On June 7, 1967, Moshe Dayan, Israel’s legendary defense minister, arrived at the Temple Mount in Jerusalem, which had been captured hours earlier by Israeli paratroopers. There he saw an Israeli flag unfurled over the Dome of the Rock. Dayan ordered the flag removed, establishing one of the most important principles of Israeli control over Islamic and Arab holy sites: Israel would display self-restraint, respecting the autonomy of Muslim authorities in this realm.
In the ensuing weeks and months, a delicate but stable ecosystem emerged: The keys to all of the gates to the Temple Mount, save one, were left in the hands of the Waqf, the Islamic endowment that administers the site. Access to the Mount was guaranteed to non-Muslims, but no prayer was allowed there except by Muslims. These informal rules of engagement were ones that both Jewish and Muslim religious authorities could accept. Overwhelmingly, rabbinic rulings forbade Jews from ascending to the Mount, lest the sanctity of the Holy of Holies be violated. The Waqf could abide universal access to the site, provided that the exclusivity of Muslim worship was maintained.
For the most part, a fragile peace has prevailed, though it can all fall apart very easily. In 1969, a mentally disturbed Australian tourist torched the Al Aqsa Mosque, leading to an outbreak of widespread violence. In 1990, an attempt by the Temple Mount Faithful to bring a cornerstone for a reconstructed Third Temple to the site was blocked by Israeli police but still led to rioting that left 21 Palestinians dead. In 1996, the opening of an archaeological tunnel adjacent to the Mount led to the first outbreak of widespread violence across the territories between Israelis and Palestinians since the signing of the Oslo accords. In September 2000, a visit by then-opposition leader Ariel Sharon triggered the second intifada.
There is a pattern: Jerusalem erupts over real or perceived threats to the integrity of sacred space. And no space is more sacred than the Mount, which is a magnet for those who seek to sow discord and promote apocalyptic visions, and a potent rallying point for fundamentalist Islamic actors inside Israel and beyond.
In recent weeks, the site has been the focus of yet another round of violence, giving rise to charges and countercharges from Israelis, Palestinians and the Arab world over who is to blame. And there is plenty of blame to go around. Both Raed Salah, the inflammatory leader of the northern branch of Israel’s Islamic Movement, and messianic Jewish forces have been fanning the flames.
The incitement from the extremists is predictable, but their fiery exhortations would gain little traction if they were not being fueled by events on the ground. Take, for example, the claim that Israel is tunneling under the Temple Mount and undermining the foundation of its mosques. It is a blatant fabrication. But it is true that only meters from the Mount, Israel is conducting massive tunneling beneath Palestinian homes in the Muslim Quarter and in the nearby neighborhood of Silwan, all with no real public scrutiny. It is also the case that the Silwan tunneling is being carried out by the same settlers who have displaced Palestinian residents above ground.
Indeed, virtually all of the archeological excavations in and around Jerusalem’s Old City are taking place under the auspices of right-wing settler organizations. Moreover, from Sheikh Jarrah to Silwan and beyond, the pace of Jewish settlement near the Old City is accelerating, with actions that expand the settlers’ presence and displace more Palestinians, carried out at the direction of, or in collusion with, the highest echelons of the Israeli government.
So when Muslims are led to believe that the mosques on the Temple Mount are in danger, they are being cynically manipulated by Islamic extremists. But Muslim fears for the welfare and future of the Palestinian population in Jerusalem, and for the religious and cultural integrity of Islamic Jerusalem, are legitimate and are being fueled by the reckless actions of the Israeli government. Israel is effectively empowering its worst enemies and weakening the forces of moderation in the Arab and Muslim worlds.
Israel would be well-advised to recall the wisdom shown by Moshe Dayan in 1967. Regardless of one’s view on the political future of Jerusalem, Israel’s claims to be a responsible guardian of this complex and sensitive city require it to respect competing religious and national narratives and their physical embodiments in the holy sites. Failing this, we will likely witness increasing and recurring violence that will send tremors throughout the region.
Daniel Seidemann is the founder of and a legal adviser to the Jerusalem nongovernmental organization Ir Amim, or “City of Nations.”
