Why Aren't Christians Speaking Out?

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Posted by Cynthia Ozick/Commentary Magazine on November 06, 19100 at 10:36:32:


By Cynthia Ozick. Ms. Ozick, a novelist, is the author of "Quarrel &
Quandary: Essays" (Knopf, 2000).

Ariel Sharon's walk across the Temple Mount plaza, within sight of the
seventh-century shrine known as the Dome of the Rock, has been nearly
universally condemned as a "provocation," an indisputably hostile act
responsible for setting off furious weeks of unstoppable Palestinian
rioting.

Muslims as far away as Indonesia and Morocco (and France and New York)
joined in the rage against this declared affront to Islam. But it was not
only Muslims who spoke of provocation; Western opinion widely and
emphatically agreed. As a consequence, what was only recently looked on as a
clash of nationalities susceptible of rational border negotiations -- "two
nations, one land" was the liberal formula -- has been turned into an ugly
assault on Judaism itself.

The reason is plain. That Mr. Sharon is consistently described as a
hardliner, that he is scorned by the Israeli left, that he is accused of bad
faith and narrow party motives, that he is reviled and demonized by Arabs --
none of this is to the point. What has enraged Muslims worldwide is the idea
of a Jewish presence, any Jewish presence, on the Temple Mount -- and by
"presence" is meant not simply a visit by a party official of the Jewish
state, but the claim of an immemorial, authentic Jewish connection to
Jerusalem. The Temple Mount is called by that name because it was the site
of the Second Temple before its destruction by Roman occupiers in the year
70, an event recorded nearly six centuries before the advent of Islam. The
issue, then, is not the character or intent of Mr. Sharon; it is the willed
erasure not only of Jewish history, but also of Jewish faith.

The current violent challenge to both Jews and Christians is in accordance
with an evolving and fanatically accelerating Palestinian fabrication: that
the Temple never existed, that it is a Jewish invention for local political
gain, that the Jewish attachment to Jerusalem is historically and
religiously nil. At Camp David last July, it was Yasser Arafat himself who
boggled his interlocutors by this preposterous assertion, which is
increasingly promulgated by influential Palestinians, whether lay or
clerical. The insidious phrase, "the Judaizing of Jerusalem," is often heard
in the mouth of Hanan Ashrawi, all the more absurdly because she is
Christian. Holocaust denial to one degree or another is rampant in all Arab
societies; it is augmented now by Judaism denial.

So far, no mainstream Christian voices have been raised against these moral
and historical depredations, and one wonders why. Why has there been no
Christian protest over Muslim rioting when a Jew walks upon a historic
Jewish site? The government and Jewish population of Israel have fully
respected and protected the integrity of the mosques on the plaza, which
have always been administered by the Muslim Waqf. Why has there been no
audible Christian protest over the burning of a synagogue in
Palestinian-ruled Jericho, or a mob's razing of Joseph's Tomb, a Jewish
shrine supposedly under the protection of the Palestinian Authority? (Its
surviving dome has now been painted Islamic green.)
Violence Scars the Holy Land

Read Natan Sharansky's October 30th editorial on this subject, "Only
Democracy Brings Peace"

Half a century ago, when the Jews of Europe were besieged and defenseless,
Christian silence was infamous. Since then, some Jews are no longer
defenseless, and Christian understanding, conscience and remorse have
expiated that unforgotten and dire omission. But what of now? Where is the
Christian outcry when profound hatred of Jews is once again being unleashed?
When Mr. Arafat, last month's peace partner, gleefully consigns the prime
minister of the Jewish state to hell?

In view of the origin and spread of intransigent Palestinian turbulence --
Hamas and Hezbollah and Mr. Arafat's negations all preceded Mr. Sharon's
walk -- one can be certain that if Shimon Peres or the late Yitzhak Rabin,
the architects of compromise and accommodation, had visited the Temple
Mount, the result would be no different. The rocks maliciously stockpiled
near the Dome of the Rock would go crashing down on Jewish worshipers at the
Western Wall just the same.

When Jewish history and faith are pronounced barren of any bond with
Jerusalem, then Palestinians can justify their exclusionary ideology by
means of unrestrained rioting, the closing of schools, the use and abuse of
the young. "The stones are our jewels," Mr. Arafat announced at the start of
the Intifada in 1987, and in the summer of 2000 Professor Edward Said of
Columbia University, also a Christian, was photographed hurling one of those
jewels from Lebanon into Israel, caught up, he explained, in the jubilation
of the stone-throwers. Today, however, firebombs, guns, a lynching, and a
Palestinian militia 40,000 strong have been added to Mr. Arafat's jewel box.

Perhaps Jews ought not to expect, or hope for, vocal Christian empathy. To
speak up for the venerable Jewish kinship to Jerusalem during a stormy time
of pervasive defamation might require going the extra mile. But should not
Christians speak up for the history and central claims of Christianity? If
Judaism has no roots in Jerusalem, then Christianity was never born. And yet
no Christian theological objection has been lodged against the denial of the
Temple's historicity.

I am a Jew who a week ago, on the holiday of Simchat Torah celebrating the
ethical mandates of a 4,000-year-old tradition, opened the Gospels and read
of the Christian connection to the Temple Mount. If the Temple is a Jewish
chimera, as Palestinian and far-flung Muslim anger affirms, it is not only
Jewish history and religion that is wiped away. The heart of Christianity,
too, suffers erasure, and Christian muteness in the face of the annihilation
of Christian belief becomes incomprehensible.

If there never was a Temple, then where did Jesus walk?

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