“Allahu Akbar! Allahu Akbar!”
God is great, God is great, the women chant. They follow the armed escort, which is there to protect three Jewish men, and to prevent them from engaging in vandalism and prayer. We are on the Temple Mount, the spiritual epicenter of Arab-Israeli hatred, the focal point of more than a thousand years of bloodshed. In Islam, this is the third-holiest place in the world: here, from the Dome of the Rock or the Al-Aqsa Mosque (exactly which depends on whom you ask), the Prophet Muhammad (PBUH) ascended to heaven. In Judaism, this is the Holy of Holies: the site of the First and Second Temples and of the Ark of the Covenant, God’s contract with the Children of Israel.
Moshe Dayan, Israel’s one-eyed Defense Minister during the 1967 Six-Day War, wrested the Temple Mount from the Arab Legion, then—acting alone and quickly—returned it to Muslim control. Dayan considered the Temple Mount to be religiously important for Muslims, but only historically significant for Jews, whom—to the chagrin of many—are now forbidden from worshipping there.
Today I heard a Bronx-born aliyot tour guide describe the Temple Mount as “the only place in Israel without freedom of religion,” and I heard a Hebron-born Arabic teacher describe it as “the only place we have left.”
This, then, is the nature of conflict: legitimate, irreconcilable desires. God is great, God is great indeed.
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