Daniel Seidermann, your humanity enriches my sad soul. From my first encounter with Israel as a young boy I came to feel that there are people who see "sacred" as a human term, not as an "exceptionalist" one that is exclusive. I marveled at how tortured Israelis were for so long about the people they had devastated, especially Dayan. I recall an old Hassidic who had come from A polish shetle shaking, crying and repeating: "Oy, are we doing what was done to us. Oh, we have more in common with these people that we have with our German killers so why are we fighting like this?" So much that is "sacred," on both sides, has been made cynically "political" by very hardened warriors, but not Dayan.
I recall the Jewish Agency's proscription that only Jewish hands can work Jewish soil. That was no Haredi declaration. Israeli authors explained, as I had been told in Tel Aviv, that it used to be Arab farmers who worked Rothchild's vineyards. But he felt that the Jews were getting lazy so he insisted on only Jewish hands working the land. Another author tells a story of the "yekes" who insisted on living in Tel Aviv so they gathered at sunrise to take the buses to the kibbutzims where they worked. One morning, part way there, a woman suddenly went into labor. "Is there a doctor on the bus?" yelled the man sitting next to her, whereupon seven people rushed to meet the demand. The driver stopped the bus, pulled the emergency brake and announced: "On my bus I do all the deliveries." It turned out that he had been the head of a leading ob/gyn clinic in Berlin. Oy, so many doctors among those Yekes! Well, Jews make good doctors, as I can attest from my sickly childhood years passed through the gentle hands of my dad's classmates. But as we now know, the myth of the "garden in the desert" is a myth as there are few Kibbutzims left in Israel, so farmers they were not. But what if the Jewish doctors did their thing for Israelis and Palestinians alike and let the Palestinian farmers do what they do best for Israelis and Palestinians alike, raising plants in a barren desert? Would we now have the conflict that we see? Jews had always taught me-- and I mean AFTER the Holocaust-- that people can sit together and solve problems so long as they show respect to all that they hold holy in common and holy separately. I remember Dayan. One could say all sorts of things against Dayan, but despite everything I can say for sure, there will always exist Palestinians ready to defend his honor, just like in the case of Begin. I was once told as a child: men are like barking dogs, they bark the same thing in the same way whether hot or cold; it is only women that give melody to a story. Perhaps that explains why women are so dominant in the holiest of places, the home, in all cultures, even where in the eyes of the state they are mere chattel. Men hold dear above all else their pride, women their children. Perhaps motherhood and its priorities will see an end to this family feud born of total misimpression: that the Jews came to the Middle East to hold the European Empires' places while they recover from a devastating war. And yet, the bond of women as opposed to men (those barking dogs who noisily express excitement without ever modulating to nuance the case) may be thus exhibiting what so blankets the varied thoughts that go through our minds but unexpressed by our words and deeds, making our gender, whether solo or many, barking out our vane PRIDE, dumb violent pride as if, should we not bark loud enough, we lose all the females and the territory we possess. Perhaps reading Dayan’s writings we would realize that behind this barking warrior were some of the deepest and most enlightened of thoughts; circumstances just didn't let them be expressed. One of them is that God had never meant for Muslims and Jews to fight over a hallowed piece of ground, killing His creations out of barking dog like pride.
There is a pattern: Jerusalem erupts over real or perceived threats to the integrity of sacred space....I guess we should have rioted over the Muslim construction of mosques in 1996 (the so called Solomons stables). These excavations, unlike those in Silwan were unsupervised, and deliberate destruction of Jewish artifacts took place. Mr Seidemann has long opposed Jews in Jerusalem. He heads the NGO Ir Goyim, dedicated to the vision of Hadrian in converting Jerusalem to a Jew free Aelia Capitolina.
Israel would be well-advised to recall the wisdom shown by Moshe Dayan in 1967...yes, the man who had two eyepatches, yet could loot other mens wives. He is my hero
Danny, you are so even-handed when you write:
"In recent weeks, the site has been the focus of yet another round of violence, giving rise to charges and countercharges from Israelis, Palestinians and the Arab world over who is to blame. And there is plenty of blame to go around. Both Raed Salah, the inflammatory leader of the northern branch of Israel’s Islamic Movement, and messianic Jewish forces have been fanning the flames."
The law, the secular democratic law, guarantees free access but Jews are discriminated against so as not to fuel flames but does that help or does it fuel the Arab trend of Temple-denial, Jerusalem-denial and is, of course, a continuation to Jewish-denial as a people who deserve a state and a homeland.
