Any attempt to sever our ties to our holiest place, where the First and Second Temples stood, just makes us unify around our indigenous homeland even more.
By Brooke Goldstein, founder and executive director, The Lawfare Project
For a Jew, the Temple Mount is everything. We pray facing the Temple Mount. We break a glass at weddings in longing for our full return to the Temple Mount.
The mantra of Chanukah is “Nes Gadol Hayah Sham”, which means “A great miracle happened there” – with “there” being none other than the Temple Mount.
It is not coincidence that the UN tried to disconnect the Jewish People from the Temple Mount during the very festival of Chanukah.
Chanukah marked the victory of ancient and indigenous Jews against the world’s greatest power, with the focal point being a miracle of oil which occurred on the Temple Mount itself.
Jewish children around the world, to this day – this past week – light candles to publicize the miracle that the Jewish people took back our Holy Temple, on the Temple Mount, which we built.
We have seen these kinds of Jew-haters before. We have survived their kind before. And, while the names of ancient Jew-haters have been lost to history, everyone knows the name of the Maccabees.
This recent attempt to defile our Temple Mount today is the same as the colonial Greek empire’s attempt all those years ago. The Greek empire tried to colonialize through the sword, the UN tries to colonialize under the banner of “cultural appropriation.”
This is yet another attempt to colonize us and our culture. To make us think and feel like something we are not.
We call on Jews everywhere to reject this attempt and rather choose the path of decolonization. All too often we see ourselves through the eyes of non-Jewish individuals. Decolonization is about rejecting external paradigms and centering Jewish lived experience as the key to liberation.
To the 129 Jew-hating nations and ambassadors at the United Nations who tried to erase Jewish history this week, we yawn at your inauthenticity and attachment to falsehood.
Your attempt to sever our ties to our holiest place just makes us unify around our indigenous homeland even more.
This article is reposted from End Jew Hatred.
