Yehuda Glick: Peace And Loathing On Temple Mount
This photo made on Nov. 10, 2013 shows a hard-line Jewish activist Yehuda Glick walking in a street in Jerusalem. Late Wednesday, a gunman on a motorcycle shot and wounded Glick outside a conference promoting Jewish access to the site known to Jews as Temple Mount and to Muslims as Noble Sanctuary. (AP Photo/Mahmoud Illean)
WHO is Yehuda Glick, the man shot in Israel, allegedly by Mu’taz Hijazi, shot dead by Israeli police?
Wikipedia tells us:
Yehuda Joshua Glick (Hebrew: יהודה גליק; born 20 November 1965) is an American-born Israeli rabbi and “civil rights activist” who campaigns for expanding Jewish access to the Temple Mount/Haram al-Sharif. Glick is the leader of HaLiba, a coalition of groups dedicated to “reaching complete and comprehensive freedom and civil rights for Jews on the Temple Mount.”…
Glick advocates opening the Temple Mount on an equal footing to prayer by Muslims, Jews, Christians and others.
“We are talking about sharing, coexistence, tolerance, respecting one another. I think that genuine peace must begin with tolerance and respect. I think that Jews, Muslims, or Christians, anybody who supports peace, anyone who supports praying — talking to G-d — should be allowed to on the Temple Mount.”
Christian Science Monitor writes:
Jews are increasingly staking a claim to the Muslim-controlled Temple Mount, testing the Israeli government’s resolve to avoid conflict by protecting Muslim sovereignty over the site.
Christa Case Bryant:
JERUSALEM — As Yehuda Glick strides across the Temple Mount, his bare feet scuffing along the paved stones and a kippah tucked under his baseball cap, the Muslim worshippers who know this sacred space as the Haram al-Sharif (Noble Sanctuary) start chanting tauntingly in Arabic, “God is great, praise be to God!”
Trailed by a group of religious Jews, an Israeli police escort, and a Muslim community representative, Mr. Glick responds in Hebrew, “Shalom – peace to you all.”
Behind him rise the two sites that make Jerusalem the third-holiest city in Islam: the Al-Aqsa mosque and the golden Dome of the Rock, a Muslim shrine commemorating the prophet Mohammed’s ascension to heaven. It is built on the spot where Jews believe the very presence of God once rested in the Jewish temple. This is considered the holiest place in Judaism, yet it has been largely off-limits to Jewish worshipers because of concerns that range from violating Jewish law to provoking riots.
Is that right? That smacks of racism? Jews are verboeten.
“I’m pretty left-wing Orthodox and even I think there’s no reason Jews shouldn’t be allowed up here,” says Mark Shayne, a financial consultant from New York who visited last week on the eve of Sukkot, one of hundreds of Jews who have visited the Temple Mount during the Jewish holidays this month. “If you can’t share a holy place, there will never be peace.”
The Islamic waqf, which governs the Haram al-Sharif, endorses the idea of Jerusalem as a “jewel of peace” for Muslim, Christians, and Jews, and are happy to welcome Jews as tourists to the Noble Sanctuary, but they are pressuring Israeli police to prevent access to the area for Jews with religious or political motivations.
“We are asking the Israeli police not to provide permission for the huge numbers of Jews who visit and especially to bar the extreme Jews from entering the Noble Sanctuary,” says Sheikh Azzam al-Khatib, director of the waqf, in between a flurry of phone calls about the rising tensions amid the Jewish High Holidays. “These extreme Jews … are trying to create new facts on the ground.”
Fear:
Among Muslims’ greatest concerns is that Jews will try to destroy the Muslim holy sites in order to rebuild their temple. In 1984, Yehuda Etzion was imprisoned for a plot to destroy the Dome of the Rock, and in 1991, Israeli police intervened to thwart a plan by the Temple Mount Faithful to airlift a 5-ton cornerstone for the new temple.
“If the Jews and the Israelis destroy the Noble Sanctuary, then they would have actually destroyed part of the holy Quran and destroyed part of the Muslim belief,” says Sheikh al-Khatib. “If that were to happen, then Muslims all over the world would conduct jihad.”
It’s a big deal, then. But surely freedom is fredome with no buts. You can come as a Jew but not if you pray. Fair?
Israeli general Moshe Dayan captured the Temple Mount in the 1967 war, but instead of restoring it to Jewish control for the first time in nearly 2,000 years, he let Muslims retain control. Some saw it as the largely secular Israeli leadership’s attempt to appease Muslims.
So. To Glick:
“[Muslims] can play soccer over there, … they can have picnics, they can urinate on the [ground], but I can’t say a word of prayer? Does that sound reasonable?” asks Glick, gesturing back to the compound where he sometimes holds a cellphone up to his ear while reciting a chapter of Psalms in order to disguise his prayer. “The only place in the world where a Jew cannot pray is over there.”