And who helps the Muslims escape blame by applying a false equivalency and in essence, collaborates with those who view their incitement and violence as justified? You, Danny. Just call some Jews Messianic and you feel free to get your hands dirty.
Curse Moshe Dayan (yemach shemo) for creating facts on the ground which will cut us off FOREVER from our Holiest site.
Also of interest: Dayan on the Golan --
"Along the Syria border there were no farms and no refugee camps — there was only the Syrian army... The kibbutzim saw the good agricultural land ... and they dreamed about it... They didn't even try to hide their greed for the land... We would send a tractor to plow some area where it wasn't possible to do anything, in the demilitarized area, and knew in advance that the Syrians would start to shoot. If they didn't shoot, we would tell the tractor to advance further, until in the end the Syrians would get annoyed and shoot. And then we would use artillery and later the air force also, and that's how it was...The Syrians, on the fourth day of the war, were not a threat to us."
* On the taking of the Golan Heights in 1967, indicating many of the firefights with the Syrians were deliberately provoked by Israel, and that many who pressed the government to take the Golan Heights did so less for security than for farmland; in a 1976 interview with Rami Tal, as quoted in The New York Times and Associated Press reports (11 May 1997)
http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Moshe_Dayan
The entire document was published in Yediot Ahronot on April 27, 1997
See translated excerpt at http://reuvenkaminer.blogspot.com/1997/04/dayan-memoirs.html
maybe i am missing something. if Jews cannot pray at the site, then where is the tolerance for different faiths?
The last time I was at the Kotel, rocks rained down on us from Arabs up above. Women and children could have been hurt...or worse. Where is the Arab religious tolerance for Jews?
Mr. Levin. During your next Google search, please take a look at a map of the ancient Kingdom of Israel which existed from around 930s BCE until about the 720s BCE. The Golan Heights was a part of this kingdom was it not?
In his 1925 autobiography, Mein Kampf, Adolph Hitler wrote that people would assume that an outrageous lie must be true because no one would have the audacity to have made it up. Later, that propaganda technique evolved into: If a big lie is repeated enough times it will become widely accepted as truth.
This bit of Nazi propaganda is being used today by the Palestinians. Their Big Lie is preached from the pulpits of the mosques and in the classrooms of their madrasas -- and more and more of the untutored masses are believing it.
What is the Palestinian Big Lie? Palestinian Authority Mufti Ikrama Sabri was quoted in the Palestinian daily Al-Ayyam (November 22, 1997) as saying that the Western Wall is part of the Al-Aksa Mosque and the Jews have no connection with it. The same newspaper (July 18, 1997) reported that Hamad Yusef, head of the Institution for the Rejuvenation of the Palestinian Heritage, referred to the "false historical claim of the Jews in the holy city, a claim which they were unable to prove in all of the (archaeological) excavations conducted by foreign groups for the past hundred years."
In other words, the Jewish people have no historical connection with the Temple Mount, including the Western Wall, or with any part of old Jerusalem. No archaeological evidence has ever shown otherwise. So they claim.
The absurd assertions continue. Islamic Movement chief Raed Salah stated in 2006, "We remind, for the thousandth time, that the entire Al-Aksa mosque [on the Temple Mount], including all of its area and alleys above the ground and under it, is exclusive and absolute Muslim property and no one else has any rights to even one grain of earth in it."
Sheikh Yusef Kardawi, one of the most influential Muslim clerics, denies that the Jews of old ever lived in Jerusalem and that they are nothing more than invaders from Europe who seized Arab land in the 20th century.
The Palestinian Minister of Muslim Affairs, Sheikh Yusef Salameh, embellishes the ridiculous claims with absurdity: The Al-Aksa Mosque on the Temple Mount was built 40 years after the construction of the mosque in Mecca by Adam, the first man. The former Jordanian Minister of Muslim Affairs, Abed al-Salaam al-Abadi refers to the Muslim prophet Abraham as the builder of the Al-Aksa Mosque 4,000 years ago. Egyptian archaeologist Abed al-Rahim Rihan Barakat writes, "The myth of the fabricated [Jewish] Temple is the greatest crime of historical forgery.(Source: Nadav Shragai, "In the Beginning was Al-Aqsa," Haaretz, November 27, 2005.)
