Page 43 - Satan in the Sanctuary

Opening Pandora's Box—Prayer on the Mount 45

once cleaned up, the site could REV. CLAUDE DUVERNOY,
serve for concerts of spiritual DIRECTOR
music and ecumenical gather- Christian Action for Israel
3
ings. Jerusalem, February 6.

READERS' LETTERS

TEMPLE MOUNT IS JEWISH
To the Editor of The Jerusalem were built there precisely because
Post of the Temple Mount's para-
mount sanctity in Judaism. Even
Sir,—The Israel correspondent
of the CBS on the Voice of so, the site comes a poor third to
America (March 15) informed Mecca and Medina, the twin
cynosures of Islam.
us that current Arab disturbances
in certain towns of the "occupied Unfortunately, Israel Govern-
West Bank" were sparked off by ment moves, such as the appeal
the
mentioned
against
above
a recent court decision upholding court decision, only add to the
Jewish rights of prayer at the existing confusion. No less per-
Temple Mount, the "site of the plexing is the Israel Rabbinate's
famed el Aksa Mosque"-—and official insistence on the inad-
here comes the gem—"also" re- missibility of steps calculated to
garded as holy ground by the
Jews. reassert Jewish presence on any
Whether facetious, malicious part of the Temple Mount, when
or plain ignorant, such reference the very act of regaining it is
known to supersede the ritual
to the Temple Mount obscures prohibition. As a result we have
the fact that the two Jewish the tragi-comic situation of an
Temples stood here for close to Israeli constabulary "protecting"
a millennium, until finally razed the actual heart of the Jewish
to the ground by the Romans in title to this country as a de facto
70 C.E. During that period, it
was the hub of Jewish existence, Moslem site, against would-be
Jewish "intruders."
temporal as well as spiritual. The
1
two Moslem structures, an after- AVNER TOMASCHOFF
thought of the 7th century C.E., Jerusalem.
A substantial number of both Jews and Christians were
in favor of Jewish prayer on the mount, which is certainly
biblical, if not very diplomatic in these tense times.