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Jerusalem

Minister appeases Muslims on Temple Mount


By Stan Goodenough
January 03, 2008

Israeli Internal Security Minister Avi Dichter, whose job it is to ensure the majority of his countrymen are able to live as Jews free from danger and fear, has bowed even further to the Muslim threat to use violence against Jews who wish to pray on the Temple Mount - Israel's holiest site.

Despite the fact that the place where Israel's first and second temples stood is under de jure Israeli sovereignty the Olmert government, like those before it, already acquiesces to the demands of the Waqf (Islamic Trust) to ban Jewish and Christian prayer on the hill.

The hours during which Christians and Jews can ascend the Temple Mount are severely restricted; non-Muslim visitors are searched and prevented from taking Bibles or prayer books into the site, and individuals are frequently arrested or at least forced to leave [as I was-Ed] if they are even suspected of praying.

Now, according to a report Tuesday in the leftist Israeli newspaper Ha'aretz, Dichter recently sent a letter to two religious Knesset members telling them that "a Jew is not allowed to pray in any overt manner whatsoever on the Temple Mount, even if he is just moving his lips in prayer."

While it "is not possible to arrest a person for 'conversing with his maker ... it is possible to carry out an arrest for expressions of outward and demonstrative signs [of prayer]," Dichter said.

He continued to explain that this interpretation "is in line with the rationale that bans Jews from praying at the site, in light of serious concerns that this will serve as a provocation, resulting in disorder, with a near certain likelihood of subsequent bloodshed."

The voices of the minister and the rest of the government were nowhere to be heard two weeks ago when the radio network of the Islamist terrorist group Hamas broadcast inflammatory Muslim sermons from the Temple Mount for the first time. These sermons almost always incite Muslims to violence against Jews.

According to the Oxford English Dictionary, making concessions to conciliate a potential aggressor is defined as appeasement.

In their pain-saturated history, the Jewish people have often suffered most after efforts have been made to appease those out to destroy them.

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