I wrote about this last month, and it is still absolutely inexplicable to me how an Israeli government can allow this to happen:
A month-old Islamic dig on Jerusalem’s Temple Mount to replace faulty electrical cables has damaged an ancient wall that is likely a remnant of the Second Temple, Israeli archaeologists said Thursday.
The work, which is being carried out with the approval of Prime Minister Ehud Olmert and the state-run Antiquities Authority, has been repeatedly condemned by independent Israeli archaeologists, who are calling for its immediate halt.
“The Israeli Government is lending a hand to the destruction of one of the most important archaeological sites in the world,” said Bar-Ilan University archaeologist Dr. Gabriel Barkai at a Jerusalem press conference.
Barkai said the dig, which involves tractors and other heavy construction equipment, has created a 400-meter-long and 1.5-meter-deep trench on the site, destroying layers of ancient remains.
Among the antiquities that have been damaged are a 7-meter-wide wall that apparently dates back to Second-Temple times and was likely part of the Temple courts, according to Israeli archaeologists from the nonpartisan Committee Against the Destruction of Antiquities on the Temple Mount.
Hebrew University archaeologist Dr. Eilat Mazar said that the Temple Mount had become “one big construction site,” and blasted the government for authorizing “rampant barbarism and vandalism” there.
You can let the Israeli Antiquities Authority (which according to the article has turned a deaf ear to the protest of people who should know what’s going on, namely archaeologists) know what you think of this historical, scientific, and religious vandalism by going to the web site and giving them a piece of your mind. If you do, remember to be polite, respectful, and cognizant that this is Israeli and Jewish history we’re talking about. References to rebuilding the Temple and the Second Coming won’t get you anywhere, even if they had anything to do with the subject at hand. Let them know that as one who values the history of Jerusalem and the Jewish people, you urge them to stop the Islamic authorities (the Waqf, who deny that anything has been damaged) from destroying antiquities valued the world over.
September 1, 2007 at 12:14 am
I kind of understand where they are coming from. Rebuilding the temple is a hope of certain sectors of the Israeli population – and one that the more secular leadership regard as a potential source of WWIII. (Virtually every ally of Israel would oppose such an idea.) They want to go as far out of their way as possible to demonstrate that they have no such designs.
If they did anything other than adopt a hands off policy to Al Aqsa and the WAQF they will be condemned by almost the entire world. People have horrible double standards when it comes to Israel. They accuse Israel of human rights abuses for virtually everything Israel does. (This does not mean there aren’t some. Just that the entire world goes mad on the subject and has NO sense of proportion. In the PC(USA) and the mainlines who have pursued various boycott, divestment, sanctions and related anti-Israel activism – their critical commentary about all other countries is far less than that about Israel. (Except perhaps the US). (In the Presbyterian News Service, for example, Israel has garnered 10 x as many stories as Iran. 20 x as many as China. And only one or two of the stories about Iran or China were unfavorable. NOT ONE WAS FAVORABLE TOWARD ISRAEL – though some were more neutral than others. No other situation in the world is singled out in the same way – though many are far far worse. No comparison is considered too extreme – Israel is compared to Sudan, to the Nazis, to Apartheid (all three of these have been asserted at one time or another by the PC(USA)). In the last case this is solely because the solution to the South Africa problem was to destroy the existing government in South Africa – and everyone who uses that word for Israel is seeking to destroy Israel as a Jewish state. They tend to regard this as a racist idea.