The new US Ambassador to Israel David Friedman is expected to stop just 19 meters short of the site of King Solomon’s Temple, his home palace, and the palace he built for his Egyptian wife, the Pharaoh’s daughter. Built centuries before the Arabian hordes converted from worshiping genies and devils, the Temple Mount compound will have to wait a while longer, apparently, before visiting heads of states start flocking over.
For now, as US officials told The Jerusalem Post on Tuesday, Ambassador Friedman will make his first stop in Jerusalem near a supporting wall erected some 2,000 years ago by an Edomite convert, King Herod, as part of his renovation of the Second Jewish Temple. Over the years, this support wall has acquired the sanctity of the prayers of millions of Jewish pilgrims, and become known as The Wailing Wall, the Wall of Tears, the Western Wall (situated as it is, west of the Temple Mount), or just the Kotel (Wall in Hebrew).
And so, the fact that Ambassador Friedman will make the Western Wall his first official stop on May 14, when he begins his term—in the Tel Aviv embassy for now—has been duly registered, and should be acknowledged as a step in the right direction.
Friedman promised in the past to set his residence in Jerusalem, which could mean that his office will be located in the US consulate in Jerusalem. But that was then, and diplomats, like politicians, are expected to renege on their promises. When (if?) President Donald Trump visits Israel this month, possibly on May 23-24, a.k.a. Jerusalem Liberation Day, he may or may not announce moving the embassy to Jerusalem.
It’s where it would have been located in King Solomon’s time.
Meanwhile, those Arabian Hordes we mentioned earlier are in possession of the Temple Mount compound, where they make sure Jews who dare to visit do not exercise their human right of freedom of religion. Had Ambassador David Friedman—named after King Solomon’s heroic father—wanted to make a splash, he would have collected a minyan come May 14 and go up the wooden Mugrabi Bridge to the periphery of the really holy site, and done a Mincha-Ma’ariv service.
We expect Jerusalem police thugs would have been obliged to acquiesce.