…the Chief Rabbinate of Israel still has a sign posted at the entrance of the Temple Mount forbidding Jews to visit the area. Since no one knows the exact location of the Temple or the inner sanctuary that was off-limits for all but a priestly elite, and Jewish law requires a level of ritual purity to enter the area that some say is unattainable at present, many Jews have long steered clear of the Temple Mount so as not to inadvertently commit an infraction of such religious precepts.
Glick:
Glick would like to see more and more of those Jews visiting the Temple Mount and praying side by side with Muslims and Christians. “My dream is to be able to hug a person from Saudi Arabia and a person from Spain, and together all pray together to God,” says Glick.
Caroline Glick writes:
Below is a message I just received from Yitz Glick, Yehuda Glick’s brother. Yitz gave me permission to share it with you. I believe it speaks for itself….
Dear Caroline,
I just wanted to tell you that our family is shocked that we haven’t heard a single word from the US State Dept., the US Ambassador or any representative of the US government regarding the shooting of our brother a US citizen Yehuda Glick.
My father Prof. Shimon Glick served as a captain in the US Army. He was a federal employee both in the NIH and the VA taking part in a leading hormone research projects. The chief investigator, Rose Yalow was awarded a Nobel prize.
My father is one of only 5 Americans residing in Israel to be appointed to the US National Academy of Science!!!
No outrage, no wishes of speedy recovery not a single word from any US official. This is in total contrast to the teenager that attacked police with a Molotov Cocktail and the State Dept demanded a transparent investigation and not to mention Abbas’ letter of support to the terrorist shooter etc…
Glick represents the Temple Mount Heritage Foundation:
Glick has for years worked with several organizations that seek to assert Jewish visitation and prayer rights on the Temple Mount and actively encourage more Jews to visit the holy place.
He now heads a new project called Liba, funded by the Temple Mount Heritage Foundation and the Israel Independence Fund, which conducts legal advocacy to advance civil rights at the site as well as public advocacy promoting Jewish visitation.
Increasing numbers of religious people, mainly from the national religious community, have begun visiting the Temple Mount in recent years, largely due to the activities of the Temple Mount rights organizations.
The phenomenon has led to increased security tensions at the site as well as increased political tension between nationalist and national religious politicians and Arab political parties in the Knesset.
Glick appears on a website for a film called The Miracle Of Israel:
Yehuda Glick is an American-born Jew who spends most of every day preparing for the arrival of the Messiah in Israel. He was the Executive Director of the Temple Institute before joining the Temple Mount Heritage Foundation. The Temple Mount, or Mount Moriah, is believed to be the site of the Foundation Stone, the Holy of Holies from where God gathered the dust to create Adam and it is also the site of the first Temple built by King Solomon.
That film is about:
The Miracle of Israel documentary is a project of The Miracle of Israel Foundation. The Miracle of Israel Foundation seeks to inform, encourage and equip people to know and understand the importance of supporting Israel—both the Land and the People.
The Miracle of Israel tells the story of the only nation in the history of the world that has maintained a national identity for centuries without a homeland. The documentary explores four ancient prophecies in light of modern events including:
□ The establishment of the state of Israel in 1948
□ The regathering of the Lost Jewish Tribes to the homeland
□ The rebuilding of the temple in Jerusalem, and
□ Claims of the coming of the Jewish Messiah
The four miracles highlighted in the film are not only distinct threads woven into the fabric and seams of the Jewish people’s survival and restoration, but some say they are proof of prophetic fulfillment that has and will impact the world as it moves toward the Last Days.
What say the Palestinians?
Minister Binyamin Netanyahu accused Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas with incitement for allegedly writing a letter of support to the Israeli-Arab family of the man who attempted to assassinate right wing activist Yehuda Glick on Wednesday night.
“When we are trying to calm the situation, Abu Mazen sends condolences over the death of one who tried to perpetrate a reprehensible murder. The time has come for the international community to condemn him for such actions,” Netanyahu said…
The Jerusalem Post was unable to confirm that Abbas had actually sent a condolence letter to the family of Mu’taz Hijazi, the man from the Abu Tor neighborhood of Jerusalem who is suspected of shooting Glick.
Israeli police killed him on Thursday morning as he resisted arrest.
According to reports, Abbas wrote a letter on November 1, to the Hijazi family in which he said that he received with “anger and condemnation the news of the heinous crime committed by the gangs of killing and terrorism in the Israeli occupation army.”
Declaring Hijazi, who was shot dead by police forces hours after the assassination attempt, as a “martyr.”
Abbas wrote that the killing of Hijzai has been added to the “crimes of the Israeli occupation army against our people since the nakba (in 1948).”
“This act won’t intimidate our people, but would increase its steadfastness in its homeland,” Abbas wrote in his letter to the family.
The Press have said lots about Glick.
The New York Times referred to him as a “Far-right activist.” The BBC and LA Timeslabeled him a “Right-wing Jewish activist.” The Sydney Morning Herald calls him a “Far-right religious activist.”
Glick is alive. So too is history…
Posted: 5th, November 2014 | In: Reviews Comment (1) | TrackBack | Permalink
