Saving Jerusalem

By Alan Caruba

Word is rapidly making the rounds of the blogosphere of an emergency coalition that has been formed to save Jerusalem from being divided up between the Israelis and the Palestinians as yet another effort to secure peace with the Muslims.

On the face of it, this is such an idiotic act that one can hardly imagine why the government of Prime Minister Ehud Olmert would even consider it, let alone actually put it on the same table of utterly failed “negotiations” with various Palestinian groups whose sole objective is the destruction of Israel.

Was nothing learned from the Oslo Agreements that were almost immediately followed by Yasser Arafat’s “Intifada” and, after his death, by the civil war between his Fatah organization and Hamas?

The U.S. State Department policy toward Israel these days seems to be peace at any cost and, of course, that never was and never will be way to achieve peace. Pressuring Israel, an invaluable ally in the region, to give up a piece of Jerusalem is as wrong-headed as all the previous efforts to negotiate "a roadmap to peace" when few of Israel's neighbors are even interested in that prospect.

As other nations fall all over themselves to "make nice" with Muslims, history records that the current Middle Eastern mess that began with the debacle of the post-WWI Versailles Treaty and subsequent League of Nations, has demonstrated an Arab resistance to Western powers, then and now. In fairness, all England and France did was divide up the region for their own imperial, colonial, and economic interests.

Then- U.S. President Woodrow Wilson was a naive onlooker whose chief aim seemed to be the conversion of Arabs to Christianity and his pie-in-the-sky notion of a world governmental body that would end the prospect of future wars. That idea got blown to hell in 1939 when Germany invaded Poland. (It reasserted itself in the form of the United Nations and it is still the "great powers", now called the Security Council, that makes all the big decisions about war and peace.)

In sum, Jerusalem is Judaism’s holiest city, home of the Temple Mount, its most revered site. To get an idea of how much the Muslims respect other religions, after conquering the city in 636 AD, they built the al Aqsa mosque right on top of the Temple Mount and to this day Jews are not allowed to visit any closer than the famed Wailing Wall. Before and after the Six Day War, the governance of the mosque was ceded to Jordan, a nation that has maintained good relations with Israel.

The Palestinians have systematically desecrated other sites in Israel that have also been sacred to Christians and their once flourishing Christian populations have been driven out. Even the birthplace of Jesus, Bethlehem, is now largely a Muslim city. The notion of transferring some of Jerusalem’s holy sites to Arab sovereignty will do no more to secure peace than any of Israel's previous efforts.

One need only see the failure of Israel’s withdrawal from the Gaza strip to understand the truth of this. The Gaza today is a place from where Israel is rocketed daily.

Among the organizations that are part of the emergency coalition are the National Council of Young Israel, the Orthodox Union, the Rabbinical Council of America, and the list is growing daily.

It is entirely likely that many American Jews, even assuming they favor an independent Israel, do not understand the significance of the proposal to relinquish part of Jerusalem. Indeed, American evangelical Christians may grasp it better than their Jewish friends.

The future of Jerusalem has no place on any negotiation table with any Palestinian/Muslim entity.

Jerusalem existed for more than two thousand years before the existence of Islam. Nowhere in the Koran is the city even mentioned by name. The only reason it plays any role in the Muslim world is that it was conquered in past ages and fought over during the Crusades before lapsing into a backwater of the Ottoman Empire.

Muslims claim that Mohammed journied there one night on his favorite horse, flying through the air, ascending to heaven to spend time in the company of Jewish prophets and Jesus. On this fanciful story rests the Muslim claim to Jerusalem!!!!

What can you do? You can suggest saving Jerusalem as a sermon topic in your church or synagogue.

If you belong to a group with a Christian or Jewish affiliation, you can get the group to issue a statement opposing any transfer of control over any part of the holy city.

You can email the office of Israel’s prime minister to let him know you oppose the proposal.

If you have a blog, you can post this commentary or one of your own to let more people know about this.

If Jerusalem goes to Muslim/Arab control, the whole of Israel will follow in time and with it the dreams and hopes of countless generations of Jews and Christians.

One of the websites on which you can garner more information is:
http://www.israelnationalnews.com/