The clearing of Jerusalem's Abu Ghunaim hillside for a new Jewish
settlement has raised hopes among many religious Israelis that the long-awaited rebuilding
of Solomon's Temple may at last be at hand. The windows of many Jewish shops and houses in
Jerusalem now display posters showing the reconstructed temple, over the ironically
premature caption, 'The Temple Today'. Many rabbis in Jerusalem have urged the Israeli
government to make a public statement on the rebuilding of the Temple as the 'culminating
symbol of the return of the Jewish people to their land'.
The ritual candelabras and other objects to be used in the new Temple building have
already been lovingly recreated on the basis of Biblical descriptions, and are on public
display in a rabbinical college in Jerusalem.
Jewish hopes for the speedy reconstruction of the vast shrine have been raised by the
recent release from an Israeli prison of the Jewish pietist Yehuda Etzion, after a
conviction for his previous attempt to blow up the Al-Aqsa Mosque and Dome of the Rock
which now stand on the Temple Mount site. Etzion and his followers had attempted to
disable key security systems, and had amassed sufficient explosives to reduce the Muslim
structures to rubble. Etzion, looking tanned and fit, recently appeared on British
television gazing out over the Temple Mount, and speaking of his undiminished longing to
try again and again, until the Muslim monuments are triumphantly razed to the ground.
Secular Israelis have expressed misgivings over the scheme, pointing out that Israel's
international image would be severely dented by the deliberate destruction of Islam's
third holiest mosque. Others, however, look forward to the chaos and violence that would
ensue. One Israeli scholar, Gideon Aran, has summed up their views: "The bombing of
the "abomination" would arouse hundreds of millions of Muslims to a jihad,
sweeping all mankind into an ultimate confrontation. This they interpret as the War of Gog
and Magog, with cosmic implications. Israel's victorious emergence from this longed-for
trial by fire will then pave the way for the coming of the Messiah."
A group of academics at Harvard's Centre for International Affairs concluded that if
Etzion had succeeded in his first attempt, "it might have started a third world
war." The current extreme right-wing prime minister Netanyahu, while attending
functions sponsored by reconstructionist groups like the Temple Mount Faithful, has in
public neither supported nor opposed the plans, although some have insisted that he
sympathises with them privately.
The idea of dynamiting Al-Aqsa Mosque is relatively new. It was of little interest to the
largely secular first generations of Zionists, who concentrated their efforts on expelling
non-Jews from the land. Most religious Jews continued to be sceptical about the whole
Zionist enterprise. But the capture of Jerusalem by Israel in 1967 provided the context
for a new style of colonist who was both Zionist and deeply devout. In 1967, the chief
rabbi of the Israeli army demanded the 'cleansing' of the Temple Mount of its Muslim
structures, but the very secular General Moshe Dayan refused permission. Although four
historic mosques near the Mount were bulldozed, most rabbis upheld the Talmudic law which
prohibits any Jewish presence on Temple Mount until the arrival of the Messiah. This
convenient alliance of secular and orthodox opinion was sufficient to protect the mosque
for thirty years.
The new Zionist-religious Jews, however, show little interest in such traditional Jewish
orthodoxy. Messiah or no messiah, the reconstruction of the Temple has become for them the
touchstone of their identity, the climax of mitzvah, religious duty. Whether or not the
Israeli government, basking in the unconditional protection of the United States, will
legalise the destruction of the mosque is unimportant to such zealots. Several articles
have appeared in Israeli newspapers reflecting on the poor quality of the security
arrangements at the Temple Mount, which are oriented more towards monitoring Muslim
worshippers than towards keeping out small and determined bands of Jews.
It is estimated that only a hundred pounds of high-yield explosives would be enough to
bring down the Dome of the Rock. The monumental Aqsa Mosque presents greater difficulties,
but massive Israeli excavations beneath and near the Mount in recent years have
demonstrably weakened the structure, with several new cracks appearing last year along the
length of its north wall. Local Muslim officials claim that little more is now needed to
bring the ninth-century structure crashing down.
In their magazines and newsletters, the Temple Mount activists appear indifferent to the
grief such a move would bring to Palestinians, and to the Muslim world as a whole. Jewish
radicals, increasingly numerous and confident, have wholeheartedly embraced the Talmudic
teachings on non-Jewish rights. Until recently, and rather curiously, it was often
Christians who were their preferred victims. The pornographic cartoon of the Virgin Mary
recently circulated on the Internet by West Bank settlers appears to have been aimed at
wounding Christian, not Muslim sensibilities. Some settler schools include on their
curriculum the long-suppressed passage from the Babylonian Talmud which imputes a long
string of sexual offences to Jesus, and teaches that in Hell he will be 'submerged for
eternity in boiling excrement'.
But Muslims are increasingly targeted by the new Judaism. Ritual cursings of the Prophet
Muhammad (s) are now common in West Bank settlements, and the distribution of pictures in
May showing the Prophet as a pig was widely reported. The commandment given by the
medieval rabbi Maimonides that non-Jews in the land of Israel are to be 'utterly wiped
out' is taken with increasing seriousness.
This type of Talmudic revival has influenced the army in particular. A booklet published
by the Central Region Command of the Israeli Army explains, 'Under no circumstances should
an Arab be trusted, even if he makes an impression of being civilised ... In war, when our
forces storm the enemy, they are allowed and even enjoined by the Halahkah (Jewish law) to
kill even good civilians.' Rabbi Weiser, who is close to the army, wrote in response to a
soldier's query, 'Rabbi Shim'on used to say: "The best of gentiles - kill him; the
best of snakes - dash out its brains."' According to Rabbi Yaacov Perrin: 'A million
dead Arabs are not worth a single Jewish fingernail.'
Muslim observers point out that given the long history of Israeli human rights abuses
against non-Jewish human beings, it is improbable that non-Jewish buildings will fare any
better. Within four years of Israel's creation, well over five hundred mosques had been
destroyed. Even the Hilton Hotel in Tel Aviv is built on a historic Muslim cemetery.
What would be the consequences of demolishing Al-Aqsa? Given American support and Israel's
nuclear capacities, the regional war hoped for by the Jewish radicals may well result in
the decimation of the region's non-Jewish population, and a considerably expanded Israeli
state embracing the 'Biblical borders' demanded by Ariel Sharon in 1993. The surviving
regimes would be docile and exhausted, and incapable of resisting Israeli and American
plans for the total subjection of the Middle East.
The consequences for Muslims in the West, however, are almost as alarming. A day after the
Jewish doctor Baruch Goldstein massacred 37 Palestinians praying in a Hebron mosque, a
petrol bomb was thrown through the window of a Jewish centre in Oxford, illustrating a
very worrying resentment against Jews in many sections of the community. It is accepted
that the destruction of the al-Aqsa Mosque would provoke a response of a far greater
severity. Outnumbering Britain's Jews by a ratio of seven to one, and with little to lose,
Britain's Muslims would certainly eliminate much of the Jewish population, along with the
entirety of identifiable synagogues. This grim prospect would represent the largest civil
war in this country since Cromwell.
There are those who continue to regard British Muslims as beyond provocation. The
destruction of Islam's third holiest shrine, they contend, would cause much distress, but
little violence. Yet the almost uncontrollable power of the Muslim reaction to the Salman
Rushdie affair should remind us that Muslims defend their sanctities very vehemently.
Horrifying though the prospect might seem, war on our streets, the final and loathsome
consequence of Western indulgence of Zionism since 1917, is a possibility for which we
must brace ourselves.
© Copyright 1998 Q-News International, UK.
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