The rabbis gave up first

Haaretz.com ^ | July 24, 2007 Av 9, 5767 | Nadav Shragai

[Squidpup]

For the past 40 years, right-wing and religious organizations have been mourning the absence of the Temple Mount from our national and religious life in addition to the Temple's destruction. In what has become a ritual, they lament the destruction of the antiquities on the mount and complain about the impotence of the Israel Antiquities Authority, the humiliating entrance conditions and turning empty areas on the mount into Muslim prayer sites.

These groups say there is a vacuum as far as sovereignty, government, law and order on Temple Mount are concerned. They say they are frustrated again and again by the authorities' lies and broken promises.

They are usually right. The only problem is that the politicians, archaeologists or even the police were not the first to give up Temple Mount. The rabbis were the ones to do so, as early as 1967. Even a decade later, when Menachem Begin wanted to change the status quo on Temple Mount to enable Jews to pray there, the rabbis would not allow it. They threatened him with boycotts and coalition crises.

When Rabbi Yoel Bin-Nun complained to Begin on the goings on at Temple Mount, Begin sent him away angrily, saying "go to your rabbis."

... This prohibition has been convenient for Israel's governments, all of which banned Jewish prayers on the Temple Mount (with the exception of visits) for reasons of preserving public order and preventing conflict.

... Sovereignty cannot be exercised on Temple Mount when the sovereign is halakhically banned from entering the place where he wishes to exercise it. The sovereignty on Temple Mount either exists or it does not.

...

[Squidpup]

Good explanation of why Israel doesn't exert control over the Temple Mount area

[Piranha]

Not really. It’s from Ha’aretz, so you’d expect it to be anti-Rabbi. The simple fact is that Israel’s defense minister, Moshe Dayan, turned over the temple mount to the Waqf as soon as the 6-day war was over.

[pabianice]

From “Never Again!” to “We don’t want to hurt anyone’s feelings” in just 60 years. Astonishing.

[joebuck]

"The simple fact is that Israel’s defense minister, Moshe Dayan, turned over the temple mount to the Waqf as soon as the 6-day war was over."

And they have been wandering in the terrorist desert for the 40 years since then.

[AnotherUnixGeek]

The simple fact is that Israel’s defense minister, Moshe Dayan, turned over the temple mount to the Waqf as soon as the 6-day war was over.

And what stops them from taking it back now?

[MeanWestTexan]

There is a huge conflict in Israel between the secular and the religious (really “observant”) camps.

The religious group is futher broken into several camps: (1) zionism is wrong because it’s up to the Messiah to restore Israel, and taking it into our hands is wrong; (2) the Temple can/should only be restored by the Messiaha; and (3) let’s take the mount back, do our best, and wait for the Messiah.

With a flavoring of “God doesn’t want us to do animal sacrifices, anymore, and that’s why the Temple is gone” running through various strains of thought.

And that’s greatly oversimplifying things.

[picard]

I think part of the turnover of the Temple to the Jordanian Muslims was because Dayan was a Communist/Socialist Secularist. He was one of those Jews who are embarrassed by Judaism and Jewish tradition and he didn’t want the crazy Orthodox Jews to reclaim the Temple. Also, at the time, Israel had a utterly misguided view that the Jordanian Arabs would want to be good Israeli citizens and they were anxious to make concessions to Muslims in general. Today, of course, we see that this was a completely misguided and disastrous notion.

The Muslims had their highest respect for Israel when Israel was strong and knew who and what they were. When Israel began making concessions and debating it’s own ‘right to exist’ is when the real trouble with the Arabs began. Arabs view weakness as pathetic and like a wild animal, it spurs them to attack. They respect(need,crave,desire) only strength and force, and later Israel provided them with diffidence, pusillanimity, and intellectualized insecurity. BTW, Dayan’s daughter Yael, became a flaming peacenik nutcase to the point where she began praising Arafat and PLO murderers over her own Jewish people. She went to the point of becoming a PLO sympathizer.

Furthermore, Islam considers the conquest holy places to be a central part of their religion. The world over, they strive to destroy churches/synagogues and temples of all sorts to be replaced by mosques. That is why they are on the Temple, as a symbol that Islam has conquered/replaced Judaism not for any ‘real’ Islamic reason. Later, they made up some story that Mohammed took a whiz there or something and now it is the third holiest site in Islam. But that is all fables. The truth is, they should never have been there in the first place.