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Steven Plaut teaches business administration and economics at the University of Haifa in Israel and is the author of The Scout.
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By Steven Plaut
January 19, 2003
One of the most exciting pieces of news in years is that of the remarkable archeological find, a clay tablet in ancient Hebrew from the 9th century BCE, about which the entire Jewish world is suddenly abuzz. The tablet appears to be from one of the ancient kings of Judea, describing repairs performed on the First Temple, the original Temple of Solomon, and has been declared a bona fide antiquity to be taken at face value by Israel's Geological Institute.
There is however another no less important aspect to this story. And that is that the story proves how far Israel's pusillanimous politicians are willing to go to accommodate the systematic destruction of priceless Jewish artifacts and religious objects in the name of appeasing the PLO.
The Israeli media is being very coy about where the 9th century BCE tablet came from. But it appears pretty obvious that it came from the diggings on the Temple Mount by the PLO. Ever since the beginning of the Oslo Atrocity, Israel's politicians have turned over control of the Temple Mount to the tender mercies of the PLO Terrorocracy (it was previously under the more enlightened control of Jordan). The PLO, for example, now appoints the religious leaders in the Mosques on the Temple Mount, imams who routinely call for suicide bombings and genocide of Jews with not a single act of correction by Israel.
The earth on the Temple Mount is filled with priceless artifacts and treasures, whose historic and religious and archeological value to Jews and to all mankind can only be guessed. The King's tablet found recently proves these artifacts go back at least 3000 years and probably go back further. The PLO however is devoted to perpetuating its Nazi lies about how there were never any Jewish Temples of Old standing on the Temple Mount, that the Western Wall has no religious or historic significance to the Jews and is merely a spot where Mohammed tied up his steed.
Even worse, the PLO is devoted to systematically destroying any archeological evidence that might be at odds with its Nazi ideology and its proclamations that there were never any Jewish Temples on the Temple Mount.
In recent months, the PLO has operated wholesale "construction and renovation" operations on the Mount, right under Israel's nose, in which God knows how many priceless antiquities were systematically destroyed. The PLO claims it was renovating the "stables" area under the Al-Aqsa Mosque. Any digging on the Temple Mount should have been done painstakingly with toothbrushes by experts, but the pusillanimous defeatist politicians of Israel - from the Sharon Administration - allowed the PLO to bring in bulldozers and heavy earth moving machinery onto the Temple Mount. The result is like fixing one's teeth with a jackhammer.
The entire world was outraged when the Taliban blew up ancient Buddhas in Afghanistan. But what the PLO has been doing is far worse. On the Temple Mount the earth moving has already destabilized the "South Wall," a section of the ancient Herodian Wall around the Temple's perimeter that is now in danger of collapsing. Historically and religiously, the South Wall is comparable to the Western Wall and every bit as sacred. Other artifacts, predating the birth of the Buddha by centuries, have no doubt been completely obliterated.
But the finding of the ancient tablet from the Judean King proves something else. Evidently the tablet was uncovered when one of the bulldozers was ripping through the earth on the Temple Mount and the tablet was unearthed and simply discarded. Someone must have come across it and sold it to an antiquities dealer, probably not knowing what it was. (That is also how the Dead Sea Scrolls were discovered.) My guess is that because the writing is the ancient Hebrew script, very different from "modern" Hebrew (the alphabet used since the 6th century BCE), it was not recognized as Hebrew by the PLO and so was not deliberately destroyed by the savages as part of their campaign to obliterate evidence of the Jewishness of the Temple Mount. But the finding of the tablet is simply a blaring siren warning of what else has already been destroyed!
The Sharon government - like the previous governments of Labor Party lemmings - has preferred to buy a few months of avoidance of confrontations with the PLO over its destruction of antiquities by turning a blind eye. Sharon is still traumatized by the campaign of world anti-Semites and Israel's anti-Jewish Left to represent the entire past 2.5 years of Palestinian atrocities as having been caused by Sharon's "controversial" visit to the Temple Mount in September 2000. In fact, that visit was exactly as "provocative" and "controversial" as would be a visit to the Vatican by an Italian politician. But Sharon is too timid to say so.
The Labor Party has always had a coy interest in ignoring archeological evidence of the Jewishness of the Temple Mount and indeed of all of Jerusalem, because the Labor Party seeks to create a post-Jewish Israeliness. The fewer the historic ties of Israelis to their Jewishness, the better, in their opinion. Shulamit Aloni, the Madame DeFarge of Meretz, while Minister of Education went so far as to demand that some books of the Bible never be taught in Israeli schools lest they make the children too "nationalist."
In the case of the Likud's sitting back while some of the most important artifacts of Jewish heritage are destroyed by the PLO - the explanation is simply cowardice. The Sharon government could have prevented the destruction simply be preventing heavy machinery being moved onto the Temple Mount by the savages. In exchange for a transient make-pretend avoidance of confrontation - during which the PLO is murdering hundreds of Jews per year anyway - the Sharon government is sitting back while some of the most important artifacts of Jewish history are systematically being destroyed. In two years no one will remember the "avoidance of confrontation" Sharon thinks he is buying. But in 5000 years Jews will still be mourning the systematic destruction of their priceless heritage by Likud cowardice.
Views expressed by the author do not
necessarily reflect those of israelinsider.
 
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