Mounting the Temple

In 1947, the United Nations voted for the partition of British Mandate Palestine into three separate entities: a Jewish state, an Arab state and Jerusalem as a separate legal entity, a corpus separatum. That was the plan.

Tish’a Beav, is a day of mourning, on which religious Jews fast and remember the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem. Eid El-Ad’ha is the Feast of Sacrifice, the Muslim feast ending the annual pilgrimage to Mecca.  Such days are always an opportunity for extremists on both sides to stir trouble. This year is no exception. Moreover, this year, both holidays fall during the same period. And so the Muslim religious authority has closed all other mosques in Jerusalem to force those Muslims who wish to pray to come in droves to the El-Aksah mosque, and right-wing Israeli politicians and activists are pushing and cajoling the government and the police to open the area for Jews to celebrate. The Chief Rabbi meanwhile opined that according to Jewish law it is forbidden for Jews to enter the area.

What a miserable lot they are – whatever god they maintain they believe in. And all those that follow, hollow and shallow, “believers” that care more for real estate than for human values of peace, love and mercy. Worst of all, are those cold-blooded politicians, secular and religious, who manipulate those primitive feelings of “their people”.

And how right the UN was in 1947, to suggest a corpus separatum. Instead – borrowing from Shakespeare – we have