Arab spokesmen, unlike their Israeli counterparts, are not ashamed to be “intransigent” or to cherish territory.

Arab spokesmen, unlike most of their Jewish counterparts, are not ashamed to make the Temple Mount the center of their new war against Israel.

Arab spokesmen care so much about the site that they can claim that Abraham wasn’t a Jew, that Jews never had a Temple in Jerusalem, that Jews in Biblical Israel are “the descendants of monkeys and pigs”.

Arab spokesmen were so skillful and able to manipulate history that today the UN, Europe, America and the chattering classes, which have no religion at all, are all reinforcing the Arab claim that any who died on the Temple Mount were martyred defenders of holy places, mowed down by savage, unprovoked “Israeli settlers”.

But the world’s feeble attempts to erase Jewish history from Jerusalem and the Land of Israel don’t cut the mustard. The contrary proof is simply undeniable and overwhelming. And those who advocate the Arab view are liars and charlatans.

But at this point, only people like Moshe Feiglin can peacefully liberate the Temple Mount. Because Israeli as a nation and as a state is losing the holy site. Those who ascend, like Feiglin and other brave people, are the only obstacle to the Temple Mount’s final islamization.

One of those heroes once told me: “I would sell my mother to have a minute of freedom in the Temple Mount”.

A few weeks ago, Yehuda Glick was almost murdered for having tried to pray as a free Jew on Temple Mount. Terrorists also planned to target Feiglin and other figures related to the Temple Mount movement. But the Israeli authorities, instead of showing braveness and attachment to their own history, appeased the Arab-Islamic fury and closed the Temple Mount again. It is as if nothing happened in Jerusalem in the past month.

But Jews are stronger than their leaders. A few weeks ago, I visited Jerusalem and I wanted to see the synagogue in Agassi street, Har Nof, where four rabbis had been killed by Israeli Arabs. In the synagogue of the massacre I met a rabbi, Avraham Nadler, who told me: “The terrorists targeted us because we, the religious Jews, are the symbol of unity of the country. We must grow and get stronger after the attack”.

The Israeli authorities must show the same fortitude and moral clarity in front of anti-Semitism and terrorism, which is now focused on Temple Mount.

In 1967, during the Six Day War, after the Arab Legion had placed its batteries on the Temple Mount, but Israel recaptured the holy site. We all know the electrifying cry of Commander Motta Gur: “The Temple Mount is in our hands! The Temple Mount is in our hands”.

But Moshe Dayan handed the keys to the Muslims. He ia said to have done it to ensure freedom of worship, while in fact with that decision he disappointed the expectations of the entire Jewish people. He gave up a goal pursued for 1800 years.

That was the root of the current “status quo”: namely, that only Muslims can pray there and religious Jews are followed by the police and arrested even if they whisper a Psalm, if they stop praying, if they bring religious books, if they take out a paper from their wallet or even if they close their eyes.

This is anti-Semitism. Pure and simple.

Had Israel insisted on Jewish rights of prayer on the Temple Mount in the places judged to be permissible for prayer as Rabbi Goren suggested, or, since not all Torah scholars agree with his findings, insisted on excavations to be sure of the exact places where Jews are allowed to pray, the Jews would be in a different and better situation today.

But it is not too late.

The question of survival that had obsessed the Jews since the destruction of the Second Temple has not been resolved by the establishment of the State of Israel. And it will not be resolved if Israel does not liberate the Temple Mount and let Jews pray there.

Bring freedom to the House of God or prepare to lose the entire State of Israel. Everybody wants to control those few sacred acres. Will the Jews take what is theirs?

Giulio Meotti – The writer, an Italian journalist with Il Foglio, writes a twice-weekly column for Arutz Sheva. He is the author of the book “A New Shoah”, that researched the personal stories of Israel’s terror victims, published by Encounter. His writing has appeared in publications, such as the Wall Street Journal, Frontpage and Commentary. He has just prblished a book about the Vatican and Israel titled “J’Accuse: the Vatican Against Israel” published by Mantua Books

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