Friday 9 February 2007

Hitler would have been proud

In 1939, as a flimsy pretext for invading Poland, the Nazi regime staged fake raids on its border installations and placed freshly murdered bodies of political prisoners in Polish uniforms at the sites. Based on the evidence so constructed, the Nazi regime invaded Poland on the 1st of September, 1939, starting the bloodiest and broadest war the world has ever seen.

This week, Israeli government crews, working with the antiquities authority, and having notified the Islamic Waqf and the Jordanian monarchy, began repairing the access ramp to the Mughrabi Gate to the Temple Mount, which overlooks the Women's side of the Western Wall Plaza. A few years ago, after a snowstorm, the ramp had partially collapsed, endangering both users of the ramp and worshippers below. The current work is being done entirely outside the confines of the Temple Mount itself. Unless the Waqf has engaged in illegal and dangerous excavation of the 2000 year old retaining wall 20 meters below grade, the work will be done nowhere near anything associated with the Islamic sites such as the Al Aksa Mosque.

Anyone who has been to the Old city of Jerusalem will recognize what I have described. Anyone who wishes can go to a number of live webcams to see the truth. But the truth, and concern for Jewish Worshippers and tourists of all faiths be damned. The Arab and Islamic world has taken a spurious claim and is in the process of turning it into what amounts to a blood libel. Much as was the outbreak of violence over the Western wall tunnels, this crisis has been manufactured out of whole cloth. It is now a provocation, and a way to unite a hopelessly fractured Muslim world. A reminder, if you will, that Sunni and Shia have a common enemy, and that is the Jew. never mind if he is wholly innocent - by the time the truth would come out - if ever - the Ummah will have been roused and the fractures of the Arab and Muslim world temporarily healed in common cause.

It is no surprise that these tactics echo the Nazi pretext for WW2. Unfortunately, it will also be no surprise if many, too many, fall for it.