"The destruction is tremendous"

REVISED 9:46 PM

With so much bad news streaming in, I hardly know where to begin. Since I can't decide which of these stories is worse, I'll just give you both in no particular order.

Peres Reduces Jail Terms of Israeli-Arab Terrorists

(IsraelNN.com) President Shimon Peres has decided to reduce the jail sentences of five Israeli-Arab terrorists.

Three of the terrorists are serving for the brutal murder of Haifa Jewish teenager Danny Katz in 1983 and two for the rape and murder of IDF soldier Daphna Carmon in 1987.

Katz, the son of Holocaust survivors, was kidnapped from near his Haifa home at the age of 15 by Arabs who worked at a nearby supermarket while on his way to visit a friend. He was beaten to death with sticks and then sodomized. He was found dead four days later in the Israeli-Arab village of Sakhnin.

The men were sentenced to life in prison, plus 27 years. They will now be eligible for release in the near future following Peres’s commutation.

Peres made the move after meeting with Israeli-Arab MK Taleb a-Sana (Ra’am-Ta’al), who also urged him to grant a pardon to Suleiman al-Abed, who is serving time for the rape and murder of teenage Jewish girl, Chanit Kikus.

Policeman Assaulted Trying to Stop Illegal Temple Mount Dig

(IsraelNN.com) A policeman trying to stop an Arab tractor engaged in illegal Temple Mount excavations was assaulted - and the police chief who arrived on the scene arrested no one.

Officials of the Moslem Waqf (religious body) on the Temple Mount are digging there illegally, likely destroying precious artifacts from as early as the First Temple period. So say eyewitnesses and representatives of the Committee for the Prevention of the Destruction of Temple Mount Antiquities.

Gideon Charlap, a top Jerusalem architect and Temple Mount expert, told Arutz-7 what he saw when he visited the Temple Mount on Tuesday: "The Arabs there are digging a deep north-to-south trench, up to a meter [1.1 yards] deep. It is being dug in the area that served during Holy Temple times as the Ezrat Nashim [the area known as the Women's Courtyard, though it was not reserved only for women -ed.]. The trench passes through three east-to-west walls, according to my calculations - walls that probably served as separations for the Temple's offices and the like. This means that the destruction is tremendous..."

"At one point during the digging," Charlap continued, "a policeman - apparently a Druze - tried to stop the work from going on, and actually entered the cabin of the tractor. A struggle ensued, and when the Arabs finally pushed him out, he actually stood in the trench and physically blocked the rest of the work!"

Charlap said that at that point, the chief officer of the Temple Mount police station, Shai Alali, arrived on the scene. "But instead of stopping the lawbreakers," Charlap related with incredulity, "he tried to 'calm down' the policeman!"

Charlap said he was unable to see how the story developed from there, "because our allotted time was over."

Jews are permitted onto the site - Judaism's most sacred anywhere in the world - only four or fewer hours a day....

.... Dr. Eilat Mazar, an archaeologist and a leading member of the Committee for the Prevention of the Destruction of Temple Mount Antiquities, spoke with Arutz-7's Hebrew newsmagazine about the desecration. "It is an untenable situation," she said. "Underneath the Temple Mount is a closed area, one that has barely been disturbed since the Destruction of the Second Temple.

Anyone can realize that remnants of both the First and Second Temples are there, and can guess what damage is being done by the tractor. The most precious findings are just rolling around there and are available to be found - and instead they have a tractor there!

If I would try to work with a tractor at one of my digs, the Antiquities Authority would stop me immediately! With a tractor, it's impossible to make any type of careful examination of the earth and pieces being dug up."

"We are a public, voluntary body that has taken upon itself to inform and warn the public about what is going on," Mazar said. "The Antiquities Authority acts as if it is fulfilling its responsibility to supervise - but in fact all they have there is just one man watching but doing nothing. That is not supervision. It's just a deception to say that anyone is overseeing the wanton digging and desecration being carried out there against our greatest national cultural treasure."

Asked if there has been any lull of late in illegal digs on the Temple Mount, Dr. Mazar responded negatively. "They have a clear goal of turning the Temple Mount into a place exclusively for Moslem prayer. In recent years, they have turned two giant structures - at the Huldah Gate and Solomon's Stables - into giant mosques, where none ever stood before...

