The incident at Joseph's Tomb is a symptom of a much wider trend: Islam is willing to tolerate us here only as inferior subjects. This is also the reason for ongoing vandalism of Jewish holy sites.
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The loud sounds of the Shofar that erupted through besieged Joseph's Tomb, in a desperate call for divine help, reminded us for several moments of a scene from an ancient war. But the sounds of heavy shooting that blended with the fire raining down on the Jewish worshippers there, reset the hands of time. We are in 2022.
Such occurrences do not make the news headlines: already two decades ago, in May 2001, dozens of Jews found themselves besieged for many hours in Rachel's Tomb. They also felt the shooting come down over them. There were no Shofars there at that time, but books of Psalms (Tehillim) – and many of them, and the ancient verses of King David's prayers mixed with the whistling of bullets as they scratched the walls of the besieged compound.
Several months later, heads of the Si'ach Yitzhak Yeshiva, the late Rabbi Sheger and Rabbi Yair Dreifus, together with their yeshiva students, found themselves in a similar situation. Rabbi of Efrat, Rabbi Shlomo Riskin, described how the students lay on the floor of the Beit Midrash in Givat Dagan with their wives and children, while bullets whistled over their heads. Their Shofar was a guitar and Rabbi Shlomo Carlebach's tune of "Am Yisrael Chai." This was the most surreal and empowering scene I have ever seen in my life," tells Rabbi Riskin. "A 90-minute campfire event, lying on the floor of the Beit Midrash, while fire and bullets light up the sky over our heads."
The mass visits to our ancestral tombs and other holy sites, such as the Mount of Olives and the Western Wall, are far from being a matter of a minority "amulet kissers and idol worshippers," as defined in a scornful and tasteless manner by Yair Garboz several years ago. Millions of Jews, healthy in spirit and soul, visit sites such as the Cave of Machpela, the Tomb of Joseph, Tomb of Shimon Hatzadik, and Rachel's Tomb, while Shmulik Rosen swears in his well-known song, "Once again we will not leave, Rachel," and appeased her with the comforting words "See the Almighty … They have returned to their border."
The Jewish people have returned to their border and wish to connect to sites and personalities which lie at the crux of its existence. This is the good news. What is less pleasing is that routine visits to these sites still involve life-threatening situations and require security escorting. This reality, even though we have become accustomed to it, is not normal. Also, the chronicles of Palestinians damaging holy Jewish sites have become commonplace, as is the escape of Christians from the Palestinian Authority areas, where the Muslim embitter their lives. Neither of these are news anymore.
Blatant contempt for holy sites
Muslim tolerance towards other faiths and their holy sites has been underlying the dispute for many generations. The incident at Joseph's Tomb is a symptom of a much wider and more profound phenomenon. Some of us have already forgotten, many others remember the destruction and burning of synagogues that remained standing in Gush Katif, showers of stones on Jewish worshipers at the Western Wall; repeatedly setting fire to Joseph's Tomb, threats, firing and Molotov cocktails on worshipers at Rachel's Tomb, at the Shalom al Yisrael synagogue in Jericho, or the Tomb of Shimon Hatzadik, as well as a constant threat on those attending funerals and memorial ceremonies on the Mount of Olives, the oldest and most significant Jewish cemetery in the world.
Add to all this the expressed disdain by Palestinians for the 23 holy Jewish sites, where they committed (in the Oslo Accords) free access for Jews to these locations.
Earlier history is more relevant: provocations by Jerusalem Arabs against worshippers at the Western Wall prior to the establishment of the Jewish state, and the many limitations on their rights there; the Jordanian denial of the armistice agreements signed with them after the establishment of the state, which should have ensured freedom of passage for Jews to holy sites that remained in the areas of the Hashemite Kingdom. The Jordanians purposely breached these sections in the agreement and during their reign in Jerusalem also desecrated, shattered and plundered about 38,000 graves and tombstones on the Mount of Olives. Many of the tombstones that were uprooted were used to build staircases, and stones for the sidewalks and were even incorporated into the buildings of the public bathrooms and latrines.
The Muslims are also badgering the Christians. They have become a small minority in Bethlehem, once a bastion of the Christian majority. The Christian presence in Beit Jala is also significantly smaller. Thousands have emigrated to South America. Like in Iraq, Egypt and Syria, many Christians have left the Palestinian Authority in recent years, as they are not able to cope anymore with the harm to themselves and their rights.
In the past the Palestinians did not hesitate to use the Christian holy sites to wage war against Israel. This happened in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem, during the first Intifada when the murderers of Eliyahu Amedi escaped there, and the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem, in the Second Intifada, when terrorists hid there for many days. Molotov cocktails have been thrown on Israelis from the roof of St. Saviour's Monastery near the New Gate. PLO flags have flown many times above Christian religious buildings, with slogans such as "Islam will win" defiling their walls.
Jesus as a Palestinian Shahid
The ongoing Palestinian harassment of Jewish and Christian holy sites does not derive only from intolerance, but even not from a "side effect" of the month of Ramadan, as claimed recently.
This is a much deeper matter: Islam considers Judaism and Christianity as inferior religions. From its point of view, they are no more than a passageway, announcing the arrival of Muhammad and Islam to the world. Islam's fundamental philosophy claims that the Jews are not a nation, but a religion and a collection of Jewish communities belonging to various places and nations. The Jewish religion is the snuffed out – din el batel, while Islam is the true religion – din el hok.
Moreover, in the minds of many devout Muslims, who live in Israel and in the Palestinian Authority areas, the "Pact of Umar" is still alive and kicking from the early eighth century. These "rules" regulated the status of the dhimmis, the proteges, both Jewish and Christian, under the rule of Islam, and they regarded them as inferior and tolerable only, ruled by the laws of Islam and dependent on its superiority and consideration.
This is the spring from which the extreme Muslims derive their audacity, bullying and right to damage to Jewish holy sites, even to this day. From their perspective, the world is divided into "good" and "bad." The good part "Dar el Islam" are the countries were Islam is already in control. The bad part "Dar el Harev" are the areas where Islam will rule in the future and they are currently waging battle to gain control.
This is where the Muslims derive their ridiculous claims, such as the overall denial of Jewish connection to Jerusalem, or calling the Temple El Mazum, i.e. the imagined. Also, identifying Jesus as a shahid and the first Palestinian refugee is, of course, an unrealistic philosophy that ignores both Christian traditions that claims that Jesus was a Jew, and the fact that the Roman Empire changed the name of Judah to Palestina, only one hundred years after the death of Jesus, the first, imagined, Palestinian Shahid.
So, this is the underlying philosophy for the ancient habits that the Muslim Palestinians have had difficulty weaning themselves from, since the establishment of the Jewish state and the redemption of Jerusalem, and Judea and Samaria. The next time that Joseph's Tomb is set ablaze, or that Jews are stoned en route to the Western Wall, you should remember that instead of looking under the stones for intelligent reasons, or even something that is more fashionable today – let's just blame ourselves for the situation.
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