The Saudi royal family , the Palestinian archaeologist Dr. Dimitri Baramki, Sheikh Kardawi, and a multitude of Syrian clerics all identify the ancient Jebusites (from whom King David bought the Temple Mount, see Samuel II, chapter 24) as an ancient Arab tribe that wandered from the Arabian peninsula, together with the Canaanites, around 3,000 years BCE and therefore predated the Jewish presence in the land.(Source: Nadav Shragai, "Christian Zionists See US Devastation as 'A Home for a Home'," September 13, 2005.)
On August 27, 2009 the Jerusalem Post reported that the Palestinian Authority's chief Islamic judge, Sheikh Tayseer Rajab Tamimi, boasted that there was no evidence to back up claims that Jews had ever lived in Jerusalem or that the Temple ever existed. Israeli archeologists, he said, have "admitted" that Jerusalem was never inhabited by Jews.
To deny the historical connection between the Jewish People and Jerusalem crosses the border of the rational into the realm of absurdity.This assault on the traditional connection between the Jewish people and their holy city of Jerusalem continues on a daily basis. It is not possible to convince those who believe such foolish assertions otherwise. As Albert Einstein said, “Two things are infinite: the universe and human stupidity. And I'm not sure about the universe.”
To deny the historical connection between the Jewish people and Jerusalem crosses the border of the rational into the realm of absurdity. The Hebrew Bible details the history of the Israelites and Jerusalem throughout its pages. This is tangibly documented in the Dead Sea Scrolls, which were written 600 years before the Koran was committed to parchment. Carbon-14 dating verifies the antiquity of the scrolls. The Hebrew Bible mentions Jerusalem and the City of David more than 700 times. The Koran does not mention Jerusalem even once.
The number of ancient, non-Jewish sources, documenting the presence of Jews in Jerusalem is impressive:
1. The Taylor Prism, named for its discoverer, Colonel Taylor, was found in the ruins of Nineveh, Iraq, in 1830. It was composed for the Assyrian king Sennacherib, and details the story of the Assyrian assault against “Hezekiah, the king of the Jews and his capital city, Jerusalem.”
2. The Babylonian Chronicles a collection of ancient tablets recording major events in Babylonian history (presently found in the British Museum), also tell of the Jews and Jerusalem.
3. One of the Elephantine Papyri, (circa 500 BCE) composed in the 17th year of King Darius, talks about the Jewish Temple in Jerusalem and its priests.
Many Greek and Roman historians likewise confirm that Jerusalem was a Jewish city.
1. It is irrational to think that all of the above sources, many of whom were anti-Semitic, were part of some Zionist plot against the native Arab-Canaanite population.
Perhaps the most impressive piece of documentary evidence are the histories of the first century CE historian, Josephus Flavius. In Antiquities and Wars of the Jews, he devotes hundreds of pages to the plight of the Jewish People in Jerusalem and the eventual destruction of their Temple. Josephus’ attention to detail, architectural and geographical, is well known and time after time his veracity and accuracy is borne out by archaeological discoveries.
To claim that the great number of Jews were relative late-comers to Jerusalem, some time during the 20th century, is contrary to the facts. Every few years, beginning in 1844, a census was taken in Jerusalem. The census counted separately the numbers of Jews, Arabs, and Christians. In every single census, the Jewish population was the greatest number. In many cases the Jewish population outnumbered the Arabs and Christians combined.
2. The absurd notion that there is no archaeological evidence to indicate a historical Jewish presence in the Holy City is to deny reality. A detailed presentation of all the archaeological evidence would require the pages of a large volume but I shall relate just of few of the archaeological items in brief merely to satisfy our own natural curiosity -- rather than to dispel a falsehood that does not need to be dispelled.
Jerusalem is one of the oldest cities in the world and, as would be expected, contains a wealth of archaeological finds. However, evidence of an ancient structure, be it a house, palace, or fortress, does not prove it to be Jewish. Ancient pottery or spearheads by themselves do not show their Jewish origin. We must limit ourselves to the archaeological finds that are unquestionably Jewish in nature. With that constraint understood, we can proceed.
The Temple Mount
1) Ashlars: The Second Temple was completely rebuilt several years before the beginning of the Common Era by the Judean tyrant, King Herod. The Temple complex was built entirely from large stone blocks called ashlars. Herod decreed that the Temple ashlars were to be unique in design and no other building in Jerusalem would be allowed to have that design. Each face of the ashlar was to be smooth and framed with a recessed border. On the Temple Mount today, these ashlars can readily be seen all along the Western Wall, Southern Wall, and parts of the Eastern and Northern Temple walls. These stones are in situ, in their original positions.
