The following is an excerpt from Dr. Israel Eldad's book Jerusalem: A
Challenge. Dr. Eldad was one of the three leaders of the Lechi after
the assassination of Avraham Stern. Eldad died in 1996.
JERUSALEM: A CHALLENGE
On the Temple Mount and below it, there occurred one of the most
exciting and odd events. General Motti Gur, the conqueror of the
Temple Mount, reports: The Mountain is in our hands. The Chief Rabbi
of the Israeli Defense Forces (Rabbi Shlomo Goren), gripped by
enormous emotion, blows the shofar at the Western Wall. With
fluttering heart, the Prime Minister, Levi Eshkol, speaking from the
heart of the entire nation, pronounces the shehechianu blessing.
Shehechianu - Who kept us alive and sustained us - to stand again
before the Wall. The Wailing Wall - a memorial of the destruction. An
Israeli soldier pressed against the Wall and bathed in tears became
the symbol of victory.
What is going on here? At the Wall? Why not on the Temple Mount? Who
at that time thought of Halachic restrictions? Certainly not Gur and
Eshkol and the weeping soldier and those masses that began to flow to
the Wall. It was not Halachah that prevented them from ascending and
celebrating on the Mount. Two thousand years of EXILE channeled them
and us and the river of their - our - stormy emotion to the Wailing
Wall, a truly surrealistic spectacle. Here was irrationality inside
the irrationality of the miraculous victory. A forced emancipational
Zionism overcame a redemptional-historical Zionism. The soldiers of
Tzahal break through the Lion's Gate, only now giving to the gate's
name its true meaning. They break into the Temple square. With their
commanders, they storm its length and diagonally cross its wonderful
and great expanse. And that search for the way to the Wailing
Wall...They ask the Arabs: How does one go down to the Wall?..The
Arabs are scared and show them the way, the steep steps to the
Mughrabi Quarter, and the liberators descend to the narrow lane.
These soldiers, conquerors of the Temple Mount, as if possessed by a
dybbuk, run down to the Wailing Wall, to the Wall of Tears and cling
to it in glowing passion and deeply moving tears. This is the most
dramatic and most photographed scene of the Six Day War, and from
it a tremor spreads through the people and the entire land, through
the towns and villages and to the fronts still bathed in fire. We
have returned to the Kotel!
Had we broken through the Jaffa Gate or the Zion Gate, had we reached
the Kotel on the way to the liberation of the Temple Mount, then one
might understand, sure it's natural. But no. The Mount was conquered
first. We were on the Temple Mount, and spontaneously, without orders
from superiors without thinking or planning we went down to the Wall.
And this Wall is not even a wall of the Temple, but part if the wall
with which Herod surrounded it. Its entire sanctity derives from
prohibitions forced on us by foreign usurpers, preventing us from
ascending the Mount.
It is a reminder, a memorial, a substitute. Hence it is a Wailing
Wall, for it reminds us only of the destruction, of the disgrace if
being below, with our enemies on top. For 2,000 years this fabulous
mountain waited for its Jewish liberators..finally they come to it,
but what is happening here?...Why do they run down to the Wall? Why,
holding, the genuine thing, do they want the substitute?
And so we have come to the restoration of the Jewish Quarter of
Jerusalem. The ears cannot grasp what the mouth is saying. There is a
Jewish Quarter in Jerusalem. There is an Armenian Quarter, an Arab
Quarter, in the midst of Jerusalem. In Prague yes, in New York yes,
but in Jerusalem? A Jewish Quarter?
But to return the main point: The Temple Mount was conquered and not
liberated. We are down below and our enemies sit above as if we are
not living in the State of Israel, as if we are not in charge in the
age of Tzahal. We deal with the recidivism of an exilic soul. Zionism
had two sources: a positive root in the sovereign will to redemption,
to return, to renew our days as of old, and a second, negative root,
in escape from oppression, in the despair of emancipation. It is this
second one that won.
