There is troubling news from Har HaBayit today. Jews who were on Har HaBayit witnessed some very upsetting activity.
In the area of Shaar HaRachamim, Merccy Gate, there have been wooden beams laying there for a long time. they have been moved around a bit from place to place, but they have spent a lot of time recently "stored" in the area of Shaar HaRachamim.
These beams have been examined and tested with carbon dating. They have been determined to be over 3000 years old, dating back to the First Temple period, and examination has discovered flakes of gold on the wood. These beams are very likely, from an archaeological standpoint, to be beams from the Mishkan and/or the First Temple.
Even without ascribing any specific holiness to them, even just from a historical and archaeological perspective these beams should be cared for like national treasures. Yet people on Har HaBayit this morning saw the Arabs (who are connected to the Waqf) working to destroy the beams.
They have done so in the past, allowing the beams to remain exposed and warp under harsh weather conditions, they have disposed of some and they have burnt some up, until protests and appeals led to an agreement that the beams would be cared for and preserved by the Antiquities Authority. Yet today, again, people witnessed, the Arabs breaking pieces off and destroying them in fire. (source: Ladaat, and prior to that a Har HaBayit email list I am a member of)
The government should be protecting our heritage and our historical artifacts. This should not be allowed to continue.
In other Har HaBayit news, it is always nice to get some words of support, especially by people generally considered mainstream, rather than extreme, by the general public.
Mayor of Jerusalem Nir Barkat said last week, in a visit to the Netiv Meir school, that he supports Jewish prayer on Har HaBayit. Barkat said the issue is not under his control in any way, but is upon the government, but his personal opinion is that anybody who wants to should be able to pray on Har HaBayit. (source: INN)
Hopefully the numbers of people, especially influential politicians, and especially mainstream ones, supporting Jewish prayer on Har Habayit will continue to increase.
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If they might be beams of the Mishkan (!), or even Bayit Rishon, how could the Israel Antiquities Authority possibly just leave them exposed out there and not immediately put them in the Israel Museum or lock them away in some secret warehouse for research ala Raiders of the Lost Ark?
ReplyDeleteIs the IAA is just negligent beyond belief? Is it an Arab/political issue? Or maybe they're just not the real deal?
everything done on Har Habayit , as irrational as it may be, is out of over-sensitivity to the Arabs. We basically give them control over everything, even when it harms us. Your question is precisely what i was demanding. That the IA should take those beams for further studies and they should be national treasures of some sort in a museum.
ReplyDeleteAnother example is the way we allow them to dig unimpeded and dispose of tons and tons of dirt. We salvage some of the artifacts via the City fo David sifting project, but we lose many more.
If that's the case, and we're so spineless about asserting our own needs and our national pride that we can't even go recover a treasure like that, which is just sitting like a heap of rubble in the corner, all I can say is we don't deserve it.
ReplyDeleteThe wet sifrei Torah photo may not have elicited much emotion from me, but I find this infuriating and depressing as heck.
How can I get on this har habayit list?
ReplyDeletesend me your email address to Israeli.Jew at gmail
ReplyDelete