Christians differ among themselves on the importance of the "Holy Places" (and indeed differ over whether Jesus prophesied the destruction of the Temple and of Jerusalem itself), but there is no doubt that they have maintained and defended these places through generations of hostility and violence--generally pitting them against a militant and aggressive Islam, though often too, of course, against other Christians. Here is Mark Twain on the subject: "All sects of Christians (except Protestants) have chapels under the roof of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, and each must keep to itself and not venture upon another's ground. It has been proven conclusively that they cannot worship together around the grave of the Saviour of the World in peace....Even in our own day a war that cost millions of treasure and rivers of blood was fought because two rival nations claimed the sole right to put a dome upon [the Church of the Holy Sepulchre].

Christian interest in the city has also often been tied specifically to the Jews' right of settlement there. In this country, for example, there was a 19th-century Christian Zionist tendency that predated the political Zionism among Jews. In an 1891 petition known as the Blackstone memorial, named after a Chicago evangelist, 413 prominent American Jews and Christians called upon the President to hold "an international conference to consider the condition of the Israelites and their claims to Palestine as their ancient home."

In 1967, in response to Arab aggression, Israel took control of all of Jerusalem, including the Temple Mount (so-called, it should be noted, because it was the site of the Second Temple before its destruction in the year 70, an event recorded six centuries before the rise of Islam). Since then, access to the holy places has been effortless and free of risk for the major religious groups, except on the Temple Mount itself. The Muslim Waqf, which administers the mosques on the plaza, prohibits both Jews and Christians from praying there. In 1971, four years after Israel had taken control of the ancient city, the National Coalition of American Nuns declared that "Jerusalem is now available to all faiths and never before have the holy places been so protected and maintained." Needless to say, Mecca and Medina, the two holiest cities in Islam, are far less welcoming to "infidels."

Moslem intolerance has contributed to a large-scale exodus of Christians from the Holy Land and the transformation of places like Bethlehem, not so long ago a Christian town, into one that is two-thirds Moslem. Last year, Christians were prevented from building a church in Nazareth because it was close to and would have been taller than an adjacent mosque. In view of all this, just how does one explain the action taken the day before Christmas last year (2000) by leaders of the major Christian churches in Jerusalem, when they announced their support for Yasser Arafat's claim to sovereignty over both Moslem and Christian holy places in the city of Jerusalem and specifically over the Temple Mount, which has been called "the most contested piece of real estate on earth"? According to the New York Times (24 December 2000), "The leading Christian churches in Jerusalem have shifted positions over the past three months of violence and are backing Palestinian demands for full sovereignty over Jerusalem's Old City and its Christian and Muslim holy sites." One assumes that the church leaders who supported Arafat's claim to the Temple Mount did not include evangelical Christians who believe that the status of the buildings on this Jerusalem plaza will determine the fate of all humanity, and that it is therefore imperative that Israel both control the Mount and undertake the rebuilding of the Temple. (Evangelicals cannot themselves undertake building the Third Temple.)

Since Arafat's rioters, pogromists, and lynch mobs had in the previous months been attacking and destroying not only Jews but Jewish holy places (most notably the synagogue in Jericho and the tomb of Joseph, whose surviving dome has now been painted Islamic green) it seemed a peculiar move for church leaders to make. Had Arafat, who spent his youth in the Muslim Brotherhood, given persuasive evidence that he would be kinder towards Christian holy places than towards Jewish ones? Arafat had made a cynical attempt to conciliate Christian sympathy for his latest mini-war by choosing to locate his snipers not in one of the numerous Moslem villages surrounding Jerusalem but in a Christian one, Beit Jalla, so that when Israeli troops fired back at the buildings which held the snipers they would be hitting Christian dwellings and their inhabitants.

One also wonders how church leaders not suffering from historical amnesia could overlook the resonance of the very name given by Arafat to his latest mini-war: Al-Aksa intifada. Al-Aksa is the mosque built twenty years after the Dome of the Rock and supposedly the "furthest mosque" mentioned in the Koran. However, in the days of Mohammed, who died in 632, Jerusalem was a Christian city within the Byzantine Empire. It was captured by Omar in 638, six years after Mohammed's death, and became a model of Moslem supercessionism. The Al-Aksa mosque, which gives its name to the present series of pogroms, is a reconstruction of the Christian-Byzantine Church of St. Mary--a typical Byzantine basilica with a row of pillars on either side of the rectangular "ship" in the center. An onion-like dome on top was added to make it look like a mosque; it was then named Al-Aksa, so that it would sound like the one mentioned in the Koran. But it did not exist until two or three generations after Mohammed's death.

The Al-Aksa intifada has also been accompanied by a propaganda intifada. Arab countries (and of course the PLO) have long been involved in Holocaust denial--

Outpost               - 8 -               August 2001