The Temple Mount Has Room Enough for Peaceful Pluralism

Dec. 14 2022

After years of reluctance, David M. Weinberg decided to visit the Temple Mount. He explains what he learned:

First, that there is plenty of room: loads of undeveloped and even desolate sections of land on the vast Temple Mount plaza where a Jewish house of prayer could be built without interfering in any way with Muslim shrines and prayer practices.

Nobody needs to feel threatened by a modest presence of Jewish petitioners tucked away in a distant corner of the holy mount. Unless, of course, your opposition to Jewish prayer and visitation on the Temple Mount stems from the wholesale denial of indigenous Jewish rights in Jerusalem and the Land of Israel—which alas has become almost-mainstream Palestinian discourse.

As Weinberg goes on to explain, the Israeli police and the waqf—the Jordanian-controlled trust that administers the Muslim holy sites—enforce a hierarchical system dictating which groups have access to the Temple Mount. This regime allots the most rights to Muslim worshippers, and fewer rights, in descending order, to: non-Jewish tourists, Jewish tour groups that are not visibly religious, and finally, it accords fewest rights to religious Jews.

Given the hostility of the waqf, I suppose that there is some law-and-order logic to this discriminatory treatment of Jews and Israelis, for the moment. I certainly have no complaints against the Israel police for doing the best they can at this supersensitive site.

But from Israel’s leaders, I have higher expectations and elevated demands. It’s time for them to negotiate significant improvements in the way the Temple Mount is administered, and Jewish-Israeli rights are accommodated there, based on principles of peace, tolerance, and religious freedom—for Jews and non-Jews alike.

Read more at Israel Hayom

More about: Jewish-Muslim Relations, Temple Mount

Israel’s Strategic Gamble in Lebanon

Nov. 13 2024

Yesterday, Hizballah fired over 80 rockets into Israel, one of which killed two civilians in the city of Nahariya. Further disaster was narrowly avoided when one of the terrorist group’s attack drones exploded near a kindergarten in Haifa, from which children had been evacuated just in the nick of time. Iran’s Lebanese proxy thus continues to demonstrate that, battered though it may be, it can still do considerable damage, although it has not been able to carry out the overwhelming and devastating barrages that Israeli experts once feared.

Eran Ortal examines the progress of Israel’s Third Lebanon War, assessing that the IDF’s goal is not to encircle and destroy Hizballah’s military forces, but to destroy its infrastructure while avoiding combat. Ortal considers the merits of this approach:

Despite the inherent risks, the strategy of clearing a narrow buffer strip and ending the war in the north with an agreement is a legitimate choice. Hizballah’s southern army is a significant military threat capable of exacting a heavy price from the IDF. Hizballah knows full well that after a year of fighting in Gaza, the IDF is not the fresh, capable army, armed to the teeth and furious, that it was at the beginning of the war. It is very possible that the enemy will cooperate with the plan and take the chance of preserving its power over an attempt to restore its lost dignity. It is also possible that that is Iran’s directive.

The current strategy strives to shorten the long war we [Israelis] have fallen into. The thinking underlying this strategy is that the current Lebanon war will not be the last. As ever, Hizballah will prepare for the next war while learning from its failures in the current round. In the future, Israel will not be able to assume that a series of secret operations will provide it with the same benefits.

If Israel does find itself preparing for another round of conflict, Ortal goes on to argue, it must be ready for a military confrontation, not a counterterrorism operation.

Read more at BESA Center

More about: Hizballah, Israeli Security, Lebanon