Given the Temple Mount’s centrality in present political events, it is worth recalling what Yeshayahu Leibowitz said decades ago. There is a wonderful YouTube clip in which he meets a group of students, mostly religious Zionists, who sounded then like they were on the political fringe but are now the new mainstream.
The youths discuss the Temple Mount’s importance in the relationship between Israel and God. He dismisses them with the confidence of adults who don’t shirk the responsibility of educating the young. “The archaeological remains on the Temple Mount have no significance for the connection between the people of Israel and their God,” he tells them. No significance, pure and simple. Telling them what they say is simple is actually incorrect.
Even when the youths struggle to accept his argument, he doesn’t give up. He reminds them that “the First Temple stood 410 years, and Jeremiah the Prophet viewed it as a den of thieves. Nothing good came of it. The Second Temple stood 620 years.” Silence in the studio. And then, after a pregnant pause, he delivers the decisive, factual knockout blow: “Al-Aqsa has stood there 1,300 years.” Leibowitz’s message is crystal clear: “These things are not central to someone for whom Judaism is a living reality.”
The truth is that Leibowitz’s spirit hovers over the abyss that Israel is sinking into. The government of change is trying with all its might to put on the brakes, but who will they stop, themselves? Indeed, everything happening is much bigger than them. When Leibowitz said the occupation corrupts, he explained something structural
— source Jews For Justice For Palestinians | Carolina Landsmann writes in Haaretz | Jun. 5, 2022