Tuesday February 20, 2007

Column:

Who owns history?

The day that question is resolved is the day that - one way or another - the red hot tensions between Islam and Israel will be resolved.

If you own the history, you own the land.

If you own the land, you have rights over the property.

If you have rights over the property, you get to make the rules.

And right now the land in debate is the Temple Mount. And right now both Muslims and Jews claim the history. And ownership is fundamental.

The most striking difference between the arguments set forth by the Jews/Israelis and the Muslims/Palestinians is that, from the very outset, Jews have never denied that Muslims have history atop the Temple Mount. They certainly do have history, say the Jews, but our history pre-dates Muslim history. The Muslim's, at this stage in the argument, have adopted the stance that Jewish history does not exist, that Jewish history on the Temple Mount is a fiction. Period, end.

That is dangerous. It is also silly.

Sheik Raed Salah, leader of the Islamic Movement in Israel, is the most virulent public advocate of the Jews-have-no-history theory. The Sheikh asserts that Jews have no connection to either the Wall or to the mountain above the Wall. The Palestinian Sheik is not the only person espousing these ideas. We hear it coming from Iran and from Muslim clerics scattered around the world and even in the United Kingdom.

How could anyone rationally theorize away the Jewish presence in Jerusalem? Anyone, least of all a Muslim? Muslim history itself is replete with stories of Jewish Jerusalem. The answer is simple - there is nothing rational about this debate over the Temple Mount, it is all raw Muslim emotion.

A quick, cursory look at the Koran immediately refutes the Muslim argument. Islam recognizes that Abraham had two sons. From one son, named Ishmael, came forth the nation of Islam. From the other son, named Isaac, came forth the Jewish nation. The Koran goes on to describe the Temple of Solomon never disputing or refuting the truth of Solomon's lineage - Solomon, King of the Jews. And further, the Temple of Herod which is the expanded version of the Second Temple is mentioned as part of Islamic tradition. Within ancient Islamic history it is clear that the building atop the mountain was where the Temple once stood.

It is the modernists who are having a problem. It is several prominent and outspoken modern Muslim leaders who want to rip out the roots not just of Jewish history, but more significantly and more appallingly, of their own Muslim history. A history that clearly documents Islam as an outgrowth of Judaism.

Salah says that anyone "who says that the Jews or the Israeli establishment has any right to al Aqsa, even to just one stone-this is an abominable attack, a falsehood, completely baseless." Salah says that any person, "Palestinians, Arabs or Muslims who accept this, is a traitor to Allah and his Prophet."

Sheik Raed Salah has chosen his words carefully. Calling another Muslim a traitor is one of the worst curses a leader can invoke in his sermons.

So where does the Western Wall come from? Salah has an interesting answer. He says that the Western Wall "is part of the western tower of Al Aqsa, which the Israeli establishment fallaciously and sneakily calls the Wailing Wall." One part of his statement is definitely correct. Fallaciously. Salah's interpretation, his fabrication, his rationalization, his historic grasp of ancient architecture, is totally fallacious.

There was no western tower of the al Aqsa Mosque. And even if there were, the Western Wall would have had nothing to do with it. Most telling, however, is Salah's inclusion of the words "the Wailing Wall." Israelis have never referred to the Western Wall as the Wailing Wall, to them it is either the full name Western Wall or, simply, the Wall, the Kotel in Hebrew.

Israelis and Jews worldwide reject the notion of a "wailing wall." The concept of a wailing wall is a Christian - not a Jewish - notion and it is a very fatalistic look at a holy site in Judaism. Referencing the Wall as wailing would infer that Jews would gather at the site to bemoan the atrocities that had befallen them, to cry over their history, to hang their collective heads over the destruction of the Temple at the only remnant of the Temple. The truth is completely to the contrary. The Jewish historical conscience regards the second temple period as a pinnacle of Jewish history and the Wall as a symbol of Israel's return to great historical grandeur.

Rewriting history is very dangerous. And deracinating the Jews from Jerusalem is part of a larger more nefarious plan.

If Jewish history is eliminated, the Jewish claim to Jerusalem is irrelevant.

If the Jews have no history and the Jews have no claim, they have made no contribution.

If the Jews have no history, no claim, no contribution, then they have played no role.

If the Jews have no history, no claim, have made no contribution and have played no role, they can be eliminated.

The current conflagration in the tensions between Israel and her neighbors is about more than ownership of the Temple Mount. It is a challenge over history. It is a struggle of life over death.