These four walls are retaining walls for the Temple Mount. The wall around the Temple Mount rests on solid bedrock and the height of the wall varies greatly depending on the contour of the bedrock. The height of the wall at the Western Wall Plaza is about 107 feet (33 meters) from bedrock to the top. The wall tapers as it rises. (See Talmud Tractate Yoma 28b.) It is about 12 feet thick at the bottom and about three feet thick at the top. Over the centuries, various invaders tried to tear down the wall in order to erase any signs of a previous Jewish presence in the city. However they were only partially successful along the upper regions of the wall due to the fact that the wall increases in thickness as one goes farther down.
If one observes the large ashlars along the bottom of the wall, one can readily see the Herodian (i.e. Jewish) design on these stones. As one looks up toward the mid-height of the wall, smaller ashlars can be seen but these ashlars are missing the Herodian design. These stones were part of a ninth century CE reconstruction of the wall by the Arabs and are consistent with Arab style ashlars. Near the top of the wall, even smaller stones can be seen, also lacking the Herodian design. They are of a later Arab reconstruction of the wall in the 16th century. The unique Herodian ashlars which are in situ testify to the Jewish presence on the Temple Mount.
2) Temple's Courtyard Wall: A number of years ago, part of an inner courtyard wall (azarah) of the Second Temple was discovered near the Dome of the Rock. It too had the tell-tale Herodian design. When the Muslims realized that evidence of a Jewish presence on the Temple Mount was discovered within a stone’s throw of their holy site, they had the tell-tale signs of the courtyard wall covered with cement. However, earlier photographic evidence confirms the fact that the wall is there.
3) 12 Steps: The Talmudic tractate Middot, dealing with the structure of the Second Temple, describes a flight of 12 steps that led to the main Temple courtyard. Through the millennia, some of the steps of the destroyed Temple could still be seen. As time passed, the steps were dismantled and used by the invaders for other construction works. However, as late as the end of the 19th century, three of the steps remained on the Temple Mount, a bit south of the Dome of the Rock. They did not lead up to anything; they were just there and were ignored by the Arabs. When the Muslim authorities realized it was evidence of a previous Jewish Temple, the steps were buried and blocked from view by a stone wall. A photograph from the late 1800’s of these Temple steps still survives.
4) Stone Markers: The first century historian Josephus Flavius records that on the Temple Mount, at the base of the steps, were a series of stone markers with inscriptions written in Greek and Latin. The inscriptions warned non-Jews from passing beyond that point (Josephus Wars, 5:5). In 1871 one of the stone markers was discovered near the Temple Mount and is presently kept in the basement of the Istanbul Archaeological Museum. The Turks are not too keen to display proof that the Temple Mount was the site of the Jewish Temple and hence the marker is not on display. However, photographs of the marker are readily available. In addition, in 1935 a fragment of another marker was discovered and is presently on display in Jerusalem’s Rockefeller Museum.
5) "Korbon:" A piece of pottery, more than 2,000 years old, bearing the Hebrew (as opposed to Arabic) inscription korbon (Temple offering) was unearthed in the late 1960’s near the Temple Mount. It is difficult to explain why a piece of dried clay with the Hebrew word for Temple offering would be found next to the Temple Mount if there never had been any Jewish Temple in the city.
6) Shofar Inscription: The Talmud (Sukkah 53b) tells us that in Temple times a shofar was sounded in the Temple on the eve of Shabbat to signal when all labor must cease. During excavations carried out by the Israel Antiquities Authority after the unification of Jerusalem in 1967, a large stone was found with the Hebrew inscription Beit HaTokiah, the Place of Shofar Blowing.
7) "Elders:" Those who served on the supreme court of the Jewish people were called the Elders. This term is used countless times in the Hebrew Bible (Tanach). Beginning in the time of King Solomon, when the First Temple was constructed, the seat of the Supreme Court was established on the Temple Mount. During the Second Temple Era, the Elders were commonly referred to by the Greek word Sanhedrin, assemblage, based on the verse “Assemble for Me 70 men, the Elders of Israel” (Numbers 11:16). During the Israel Antiquities Authorities excavations, a few fragments of an exquisitely engraved plaque was found. It bore Hebrew letters but only one word could be deciphered from the few fragments: zekayin, Elders.
