MK Yisrael Eichler during the opening of a Knesset committee meeting on transportation, spoke about the worrisome issues surrounding the Kosel and Har Habayis.
Today, the matter is far greater than traveling to the Kosel as there are many who would prefer not seeing Jews at the Kosel at all. Eichler expressed sorrow and solidarity with the mourners of the family murdered in cold blood in Chalamish (N’vei Tzuf) on Friday night.
Eichler reflects back to the Pogroms of ‘Tarpat’, when the Hebron Jewish community came under attack and there too, there was an Islamic slaughter of innocent Jews, indiscriminate murder in 1929, which he explains began with the mufti accusing the Jews of threatening al-Aqsa Mosque, citing unfortunately, most Jews are unaware of this.
He explains the Hebron massacre in 1929 took place in the month of Menachem Av and back then, the British were involved and blamed; and the result, tragic. Today he questions “Who will be blame” as today the allegations vis-à-vis Har Habayis did not began today but a number of years ago and the leaders of the incitement are Israeli citizens among the Muslim community. Today weare in the midst of bloodshed and a well of tears.
He quotes that Rav Yosef Chaim Zonnenfeld ZT”L issued a calling to the Arabs in 1929, a call made in Arabic, that the Jews have no intentions of depriving anyone of his place of prayer and that all the Jews wish is to reside in peace and daven at the Kosel, in brotherhood among all inhabitants of the land.
He feels the message today must be directed at the international Muslim community and while the message has been sent, it has not been enough and it must be made clear no one is seeking to encroach on anyone’s place of prayer.
Eichler warns the main inciters are Israelis, who have turned the Kosel and Har Habayis into places of dispute and the results were seen in N’vei Tzuf as “all the fuel of the suicide bombers over the years is al-Aqsa and halacha prohibits us from being there today and we must permit this incitement to continue today”.
Eichler explains this is true regarding the battle with Arabs in the region or the Jews in the United states, we must not permit turning Har Habayis and the Kosel into the battleground.
(YWN – Israel Desk, Jerusalem)
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2 Responses
Nice, during bein hametzarim, to blame yidden for Arab murders. Pnei hador kipnei hakelev.
I think Rashi tz’l, the rishonim when they were alive, and myself studied a different version of last week’s parasha, Masei, than Eichler. In Masei, we are commanded to drive out the inhabitants of EY and settle the land. Al pi the Rambam, the inhabitants were an immoral people, just as the modern day “Palestinians.” These Arab Muslims, are not Bnei Noachides by any halachic opinion, and to boot, they applaud and preach about murdering Jews in their mosques and on Har Habayit itself! They have no right to be in EY, much less, have a right to pray on the Jewish Temple Mount. As Jews, and especially during the 9 days, and 50 years after the liberation of Yerushalayim that Hashem gave us, our tafkid in this dor is to rebuild the Beit Hamikdash and chazal say that any generation that does not rebuild it, it is as if they destroyed the initial Temple. I am so saddened that Eichler is choosing the side of churban and betrays the tikun that Hashem wants from him.