For truly Zionism was forced on us. Even this miraculous war, with
its liberation of Jerusalem, was forced on us to our shame.
And so, to the extent that memories and emotions played a role and
they certainly did they were memories and emotions that went as far
as the Wall of Teras. They did not go higher than that Wall, not to
the establishment if decisive facts in Jewish redemptive history. The
Mount was liberated and abandoned.
An intimidated, wavering rabbinate shaped by exilic traditionalism
joined hands with a political establishment on which the entire issue
had been forced, and who could not forget that its main demand had
always been free access to the Wailing Wall. Behold, this was now
achieved.
There was yet another factor. Was it not clear, as a matter if
course, that should the city fall into the hands of Jews even if the
mosques on the Temple Mount should survive the battles that the
Temple Mount itself appropriated and removed from the control of the
political-religious-nationalist Waqf, with its incitement to kill the
Jews? Would one not expect that Jews, following both Halachic
prescriptions and their generations of longing, renew their prayers
on the Mount? Could anything be more natural? After all the
Hasmoneans and the Zealots fought for the Temple Mount, not for the
Wall.
But no: the Jews abandon the Mount and go down to the Wailing Wall.
At that moment, it dawned upon the Muslim Arabs that the battle might
be over, but the war was not. There was no decision, and the heart of
El Quds remained in their hands.
The police have thwarted an attempt by Islamic Movement activists to
begin laying a floor in the space under the Al Aqsa mosque on the
Temple Mount, known as the "ancient Al Aqsa."
The attempt was made after the Waqf (the supreme Muslim religious
council) received permission to clean out the area.
Youngsters associated with the Islamic Movement tried to lower into
the space flooring left over at the Temple Mount plaza from work
intended to turn Solomon's Stables into a mosque. Police noticed the
work two days ago and stopped it.
Minister of Public Security Avigdor Kahalani said yesterday that
although permission was given to the Waqf to clean out the space,
they did not receive authorization to turn it into a mosque or to
build a permanent structure. Kahalani emphasized that the government
learned its lesson from the Solomon's Stables affair and will not
allow it to be repeated.
The "ancient Al Aqsa" has been used as a prayer site for many years,
in times of rain or when the main Al Aqsa mosque becomes overcrowded.
A large number of the old carpets from the Al Aqsa mosque, which had
been donated by the kings of Morocco and Saudi Arabia and have since
been replaced with newer carpets, were taken down to the "ancient Al
Aqsa." Cabinets and other equipment charred in an arson fire in 1969
were also moved to the other Al Aqsa.
Several months ago, Waqf leaders decided to clear out the area of the
"ancient Al Aqsa," and to move the remnants of the fire to the
Islamic museum on the Temple Mount. The Waqf asked and received
permission for the work. Activists of the Islamic Movement in Israel,
however, tried to also lower construction materials to the site, but
police stopped this.
The Waqf is currently repairing the flooring of the Temple Mount
plaza in order to prevent rain water from seeping into the new mosque
in Solomon's Stables.
It appears that the intention was to take advantage of some of the
construction materials used by the Waqf to seal the plaza floor, in
addition to materials left over from work on Solomon's Stables.
Officials at the Attorney General's Office are determined to enforce
the decision to prevent any change to the status quo on the Temple
Mount, either by Jews or Arabs.
Sami Sockol adds:
Adnan Husseini, head of the Waqf in Jerusalem, said yesterday that in
recent months, the Waqf has been involved in cleaning the "ancient Al
Aqsa" and in laying down new carpets. "This is not about digging or
new construction, because the building is already there," he said.
According to Husseini, the site in question is the place where the
mosque collapsed in an earthquake during the Abbasid period (750-1258
C.E.).
Gathering en masse to arouse consciousness among the People,
its rabbis, and its leaders to rebuild the Beit HaMikdash
and return the Kohanim to their Service
P.O. Box 31336, Jerusalem, ISRAEL
Telephone: +972-2-5371904
Email: Yirmiyahu Fischer
HaTenu'ah LeChinun HaMikdash
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