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Terrorism

Israeli police wilt before threat of Muslim violence

Close Temple Mount to Jews and Christians on Tisha B'Av


By Stan Goodenough
August 03, 2006

The Israeli Police Force, able to turn out tens of thousands of members in order to uproot Jews from their homes in parts of the Promised Land, was unwilling to secure the rights of Jews to pray at their holiest site Thursday for fear of Arab violence.

In an announcement aimed at circumventing a ruling of the High Court of Justice earlier this week, according to which members of the Temple Mount Faithful would be permitted to pray on the Temple Mount on the Jewish fast day of Tisha B?Av, Jerusalem police chief Ilan Franco ruled that the site would be off-limits to Jews and Christians for the day.

The reason, according to Jerusalem police spokesman Shmuel Ben-Ruby as stated by The Jerusalem Post:

The decision to shut the Mount to visitors ? followed an amalgamation of intelligence information that thousands of Muslims were planning to flock to the site to "protect" it from Jews who were planning to visit on Tisha B'av at the urging of "extremist" Jewish groups?

Muslims, who refuse to recognize or respect Jewish veneration of the place on which Israel?s ancient temples stood, are being allowed to pray on the Mount today

Tisha B?Av (the Ninth Day of Av) is one of the holiest days on Israel?s calendar, when Jews around the world mourn the destruction of both the first and second temples, along with numerous other catastrophes that impacted them as a nation down the ages.

Included in that long list this year is the 2005 uprooting of Jews from their homes in the Gaza Strip and the abandoning of that ancient Jewish land to Muslim Arabs. Tens of thousands of soldiers and policemen were used to carry out that expulsion.

The lack of readiness on Israel?s part to use its law-enforcers to guarantee the rights of its own people to worship God at sacred sites has only served to strengthen the Islamic hold on these places.

And instead of coming out in support of their countrymen, Israel?s almost exclusively leftist media supports these police decisions. Reported the Post Thursday:

In the past, the site has been repeatedly closed down to non-Muslim visitors on Tisha B'av due to concern over the outbreak of violence, drawing the wrath of Israeli rightists who accuse police of "capitulating" to Arab threats.

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