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Israel Should Fund the Temple Mount Sifting Project

Sept. 1 2017

In 1999, the Islamic Waqf—the Jordanian-controlled organization that administers the Muslim holy sites in Jerusalem—together with the Northern Branch of the Islamic Movement—the Israeli chapter of the Muslim Brotherhood—decided to build a new, subterranean mosque underneath al-Aqsa. To do so, they destroyed the structure known as Solomon’s Stables, built by King Herod around the beginning of the Common Era. Israeli archaeologists have since then been trying to rescue artifacts that were displaced in the process, but their funding has recently run dry. David M. Weinberg writes:

Without any scientific supervision whatsoever, [the Waqf] bulldozed 9,000 tons of the most sensitive and valuable earth on the globe and unceremoniously dumped close to 400 truckloads of it as “garbage” in the Kidron Valley [which runs between the Temple Mount and the Mount of Olives]. I have no doubt the Islamists were seeking not only to expand their prayer space but deliberately to destroy any traces of Jewish history on and under the Temple Mount.

In a bold move, the archaeologists Gabriel Barkay and Zachi Dvira of Bar-Ilan University waded into the dump, and in 2004 they started sifting it. Their initiative became the Temple Mount Sifting Project, the goal of which is to rescue ancient artifacts and to research the archaeology and history of the Temple Mount.

Over the past twelve years, it has grown into a project of international significance. With the help of nearly 200,000 volunteers, half a million valuable finds have been discovered from the First and Second Temple periods, the late-Roman, Byzantine, Crusader, and Islamic periods, and the Middle Ages. . . .

These constitute the first-ever archaeological data from below the Temple Mount. Though the artifacts have been wrenched from their archaeological context (again, nefariously), the project has used innovative methodology and survey techniques . . . to analyze the finds. . . . All of this has transformed our understanding of the history of the Temple Mount. . . .

The project needs 8 million shekels ($2.2 million) over the next four years to resume sifting of the remaining 30 percent [of the material], and to continue scientific research and publication efforts. Until now, for twelve long years, private donations and the Ir David Foundation have funded the project. Now it is time for the government to back the project generously.

Read more at Israel Hayom

More about: Archaeology, Islamic Movement, Islamism, Israel & Zionism, Temple Mount

The Summary: 10/7/20

Two extraordinary events demonstrate something important about Israel’s most fervent adversaries. One was a speech given at something called The People’s Forum (funded generously by Goldman Sachs), which stated, “When the state of Israel is finally destroyed and erased from history, that will be the single most important blow we can give to destroying capitalism and imperialism.”

The suggestion that this tiny state is the linchpin of a global, centuries-old phenomenon like capitalism goes well beyond anything resembling rational criticism. Even if Israel were guilty of genocide, apartheid, and oppression—which of course it is not—it would not follow that its destruction would help end capitalism or imperialism.

The other was an anti-Israel protest that took place in front of New York City’s Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center, deemed “complicit” in Israel’s evils. At organizers’ urging, participants shouted their slogans at kids in the cancer ward, who were watching from the windows. Given Hamas’s indifference toward the lives of Gazan children, such callousness toward non-Palestinian children from Hamas’s Western allies shouldn’t be surprising. The protest—like the abovementioned speech—deliberately conveyed the message that Israel is the ultimate evil and its destruction the ultimate good, cancer patients be damned.

The fact that Israel’s adversaries are almost comically perverse does not mean that they can be dismissed. If its allies fail to understand the obsessive and irrational hatred that it faces, they cannot effectively help it defend itself.

Read more at Mosaic