'Jews don't destroy synagogues'

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By Jerusalem Newswire Editorial Staff
August 31, 2005

As the Roman general Titus stood on the threshold of victory against Jerusalem in AD 70 the Jews knew what his plans for their temple were, but never dreamed of preempting that desecration by destroying the holy place themselves.

That is the position Israel must now take on the 24 abandoned synagogues in the Gaza Strip, said attorney Gilad Corinaldi, who filed a petition with Israel's High Court to stay a government decision to raze the houses of worship.

?It is better that gentiles desecrate Jewish places of worship than humiliate ourselves doing it,? Corinaldi was quoted as saying by The Jerusalem Post.

He warned that demolishing the Gaza synagogues would set a precedent eroding the holiness of Jewish places of worship all over the world. Leading Israeli rabbis have publicly expressed similar fears about a subsequent rise in anti-Semitism.

Corinaldi filed his petition on behalf of Rabbi Yishai Bar-Chen, the leading rabbi in what was Jewish northern Gaza.

The High Court has already issued a temporary restraining order against the government's decision while it reviews a Rabbinical Council ruling that destroying synagogues is a violation of Jewish religious law.

The government of Prime Minister Ariel Sharon fears the Palestinian Arabs will engage in widespread desecration of the Jewish houses of worship after all IDF soldiers are removed from Gaza next month.

In October 2000, then-Prime Minister Ehud Barak ordered the IDF to withdraw from the religious complex surrounding Joseph's Tomb in Shechem in the framework of an agreement with the Palestinian Authority to protect the Jewish holy site.

Within hours, Arab mobs stormed the burial site of one of Israel's most revered patriarchs, and began looting, burning and destroying the building with pickaxes and hammers.

In 2003, the ?Palestinians? further desecrated the site by smashing the tombstone placed in Joseph's memory.

The fate of Gaza's synagogues ? destruction at the hands of the Jews, or desecration by Arab Muslim mobs ? is to be decided Sunday by a special seven-member High Court panel.

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