A Worry of Jeffrey Goldberg; A Worry of Mine

Jeffrey Goldberg is worried and concerned.  In this piece, on terrorist attacks about which he worries the most,  he writes of three but I'll concentrate on one, which I am familiar with:

Yehuda Etzion, a former member of a Jewish terrorist group in the West Bank, once drove me to the top of the Mount of Olives, to a ridge above the Garden of Gethsemane, and asked me to look out across the valley, to the Temple Mount on the far side. Shimmering in the sunlight was the Dome of the Rock, one of the world’s most important Muslim shrines. I said that the Dome was beautiful. Etzion answered that he didn’t even see it.

I asked him what he meant. “Look, maybe it’s beautiful,” he said.“But my father told me once that there are very many nice women in the world, beautiful women, but you have only one wife. This building is not my woman. It’s my enemy’s woman. So I don’t see it.”

I asked him what he saw instead. “I see the place where the Temple will stand.”

The Temple in question is the yet-unbuilt Third Temple, which certain Jews of a messianic bent believe should be built atop the Mount (site of the first two Jewish Temples), in place of the Dome of the Rock. But how to remove the Dome? Etzion and his fellow extremists once plotted to blow it up. The Israeli internal security service, the Shabak, caught them and sent them to jail before any damage could be done. Etzion told me he didn’t regret the plot, only that it didn’t work.

...The Muslim world would ignite if the Dome were attacked.

...The ambitious terrorist of this moment in history seeks not simply to kill large numbers of innocent people, or to terrify an even greater number of people. He seeks nothing less than to provoke the thing we have so far mainly been able to avoid: a clash of civilizations. Three attacks, in particular, I worry could have such world- changing effects. A plot against the Dome of the Rock is one...

I left this comment there, awaiting moderator's authorization:

As for the Temple Mount and its potential, I am sure Goldberg has a point. But...

But, if he would express in one and a half sentences a dread or at least a condemnation of Muslim activities that have, in the past decades, destroyed, obliterated and hidden any Jewish historical artifact at the site (after all, the Taliban anti-Buddhism actions merited a decry), or the custom of Muslims to throw stones over the wall down on the heads of Jewish worshipers at the Western Wall among other non-pacific actions that do not contribute to a situation of coexistence and mutual religious respect, I'd feel a lot better. Jeffrey, just a bit of balance and equivalency. The fault and the responsibility is not all on one side.

__________________

UPDATE

Received this:

Shalom Jefferey,

My name is Yehudah Glick and I have been quite active in the past two decades in incouraging Jews to visit the Temple Mount.I know almost every one of the activists in the field. I do not know of one single one presently even thinking of blowing up the Dome of the Rock (including Yehuda Etzion).

On the other hand I have been to some 20 funerals of personal friends of mine who have beenmurdered by Muslims who were ignited in the name of Allah by the the so-called prayers comingfrom the Temple Mount. The dream of rebuilding the Temple is the building of a "House of Prayer for all Nations" who will call for peace in the Name of the One and Only G-d.

Write as you please but deep in your heart know the truth - Muslim terrorism is something much more realistic to be frightened of. (small reminder - Sep 11 - nothing to do with any Messianic Templest)

Yehudah Glick
Chairman
Temple Mount Heritage Foundation

And I have now caught this by Efraim Levy:

I do not believe that it is possible to solve the problem of Jerusalem in a manner which either side can swallow. Israelis cannot and should not swallow the division of Jerusalem. But there are elements the Palestinians cannot swallow, such as our status and presence in some of the eastern parts of Jerusalem and our historic claim to a status on the Temple Mount. Even Prime Minister Ehud Barak would not give up Israeli claims to the Temple Mount. Everybody is talking about the Western Wall, but if we have rights to the Wall, a wall is part of a building, so we have a right to the building of which the Wall was a part.

In the year 2000 I paid a clandestine visit to the Temple Mount, to what is called Solomon's Stables, where I saw beautiful, 2,000-year-old columns. They do not exist anymore because they were destroyed by the Muslims, believing that if they destroyed the remnants of the Temple area, they would destroy Jewish rights there. There can only be an ultimate reconciliation between Israelis and Palestinians if there is a mutual acceptance of rights...

Is the former head of the Mossad also a problem and fanger and threat for Goldberg?

And read Victor Shikhman.

More from 2001:

...The cleric in charge of the holy places, Sheik Ikrima Sabri, is the Grand Mufti of Jerusalem, one of the most influential religious leaders in Palestine. On the evening that I visited him, I was ushered into a room lined with brown velvet chairs and sofas adorned with gold lamé pillows. There were two chandeliers, and on one wall hung a photograph of the Mufti as a much younger man, when his bombastic speeches could send thousands into the streets for days of tumultuous riots...
The Mufti entered the room wearing a drab, gold-colored robe over a red shirt and slacks. With his gold-rimmed aviator glasses, gray hair, trim beard and friendly face, he almost looked like Santa Claus. Behind the kindly visage is a fiery religious zealot. The Mufti unabashedly justifies Palestinian suicide bombers, calling them "martyrs" who are "defending their country, their land." A suicide bomber, he explains, "is sacrificing his life to get rid of the occupation."

As far as Jewish rights over the Temple Mount are concerned, he bluntly says, "Jews were here in part of their history, but they themselves can't be sure where their temples were. We believe the Al-Aqsa Mosque is given to us by God." God would never take it away and give it to the Jews, he argues. The Mufti says that if Jews want peace, they should find someplace else to build their long-lost temples

^