By Charles Miller
The recent controversy regarding newly installed Israeli National Security Minister Itamar Ben-Gvir’s visit to the Temple Mount underscores the evil motivations of Israel’s incessant detractors and the moral bankruptcy of their stated condemnations. The visit, much like other Jewish measures over the years in the Land of Israel, has been exploited by Israel’s antagonists to denigrate and deny Jewish history in the land.
In order to appreciate today’s headlines, one needs to understand historical context. Prior to the Six Day War of 1967, Jewish holy places lay in ruins, devoid of any Jewish presence, with nary a word of denunciation from a world that had treated Jews with contempt and far worse for centuries.
The Jordanian government under King Hussein, the father of today’s monarch, notoriously destroyed every vestige of Jewish life in the Old City of Jerusalem, turned the largest Jewish cemetery in the world at Har HaZeitim into a garbage heap with rampant desecration, and enforced a seven-centuries old ban on Jewish worshipers at places like Maarat HaMachpelah in Hebron, Rachel’s Tomb in Beit Lechem, and other holy places. That historical record has never been acknowledged. Jordan’s legacy of hate and discrimination toward Jews, like much of the Arab world historically, has never been fully vetted or accounted for.
Symptomatic of the contemptuous behavior and the moral degenerateness of its posture, Jordan’s King Abdullah, without a hint of shame for his country’s prior actions, ominously warned Israel’s newly installed government of “red lines” with regard to Jerusalem’s holy sites. The irony of such an obnoxious warning is not lost on those who understand the historical record. Predictably, no thought-provoking journalist at CNN, the New York Times, and the like deemed it worthy to confront the “moderate” monarch with his nation’s historic butchery.
Prior to 1967, the “historical status quo” involved the holy places in Jerusalem being devoid of Jews. The lauded and universally accepted “status quo” at that time accepted that the religiously sacred areas of our people could be defiled and desecrated beyond comprehension.
Between 2015 and 2022, Israel was condemned by the United Nations General Assembly more than double the number of times than the rest of the world’s nations combined. Think about that degenerate figure: the sovereign Jewish State, deemed a “racist entity” by the same UN General Assembly in 1975, seemingly warranted the world’s demonic attention more than double the rest of humanity combined.
The war against Jews and Israel rages on America’s college campuses, with anti-Zionism the “celebrated” cause. Just this past year, Harvard’s student newspaper embraced the Boycott Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) movement, which calls for Israel’s destruction. Nine organizations affiliated with the University of California at Berkeley’s Law School passed a bylaw disinviting any speaker who supports Zionism. The list is ominous, multiplying, and morally bankrupt, creating a campus culture that treats Jewish students as pariahs and targets of scorn, violence, and denigration. Have these cesspools of hate been called to account for their bigotry and moral obtuseness?
In 2016, in the waning days of its administration, the Obama/Biden government spearheaded the passage of UNSC 2334. As the most hate-filled resolution since the degenerate “Zionism Equals Racism” decades prior, the resolution condemned and deemed illegal as a “flagrant violation of international law” any acts that included “altering the demographic composition, character, and status of the Palestinian Territory occupied since 1967, including East Jerusalem, including, inter alia, the construction and expansion of settlements and transfer of Israeli settlers.” In plain English, the Obama/Biden supported resolution deemed illegal and flagrantly violative of human rights the return of Jews to a rebuilt Jewish Quarter in the Old City, the rededication of our desecrated holy places, and the reclamation of much of our Jewish heritage that had been denied to us for millennium.
That is the tragic legacy of that administration vis-à-vis Israel, an act that President Biden has never repudiated. Courageously, former US Ambassador to Israel David Friedman, in justifying the Trump administration’s favorable actions toward Israel and to Jewish history, bluntly stated that the Obama/Biden UN resolution disgracefully deemed even the Western Wall an illegally occupied place.
Prior to the newly sworn Netanyahu government’s ascension to power, US Secretary of State Antony Blinken obnoxiously and contemptuously stated that the US “will engage with and judge our partners in Israel on the basis of the policies they pursue, not the personalities that happen to form the government.” Seemingly looking for a fight from the outset, the Biden/Blinken foreign policy apparatus sought to delegitimize and tar and feather their despised Netanyahu government “partners.” One wonders whether Blinken or Biden toasted President Emmanuel Macron and his French government during their recent state dinner with promises to “judge” and scrutinize their every move.
This context brings us back to Ben Gvir’s visit to Har Habayit. Condemning him before he even went, the US government and others deemed a peaceful walk on Judaism’s holiest spot to be provocative and “deeply concerning.” In his press conference following the visit, State Department Spokesperson Ned Price, shockingly on eight separate occasions, indicated Israel’s need to “preserve the historical status quo” at Jerusalem’s holy places. When finally cornered by an inquisitive reporter at the Associated Press, Price sheepishly indicated that he could not actually define what the term “historical status quo” meant or whether Ben Gvir violated anything. The hate-signaling and shaming was what mattered. The empty and hate-filled rhetoric was what needed to be conveyed, including its sought-after desired effect. Price and others seek to deny Jews the rights that any other human beings have, the freedom to peacefully assemble.
Neither Price nor his handlers in the Biden administration would ever countenance the denial of such liberties for any other social, ethnic, or religious group. They would rightfully deem racist any such effort in that regard. Yet, when it comes to Israel and Jewish sensibilities, such consistency is lost. The hypocrisy is drenched in the words they spew forth.
They have never decried the presence of Muslims or Christians visiting the Western Wall Plaza; they’ve never condemned non-Jews for visiting other Jewish holy places in Israel. Israel has never denied such free access; yet for Jews, such rights are not universally acknowledged or protected, even for places holy to us. The double standard is nauseating, but predictable.
Whether it’s today’s college campuses, the streets of Brooklyn, the halls of the UN, or the podiums within the Biden administration, the gratuitous and contemptuous attacks on Jewish sovereignty, Jewish heritage, and Jewish rights have become unhinged. It’s past time for our people to assert ourselves proudly and unapologetically.
The advent of Jewish sovereignty, after 2,000 years of exile and dispersion, enabled Jews to be captains of our ship and stewards of our fate. Despite overwhelming odds and endless detractors, the Jewish people have reclaimed our dignity and our historical place in the world. The march forward will undoubtedly be filled with attempted roadblocks and censures; but the destiny of our people is assured. Our faith in our values and the righteousness of our cause drives the Jewish people forward from strength to strength.
Charles Miller is a resident of Woodmere, NY. He is a practicing criminal defense attorney and a former United States Naval Officer. He currently serves as 2nd Vice President of the National Council of Young Israel and as a delegate to the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations. He proudly serves on the executive committee for the International Committee for the Preservation of Har HaZeitim.
