Time To Get Serious About Safeguarding The Temple Mount

By: Rabbi Chaim Richman

Published: July 25th, 2012

This year, as Israel observes the traditional period of national mourning for the destruction of the Beis HaMikdash on Tisha B’Av, it has again been revealed that the Islamic Waqf is carrying out unsupervised work at the Temple Mount, potentially causing irrevocable damage to Judaism’s holiest site.

Of all the unsolved questions surrounding Jerusalem’s biblical past, this modern mystery seems to present the greatest riddle: How is it that in Israel, a country home to priceless archeological treasures that are safeguarded by a governmental Antiquities Authority known for its sweeping powers and far-reaching control, archeological crimes are regularly and systematically committed with impunity by serial offenders whose identity is known to the police?

The crimes, perpetrated in broad daylight in the national homeland of the Jewish people, inflict irreparable damage to the very core of the Jewish people’s identity. The Temple Mount, one of the most significant ancient sites in the world, has somehow acquired a sort of legal extraterrestrial status, with a sort of perverse diplomatic immunity wielded by the Islamic Waqf that controls it.
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