Now they are already destroying the Holy Temple, itself. The tractors of the Moslem Authority on the Temple Mount have dug a trench across part of the Mount, destroying a section of the outer wall of the Second Temple in the process. To many Israelis, the Holy Temple sounds like an irrelevant -- and even frightening -- fable. It is much more comfortable for us when it is kept buried underground. It is much more comfortable for us to think that it was completely destroyed 1937 years ago, that nothing remains, that it all turned to dust and evaporated far away from our collective consciousness. It is much more comfortable for us to think so -- despite the fact that all the prayers and longing that retained our identity throughout the long exile --all the prayers and longing that motivated us to return to this land -- were always focused on this very Mount and this very Temple. 

It is much more comfortable for us this way. So even though the Arab construction taking place now on the Temple Mount is a brutal and ongoing violation of the law, we close our eyes and allow the rape to be carried out undisturbed. Yes, if you understand what is happening on the Temple Mount, the feeling is akin to seeing your daughter raped before your eyes. The Western Wall, a retaining wall that Herod built around the Temple Mount, is nowhere near as holy as the place being destroyed now by the Moslem Authority. For me, they are destroying the Western Wall, magnified one thousand times.  

Last week, I happened across a talkback to an article on Israel’s Arabs. The talkback was written by an Arab woman, Samir, from Haifa: 

“We are not Israeli Arabs. We are Palestinian citizens of the State of Israel. Our citizenship is a technical matter that includes an Israeli passport and identity card that we must produce at various official institutions. We have a nationality. We are Palestinian Arabs. We are not Arabs of this State and we are not willing to be associated with it at all. You though, lack a nationality. You have a religion called Judaism. You belong to it, and that is all!!! Beside the Hebrew language, there is nothing that you have succeeded in creating in the 58 years that you have been here as occupiers of the land of another nation. You have no culture and no past to be proud of. You are simply a collection of individuals that gathered from the exile. You came here to realize your right to self fulfillment, at the expense of the right of another nation to do so. You have murdered Rabin’s vision of peace forever! So you should be ashamed of yourselves. We have nothing more to speak about. Of course, I do not want to make generalizations. I have Jewish friends who are like brothers to me, and I respect them very much. But there are others who negate the existence of another nation so that they, themselves, may exist.” 

Many people attempted to answer Samir. They explained that there is no such thing as a Palestinian nation. They explained that we were here first. There were hundreds of answers there -- historically accurate but nevertheless irrelevant to Samir’s claim that “you are not a nation.” Nobody succeeded in answering her claim simply because she is right. The Israeli-ness that has attempted to replace Judaism is not a new nation. It is a rootless phenomenon that is crumbling before our eyes.

The question is not if the Palestinians are a nation. Clearly they are not. The question is why Samir is wrong when she claims that the Israelis are nothing more than a culture-less band of colonialists. Because a “nation” whose police force stands quietly by while its most sanctified site -- the very foundation of its collective identity -- is being destroyed, is not a nation. It is hardly a religion. He who estranges himself from the foundations of this land will not be able to exist in any part of it. That is why Israel’s leaders have no solution for the Kassams in Sderot and that is why they are hell-bent on self-destruction. 

Someone is trying to scare you away from your connection to the Temple Mount -- the most basic foundation of our right to exist here. But in the words of the famous poet Uri Tzvi Greenberg, “He who rules the Mount rules the Land.” It is time for you to decide if you are willing to allow the Moslem Authority tractors to continue to destroy your existence in the Land of Israel.

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