Women in Green: The Temple Mount

THE TEMPLE MOUNT

Letter from Ruth Matar (Women in Green) Jerusalem
Thursday, October 12, 2006


Dear Friends,

According to the Hebrew poet Uri Zvi Greenberg (1896-1981), "whoever controls the Temple Mount controls the entire land of Israel!"

And now, in the Hebrew year 5767, 2006 C.E., the Arabs are threatening a "blood bath" if the Jews dare build a synagogue on their own holiest site, the Temple Mount, as proposed by Uri Ariel, a Jewish Knesset member of the National Union - National Religious Party. (Headline in the Jerusalem Post of October 11, 2006: "Arab MK threatens bloodbath over plan for Temple Mount shul")

Knesset Member Ariel said his proposal would maintain the status quo and not infringe on Muslims "right of full access to the Aksa Mosque, which is situated on the ruins of the Second Temple.

Ariel said it was abnormal that the most holy Jewish site in the world was off-limits to Jews as a place of religious worship.

How did we arrive at this ludicrous state of affairs?

By not asserting our inalienable right to our G-d given homeland and our holy sites therein.

The following are excerpts from a previous article of mine. You may see the whole article at:
http://181818.org/green/blog/index.php?mode=viewmonth&month_no=07&year=2004 Scroll down to July 29.

Since June 7, 1967, when the Temple Mount was liberated, only Muslims have been allowed to pray on the Temple Mount, by order of then Defense Minister Moshe Dayan. Dayan insisted that Jews be allowed to visit the Temple Mount, but not to pray there. Dayan gave an explanation for his scandalous decision as follows: Since for the Muslims the Temple Mount is a Muslim Mosque for prayer, while for Jews it is merely a historical site recalling the past, the Arabs are not to be disturbed in acting there as they do now, and the right of the Muslims to control it must be recognized. How sad, no, how tragic, that Dayan was an assimilated Jew and completely ignorant of Jewish religion and unfeeling toward Jewish tradition.

Dayan's terrible decision is still in place. Only Muslims are allowed to pray on the Jewish Temple Mount, and Jews and Christians are forbidden to do so. They are even forbidden to move their lips in prayer!

Ariel Sharon, soon after his election as prime minister, went up to the Temple Mount in September of 2000. A new wave of terror started immediately, which had been planned by Arafat for several months.

Even though Sharon supposedly defied the whole Arab world by going up to the Temple Mount, he subsequently showed no interest whatsoever in claiming Jewish ownership of the Temple Mount, which is the holiest place in the Jewish religion.

He permitted the Arabs to build additions to their Mosques using heavy machinery, and looked away when the Arabs wantonly destroyed Jewish artifacts from the First and Second Temple periods. This was done deliberately by the Arabs to destroy any evidence of prior Jewish presence on the Temple Mount. (Some such artifacts, which had not been destroyed, have turned up on the world antiquity market at tremendous financial gain for the Arabs.)

When Israeli archeologists warned Sharon of dangerous cracks in the Southern Wall of the Temple Mount, and cautioned against the Southern Wall's imminent collapse, the Sharon government called in Jordanian engineers to do the necessary repairs. This in spite of the fact that Israel has engineers who are just as good, and probably better. Was this Sharon's way of disavowing his interest in the Temple Mount as a Jewish Holy place?

Unfortunately, we have now arrived at a point when a "post-Zionist leftist oligarchy consisting of consecutive Israeli governments, secular Israeli courts, and the leftist media, subjugate us, both physically and spiritually.

Incredibly, we are not allowed to build our homes in our biblical homeland of Judea and Samaria without U.S. State Department permission. Our government has promised our only "friend", the United States, not ever to do this!

If "illegal outposts" are built by some idealistic religious young couples, who feel subject to a Higher Authority, they will be forcibly and brutally removed, as was done by the Olmert government in Amona. Of course, Ehud Olmert did make promises to Condoleeza Rice! Does Olmert feel promises to Condi are more important than the promises to the Jews by the G-d of Israel?

Dear Friends:

This concerns all of us! Move heaven and earth, but don't let the Moslem enemy gain additional control of our Temple Mount. Please share with us suggestions as to how we can work together to prevent this from happening.

May we be worthy of redemption and may the Third Temple be built speedily, and in our days.

With Blessings and Love for Israel,

Ruth Matar


P.S. My son (and Nadia Matar's husband), Dr. David Matar, has contributed a historical background on the Temple Mount:

Jewish tradition, from its very beginnings, has seen the Temple Mount in Jerusalem as the very center of the universe, the focal point of G-d's connection to the Jewish people and all of mankind. The Torah relates in Genesis that the near-sacrifice of Isaac took place atop Mount Moriah, which was identified with the Mountain of G-d, the Mountain of pilgrimage that is the Temple Mount.

After King David founded Jerusalem as the capital of the kingdom of Israel, he purchased land with a granary from a Jebusite named Aravna; David's son Solomon built a magnificent Temple there that stood for 400 years. Solomon's Temple was designed and built as a permanent shrine on a grand scale, which would replace the Tabernacle that had served the Israelites in the desert, and in various temporary locations within the Promised Land.

Although destroyed by the Babylonians in their conquest of Judea, the temple was rebuilt by the returning exiles, and served as the center of Jewish spiritual and material life for the next 600 years. In the reign of Herod the Great, near the beginning of the Common Era, the Temple was completely refurbished, while the Temple Mount almost doubled in size – all in order to accommodate millions of pilgrims, Jews and non-Jews from all over the known world.

Almost 2000 years have passed since the Romans destroyed the Second Temple; yet committed Jews throughout the centuries, in all the lands of their exile, have prayed in the direction of their ruined Temple. To this day, Jews focus their hopes, dreams and prayers on the speedy rebuilding of the Temple, as the central condition for national and cosmic redemption.