8) Bar Kokhba Coins: During the Bar Kokhba rebellion against the Romans, circa 132 CE, Bar Kokhba regained control of Jerusalem and issued coins proclaiming the freedom of Jerusalem. Many of those coins have been found in Jerusalem and one was recently discovered in some debris that came from the Temple Mount.
9) Mikvas: Many mikvas (ritual baths) have been found in close proximity to the Temple Mount. They all conform to the strict regulations of Jewish law as detailed in the Talmud. Based on the pottery shards and coins found in and around the mikvas, they clearly date to the Second Temple era. Any Jew who wished to go to the Temple had to be ritually clean, which entailed immersing in a proper mikva. If the Temple Mount had never been the site of a Jewish Temple and if their never was a Jewish presence in Jerusalem, it would be difficult to explain why a number of kosher mikvas would be found next to a mosque.
10) Hasmonean Coins: The story of Chanukah recalls the miracle of the Menorah burning for eight days and the victory of the Maccabees over the Syrian-Greeks. The Maccabees founded a royal dynasty called the House of the Hasmoneans. They ruled from the mid-second century BCE until a few decades before the common era. Hasmonean kings issued coins bearing their names. Thousands of these Jewish coins have been found in and around Jerusalem.
11) Four Gates: Josephus Flavius, who served as a Temple priest, describes four gateways in the Western Wall of the Temple compound (Antiquities, 15:11, para. 5). All four of these gateways have been found and they are exactly as Josephus described them. Traces of all four can be seen today.
12) Menorah Engraving: Shortly after the Old City of Jerusalem was restored to Jewish hands in 1967, archaeological work began. The remains of a mansion were discovered, dating back to the era of the Second Temple. On one of its walls was an engraving of a seven-branched menorah depicting the Temple candelabra exactly as depicted in the Torah. The engraving is presently on display in the Israel Museum.
13) The Israelite Pool: Adjacent to the northern wall of the Temple Mount was a great cistern, constructed when Simon the Just (Shimon HaTzaddik) was the high priest, around 320 BCE. It was filled in during the British Mandate due to health concerns. Numerous photographs and drawings of the great cistern exist. For over 2,000 years it was known by its Hebrew name -- the Israelite Pool (Braichot Yisrael).
14) Quote from the Waqf: And now for the clincher. In 1925, the Supreme Muslim Counsel of Religious Affairs of Jerusalem (Waqf) published a small booklet, a guide to the Temple Mount. On page 4, it reads, “The site is one of the oldest in the world. Its sanctity dates from the earliest times. Its identity with the site of Solomon’s Temple is beyond dispute (emphasis added). This, too, is the spot, according to universal belief, on which David built there an altar unto the Lord.”
The above quote from the Waqf was published around the same time as Adolph Hilter’s Mein Kampf (i.e. the Nazi's Big Lie) was being published. It is no wonder that subsequent editions of this Waqf pamphlet omit the quote.
I must reiterate that the purpose of this article is not to prove anything other than satisfy an intellectual curiosity regarding the historical and archaeological indications of a Jewish, Biblical and medieval presence in the Temple Mount. The real proof is found in the passages contained in the volumes of the Prophets and in the tear-stained pages of the Hebrew prayer book. They contain the history of our Holy City and its glorious Temple. They tell of its heart-rending destruction and of our 2,000-year-long yearning for its rebuilding and for the day of universal peace.
Jerusalem's Population
Year Jews Muslims Christians Total 1844 7,120 5,000 3,390 15,510 1876 12,000 7,560 5,470 25,030 1896 28,112 8,560 8,748 45,420 1922 33,971 13,411 4,699 52,081 1931 51,222 19,894 19,335 90,451 1948 100,000 40,000 25,000 165,000 1967 95,700 54,963 12,646 263,309 1987 340,000 121,000 14,000 475,000 1990 378,200 131,800 14,400 524,400 2009 476,000 247,800 15,200 760,800
We are living in a time of forgetfullness...... They do not know their G-D. It is so true the words of Isaiah 1.
For it is written...Isaiah 1....Hear, O heavvens, and listen, O earth; for the LORD has spoken: I reared chilfren and brought them up. but they have rebelled against me.
