ISRAEL ELDAD (Continued from p.8) force was the only appropriate answer of an authentic nation to the British betrayal. And so, despite the ongoing war against Hitler, Lehi began its own war against the British. This put Lehi at odds not merely with the "organized yishuv," but also with the Revisionists, Jabotinsky, and Menahem Begin's Irgun. The hostilities were so bitter that the Revisionist daily Hamashkif published the police "wanted" ads for Lehi men, complete with the prices on their heads. Given this background, that Eldad should come to be esteemed as "spiritual father of the Hebrew

revolution" by the heirs of Revisionism and the Irgun marks a profound change indeed. Eldad was, of course, appalled by the ill-conceived policies of Labor that threaten Israel's continued existence. In January 1996, at the time of the last Israeli troop withdrawal from Judea and Samaria, in his last weekly column in the Israeli paper Yediot Ahronot, Eldad wrote: "Whoever does not feel the loss and the devastation...does not understand that this is the most dangerous assimilation of all--the daily cutting away of the body and of the soul." Erich Isaac is a member of the executive committee of Americans for A Safe Israel.

The following excerpts (pp.242 ff.) are some of Israel Eldad's comments on the liberation of the Old City of Jerusalem in the Six Day War, first published in 1978 in "Jerusalem: A Challenge," by Israel and Arieh Eldad. ...And now on the Temple Mount and below it, there occurred one of the most exciting and odd events. Motti Gur, the conqueror of the Temple Mount, reports: "The Mountain is in our hands." The Chief Rabbi of the Army, gripped by enormous emotion, blows a shofar at the Wall. With fluttering heart, the Prime Minister, speaking from the heart of the entire nation, pronounces the "shehechianu" blessing. Shehechianu--"Who kept us alive and sustained us"--to stand again before the Wall. The Wall of Tears--a memorial of the destruction. An Israeli soldier pressed against the Wall and bathed in tears became the symbol of victory. What is going on here? At the Wall? Why not on the Temple Mount? Who at that time thought of halachic restrictions? Certainly not Gur and Eshkol and the weeping soldier and those masses that began to flow to the Wall. It was not halacha that prevented them from ascending and celebrating on the Mount. Two thousand years of exile channeled them and us and the river of their--our--stormy emotions to the Wall of Tears, a truly surrealistic spectacle. Here was irrationality inside the irrationality of the miraculous victory. A forced emancipational Zionism overcame a redemptional-historical Zionism. The soldiers of Tzahal break through the Lion's Gate, only now giving to the gate's name its true meaning. They break into the Temple square. With their commanders, they storm its length and diagonally cross its wonderful and great expanse. And they search for the way to the "Wailing Wall"...They ask the Arabs: How does one go down to the Wall?...The Arabs are scared and show them the way, the steep steps to the "Mughrabi

Quarter," and the liberators descend to the narrow lane. These soldiers, conquerors of the Temple Mount, as if possessed by a dybbuk, run down to the Wailing Wall, to the Wall of Tears, and cling to it in glowing passion and deeply moving tears. This is the most dramatic and most photographed scene of the Six Day War, and from it a tremor spreads through the people and the entire land, through the towns and villages and to the fronts still bathed in fire. We have returned to the Kotel! Had we broken through the Jaffa Gate or the Zion Gate, had we reached the Kotel on the way to the liberation of the Temple Mount, then one might understand, sure, it's natural. But no. The Mount was conquered first. We were on the Temple Mount, and spontaneously, without orders from superiors, without thinking or planning--we went down to the Wall. And this Wall is not even a wall of the Temple, but part of the wall with which Herod surrounded it. Its entire sanctity derives from prohibitions forced on us by foreign usurpers, preventing us from ascending the Mount. It is a reminder, a memorial, a substitute. Hence it is a Wailing Wall, for it reminds us only of the destruction, of the disgrace of being below, with our enemies on top. For 2,000 years this fabulous mountain waited for its Jewish liberators...finally they come to it...but what is happening here?...Why do they run down to the Wall? Why, holding the genuine thing, do they want the substitute? And so we have come to the restoration of the Jewish Quarter in Jerusalem. The ears cannot grasp what the mouth is saying. There is a "Jewish Quarter" in Jerusalem. There is an Armenian Quarter, an Arab Quarter, and, in addition, a Jewish Quarter in the midst of Jerusalem. In Prague--yes, in New York--yes, but in Jerusalem? A Jewish Quarter? But to return to the main point: The Temple Mount was conquered and not liberated. We are down below and our enemies sit above, as if we are not living in the State of Israel, as if we are not in the age of Tzahal. We (Continued on p.11)

Outpost               - 10 -               March 1996