
Muslims as the Noble Sanctuary, where Mohammed ascended to
Heaven."
A subtle but astounding indignity lies in that clumsy
attempt at political correctness. That Jewish Holy Temples
stood on the spot in question is historical fact, part of
the unbroken millennia-old historical tradition of the
Jewish people and corroborated by historians ancient and
modern alike. To equate that historical truth with a
fanciful myth is simply beyond bizarre.
The founder of Islam may or may not have traveled to heaven,
or elsewhere, from Jerusalem; but there is certainly no
historical evidence that he ever left the Arabian Peninsula,
nothing but sectarian legend behind the claim that he did.
Why then is Mr. Greenberg speaking of the existence of the
Temples and the "night flight" in, so to speak, the same
breath?
That Arab and Islamic leaders and writers, sadly, have
demonstrated utter contempt for inconvenient facts of
history is well documented. They regularly deny the fact of
the Holocaust, and assert that Jews murder non-Jews to
gather their blood for Passover matzos (a recent such
accusation appeared only recently in Al-Ahram, Egypt's
leading newspaper and a government organ). It should not
surprise anyone that they are now trying to deny the Jewish
connection to the Temple Mount. In fact, that assault on
history is taking place not only in word but in deed: The
Waqf, the Islamic authority that oversees the mosques
currently on the Mount, has been reported by archaeologists
to be systematically excavating and destroying relics on the
Temple Mount, presumably in an attempt to obscure signs of
its Jewish character.
But for reporters to join that effort, however good their
intentions or subtle their words, is beyond justification
and beyond comprehension. Journalism, after all, is supposed
to be about presenting objective truths, not abetting
malevolent lies.
Jewish tradition teaches that the highest response to
personal adversity is the determination to better oneself,
and that the highest response to national adversity is a
similar determination on a national scale.
As we Jews regard the intensifying assault by our enemies on
our history, and its widening acceptance by the larger
world, we might do well to ponder whether it may be a
message to us that we have not been paying sufficient
attention to that history ourselves.
Because our illustrious past, after all, contains not only a
historical account of the second and first Temple eras but
of the very ground-zero of the Jewish people, God's
revelation to us at Sinai. Might not our determined
reconnection to that event, our re-embrace of its mandate
for our priorities and our lives, be the way to end the
ongoing assault on our history?
AM ECHAD RESOURCES
[Rabbi Avi Shafran serves as director of public affairs for
Agudath Israel of America and as American director of Am
Echad]
