Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu not only forbids Jews from praying on the Temple Mount but he also doesn’t want to hear about an Israeli flag flying there.
Palestinian Authority flags flutter on the holiest site in Judaism. Hamas flags and even Islamic State (ISIS) flags are flown there.
But when Tzipi Hotovely, the Deputy Foreign Minister and a popular Likud party Knesset Member, said Monday that her “dream is to see the Israeli flag flying over the Temple Mount,” Prime Minister Netanyahu shivered.
He immediately stated that he has made it clear that his policy is to retain the “status quo,” which is not exactly true, and that “expects that all members of the government to act in accordance with it.”
No Jewish prayers and no Jewish flags can be heard or seen on the Temple Mount.
Yoel Hasson, Knesset Member for the so-called Zionist Union party, calls Hotovely a “messianic” who should be fired before she makes more comments that “could inflame the entire Middle East.”
Hotovely, who always has remained loyal to her boss, clarified her “dream” by explaining she was speaking her “private views and not the government’s policy.”
She has a lot to learn. Cabinet ministers cannot get away with being intellectually honest. He or she has to toe the party line
That is what has gotten Bayit Yehudi (Jewish Home) Cabinet Minister Uri Ariel into constant hot water. He insists that Jews have the right to pray on the Temple Mount and has been the Arab media’s favorite “proof” of Jewish incitement. The holy Muslims’ blood boils over when a Jew actually says that the Jordanian-Israeli Peace Treaty should be carried out
It explicitly states in Article 9:
The Parties will act together to promote interfaith relations among the three monotheistic religions, with the aim of working towards religious understanding, moral commitment, freedom of religious worship, and tolerance and peace.
Netanyahu and his predecessors have unilaterally changed the peace treaty to mean Jews may not pray on the Temple Mount. They conveniently rely on the Chief Rabbinate, which for decades has said that a Jew even stepping foot on the Temple Mount is against Jewish law.
If The Prime Minister wants to follow the Chief Rabbinate’s decision, then it should follow that he should ban Jews from visiting.
Instead, he goes with the political winds. Jewish prayer on the Temple Mount, especially right now, indeed would “incite” the Arab world into trying to murder Jews everywhere, at anytime and at any place.
But when the Prime Minister says out loud that prayer is forbidden, he is creating a precedent that cannot be rolled back so long as Arabs are on the holy site.
Hotovely was not politically smart for stating her “private views,” but if everyone were politically correct, Jews would have been banned from vesting the Temple Mount years ago.