The ox knows its owner, and the donkey its master;s crib; but Israel does not know, my people do not understand.
G-D is not at fault.....mankind is. G-D used animals that are completely dependent and the owner is completely reliable. note also the animals are not excessively bright or discerning. But nevertheless trust and depends upon the master. Unlike G-D children.
Many thanks to Rabbi Resnik for providing us with masses of 'ammunition.' It's worth noting that until very recently the Muslims themselves were proud that their mosque and Dome were on the site of Solomon's Temple. The only dispute had been over the exact location of the Holy of Holies. The point of the recent attempts to disconnect Jewish history from Jerusalem is that if you repeat a big enough lie often enough some people will begin to believe it.
I want you to think.....clean out everything mankind has put there.
How could it be that G-D could permit, let alone command, the destruction of the sanctuary called by so holy and divine a nane???? It does notmake sense, for it would amount to G-D'S allowing the very center and sourde of holiness, glory and honor to be defiled. Are you thinking yet????
hummm, Forward, do you think this will stay ?
thank you Forward
It is written in Ezekiel chapter 8 were he proclaim for G-D to the people and us,...that G-D declare it necessary in order to protect the Divine name,----spelled out in detail,...in chapter 8 of Ezekiel that G-D would abandon the temple man had built because it had become a place of idolatry and blasphemy, so there would be no shame or dishonor to the divine name.
Now this word of judgment is focused sharphy on the central catastrophe that will be involved, the ruination of the temple of Jerusalem. This vision is in chapter 8 and ending in chapter 11.
In short....G-D will not be hurt or defiled by what happens to the temple.
In Ezekiel's vision is a remarkable , and woulderfull statement given him by G-D... The necessity of the old temple destruction built by man were sins of the past were not repented. In chapter 8 it shows it had to come about because of the idolatry of the city. So G-D had already abandoned the temple before its destruction.
G-D dwells and rest upon the sons of G-D, who put sin out, and have turned. Keep up the idolatry of this temple and you lose your G-D.
Two diffrent people returned with Jeremiah, those who cryed, the temple, and those that did not. Those that did not cry along with Jeremiah turned and repented, and now stood on the true foundation of the temple G-D is building in every generations those who turn and place them selfs down upon the Rock the Capstone, the Temple of G-D, were sin can not enter in. For it is written....The Stone the builders rejeccted has become the capstone; the LORD has done this, and it is marvelous in our eyes. Genesis 28....And this stone, which I have set for a pillar, shall be G-D'S house: and of all that thou shalt give me I will surely give the tenth unto thee.
So think,,,,,thank you
I hear crys the Holocast, Htler the pure race.....and on and on, the world, the tears of the Jewish people
Yes, you cryed....and G-D cryed over you, and what you have done! You have walked in error....and will not turn....
Turn and wipe away the tears that haven fallen so deep within G-D'S own heart due to our sins.....stop thinking of your selves... sorry if I sound not nice, I just love you so much. You should say you love me more, it's a game I played with my sisters and brother and cousins, sons, and grandchildren... I do love you all---more, than you love me.
Have you ever wouldered why you said something??? I have, and the little story above, I wouldered why I wrote it down, it seem of no importance.
It's late and Iam about to go and say good night to G-D and this came in my thoughts......I love you more....says G-D to me.
I was the oldest and my arms were much longer than my sisters and brother and most of little cousins I took care of. Their were many of us, my mother was the youngest of seventeen children. I would streach out my arms and say no, no, no. see I love you more. I would place my arms up to theirs and some times, I would hear a little hummm, I love it. That how G-D is to us ----his out streached arms, want to emprace every one of us, He loves us more. His strong arms reach from the deepest deepts of heaven to us here.
Remember him in the night and awake to him in the day.
Deutetonomy 33...The eternal G-D is your refuge, and underneath are the everlasting arms. Psalm 91..He who dwells in the shelter of the Most High will rest in the shadow of the Almighty. Psalm 119...In the night I will remember Your name, O LORD, and I will keep Your law.
So my friends, take rest, His arms are streached out, He loves you more.
With all the bickering and fussing with the muslims I say "DOWN WITH THE DOME" and up with the new Temple. And let it not be spoiled with any infadel muslim entering in. Let them move the Dome to Saudia Arabia.- UP_UP_UP with Solomons Temple-
It's going to happen sooner or latter anyhow so why not start now.
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