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Wednesday, April 18, 2007

The Archaeological War

The Hurva Synagogue was named for the incident in 1721, when Turkish overloads tore down an unfinished synagogue building on that site because its members could not pay their taxes. It was rebuilt in 1862 and stood for 140 years as the most magnificent synagogue in Jerusalem. In 1948, Jordan’s Arab Legion blew it up during the War of Independence. The Jewish community of the Old City scattered to different neighborhoods such as Meah Shearim and Katamon.

The Jewish history of Jerusalem dates back to the arrival of Abraham in Jerusalem’s former manifestation--the city of Shalem (Salem), nearly 4000 years ago. And while it is true that the Jews have been thrown out of Jerusalem several times throughout the centuries by oppressive regimes, there was an uninterrupted Jewish community there since 1267, when the Ramban (Nachmanides) came to settle there. In 1948, it came to a brief end--until the Six Day War in 1967, when the State of Israel regained control of East Jerusalem, including the Old City.

What the Arab Legion attempted to do when its soldiers detonated the Hurva, and thereby brought the Old City under their control, was to sever the Jewish connection to the Old City and delete, as it were, the history of the Jewish community in the Old City. The unit commander sent back to his superiors, after the Hurva was destroyed, “For the first time in 1,000 years not a single Jew remains in the Jewish Quarter. Not a single building remains intact. This makes the Jews’ return here impossible.”

In 1967, the Israeli government granted total authority over the Temple Mount to the Wakf, an Islamic body. This was to forestall international rage over the Jews’ possession of the Temple Mount, which happens to be considered the third holiest site in Islam. Never mind the fact that the Temple Mount is called “the Temple Mount” because the 1st and 2nd Temples--Jewish temples--stood there.

Unfortunately, the Wakf has abused its authority and has dug deep into the Temple Mount. They claim that the purpose of their digging is to fortify the structures of the existing mosque sites there. Worse, since the second intifada, the Wakf has forbidden any supervision by the Israeli Antiquities Authority on the Temple Mount. The Wakf’s henchmen have indiscriminately destroyed thousands of years of key archaeological items that chronicle the story of the Temple Mount, including its Jewish and Christian histories. The sheer volume of artifacts and structures lost in the Wakf’s desecration is enough to make the skin of any archaeologist crawl--which is why in 2001 an organization called the Committee to Prevent the Destruction of Temple Mount Antiquities was formed to document the Wakf’s archaeological crimes and report them to the government. I use words like “desecration” and “crimes” because the destruction is in fact not indiscriminate, but is intended to revise the history of the Temple Mount--this time with no evidence of Jewish--or Christian--history there.

What that means is that the modus operandi of the Arab Legion in 1948, and the Wakf today, is the same. The legitimacy of a Jewish homeland in the land of Israel can only be undermined if you physically erase the overwhelming evidence of our history here. And while the very idea of that is harrowing even to the most secular, left-wing archaeologist, in the Wakf’s eyes, it is the most efficient means of clearing the Mount for Muslim dominance, which takes precedence over reality.

Abdel Husseini, who is the director of the Wakf, once said in an interview, “it is G-d’s will that this place is a mosque, and this declaration of G-d is more important than the declaration of Jews or Christians. G-d’s declaration says this is an Islamic place called the Al-Aksa mosque. What others like to claim from there and there, we have nothing to do with.”

There you have it.

Gabriel Barkay, who is an archaeologist at Bar Ilan University, protested during an interview with the Jewish United Fund, “The Temple Mount was never touched archeologically. Would anyone in the civilized world agree if some bulldozers were working on the Acropolis in Athens or the Pantheon in Rome, particularly without any type of archeological supervision. Why does the world cry out when the Taliban destroy Buddhas but not when Palestinians are destroying thousands of years of cultural heritage on the Temple Mount?”

I can’t explain the behavior or the decisions of the Israeli government with regard to the violations that take place right under its nose, but what I can say is that this second-tier archaeological war has done is it has underscored the importance of rebuilding places like the Hurva.

In the next blog, we’ll talk about the fact that the Hurva’s arch, the most recognizable item in the Old City skyline, is not actually the arch of the Hurva.