It is totally illegal; how can such violations of the law be allowed - especially in such an important place for Jewish Nation? ....

See Echad.info and Har-HaBayt.org for more.

The route of the trench (marked in red)

Comments

[Hope]

This is horrifying; I was actually there for the first time on Tuesday when that happened. Is there any move to get it stopped?

[Yael]

Hope, You're in Jerusalem?! That's fantastic. Tell us about it. And as for your question, there's nothing being done as far as I know, just a lot of complaining. If anybody hears otherwise, lemme know.

[mf]

when are the western media going to report on the REAL occupied terrorites? aka the muslim occupied jewish temple mount? funny, how you NEVER hear about this in american or european academia or the media. i thought they cared about science and academics and cultural tolerance? so why would they turn a blind eye to this? IMAGINE if jews occupied mecca?

[Cpt Mac]

They are going all over the world burning churches, destroying icons of others, the world just turns a deaf ear. To think of what they did to the Church of the Nativity when they occupied it was so unpublicized and played down. Now the Temple Mt. Anyone who knows of History Time Lines knows who the Holy Lands belong to. It is unbelievable that because Muhammad had his, so called, flight to the Temple Mt., tied his donkey there, then was taken up into the Jewish Heaven, passing all the Jewish and Christian prophets, that this event is the Muslim claim to the Temple Mt. A place where King Solomon a Jew, built the Temple to and for the Jewish God, who had given the instructions to his father David, a Jew, this Holy Place of all Holy Places, and they continue to claim it is beyond belief. It only shows those with eyes to see and ears to listen the insane mindset of these people. There is no reasoning with them. There is no compromising with them. They are totally self-centered. I will pray for all of you, it is time for Israel to take off the kid gloves. Protect your people and what rightfully belongs to you, world opinion be damned. This is a fight for survival, literally for Israel and Jewish Culture. You are a Nation and you have the right to protect what is yours and your people.

[George]

These muslims are ignorant low lifes destroying Jewish History for their cult from Hades. May HaShem destroy them and all their evil works.

[Stuart in GN]

This is further proof (as if any more is needed) that the Israeli government is feckless and useless. It is time for the Israeli public to rise up and throw those appeasing fools out of power. Dayan had no right to turn the Temple Mount over to the Waqf, and the Israeli government has no right to allow the Waqf to continue its obscene control of the holiest place on Earth.

[JUDY]

SERIOUS, THEYRE DESTROYING SOME OF THE RUINS UNDERNEATH! HMMMM WHAT ELSE IS NEW, NO ONE GIVES A DANG, NEITHER YOUR GOV'T OR OURS. TJATS HORRIBLE TO THINK THAT GOLD ARTIFACTS ARE BEING DESTROYED! MORE GORGEOUS THAN THAT CREEPY MOSQUE THERE!!!

[Are you sure]

@Cpt Mac you sound like Nazi...but the way let me ask you: 1.Before Moses & jew wanna come to Kanaan,where are you?...(sure u r not Kanaan origin which you call Israel now) 2.No jews kills palestinian/moslem?...come on,don't say u forget what Dr. Baruch Goldstein did in 1994. 3.Many palestinian houses tear down by Israeli buldozer,while you build another houses in that area...(if Nazi do this...) Every man,a jewish,a moslem,a christian are equal,in many ways,or do you think the way of your thinking are something that jew ancestor embrace?...(i'm sure they will cry,when they see their grandchild become like Nazi did to them in the past,how pity)

[Ruben Silverman]

Shut up,why we defending a christians? what they did to us,are much more horrible than what any moslem did,Nazi did you guys forget? I'm not american jew,but still i never forget 6000.000 millions jew kills by christians,and i also know that when moslem lead in cordoba spain,our ancestor are more freely and live equaly in moslem regime than in christians regime that day...sigh...and why we never saw any goodness in them?...always says 100% bad things about moslem while in fact 6000.000 are much horror than 3000 in WTC or thousand in Israel,while no one of us want every single live die for sure. (but fact is still a fact and if we talk about justice then we should talk about justice for all not justice only for jew or for christian only)

[Yaeli]

That last bit from "Ruben Silverman" comes to us from IP address 118.137.195.114 That would be Raya, Jakarta, Indonesia. IP Latitude: -6.1744 IP Longitude: -6.1744