[VIDEO IN EXTENDED ARTICLE]
Speaking to a Hebrew University audience last week, Israel Police Chief Yochanan Danino stated the new Jewish struggle to change the long-standing status quo on Har Habayis will ignite the global Islamic community and lead to an existential threat for Israel. The chief added that despite tenacious efforts, the status quo will not change regarding Jews davening on the site.
MK Moshe Feiglin, among the leading activists to permit Jewish tefilos on Har Habayis, responds to the police chief’s remarks.
Feiglin does not accept the police chief’s analysis of the situation, calling his words “painful” and witness to the gravity of the situation. He draws an analogy to France where the nation stands firm to permit the controversial Charlie Hebdo publication [which he adds he does not necessarily support] continue with its agenda yet in Israel, where the issue is Israel’s roots and unique right to Har Habayis seems to be a closed agenda for many.
Feiglin believes that since the chief is in his last days of office he wishes to ride certain waves before leaving his senior position and clearly the Har Habayis issue is one of them.
Feiglin explains that such statements will have an impact in the present and future, and we must come to understand that without control over Har Habayis the manufacture of missiles, rockets, terror attacks and the like will continue. He added this is simply “a ghetto mentality”.
“I do not expect anything from the political system and its players, which is prisoner to the Oslo mentality and that is why I am establishing the alternative at present”.
(YWN – Israel Desk, Jerusalem)
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One Response
What incites the Muslim world is the existence of a non-Muslim state in the Middle East. It is irrelevant whether or not that state includes the West Bank, or the Har ha-Bayis, or Tel Aviv or Haifa. While davening on the Har ha-Bayis “rubs it in”, not doing so is hardly a gesture towards peace.
The reason Jews should not daven on the Har ha-Bayis is that it violates halacha to go on there.